Word Finder - episodes

definition

An incident, action, or time period standing out by itself, but more or less connected with a complete series of events.

example

It was a most embarrassing episode in my life.

definition

An instalment of a drama told in parts, as in a TV series.

example

I can't wait till next week’s episode.

The dramatic episodes of this struggle are too well known to be enlarged upon.

The history of mining is full of dramatic episodes of this character.

It has been hinted that Lamartine's personal narratives are doubtfully trustworthy; with regard to his Eastern travels some of the episodes were stigmatized as mere inventions.

He couldn't remember what happened, only that one of his episodes had come on when he was in the pillar of magic.

Then occurred one of the most dramatic episodes of the war.

The attack on the fort at Bobbili made by General Bussy in 1756 is one of the most memorable episodes in Indian history.

The siege of Acre, as arduous and heroic in many of its episodes as the siege of Troy, had been begun in the summer of 1189 by Guy de Lusignan, who, captured by Saladin at the battle of Hattin, and released on parole, had at once broken his word and returned to the attack.

Such of them as are not genuine relics of the 12th century are either poetical versions of the leading episodes in the hero's life as contained in the Chronicle, that Chronicle itself having been doubtless composed out of still earlier legends as sung by the wandering juglares, or pure inventions of a later time, owing their inspiration to the romances of chivalry.

It also justifies the idealization of the hero, on the one hand, and, on the other, the introduction of episodes which have but little relation to his personal fate, or even put his character in a directly unfavourable light.

As secretary of state, Adams played the leading part in two most important episodes, - the acquisition of Florida and the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine.

They are not represented as having any immediate religious importance; they really lie outside of the chronological scheme, and their history is plainly not related from such lively and detailed reminiscence as gives charm to the longer episodes of the book.

In point of conception, each of his three-and-thirty novels is either absolutely good or is possessed of a certain amount of merit; but hitches occur in all, so that every one of them is remarkable rather in its episodes than as a whole.

It is therefore with some show of reason that The Last of the Mohicans, which as a chain of brilliantly narrated episodes is certainly the least faulty in this matter of sustained excellence of execution, should be held to be the best of his works.

To the north also belong the sagas of Gretti the Strong (Ioio-1031), the life and death of the most famous of Icelandic outlaws, the real story of whose career is mixed up with the mythical adventures of Beowulf, here put down to Gretti, and with late romantic episodes and fabulous folk-tales (Dr Vigfusson would ascribe the best parts of this saga to Sturla; its last editor, whose additions would be better away, must have touched it up about 1300), and the stories of the Ljosvetningasaga (1009-1060).

Of later times there are Droplaug's Sons' Saga (997-1007), written probably about I i io, and preserved in the uncouth style of the original (a brother's revenge for his brother's death is the substance of it; Brandkrossa pattr is an appendix to it), and the tales of Thorstein Hall of Side's Son (c. 1014) and his brother Thidrandi (c. 996), which belong to the cycle of Hall o' Side's Saga, unhappily lost; they are weird tales of bloodshed and magic, with idyllic and pathetic episodes.

Besides complete sagas there are embedded in the Heimskringla numerous small pcettir or episodes, small tales of Icelanders' adventures, often relating to poets and their lives at the kings' courts; one or two of these seem to be fragments of sagas now lost.

Snorri (1179-1241) wrote the Lives of the Kings (Heimskringla), from Olaf Tryggvason to Sigurd the Crusader inclusive; and we have them substantially as they came from his hand in the Great King Olaf's Saga; St Olaf's Saga, as in Heimskringla and the Stockholm MS.; and the succeeding Kings' Lives, as in Hulda and Hrokkinskinna, in which, however, a few episodes have been inserted.

The complex work now known as Orkneyinga is made up of the Earls' Saga, lives of the first great earls, Turf-Einar, Thorfinn, &c.; the Life of St Magnus, founded partly on Abbot Robert's Latin life of him (c. 1150) an Orkney work, partly on Norse or Icelandic biographies; a Mirade-book of the same saint; the Lives of Earl Rognwald and Sveyn, the last of the vikings, and a few episodes such as the Burning of Bishop Adam.

The commencement of the period was marked by one of the most wonderful episodes in the geological history of Africa.

Bipolar I disorder is characterized by manic episodes, the "high" of the manic-depressive cycle.

His historical writings, with the exception of a small volume on American Political Ideas (1885), an account of the system of Civil Government in the United States (1890), The Mississippi Valley in the Civil War (1900), a school history of the United States, and an elementary story of the revolutionary war, are devoted to studies, in a unified general manner, of separate yet related episodes in American history.

It has long been conceded that the great French national epics of the 11th and 12th centuries must have been founded on a great fund of popular poetry, and that many of the episodes of the chansons de geste refer to historical events anterior to the Carolingian period.

Prior to these episodes Athens had not been in hostile contact with any of the Peloponnesian confederate states for more than ten years, and Pericles had abandoned a great part of his imperial policy.

These consist of episodes in the life of the parish priest "Father Prout," and dialogues after the model of "Christopher North," varied by translations of well-known English songs into Latin, Greek, French and Italian verse, which he humorously represents as being the true originals from which the English authors had merely plagiarized them.

This effect is due to the multitude and the character of the episodes.

There are, however, many other episodes that have nothing to do with Beowulf himself, but seem to have been inserted with a deliberate intention of making the poem into a sort of cyclopaedia of Germanic tradition.

In general the extraneous episodes have no great appropriateness to their context, and have the appearance of being abridged versions of stories that had been related at length in poetry.

As originally dictated, Beowulf probably contained the story outlined at the beginning of this article, with the addition of one or two of the episodes relating to the hero himself - among them the legend of the swimmiug-match.

On the one hand, it seemed to follow from the existence of such a family that Homer was a mere " eponymus," or mythical ancestor; on the other hand, it became easy to imagine the Homeric poems handed down orally in a family whose hereditary occupation it was to recite them, possibly to add new episodes from time to time, or to combine their materials in new ways, as their poetical gifts permitted.

Thus the successive episodes of the siege related at length in the Little Iliad, and ending with the story of the Wooden Horse, are nearly all taken from passages in the Odyssey.

The several episodes of the poem are not so many distinct stories, each with an interest of its own.

But the original nucleus and parts of the incidents may be the work of a single great poet, and yet other episodes may be of different authorship, wrought into the structure of the poem in later times.

He showed, on the one side, how the history of a people can be written with a recognition of fixed principles, and at the same time with an artistic feeling for personal and dramatic episodes.

An ambitious didactic composition in hexameters, entitled Urania, embodying the astronomical science of the age, and adorning this high theme with brilliant mythological episodes, won the admiration of Italy.

The Colorado "labour wars" were among the most important struggles between labour and capital, and afforded probably the most sensational episodes in the story of all labour troubles in the United States in these years.

The chief incidents and episodes would be deeply graven in the popular memory; and it is the poet's function to make the past live again.

Sometimes they were expanded versions of its episodes, sometimes what may be called commentaries or companion volumes.

Only two episodes stand out in his biography.

All these poems, like the Elegiada of Luis Pereira Brandao on the disaster of Al Kasr, the Primeiro cerco de Diu of the chronicler Francisco de Andrade, and even the AfTonso Africano of Quevedo, for all its futile allegory, contain striking episodes and vigorous and well-coloured descriptive passages, but they cannot compare with The Lusiads in artistic value.

Besides furnishing the early playwrights with material for miracle plays, it has supplied episodes and apologues to many a writer, including Boccaccio, John Gower and Shakespeare.

He also elaborates the episodes most attractive to his audience, notably those of Dido and Aeneas and Lavinia, the last of whom plays a far more important part than in the Aeneid.

Side by side with full, vividly coloured descriptions of the Zoroastrian deities, they frequently interweave, as episodes, stories from the old heroic fables.

One of its episodes, the farewell song of the prince departing into the forest, has since become one of the most widespread popular songs.

The application for statehood precipitated one of the most famous and significant episodes of national history - the Missouri Compromise.

The real truth is not of course revealed at once, and many episodes in 19th-century history are still shrouded by official secrecy.

The three main episodes are those of the twelve spies, the rebellion of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and Balaam's mission to Balak.

The episodes introduced in the course of the story are for the most part dissimilar.

When it is remembered that Gordon was of a different nationality and religion to the garrison and population, that he had only one British officer to assist him, and that the town was badly fortified and insufficiently provided with food, it is just to say that the defence of Khartum is one of the most remarkable episodes in military history.

The other main episodes of his reign were the quarrel over the Angevin inheritance and his wars with the dukes of Normandy.

At least this time channel 4 showed a full series rather than simply cherry-picking random episodes.