curtail

The answer is, that it could only have been done for greater caution, and to guard against all cavilling refinements in those who might hereafter feel a disposition to curtail and evade the legitimatb authorities of the Union.

I have had news tonight over the telephone and I find that I must curtail my visit."

Well, sir, let us do what we can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is inexpressibly irksome to me.

The distance was little more than six miles, but the road was strange, and I had to keep stopping to inquire my way; hallooing to carters and clodhoppers, and frequently invading the cottages, for there were few abroad that winter's morning; sometimes knocking up the lazy people from their beds, for where so little work was to be done, perhaps so little food and fire to be had, they cared not to curtail their slumbers.

Now, whenever I hear any one advocating measures that are meant to curtail the development of another, I pity the individual who would do this.

The rulers, being aware that their power rests upon their wealth, refuse to curtail by law the extravagance of the spendthrift youth because they gain by their ruin; they take interest from them and buy up their estates and thus increase their own wealth and importance?

Like a wise commander, who finds he has occupied too much ground for the amount of his force, he began to curtail his outworks.

"Sir, I do not wish to act against you," I said; and my unsteady voice warned me to curtail my sentence.

For instance, Art is allowed as much indecent license today as in earlier times-- but the privileges of Literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed within the past eighty or ninety years.

The wedding-breakfast was hurried; the wedding-speeches were curtailed: there was no time to be wasted, if the young couple were to catch the tidal train.

Among our still more modern and dashing young gentlemen -- who are extremely averse to superfluous effort and supremely indifferent to the purity of their native language -- the formula is still further curtailed by the use of "to feel" in a technical sense, meaning, "to recommend-for-the-purposes-of-feeling-and-being-felt"; and at this moment the "slang" of polite or fast society in the upper classes sanctions such a barbarism as "Mr.

Gardiner, which at once delayed its commencement and curtailed its extent.