Word Finder - vicissitudes

definition

Regular change or succession from one thing to another, or one part of a cycle to the next; alternation; mutual succession; interchange.

synonyms

• ups and downs

definition

(often in the plural) A change, especially in one's life or fortunes.

Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its vanity and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new life.

During the rule of the Paramara dynasty Dhar was famous throughout India as a centre of culture and learning; but, after suffering various vicissitudes, it was finally conquered by the Mussulmans at the beginning of the 14th century.

Frankfort has suffered much from the vicissitudes of war.

Throughout these vicissitudes there were important political and religious changes which render the study of the composite sources a work of unique difficulty.

The truth is, pastoralists for the most part carried on their industry trusting very greatly to luck, not making any special provisions against the vicissitudes of the seasons.

Such vicissitudes were the ordinary lot of the Jews for several centuries, and it was their own inner life - the pure life of the home, the idealism of the synagogue, and the belief in ultimate Messianic redemption - that saved them from utter demoralization and despair.

The Spanish settlements experienced many vicissitudes.

A small Chinese Roman Catholic church has maintained its existence through all the vicissitudes of modern times.

The later course of Italian foreign policy was marked by many vicissitudes.

They took a keen interest in all the political vicissitudes of the Oriental world.

The classification of snakes has undergone many vicissitudes.

In this war, which resembles in character, and in its striking vicissitudes, the English War of the Roses at the end of the 15th century, Abdur Rahman soon became distinguished for ability and daring energy.

It was one of the vicissitudes of life.

Exercise will not only help strengthen muscles, reducing achiness and stiffness, it will also increase endorphins, which will help with emotional vicissitudes.

He then gave in his resignation as general, and returned to commerce; but his brewery was ruined, and after many vicissitudes of fortune he died in poverty in Paris on the 6th of February 1809.

In 1893, after many vicissitudes, the Italian Socialist Labor Party was founded, and has now become the Italian Socialist Party, in which the majority of Italian workmen enrol themselves.

But, like all the vicissitudes, of the Italian race, while it was a decided step forward in one direction, it introduced a new source of discord.

There is not a burgh of northern Italy but can trace the rise of a dynastic house to the vicissitudes of this period.

The sect was founded by 'Anan in the 8th century, and, after many vicissitudes, still exists.

Palestine, in spite of the numerous vicissitudes to which it has been subjected, has not lost its fundamental characteristics.

But the case is quite different if one looks at the two continents as a whole, for improvement in means of communication has brought about strange vicissitudes, and western Europe has asserted her power in middle and eastern Asia.

He was buried, though not till some months after his death, in a church in Bordeaux, which after some vicissitudes became the chapel of the college.

It has shared the vicissitudes of the nation itself and like it been in danger of extermination at the hands of fanatic foes.

He inured himself to the vicissitudes of heat and cold, and voluntarily suffered the pains or inconveniences of hunger and thirst, fatigue and sleeplessness.

Happy the humorist whose works and life are an illustration of the great moral truth that the sense of humour is the just balance of all the faculties of man, the best security against the pride of knowledge and the conceits of the imagination, the strongest inducement to submit with a wise and pious patience to the vicissitudes of human existence.

There are vicissitudes and varying standpoints which point to a complicated literary history and require some historical background, and, apart from actual changes in the history of the Levites, some allowance must be made for the real character of the circles where the diverse records originated or through which they passed.

Again, there were priestly and other families - some originally of " southern " origin - already settled around Jerusalem, and questions inevitably arise concerning their relation to the new-comers and the literary vicissitudes which gave us the Old Testament in its present form.

The younger Michele was a mere courtier and spendthrift, but Elena seems to have been a woman of superior stamp. She was tenderly loved by her famous son, and his letters prove that she retained his fullest confidence through all the vicissitudes of his career.

To sovereigns whose nerves had been shattered by the vicissitudes of the revolutionary epoch these symptoms were in the highest degree alarming; and Metternich was at pains to exaggerate their significance.

Killis, who had been raised to the rank of vizier, to deal with the situation in Syria, where a Turkish general AftakIn had gained possession of Damascus, and was raiding the whole country; on the arrival of Jauhar in Syria the Turks called the Carmathians to their aid, and after a campaign of many vicissitudes Jauhar had to return to Egypt to implore the caliph himself to take the field.

He set out the various vicissitudes in progressing the contract on the lines I have described above.

He had led the country out of the despondency which followed the defeat of Novara and the abdication of Charles Albert, through all the vicissitudes of national unification to the final triumph at Rome.

Contemporaneously with the vicissitudes of home and foreign policy under the Left there grew up in Italy a marked tendency towards colonial enterprise.

The latter, indeed, prosecuted the former for libel and for abuse of his position when premier, but after many vicissitudes, including the flight of Giolitti to Berlin in.

About 1290 it first passed into the hands of Obizzo d'Este, and the authority of the Este family was after many vicissitudes more formally recognized in 1409.

This is independently suggested by the contents and vicissitudes of the purely ecclesiastical traditions.'

There were catastrophes detrimental to the preservation of older literary records, and vicissitudes which, if they have not left their mark on contemporary history - which is singularly blank - may be traced on the representations of the past.

From Pennsylvania the sect spread chiefly westward, and, after various vicissitudes, caused by defections and divisions due to doctrinal differences, in 1908 were most numerous in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and North Dakota.

The new state which he founded was maintained under various vicissitudes after his death.

The grandeur and antiquity of the empire and the vicissitudes through which it passed, their long series of wars and the magnificent monuments erected by their ancient sovereigns, could not fail to leave numerous traces in the memory of so imaginative a people as the Persians.

The cotton plant requires certain conditions for its successful cultivation; but, given these, it is very little affected by seasonal vicissitudes.

Into the vicissitudes of the fight it is not necessary here to enter; but in the issue Nureddin won, in spite of the support which Manuel gave to Amalric. Nureddin's Kurdish lieutenant, Shirguh, succeeded in establishing in power the vizier whom he favoured, and finally in becoming vizier himself (January 1169); and when he died, his nephew Saladin (Sala-ed-din) succeeded to his position (March 1169), and made himself, on the death of the caliph in 1171, sole ruler in Egypt.

Throughout all the vicissitudes of the Revolution the relations between the two states had wit remained unimpaired, and Turkey had been one with France.

Town and castle followed the vicissitudes of the dukedom of Norfolk, passing to the crown in 1405, and being alternately restored and forfeited by Henry V., Richard III., Henry VII., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth and James I., and finally sold in 1635 to Sir Robert Hitcham, who left it in 1636 to the master and fellows of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge.

The charm of the personal character of Stevenson and the romantic vicissitudes of his life are so predominant in the minds of all who knew him, or lived within earshot of his legend, that they made the ultimate position which he will take in the history of English literature somewhat difficult to decide.

But from 1087 his life was one of action and vicissitudes which left him little leisure.

The pastoral industries, which date from early colonial times, have suffered many vicissitudes, and their development has failed to keep pace with the country's growth in population.

Thenceforward its position was dependent, and in the Second Punic War, after several vicissitudes, it was depopulated and plundered by Hannibal.

In its lower course, whatever is worthy of record clusters round the historical vicissitudes of Hamburg - its early prominence as a missionary centre (Ansgar) and as a bulwark against Slav and marauding Northman, its commercial prosperity as a leading member of the Hanseatic League, and its sufferings during the Napoleonic wars, especially at the hands of the ruthless Davotit.

The church of Austin Friars, origin- ally belonging to a friary founded in 1253, became a Dutch church under a grant of Edward VI., and still remains so; its style is principally Decorated, but through various vicissitudes little of the original work is left.