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Use whim in a sentence

Definition of whim:

  • (noun) a sudden desire
  • (noun) an odd or fanciful or capricious idea

Sentence Examples:

Writing as one thought coursed after another in his teeming fancy, we find these passing whims of a vivid imagination embodied in the journal intended for the information of the sovereigns.

Now, some people would say that it was very foolish and sentimental of David to be indulging in such a whim, and still more foolish in these men to gratify it at the risk of their lives; but I think there is a better way of looking at it.

Though the affair was but a whim of youth, more odious than poetical, it caused some talk, and raised around the extravagant host the haze of a mystery, suggesting fantasies of irreligion and horror.

Elizabeth, his eldest daughter, was sent home for her education, and lived first with one of her kinsfolk, and then another, as her father's whims or their convenience dictated.

Then again, each day was so many hours long, and, since he no longer was occupied with writing and studying, those hours had to be occupied somehow; so he yielded to what was to him a whim, permitted interviews, gave his opinions on literature and philosophy, and even accepted invitations of the bourgeoisie.

For by some whim of fate Madame Roland was executed on the very scaffold to which her envenomed writings had driven Marie Antoinette.

The women, indeed, whom he loved, whom he proposed to, always awoke with a shock to the risk of joining for life a man of such explosive whims, of such absorption in his own self and art, of such utter deafness, untidiness, and morose habit of mind.

And then the squire would draw her aside and beg her to bear with Vera's whims as far as possible since loneliness depressed her, and she was the only person he knew whose company did not either tire her out or irritate her beyond endurance.

Most of our time at least, policies were based on whims and fancies, to gauge the rationale of which often left one bewildered.

Leonora admitted to Rafael that she could have lived to old age submissively at Keller's side, pampering his whims and selfish caprices.

Everybody knows fathers and mothers whose fondness induces them to indulge all the appetites, desires, and whims of their children, thereby ruining their health and temper, making them greedy and selfish, and laying the foundation for a wretched life for the children themselves and all who are unfortunate enough to come into contact with them.

To deny my request was simply one of his ill-advised whims, and his refusal was given with customary curtness and contempt.

Whatever honest, commonplace affection was in the man came out in a simple way to this Lois, who ruled his sick whims and crotchets in such a quiet, sturdy way.

This nickname is gall and wormwood to Gertrude, but I can't quite hold with her whims on the subject of names.

The Englishman is, therefore, contented with that liberty which secures his most personal rights and guards his body, his property, and his conjugal relations, his religion, and even his whims, in the most unconditional manner.

I was now too fond of you often to simulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart.

Ever after this Walters gallery incident it was my duty, so he thought, to keep Field's desk supplied with inks, not only of every color of the rainbow, but with lake-white, gold, silver, and bronze, and any other kind which his whim deemed necessary to give eccentric emphasis to some line, word or letter in whatever he chanced to be composing.

The German army, then, is by no means a lifeless tool that might be used by an unscrupulous and adventurous despot to gratify his own whims or to wreak his private vengeance.

Both plainly belonged to the same species, and it pleased my whim to symbolize them as a mastodon and a rogue elephant.

In the dark and the rain I felt hopelessly alone, abandoned to the whims of destiny; I felt that all my doings, my desires, and everything I had thought and said till then were trivial in comparison with my loneliness, in comparison with my present suffering, and the suffering that lay before me in the future.

In very many cases I should say the doing of what I want has simply been regarded by the woman as gratifying a silly and perhaps amusing whim, in which, beyond the novelty of treading on a man's body, she has taken but little interest.

By persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the sober actions of men otherwise rational and tinges them all with its own semblance of insanity.

The whim of a populace or the candidate's own misrule were never considered by the investigators, nothing counted with them but heredity and lawful descent from kings, all else was ignored.

The husband is represented as yoked to the wheel of his wife's whims, tyrannized over by the one he works for.

And, beyond even this ... some devilish whim had betrayed him to-night into offering his time for the service and uses of the landlady's daughter in the puling matter of algebra.

The interpolations due to the ignorance or whims of copyists were remorselessly stricken out, and into the ritual, thus purified, was introduced the pomp customary at the court of Byzantium.

She congealed the clouds when she pleased, and covered the face of the sun with them; and when the whim seized her, she made the murkiest sky clear up at once.

The extravagance of the present, in contrast with the frugality of a past age, has always been a favorite topic of declamation, and appears to have no other foundation than whim.

We have the highest, and indeed an almost unique, example of this kind of sympathetic imagination in Shakespeare, who becomes so sensitive, sometimes, to the thought, the feeling, nay, the mere whim or habit of body of his characters, that we feel, to use his own words, as if "the dull substance of his flesh were thought."

A whim, for which he was now grateful, had cozened him into carrying this uniform along with him on his adventures.

Indeed, I suppose that I, at least, who had led the rest into this imbroglio through my whim, should have been utterly overwhelmed by the burden on me.

And he had borne with patience all her imperious strictures and had obeyed all her crazy and jealous whims.

The sense of a Latin or Greek word, he said, is better established, more surely fixed, more definite, less liable to capricious peculiarities of convention, than the vernacular words which the whim or ignorance of the lexicographer may choose.

The choice of a vocation, determined by fugitive whims and chance fancies, by mere imitation, by a hope for quick earnings, by irresponsible recommendation, or by mere laziness, has no internal reason or excuse.

A bachelor under thirty, with a competence of such dimensions that it had entailed incompetency, and a doting family that danced attendance upon his every whim, he was figuratively as well as literally at sea in this new environment.

There is really nothing so bewildering to anyone who sees it for the first time as the exquisite order and dainty perfection of a yacht in which its owner takes a pride, and can afford to gratify his whim.

It went, probably, a long way back of the night when that hasty speech of his about not jeopardizing the children's lives to gratify his wife's whims had set the match to her resolution to leave him and the babies and live a life for herself.

She knew its whims, corrected its errors, brought to her insensate machine the complement of brain that made it trustworthy.

Unless you eulogize whatever they say or do, unless you adapt yourself to their slightest whim, they become angry with you.

You give me up, for the sake of a whim, of some silly fustian about patriotism, some fool's rubbish of high-sounding words!

An elderly pedant to interfere with the pretty whims of a viper when she wears the outer semblance of a fine woman!

Those were days when children murdered parents, wives husbands, for whim or passion, and very little came to punish their guilt.

The known beggar, who goes his own rounds, and has his own walk, always adapts his character to that of his benefactor, whose whims and peculiarities of temper he studies with industry, and generally with success.

The life of unreason is their desire; the experience whose bent is determined by every whim, the expression which has no rational connection with the past and no serious consideration for the future.

Humanism has at least the value of an objective standard in the sense that it sets up criteria which are without the individual; it substitutes a collective subjectivism, if we may use the term, for personal whim and impulse.

I thought it was a whim at first, and I sent Tudor in my stead; but she was so rude to him, and lashed herself into such a fury against us clerics, that he came back looking quite scared, and asked why I had sent him to a mad woman.'

That the boy should have had the unheard-of audacity to lock her up in her own bedroom in order to gratify some mad whim, and so have upset her plans for the entire day, was an outrage impossible to forgive.

When the hoop behaved well, she came ahead rapidly; when it affected to be intoxicated, which was most often its whim, she zigzagged with it, and gained little ground.

The truth is, he regarded it as a very innocent whim, which required to be indulged in his wife's delicate situation; so he always joined in her hopeful anticipations, and endeavored to sympathize with them.

I said that the day was past when I would sacrifice my peace or my duty to her whims; and she ventured no remonstrance when I announced that I intended to follow the hand so long as it moved, and discover the meaning of the apparition.

When she had resumed her former position with a feeling of perfect safety, she continued for a few minutes to dilate in fancy upon the suffering that would be caused by the death her whim had suggested.

They were of the same stamp all of them, drinkers, madcaps, fighters, gamblers, full of strange caprices and extraordinary whims.

It was the insolent whim of these transient, pampered aristocrats that I should be detailed to serve them food.

You remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation.

I think it was the ancient Romans who personified death in the form of a walking skeleton, scythe in hand, cutting down whatever the whim of his fancy might suggest.

His action in this can only be accounted for in the light that it was one of those unpremeditated whims of a narrow-minded faddist.

I once heard of a captain who indulged his boatswain in this whim of representing his absent love as far as the king's allowance of paint could carry the art; and it must be owned, that, as the original Dulcinea owed her roses to the same source, the representation "came very close aboard of the original," as the delighted boatswain expressed it.

For a two-by-four he lugs around a lot of cranky whims, and it looked like this was one of his pets.

She had lived riotously through seven imperial reigns, gambling, owning and exhibiting pantomimes, nourishing all manner of luxurious whims, whether the state lay gasping under a Nero or Domitian, or breathed once more in the smile of Trajan.

The position and task of the American President in that crisis cannot be understood from those of other historic rulers or historic leaders of a people; and it may seem as if, after that tremendous conflict in which there was no lack of heroes, some perverse whim had made men single out for glory the puzzled civil magistrate who sat by.

Also, the masters were not at the mercy of their workmen, and did not obey their whims as they do to-day; on the contrary, they made them their children, their apprentices, took care of them, and taught them the intricacies of the trade.

In some mysterious manner they are said to waylay a poor defenseless soul, and ruthlessly hold it in captivity till such time as it suits their whims, when they actually devour it.

The performer takes up the instrument as the whim prompts him and in the semidarkness plays his rude, melancholy tune.

He grew arrogant and boastful, and strutted in his power like a man in liquor with the vain knowledge that he could increase the population of a state or a group of states, or he could shrivel the prosperity of a section of the country by his whim.

Then the whim came to him to finish his night's amusement by a sarcastic enjoyment of the revivalist service.

Occasionally I fling away a small sum on a whim that catches my fancy; now its German marks, now an abandoned farm.

He wondered, making a wry face at the thought, whether she intended to record his actions in a book, giving him marks of merit or demerit according as the whim struck her?

Is it nothing that, to gratify your vanity or your whims, you should have condemned a man, whose blood is not frozen yet, to something worse than widowhood for life?

Donald Hester of course knew nothing of the wonderful tub, nor of another whim of the paymaster's, which was that an officer should never appear in public save in uniform.

This term has been used as a peg upon which to hang every whim, fancy, formula, and vocal vagary that has floated through the human mind in the last two centuries.

Then the common whim of the observer drew me to compare her with her brother, and to note their likeness and unlikeness.

Never again would she be changed into a peafowl at the whim of a wicked dragon, never again be separated from her loved one.

Bach was so great that he had no artistic jealousy, no whim, and when harshly and unjustly criticized he did not concern himself enough with the quibblers to reply.

Later this same child may evolve aspirations and ambitions that seem to the other members of the family mere whims and vagaries to be laughed down, or stoutly endured, as the mood prompts.

As the parties to a lawsuit have the privilege of challenging peremptorily a certain number of jurymen, so every man should be allowed to enjoy a reasonable number of whims and prejudices without being called upon to give reasons for them.

Their language proves indeed that these so-called heathens, with their complicated systems of mythology, their artificial customs, their unintelligible whims and savageries, are not the creatures of to-day or yesterday.

He did not retire to gratify any self-indulgent whim, but only in order to work the more uninterruptedly and definitely.

Afterwards they played a game at bagatelle, but it took all their patience to stand Herbert's whims and tricks.

He knew in his heart that his only title to the position he assumed was the whim of his schoolfellows.

He would never have done it alone, without anyone to see him, being too fond of himself to persevere in anything he did not like out of whim, or for the sake of some possible future gratification, of the reality of which he was not very well assured.

The French people, as is natural, are weary of a War which yields them mere losses and disgraces; "War carried on for Austrian whims, which likewise seem to be impracticable!"

Ugly women may be naturally quite as capricious as pretty ones; but as they are never petted and spoiled, and as no allowances are made for them, they soon find themselves obliged either to suppress their whims or to hide them.

With the best heart in the world, he contrived, through a predominant whim of contradiction, to earn for himself, among those who only knew him superficially, the character of a curmudgeon.

While at Oxford he took little share in the regular studies of his college, but read enormous numbers of Greek, Latin, and English books, as his taste or whim suggested.

Nothing can be more absurd than his whim of composing grave letters of expostulation and commendation to Cicero and Seneca; yet these strange performances are written in a far more natural manner than his communications to his living correspondents.

Do you suppose I'm going to spend my time building churches and stultifying myself just for the sake of gratifying your idle whims?

With the best heart in the world, he contrived, through a predominate whim of contradiction, to earn for himself, among those who only knew him superficially, the character of a curmudgeon.

Washington, whose elderly and doting husband had never refused to grant her most exorbitant whim, sighed profoundly.

It was not strange that he should so heartlessly have betrayed his friends' confidence, nor that he hesitated not at all to gratify a whim at the cost of another's misery.

Not that there was apparent disposition on her part to thwart any of his plans, but on the contrary, Esther seemed acquiescent in every whim of her guests.

His lightest whim she respected and obeyed as law, and if, expressing her opinion on a matter, he took up the subject and differed from her, she instantly threw down her own opinion as wrong and untenable.

If this takes a hundred or more volumes a day, he is to have them; but to give him the right to throw a library into confusion by "browsing around," is to sacrifice the rights of the public to prompt service, to the whim of one man.

How often Philippa worried her with her whims and naughtiness, and yet how patient and good she was!

The infantry sergeant in command of the little party tried to wheedle Case out of his whim, but it was useless.

Many of the conventions of modern European music are no more scientific or original or consistent; most of them are based upon the principle that the whim of a great dead composer is worthy to be the law of any living composer.

Such an overturn was of course detrimental to the service; first, because it substituted greenhorns for trained employees, and next, because it introduced the haphazard of politicians' whims for a just scheme of promotion and retention in office.

It was much too dangerous to trust the lives of the two boys to the whim of such a maddened mob.

His whim has not proved so foolish, after all, and Marcia is at present bewildered and conquered by the power he holds over her, brought for a little while out of her silly self by an ennobling regard.

Italians have an ineradicable habit of making themselves externally agreeable, of bending in all indifferent matters to the whims and wishes of superiors, and of saying what they think Signori like.

His daughter will do that, and he buys for her novels, bicycles, gloves and chocolates with equal fond readiness to humor what he considers whims pardonable in children.