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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:

He had endangered his own and other lives to humor a boyish whim.

Nobody else understood his moods, his humors, his whims; she knew his tastes with ominous exactness.

Out of his wealth what a home he would provide for her, and how he would gratify her gentle whims!

The whim of painting the eggs and sending them to the sisters had come to him as a sort of apology to them for his exhibition of temper, and he had no idea that his name, so palpable to his artist eye, would escape their observation as it did.

Madge the more, because she is so full of whims and oddities.

During all this time he had been coming more and more under her sway, changing his modes of living to suit her whims, and the only way of safety for him was to marry her and be master; then she should see how he would rule his house!

In other words she was constant and true, without whims or caprice.

He was a boy without reason, who sometimes, if the whim seized him, would gallop off like an untamed animal.

She was too unused as yet to the whims of the man to accept them with equanimity.

It was due to his whim that I was detained aboard in the first place.

Come and find us out, and seal our judicious change with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the sun prompts.

Coats of arms, unless in very special instances, prove nothing but the whims of the heralds.

Well, I must say, Angela, you do not make much ado about ruining your father to gratify your own sentimental whims.

I mustn't let the whim of some mad tradesman get on my nerves.

He was as amiable, as considerate as ever; as ready, within reason, to accede to her wishes and gratify her whims.

Only be a loving child to me in my old age, and bear with my whims and fancies, and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life was not so happy as it might have been, than ever that old woman did for you.

Did you think I were such a goose, to take all this trouble merely to gratify your whim?

This was no whim, no mere thought; it was a decided plan, which he undertook to realize with cleverness and decision.

He knows that his fate is in the hands of a tribunal from whose arbitrary decision there is no appeal, and that decision he knows may depend upon the whim of the commandant, to whom a poor breakfast or a bad night's sleep may give the wrong twist.

They said it was only a boyish whim, and that I would get tired of it very soon.

Cotter had at one time in his possession, a regular journal of his life, written from day to day, for amusement, but which a whim of the moment induced him to commit to the flames, though he afterwards much regretted the circumstance.

Bennett was too fickle and whimsical an employer to suit me, and I had no disposition to expose myself to his whims.

He was a creature happily pliant to the rule of all his whims.

Her own little private whims and fancies she resolutely refused to gratify.

His return to the scene of his most stirring experience was one of those whims which his species sometimes show.

How long, thought I, will this madman balk me with his whim?

I was not sure of her motive in maintaining the alias, though I was certain it was more than a mere whim.

It was a little thing, after all, I told myself sharply, to subordinate my individuality and cater to her whims.

Taxation that, in its principle, is variable, shifting, or dependent on personal whim and favoritism, is despotism.

Miserable and deluded girl, what new whim has caused this sudden change?

She had concealed his childish faults, she had petted him in every whim, encouraged him in every folly in his youth; to hide his faults from a severe but not too harsh a judge, she had lowered herself in the eyes of her husband, and achieved no good.

If her whim be thwarted, I will not answer for the consequences.

There was apparently a perfect understanding between them, and the master first glanced up and made sure of the position of the sun and the length of time he might allow for the trip home, before he decided to follow the whim of the wolf-dog.

It was almost beyond belief that any man with such whims should ever have had the money to gratify them.

A whim seized me to visit the crypt of the chapel and examine the opening to the tunnel.

I was subject to the whims and the caprice of those, whom I solicited on these occasions.

It may be that his subjects did not even call him a fool, but only a man of princely whims.

Many selfish whims constituted an attraction, but he told himself that this was not the making of a stalker.

One is startled by such a pathetic whim of poetic justice in a government.

Property, based on a possession more or less ancient, was transmitted by heritage; but the king could always dispose, according to his whims, of property of chiefs and subjects, and the chiefs had the same privilege over the people.

It seemed entirely natural to the others that she should do just what she liked, shut them off from her portion of the house, take her meals there if she felt disposed, and keep such hours as pleased her instant whim.

One conceives then that the variations of exchange are not permitted to be left to the arbitrary judgment of a single man, nor to be affected by the whims and abuses of individuals; that value is defined in view of the general good.

Helene's first thought was that much notice ought not to be paid to a child's whims; but to her heart there stole a feeling of secret shame, and the weight of her daughter's body on her shoulder brought a blush to her cheeks.

Down in the harbor his yacht was waiting, and he wondered cynically what whim kept him from joining her.

Death is a boon the savages may bestow, when the whim takes them.

You will hear this patriotism scorned as an impracticable theory, as the dream of a cloister, as the whim of a fool.

Montague to require her to walk two miles simply to gratify a mere whim.

Her triumphs, her beauty, her goodness, her admirers, her acts, her sayings, even her little whims, were all recounted.

It is proof that the human race lives for its kings, for it is at the mad impulse of one mind a slaughter of nations takes place, and at the whim of a haughty ruler that which nature has taken ages to produce perishes in a moment.

I experienced an atrocious satisfaction in feeling that no chance whim had deterred her from consuming it all.

Gratified in all its whims, it develops perverted tastes, or refuses all food but what it fancies.

Whim, caprice, passion, prejudice often influence their preferences of some to others.

It sheltered serious scholars from the whims and avarice of the shifting politicians and their politics.

He was never known to take credit to himself that was due to others, but, like most great men, he took for granted that all those above or below him in rank and station should be subordinate to his whims and actions.

Bessie did not at all relish the prospect of the little adventure upon which Dolly's whim had launched her, but she decided to take it with a good grace, since, now that she was in the car, she had to see it through.

A man might be flogged half to death at the whim of an officer, and instinctively they protected their comrade.

The stomach was here a patient, unquestioning serf, not a master full of whims, requiring to be petted and conciliated.

As he sat before the fire in the grand salon, the flickering yellow light playing over his features, which had a background of moving, deep velvet-brown shadows, he might have been the theme of some melancholy whim by Rubens, a stanza by Dante.

Perhaps it is because I am an old maid, and have none, that some of my nursery whims stick to me, and I find myself liking things, and wanting things, quite out of keeping with my cap and time of life.

Some folks said he had a great many droll whims in his head.

She would fret herself into a fever if I crossed her whims.

He cared little for princely etiquette, and followed the whim of the moment.

He's old and faithful and used to your whims and surely after thirty years of service, he won't break into tantrums.

The coward and the impostor have been set upon a pedestal of glory either by accident or by the whim of posterity.

Catering to the whims of a lot of silly women who don't know their own minds!

You'll have to fetch and carry, and put up with all the whims and tantrums of a very sick man.

She had only one thing on earth to center her affections on, and that one she worshiped with a love stronger than her sense of duty; for, since his father died, she had never been able to check Guy in a single whim.

Anticipating her every whim, he had nursed her with the tenderness the untiring devotion, of a mother with her babe.

The idle whim of a sardonic old man; nothing more than that.

He had her picture painted, and humored all her whims and caprices, to the sore depletion of his pocket.

George's Day, ghosts that the gray old stones can conjure up, at Fancy's whim came thronging.

Commerce means a mutual exchange, and having performed our home duty will be in no mood to tolerate a whim or a caprice.

It was quite an unusual thing for this spoiled darling of an admiring public to be thus openly thwarted in her whims.

Still, he had a vague feeling that a young girl's not coming down to supper need not be taken very seriously, that young girls had whims and fancies which signified nothing, and that it was better to let them alone until they got over them.

For years her aunt has obeyed her slightest whim, but as she grows older she grows more like her father, and her aunt wants her to have some steadying influence that will put a curb on her unconventional tendencies.

Mother Nature was indulging in one of her many whims, and seemed smiling broadly at the incongruity.

It had been a whim of his latterly to have this lugubrious list read to him every day.

Perhaps it was a whim of his fancy, some unbalanced caprice which led him to repel her.

Arabella was rich and independent, and spoiled by over indulgence to her idle whims and caprices.

"What a strange whim," returned the lady, proceeding to fasten on the necklace.

And what wild whim was that of yours to persuade me to leave my horsemen a good mile from the castle?

He was too shrewd a man of the world, too skillful an interpreter of the whims of women to write at once.

Some whim led him through the grove of spruce trees on his way back to the ranch.

They would laugh if her new position were a passing whim; they would be scornful and angry if it were anything more.

The attention we paid to this whim pleased the poor creature mightily; he was all animation and delight.

How tiresome it is, when a person is made up of nothing but whims!'

Nicholas had sore work to console his little sister, and Betsy's prospects were in a very unfavorable state, when a diversion was caused in her favor by a new whim which put the military funeral out of Robin's head.

"No, but I will not encourage your whims; you chose to sulk, it was no fault of mine."

We may then safely assert that our author has given us sketches from his whims and fancies, rather than the mature results of his judgment, and that he has also neglected to direct his researches into the history of the past.

"At his best, full of whims and oddities ... the most cheerful of humorists and the wisest of wayside philosophers."

Indians are not so rich in cartridges that they can afford to waste them on a mere whim.

They all decided that it would be utterly impossible for them to guess, there was no saying what absurd whim might seize upon such a man; they would be surprised at nothing which he might ask, and so on.

He had a tyrant's caprice to depend on, and knew how a moment's whim might end all.

He has bright glimpses of truth, but they are due rather to the freedom of his thinking than to its depth; and in the hurry and impatient pressure of his impulses, he does not discriminate between his ideas and his whims.

Even our western monarchs have incomprehensible whims; but they are as nothing beside Oriental caprices.

A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind.

I was indulged in every whim, and I grew up as selfish and capricious as I was beautiful.

The boys as well as Jeff could not believe that Tim was in earnest, for his lightest words were often spoken with the gravest expression of face; but their former experience taught them to be prepared for almost any whim in the weather.

The work has gone through many editions; but, after some years the whim seized him to turn it into an official literary history of the period, and he issued it as a "Life and Times," with an abundance of notes and references.

And if he chucked that overboard because of a whim, we stood to lose.