peculiarity

Hence, if man goes on selecting, and thus augmenting, any peculiarity, he will almost certainly unconsciously modify other parts of the structure, owing to the mysterious laws of the correlation of growth.

It was Stryver's grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any place, or space.

Without thinking about it, he accepted this disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of his father, as milk and half- digested meat were peculiarities of his mother.

Day after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.

Every author has some peculiarity in his descriptions or in his style of writing.

A second peculiarity of airship war as it first came to the world that also made for social collapse, was the ineffectiveness of the early air-ships against each other.

The housekeeper tried to describe him, but failed to distinguish the nameless visitor by any personal peculiarity which her master could recognise.

They are kept together by the peculiarity of their topographical position; by their individual weakness and insignificancy; by the fear of powerful neighbors, to one of which they were formerly subject; by the few sources of contention among a people of such simple and homogeneous manners; by their joint interest in their dependent possessions; by the mutual aid they stand in need of, for suppressing insurrections and rebellions, an aid expressly stipulated and often required and afforded; and by the necessity of some regular and permanent provision for accomodating disputes among the cantons.

[11] It was one of his peculiarities, he tells us, to live by the eye far more than by any other sense (a peculiarity, perhaps, in an Englishman), and this is what he sees at the early daily service then common in some City churches.

The doctor being called, described a personal peculiarity, which he had noticed at the post-mortem examination, and which might lead to the identification of the murdered man.

One old Sag-Harbor whaleman's chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was this: --He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head --a peculiarity only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have this saying, A penny roll would choke him; his swallow is so very small.

"With this view, I have not hesitated to reveal to the lawyer a constitutional peculiarity of my poor uncle's, which was always kept a secret among us at his own request -- I mean his tendency to somnambulism.