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Use hearsay in a sentence

Definition of hearsay:

  • (noun) gossip (usually a mixture of truth and untruth)
  • (adjective) heard through another rather than directly; "hearsay information"

Sentence Examples:

He instructed them that although the boy Ralph's declaration that he was not Robert Burnham's son might be regarded by them, yet they must also take into consideration the fact that his opinion was founded partly, if not wholly, on hearsay, and, for that reason, would be of little value to them in making up their decision.

A great deal of what I had read and heard had been mere hearsay, and this it was necessary to discard in order that the real facts of the case might be taken up, and the proper conclusions drawn therefrom.

I may as well here describe the tribulations of the advanced party, prefacing my remarks by saying that they are founded on reports and hearsay, and therefore I beg any slight inaccuracy may be forgiven me.

It is interesting chiefly for its style, which is simple and dignified, and for the flashes of wit and poetry that break into the fantastic combination of miracles, traditions, hearsay, and state records which he called history.

It will generally be found that those who know what it is to have been in need and destitution are very much less afraid of it, and consequently more inclined to extravagance, than those who know poverty only by hearsay.

On the one hand, they often describe things which they have never seen themselves, and only know from hearsay; and, on the other, they adorn what they really have seen with a little too much imagination. 16th January.

The latter adds from hearsay that the Americans cruelly slew an Indian woman; but there is not a syllable in any of the other accounts to confirm this, and it may be set down as a fiction of the by-no-means-valorous bombardier.

He saw the minister, and explained that though he did not acknowledge the 'Persian Letters,' he would not disown a work for which he had no reason to blush; and that he ought to be judged upon its contents, and not upon mere hearsay.

What I have found, and found so much reason to lament, is, that while anatomy has been taught as a science ought to be taught, as a matter of autopsy, and observation, and strict discipline; in a very large number of cases, physiology has been taught as if it were a mere matter of books and of hearsay.

There is not a young man or graybeard in the village but can tell of the crags and crests of the mountain, of its crevasses and caves, of its torrents and screes, whether now he knows it from his own experience or from hearsay.

Ghosts, second sight, dreams, omens, premonitions, visions, did greatly delight him, but it is fair to note that he does not vouch for all his marvels, but merely jots them down, as matters of hearsay.

That Puritan blood flowed in their veins that throughout our land has drowned much harmless joyousness; yet those who know of it only from hearsay do foolishly to speak but ill of it.

In his own words, he loved Turgenev, the singer of virginal love and purity, of youth, and of the melancholy Russian landscape; but he loved virginal love, not from knowledge but from hearsay, as something abstract, existing outside real life.

Indeed, the worthy burghers began to surmise that he knew more of these stories than mere hearsay.

"No man's unsupported testimony," he adds, "as to the place of his birth would be taken in evidence in a court of justice, for his knowledge of the event must necessarily be from hearsay or from records."

Yet those who approached Dorothea, though prejudiced against her by this alarming hearsay, found that she had a charm unaccountably reconcilable with it.

It is very bad salesmanship to begin introducing ideas and feelings to a mind and heart that are unknown to you except from hearsay.

On one occasion I had some trouble to make a Native complainant understand that the evidence upon which he relied was entirely hearsay and therefore of no avail against the man he wished to charge with a crime of theft.

Knowing the South Seas from hearsay and by travel, he knew something of that inertia which blunted the fineness, innate and acquired, of white men and women, the eternal warfare against indifference and slovenliness.

And, if hearsay be true (and in this case I believe it is) you even went so far as to kill a defenseless woman who had been brave enough to wander out across that particular part of the Fens just to see what those flames really were.

To him Hercules lived yesterday, and, confusing hearsay with memory, he was almost ready to swear that he was present and used a shovel when the strong man cleaned the Augean stables.

Still, the numerical illustration of the rapid deterioration of hearsay evidence, when less than quite veracious, puts us on our guard against rumor.

Where, except so far as the retainer is concerned, I was obliged to depend so much on hearsay evidence, I thought it just possible that I might have selected an extreme case instead of a fair type of what I have ventured to call the African system.

It is only when we take into consideration the entire life history of a paranoiac, which unfortunately is frequently ruled out as hearsay evidence, that the real state of affairs becomes manifest.

It is marvelous that so learned and so distinguished a man should have fallen into such a mistake; and, on hearsay, ventured to utter a most calumnious accusation against the friends of the slave.

The shock given to the whole community of the United States by the character of evidence received to help the court determine the Dreyfus issue, was itself enough to show that the confidence of the public in the justice of the rule against hearsay evidence had grown rather than diminished with years.

Now, therefore, the fact that a few men drawn up for battle with valor on their side are able to overcome a multitude of the enemy, is well known by every man of you, not by hearsay, but by daily experience of fighting.

I hope that this little volume will find them no less benevolently disposed, and that at the same time it may not be without interest to those whose knowledge of the Shiny East is derived from hearsay.

Indeed, the worthy burghers began to surmise that he knew more of those stories than mere hearsay.

Half-truth and hearsay was called truth.

It might have been mistaken for the first attempt in the ship-building way of an infatuated boy, whose acquaintance with ships was founded on hearsay, and whose taste in color was violently eccentric.

A few anecdotes, obviously based quite tenuously upon hearsay, will suffice to illustrate.

However, it will be noted that these conclusions are based upon the accounts of journalists and diarists rather than hearsay.

He had had several wives before the war, and was reputed to be none too good to them, a fact which was known at home only on hearsay; for he always took his wives from plantations at a distance from his home.

Certain pains, we are told by hearsay busybodies, mean certain serious conditions, and the category of these diseases extends from indigestion to consumption and to cancer.

For these and various other causes, a king or a prince desiring to choose a wife was obliged to content himself with such information relating to the several candidates as he could obtain from hearsay in respect to their characters, and from miniatures and portraits in respect to their personal attractions.

I'm afraid not, dear; and your warmest, greatest longing, would come back to home and girlhood, when you only knew the world's wickedness by hearsay, when you owed it nothing, and never heard its grasping cry for pay for its homage.

"Cheer up, lad, we'll find a way," declared the old sailor, with a hopefulness he was far from feeling, for he knew well, by hearsay, of the terrible swamp quagmires that swiftly suck their victims down to a horrible death in the foul mud.

Melrose's room, her casual mention of tea, her appreciative little phrases as she introduced to Marion and Doris the young lady who picked out books for Aunt Alice, had all helped to crush out the vaguely hostile impulse Norma Sheridan had toward rich little members of a society she only knew by hearsay.

A careful examination of the evidence adduced in support of the latter assertion, shows it to be of the most flimsy description, and refers it to its true basis, viz. hearsay: the reasoning and inferences which prop the evidence are equally flimsy.

I suppose such cases must occur amongst Germans too, and in the end one speaks of a foreign nation partly from personal experience, which must be narrow, and partly from hearsay.

To this his master retorted wearily that he had told him a thousand times that he was enamored only by hearsay, and had never visited Dulcinea in her palace.

Hence, the majority of men only hear of these things by hearsay in a rough and inexact manner; so that a series of phenomena familiar to naturalists and medical men, are still dead letters for the rest of the public.

The mystery of the whole creation suffering together oppressed and solemnized her life, for it was no hearsay of cold, and hunger, and wretchedness that touched Ada.

It simply means that they had no data but hearsay on the early period.

Most likely it was the latter, if any of these neighborhoods, though it is all hearsay now, though formerly one of the "stock sights" of the "Lady Guide Association," who undertook to gratify any reasonable whim of the inquisitive American.

He tells me that he is fairly familiar with the Thibault tanneries from hearsay, and he is confident that he is taking them some tips that will make him solid with them from the start.

He brought to bear the authority of his personality, fortified by the confidence and prestige which attach to it; and he made it plain that he spoke, not from hearsay, but from personal experience, observation, and knowledge.

Of their mother they only knew by hearsay, as Dave was only three years old when his sister committed matricide, quite unconsciously, and you could hear her all the way up the Court.

The idle talk of a chatterbox gained, in the buzz of hearsay, the same importance as well established observations, and what had been said before and after was blended and combined with audacious arbitrariness.

Leach was taken out of his bed in the night, his papers were seized, and even his journeymen and servants were apprehended, the only foundation for the arrest being a hearsay that Wilkes had been seen going into Leach's house.

To have believed ill of Paul from hearsay would have been impossible; his confidence in his elder brother had been unbounded.

Back of their grandfathers they have neither screed nor hearsay.

How quickly in the course of a few such transmissions hearsay loses all evidentiary value is simply illustrated by the game known as Russian Scandal.

I will relate that of which I myself was an eyewitness, facts which I know to be true, and will pay no attention to the contradictory statements of those who merely write from hearsay, for truth is a sacred thing.

Most of it is hearsay, and when we went down there on a second trip after losing the Mayflower, we found little to prove that a galleon had been lost, barring some old cannon, flint rock ballast, and square iron bolts.

In fact, manual labor was looked down upon by the Greeks, and a sharp distinction was drawn between the slaves who performed bodily work and really observed nature, and the leisured upper classes who speculated, and often only knew nature by hearsay.

If they can't see you they can't see your hardships, and besides, hearsay evidence unsupported is not worth shucks.

We trooped with her down the brae to the wooden station, and I think I was envying her the journey in the mysterious wagons; I know we played around her, proud of our right to be there, but I do not recall it, I only speak from hearsay.

He made some distinction between hearsay and authentic information, but had no pretence to accuracy, his retentive memory being the chief authority.

"It is mere hearsay," he added, daunted by our protestations, and we all came to the conclusion the hearers had but singing in their ears.

Such was the immediate effect, both of his countenance and his noble bearing in every respect, as far removed from guilty hardness as from guilty fear, that many who had on hearsay condemned now in their hearts acquitted him.

All that is left to say is that I know my uncle Karl only slightly, and my grandfather not at all, wherefore my descriptions must, unfortunately, lack the element of personal observation, being drawn almost entirely from hearsay.

As to draining by what is called a Mole Plow, which simply makes a waterway through the subsoil at a depth of three feet or thereabout, I have no acquaintance with it but by hearsay.

Nay, sir, I speak on hearsay, but advisedly, for my master is well aware of the substantial undertakings of your firm.

"It was that very adjuration, his grief, his profound humility and wisdom," said Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, "that made us think of him all the more; we learned to know him from his words as we could never have known him by hearsay."

Such testimony was hearsay or secondary evidence at best; and they could have cherished no hope that such loose talk and the fragmentary repetition of letters heard read would ever be allowed to pass muster by an impartial judge in a civil court.

Conroy's imposture was hearsay only.

Thus, a statement has been excluded as hearsay, even though it can be proved that the author of the statement made it on oath, or that it was against his interest when he made it, or that he is prevented by insanity or other illness from giving evidence himself, or that he has left the country and disappeared, or that he is dead.

Instead of sailing out on hearsay to an unknown land and finding himself in the wrong one, or in the wrong part of the right country, as has happened to thousands, the emigrant can now obtain official information, which may guide him rightly.

I speak in general, for there were many instances of immovable affection, pity, and duty in many, and some that came to my knowledge, that is to say, by hearsay; for I shall not take upon me to vouch the truth of the particulars.

She spoke feelingly without the least inner emotion; she spoke of feelings of which she only knew from hearsay.

He lived in Park Lane and was a very grand person in all ways, and, according to hearsay, firmly believed that he was a teapot, and spent his days in the miserable hope that somebody would be kind enough to put him on the stove!

In an age when reading and writing were substantially unknown, and when history itself was, but the vaguest hearsay handed down from dotage to infancy, nothing was rescued from oblivion except the wonderful, the miraculous.

As a general rule, hearsay evidence is excluded on a criminal charge, but where the charge is one of homicide it is the practice to admit dying declarations of the deceased with respect to the cause of his death.

It represents the intensive development of the older type of "biography," based on direct observational data rather than on hearsay, conjecture and anecdote.

If he learned, not by hearsay, but eye to eye, that she had come of her own motion, poor, silly dupe of his blandishments, to throw herself into his arms!

I only know of the life in the regular inebriate "homes" from hearsay.

He knew from hearsay what was meant by the cruel ordeal of the gantlet, and how not one man in ten came forth from it alive, and overpowered as he was with a sense of physical weakness, his heart sank within him.

My comrade claims to speak from personal knowledge and not from hearsay testimony, and as his statement has not been induced by the fear of punishment or the hope of reward, its credibility can not be impeached.

Of these, and of extraordinary escapes from death with which they are associated, many anecdotes are told in mining districts, which would appear to the reader exaggerated, or positively untrue, if I related them on mere hearsay evidence.

These men took nothing on hearsay: and in this manner successive annalists carried on a continued chronicle from age to age.

Extending in a south-easterly and north-westerly direction, is a large elliptical space, within which geographical features are represented by dotted lines, indicating that they are put in by hearsay only.

It may be laid down as a general rule that all contemporary estimates as to the population of the Indian tribes which were necessarily founded upon hearsay prior to actual penetration into their country are fanciful and totally unreliable.

They are, I believe, timid, harmless creatures, a species of incomplete men, in whom brutal instincts have stifled the intellect; however, I only speak of them from hearsay, for I never saw one of the poor devils.

"Look," said he, "at the fallibility of rumor; for I had heard of you as something of a philosopher, and here I find you not only taking a man's character on hearsay but denying him the chance to prove you mistaken!"

In some cases with a child, or servant, or private friend, or for prevention, we may speak of faults upon hearsay or suspicion; but it must be as of things uncertain, and as a warning rather than a reproof.

Anything else I said would be hearsay, and I understand that he did receive some cortisone.

I am sure until the time that the suspect was turned over to Fritz, other than maybe a couple of words exchanged between Walker and the suspect while I was standing in the door talking to Baker, I am sure I would have heard it, and I never did hear the address North Beckley mentioned until much later in the day, and this was strictly hearsay, sir.

My answer is, that the former, the English residents in China, derive their knowledge on the subject from actual experience formed from personal intercourse with the natives, from seeing with their own eyes, and hearing with their own ears; whilst people in England obtain their information from hearsay only.

Many of my preconceived notions, obtained by reading and by hearsay, were put to flight during those three or four days.

They were satisfied to condemn it on hearsay evidence, or on the strength of some garbled quotations.

The elephant has an eye for neatness, and one would hardly believe from hearsay with what regularity and carefulness he works, moving from one end of the log to the other until it is in exactly the right place.

None is supported by sufficient evidence to make it creditable and most of them arose at so late a date that it was impossible for the writers to know anything about the facts of the case except by hearsay evidence.

She put romanticism and romance into her own existence as well as that of others; whether it is a question of events of which she was witness or of those which she relates from hearsay, it is never prudent to accept her word without confirmation.

While he partook of his repast he spoke not, and those in the room who had hitherto only known him by hearsay as a fearless soldier, who would fight under the most desperate circumstances, now looked, not without astonishment, upon his person.

We can scarcely be expected to credit without adequate proof all the hearsay tales of Russian oppression.

Yet it is the mention of the last that will make many who know only of the sport by hearsay, look scornful and say they see no fun in standing watching and waiting for the bite that often never comes, and that they prefer something more active.

"By hearsay," he replied irritably, while to himself he added: "You are a mere coquette whom sheer idleness is leading to weary and madden me."

It produced a marked effect on the other gulls; perhaps the Burgomaster, a rare visitor to our seas, was known, from hearsay, to them as a great tyrant.