Word Finder - beginnings

definition

The act of doing that which begins anything; commencement of an action, state, or space of time; entrance into being or upon a course; the first act, effort, or state of a succession of acts or states.

definition

That which is begun; a rudiment or element.

definition

That which begins or originates something; the source or first cause.

example

What was the beginning of the dispute?

definition

The initial portion of some extended thing.

example

That house is at the beginning of the street.

In the 11th century the beginnings of its independence may be traced.

From this disaster are to be dated the beginnings of Walachia as an independent state.

It is more important to observe that under Joseph and his ministers or advisers, including the Frenchmen Roederer, Dumas, Miot de Melito and the Corsican Saliceti, great progress was made in abolishing feudal laws and customs, in reforming the judicial procedure and criminal laws on the model of the Code Napoleon, and in attempting the beginnings of elementary education.

Huxley, who in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia traced the history of the growth of the biological idea of evolution from its philosophical beginnings to its efflorescence in Charles Darwin.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

The beginnings of a school of wall painting also go back to the Middle Minoan period, and metal technique and such arts as gem engraving show great advance.

Meanwhile, in the Farther East so rapid has been the progress of geographical research since the first beginnings of investigation into the route connexion between Burma and China in 1874 (when the brave Augustus Margary lost his life), that a gradually increasing tide of exploration, setting from east to west and back again, has culminated in a flood of inquiring experts intent on economic and commercial development in China, essaying to unlock those doors to trade which are hereafter to be propped open for the benefit of humanity.

Later in birth than the Templars and Hospitallers, the Teutonic Order traces its first beginnings from the third Crusade.

It is easy to understand, therefore, why we trace the beginnings of economics, so far as England is concerned, in the 16th century, and why the application of strict scientific tests in this subject of human study has become possible only in comparatively recent times.

The beginnings of this rupture, as well as a sharp affray between his volunteers and the townsfolk of Ajaccio, may have quickened Bonaparte's resolve to return to France in May 1792, but there were also personal and family reasons for this step. Having again exceeded his time of furlough, he was liable to the severe penalties attaching to a deserter and an émigré but he saw that the circumstances of the time would help to enforce the appeal for reinstatement which he resolved to make at Paris.

During the same period we also note the development of certain families, thanks to the accumulation of wealth by trade, and here we get the beginnings of that commercial aristocracy whose evolution was the dominant factor in the constitutional history of the republic.

The miracles connected with the beginnings of the national history - the period of the Exodus - appear on closer inspection to have been ordinarily natural phenomena, to which a supernatural character was given by their connexion with the prophetic word of Moses.

In the years immediately preceding the war we have to chronicle first a great advance in our knowledge of the beginnings of Egyptian history, owing mainly to the excavations of Prof. Flinders Petrie at Tarkhan 1 and of the German, Prof. Junker (working for Austria), at Tura.

The beginnings of this use are to be seen in such passages as Acts xxii.

In his Urgeschichte der germanischen and romanischen Volker (Berlin, 1881-1890), Dahn went a step farther back still, but here as in his Geschichte der deutschen Urzeit (Gotha, 1883-1888), a wealth of picturesque detail has been worked over and resolved into history with such imagiRative insight and critical skill as to make real and present the indistinct beginnings of German society.

And the whole breathes such a genuine originality, all is psychologically so accurate and just, the earliest beginnings of the new religious.

So soon as the point of view is clear - that in the Gathas we have firm historical ground on which Zoroaster and his surroundings may rest, that here we have the beginnings of the Zoroastrian religion - then it becomes impossible to answer otherwise than affirmatively every general question as to the historical character of Zoroaster.

The list of Cain's descendants reflects the old view of the beginnings of civilization; it is thrown into the form of a genealogy and is parallel to Gen.

When the Israelites settled in Canaan they found there an agricultural festival connected with the beginnings of the barley harvest, which coincided in point of date with the Passover and was accordingly associated with it.

A considerable fragment has been preserved from the sixth book, entitled Hitrpta KWVVTavTCVOUIroX€WS, a history of Byzantium from its earliest beginnings till the time of Constantine the Great.

Enrico treats of the fall of the Visigothic monarchy and the beginnings of resistance in the Asturias which gave 1 The - diagram shows the arrangement and proportions of the Villa Ercolanese.

Philosophy, as Haureau finely says, was the passion of the 13th century; but in the 15th humanism, art and the beginnings of science and of practical discovery were busy creating a new world, which was destined in due time to give birth to a new philosophy.

Its first beginnings are seen in the imitative tendencies of animals by which the young of one generation acquire some of the habits of their parents, and by which gregarious and social animals acquire a community of procedure ensuring the advantage of the group. " Taboo," the systematic imposition by the community of restrictions upon the conduct of the individual, is one of its earliest manifestations in primitive man and can be observed even in animal communities.

Rabbula, the powerful and energetic bishop of Edessa who withstood the beginnings of Nestorianism, and who gave currency to the Peshitta text of the four Gospels, abolishing the use of the Diatessaron, is dealt with in a separate article.

But it has been and is still held by many critics that the author of Acts is a different person, and that as in the Third Gospel he has used documents for the Life of Christ, and perhaps also in the earlier half of the Acts for the history of the beginnings of the Christian Church, so in the "we" sections, and possibly in some other portions of this narrative of Paul's missionary life, he has used a kind of travel-diary by one who accompanied the Apostle on some of his journeys.

Ultimately the laws of the 10th and 11th centuries show the beginnings of the frankpledge associations, which came to act so important a part in the local police and administration of the feudal age.

The great engineering works by means of which the marshes were drained and the overflow of the rivers regulated by canals went back to Sumerian times, like a considerable part of later Babylonian religion and the beginnings of Babylonian law.

The simoniacal election of Pietro Mezzabarba as bishop of Florence (1068) caused serious disturbances and a long controversy with Rome, which ended in the triumph, after a trial by fire, of the mdnk Petrus Igneus, champion of the popular reform movement; this event indicates the beginnings of a popular conscience among the Florentines.

The preaching of Jesus shows traces of this, and the Fourth Gospel (as well as the Synoptists) displays a marked interest in connecting the Johannine movement with the beginnings of Christianity.

It is better to say that European feudalism is not to be found in England before the Conquest, not even in its beginnings.

A word must be said of the historical romances, the beginnings of which go back to the first centuries of Islam.

The people accepted all this, and so a romantic tradition sprang up side by side with the historical, and had a literature of its own, the beginnings of which must be placed as early as the 2nd century of the Flight.

The earliest effect of Hallam's death upon his friend's art was the composition, in the summer of 1834, of The Two Voices; and to the same period belong the beginnings of the Idylls of the King and of In Memoriam, over both of which he meditated long.

It is a species of saga, setting forth not only the heavenly beginnings of the Japanese race, but also the story of creation, the succession of the various sovereigns and the salient events of their reigns, the whole interspersed with songs, many of which may be attributed to the 6th century, while some doubtless date from the fourth or even the third.

The real beginnings of the study of painting and sculpture in their higher branches must be dated from the introduction of Buddhism from China in the middle of the 6th century, and for three centuries after this event there is evidence that the practice of the arts was carried on mainly by or under the instruction of Korean and Chinese immigrants.

The national kingdoms founded by the Northern races, after the fall of the Roman Empire, under the influence of the classical tradition, are the beginnings of the modern European system; Philip of Macedon foreshadows Theodoric, Charlemagne and William the Conqueror.

Outside the Church the breakup of old civilizations, the confused beginnings of medieval kingdoms, with the attendant war and rapine, the inroads of the Saracens and the rise of Islam, were all effective silencers of the pulpit.

Towards the end of the period we note the beginnings of the triple division of medieval preaching into cloistral, parochial and missionary or popular preaching, a division based at first on audiences rather than on subject-matter, the general character of which - legends and popular stories rather than exposition of Scripture - was much the same everywhere.

As the sphere of the census operations in Canada has been gradually spreading from the small beginnings on the east coast to the immense territories of the north-west, so, in the island continent, colonization, first concentrated in the south-east, has extended along the coasts and thence into the interior, except in the northern region.

Beginnings had already been made - partly by help of the London Missionary Society - in British North America (from New England), South Africa, Australia and British Guiana.

These inauspicious beginnings, indeed, set the whole tone of the war, which was frankly one of mutual extermination.

Among the Hebrews, as among many other nations, the earliest beginnings of literature were in all probability poetical.

The chief argument against this is that it seems paradoxical to think of Africa rather than Rome as the home of the first Latin version; but it must be remembered that Roman Christianity was originally Greek, and that the beginnings of a Latin church in Rome seem to be surprisingly late.

The beginnings of palaeogeography followed those of palaeometeorology.

Were the geologic record complete he would be able to trace the ancestry of man and of all other animals back to their very beginnings in the' primordial protoplasm.

Thus both invertebrate and vertebrate palaeontologists have reached independently the conclusion that the evolution of groups is not continuously at a uniform rate, but that there are, especially in the beginnings of new phyla or at the time of acquisition of new organs, sudden variations in the rate of evolution which have been termed variously " rhythmic," "pulsating," " efflorescent," "intermittent " and even " explosive " (Deperet).

It is also possible that the compiler has himself attempted here and there to harmonize to a certain extent the various Gnostic doctrines, yet in no case is this collection of sources given by Hippolytus to be passed over; it should rather be considered as important evidence for the beginnings of the decay of Gnosticism.

And if in the old sources it is only the first beginnings of this development that can be traced, we must assume that at a later These ideas may possibly be traced still further back, and perhaps even underlie St Paul's exposition in Col.

Shippard in British Africa (London, 1899), give the story of the beginnings of British rule in the protectorate.

In the colonial period there were beginnings in some lines of manufacturing, but the policy of the British government was generally hostile and the increase was insignificant.