no-meaning

It was evident that here was no silken Pharisee absorbed in ceremonial functions, no self-seeking opportunist euphuistically ‘steering through the channel of no-meaning between the Scylla and Charybdis of Yes and No.’

Gathering Clouds: A Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom 1831-1903 1895

Owen, hovering betwixt his respect for his patron, and his love for the youth he had dandled on his knee in childhood, like the timorous, yet anxious ally of an invaded nation, endeavoured at every blunder I made to explain my no-meaning, and to cover my retreat; manuvres which added to my father's pettish displeasure, and brought a share of it upon. my kind advocate, instead of protecting me.

Rob Roy 1887

Socrates busied himself to begin with, not with some general intellectual _principle_, but with a multitude of different _people_, with their notions especially on moral ideas, with the meaning or no-meaning which they attached to particular words, -- in short, with the individual, the particular, the concrete, the every-day.

A Short History of Greek Philosophy John Marshall 1880

It matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers.

Hard Times 1876

It matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers.

Hard Times 1868

It matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers.

Hard Times Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1868

Owen, hovering betwixt his respect for his patron, and his love for the youth he had dandled on his knee in childhood, like the timorous, yet anxious ally of an invaded nation, endeavoured at every blunder I made to explain my no-meaning, and to cover my retreat; manoeuvres which added to my father's pettish displeasure, and brought a share of it upon my kind advocate, instead of protecting me.

Rob Roy — Volume 01 Walter Scott 1801

Owen, hovering betwixt his respect for his patron, and his love for the youth he had dandled on his knee in childhood, like the timorous, yet anxious ally of an invaded nation, endeavoured at every blunder I made to explain my no-meaning, and to cover my retreat; manoeuvres which added to my father's pettish displeasure, and brought a share of it upon my kind advocate, instead of protecting me.

Rob Roy — Complete Walter Scott 1801

Owen, hovering betwixt his respect for his patron, and his love for the youth he had dandled on his knee in childhood, like the timorous, yet anxious ally of an invaded nation, endeavoured at every blunder I made to explain my no-meaning, and to cover my retreat; manoeuvres which added to my father’s pettish displeasure, and brought a share of it upon my kind advocate, instead of protecting me.

Rob Roy 2005

a crook and cocked hat on, smiling with an insipid air of no-meaning, between nature and fashion.

Lectures on the English Poets Delivered at the Surrey Institution William Hazlitt 1804