Word Finder - scruples

definition

A weight of 1/288 of a pound, that is, twenty grains or one third of a dram, about 1.3 grams (symbol: ℈).

synonyms

• s.ap.

definition

(by extension) A very small quantity; a particle.

definition

A doubt or uncertainty concerning a matter of fact; intellectual perplexity.

definition

Hesitation to act from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; doubt, hesitation or unwillingness due to motives of conscience.

definition

A Hebrew unit of time equal to 1/1080 hour.

definition

To hesitate or be reluctant to act due to considerations of conscience or expedience.

definition

To excite scruples in; to cause to scruple.

definition

To regard with suspicion; to question.

definition

To question the truth of (a fact, etc.); to doubt; to hesitate to believe, to question.

example

I do not scruple to admit that all the Earth seeth but only half of the Moon.

The same scruples endured among the medieval Cathars.

One day, almost overcome with scruples, he was tempted to end his miseries by suicide.

They have conscientious scruples to overcome.

Though he had some scruples about doing business at that season, he received his visitors with much civility.

Even there he resisted, not so much, it would seem, from any scruples of his own, for he was not a high-minded man, as because he knew that he dared not return to Italy if he gave way.

Disguising himself as Apollo, brother of Artemis, he overcame any scruples Callisto may have had and they became lovers.

Well, there are no such scruples in Macau, which is why daytrippers from HK flock here.

He is too cowardly and perhaps too mindful of a few scruples.

From the very day of Clement's coronation the king had charged the Templars with heresy, immorality and abuses, and the scruples of the weak pope were at length overcome by apprehension lest the State should not wait for the Church, but should proceed independently against the alleged heretics, as well as by the royal threats of pressing the accusation of heresy against the late Boniface VIII.

Nevertheless, all who have seen the church must admit the improbability of similar scruples.

We felt no moral scruples about the possible future abuse of our brain child.

In this case there were no conscientious scruples to overcome.

Out of deference to the scruples of the ultra-Conservatives, the terminus was fixed at a place called Lu-Kou-ch'iao, some 4 m.

But he could persevere in an astute policy under the cover of an easy geniality and had no scruples.

In Phila we see Jewish scruples uniting with others drawn from Greek philosophy.

It had been doubtful at first whether he would be allowed to inherit his ancestral throne at all; but Frederick removed the last scruples of the Rigsraad by unhesitatingly accepting the conditions imposed upon him.

After some delay, consequent on the scruples of the theological censor of Halle, who did not like to see miracles rejected, the book appeared (Easter, 1792).

The Deanery of Coventry and Litchfield was subsequently offered him, which from scruples of conscience, he refused.

The Girondins, when in power, had had scruples which had not troubled them while scaling the ladder; idols of Paris, they had flattered her in turn, and when Paris scorned them they sought support in the provinces.

The legislature has continually had regard to their refusal to take oaths, and not only the said act but also another of the same reign, and numerous others, subsequently passed, have respected the peculiar scruples of Friends (see Davis's Digest of Legislative Enactments relating to Friends, Bristol, 1820).

Their point of view was better expressed in the scruples of priests, who, as Tertullian (c. 200) records (De Corona, iii.), were careful lest a crumb of the bread or a drop of the wine should fall on the ground, and by such incidents the body of Christ be harassed and attacked!

After that experience in the house of Cornelius his old Jewish scruples had been overcome.

The period of reading and writing was also a period of propaganda in which Lenin was not troubled by any scruples.

But Bunyan's notions of good and evil had been learned in a very different school; and he was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and his scruples.

He had been an admirable servant to both, full of zeal, intelligence and energy, and not too much burdened with scruples.

In Athanasius the relation of the work of Christ to Satan retires into the background, Gregory of Nazianzus and John of Damascus felt scruples about this view.

The Arabs only forbade plastic art in the 9th century, nor were their essentially Semitic scruples ever shared by the Persians.

Against competitors who show no such scruples, however, the ethical advertisers face a losing battle in the marketplace.

He did not use any scruples with the young clergyman.

A Conscience clause is the term given to a special provision often inserted in an English act of parliament to enable persons having religious scruples to absent themselves from certain services, or to abstain from certain duties, otherwise prescribed by the act.

The validity of his fundamental position was impaired by the absence of a well-constituted theory of series; the notation employed was inconvenient, and was abandoned by its inventor in the second edition of his Mecanique; while his scruples as to the admission into analytical investigations of the idea of limits or vanishing ratios have long since been laid aside as idle.

The king exerted all his personal influence to overcome Yorke's scruples, warning him finally that the great seal if now refused would never again be within his grasp. Yorke yielded to the king's entreaty, went to his brother's house, where he met the leaders of the Opposition, and feeling at once overwhelmed with shame, fled to his own house, where in three days he was a dead man (January 20, 1770).

His scruples forbade him to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court by accepting bail, but he was soon released.

The student of English constitutional history will observe the success with which Friends have, by the mere force of passive resistance, obtained, from the legislature and the courts, indulgence for all their scruples and a legal recognition of their customs. In American history they occupy an important place because of the very prominent part which they played in the colonization of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In dealing with nonconformity he was tolerant, and even advocated a revision of the Prayer Book if that would allay the scruples of dissenters.

Seeking out Nonnus, she overcame his canonical scruples by her tears of genuine penitence, was baptized, and, disguising herself in the garb of a male penitent, retired to a grotto on the Mount of Olives, where she died after three years of strict penance.

At first he did this to gratify the Flemings, whose scruples in fighting their overlord, the French king, disappeared when they persuaded themselves that Edward was the rightful king of France.

Then came the religious fanaticism of Akhenaton, mutilating all figures of Ammon and all inscriptions containing his name; this made havoc of the exquisite monuments of Hatshepsut; and the restorers of the XIXth Dynasty, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the queen, had no scruples in replacing her names by those of the associate kings Tethmosis I., II.

This Abu Salama seems to have had scruples against recognizing Abul-Abbas as the successor of his brother Ibrahim, and to have expected that the Mandi, whom he looked for from Medina, would not be slow in making his appearance, little thinking that an Abbasid would present himself as such.

They produced a brilliant succession of eminent scholars and scientists who transmitted to the Moslems the results of Babylonian civilization and Greek learning, and their influence at the court of Baghdad secured more or less toleration for Sabianism, although in the reign of Harlan al-Rashid the Harranians had already found it necessary to establish a fund by means of which the conscientious scruples of Moslem officials might be overcome.

Yet nothing is less true; for the savage, more than the civilized man, is tied down at every step with superstitious scruples and restrictions barely traceable in higher civilizations except as primitive survivals.

By Bacon's directions the proposal to the three judges to give their opinions separately was made suddenly and confidently, and any scruples they might have felt were easily overcome.

The revolutionist, as he would recommend him to be, is a consecrated man, who will allow no private interests or feelings, and no scruples of religion, patriotism or morality, to turn him aside from his mission, the aim of which is by all available means to overturn the existing society.

Workless, and in desperation, they threw themselves on Edwards mercy,, by the advice of a rich citizen of Ghent, Jacob van Artevelde; and their last scruples of loyalty gave way when Edward decided to follow the counsels of Robert of Artois and of Artevelde, and to claim the crown of France.

Determined in her faith and proud in her meekness, in opposition to the timid counsels of the military leaders, to the interested delays of the courtiers, to the scruples of the experts and the quarrelling of the doctors, she quoted her voices, who had, she said, commissioned her to raise the siege of Orleans and to conduct the gentle dauphin to Reims, there to be crowned.

Brought up religiously and to shun the society of women, his first experiences in adultery had been made with many scruples and intermitten.tly.

But it is plain that, once convinced of the necessity for the king's execution, he was the chief instrument in overcoming all scruples among his judges, and in resisting the protests and appeals of the Scots.

He gives various methods of prayer; methods of making an election; his series of rules for the discernment of spirits; rules for the distribution of alms and the treatment of scruples; tests of orthodoxy.

His scholarship still moved in the old traditional lines, and he was also much exercised by religious scruples, the conflict of an independent mind with that submission to authority at the expense of reason encouraged by the Lutheranism in which he had been trained.

Resigning in 1882 owing to conscientious scruples, he became professor extraordinarius of oriental languages in the faculty of philology at Halle, was elected professor ordinarius at Marburg in 1885, and was transferred to Gottingen in 1892.