All 38 Uses of
disposition
in
Middlemarch
- Miss Brooke argued from words and dispositions not less unhesitatingly than other young ladies of her age.†
Chpt 1 (definition 3)
- The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency.†
Chpt 1 (definition 3)
- I have always been a bachelor too, but I have that sort of disposition that I never moped; it was my way to go about everywhere and take in everything.†
Chpt 1 (definition 3)
- She attributed Dorothea's abstracted manner, and the evidence of further crying since they had got home, to the temper she had been in about Sir James Chettam and the buildings, and was careful not to give further offence: having once said what she wanted to say, Celia had no disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects.†
Chpt 1 (definition 3)
- It was a sign of his good disposition that he did not slacken at all in his intention of carrying out Dorothea's design of the cottages.†
Chpt 1 (definition 3)
- The small boys wore excellent corduroy, the girls went out as tidy servants, or did a little straw-plaiting at home: no looms here, no Dissent; and though the public disposition was rather towards laying by money than towards spirituality, there was not much vice.†
Chpt 1 (definition 3)
- You do not like to hear these things, Vincy, but on this occasion I feel called upon to tell you that I have no motive for furthering such a disposition of property as that which you refer to.
Chpt 2 (definition 1) *disposition = transferring
- But Fred was of a hopeful disposition, and a vision had presented itself of a sum just large enough to deliver him from a certain anxiety.†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- Whatever was not problematical and suspected about this young man—for example, a certain showiness as to foreign ideas, and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and forgotten by his elders—was positively unwelcome to a physician whose standing had been fixed thirty years before by a treatise on Meningitis, of which at least one copy marked "own" was bound in calf.†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- Will any member of the committee aver that he would have entertained the idea of displacing the gentleman who has always discharged the function of chaplain here, if it had not been suggested to him by parties whose disposition it is to regard every institution of this town as a machinery for carrying out their own views?†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- …it in his thought to tell her that she ought not to have received young Ladislaw in his absence: but he abstained, partly from the sense that it would be ungracious to bring a new complaint in the moment of her penitent acknowledgment, partly because he wanted to avoid further agitation of himself by speech, and partly because he was too proud to betray that jealousy of disposition which was not so exhausted on his scholarly compeers that there was none to spare in other directions.†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- You will hardly demand that his confidence should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we know, is something less coarse and materialistic: it is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good taste in costume, and our general preference for the best…†
Chpt 3 (definition 3)
- And with so much good in your disposition, Fred,—you might be worth a great deal.†
Chpt 3 (definition 3)
- It had occurred to him that he must not any longer defer his intention of matrimony, and he had reflected that in taking a wife, a man of good position should expect and carefully choose a blooming young lady—the younger the better, because more educable and submissive—of a rank equal to his own, of religious principles, virtuous disposition, and good understanding.†
Chpt 3 (definition 3)
- It is so, with testamentary dispositions.
Chpt 3 (definition 2) *dispositions = decisions
- "The will I hold in my hand," said Mr. Standish, who, seated at the table in the middle of the room, took his time about everything, including the coughs with which he showed a disposition to clear his voice, "was drawn up by myself and executed by our deceased friend on the 9th of August, 1825.†
Chpt 4 (definition 3)
- "A most singular testamentary disposition!" exclaimed Mr. Trumbull, preferring for once that he should be considered ignorant in the past.†
Chpt 4 (definition 3)
- That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves.†
Chpt 4 (definition 3)
- Not for one moment did Mr. Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any doubleness: he had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little less uncomfortable) the positive knowledge that her tendency to form opinions about her husband's conduct was accompanied with a disposition to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by what he said.†
Chpt 4 (definition 3)
- It may be imagined that Mr. Trumbull rose from his couch with a disposition to speak of an illness in which he had manifested the strength of his mind as well as constitution; and he was not backward in awarding credit to the medical man who had discerned the quality of patient he had to deal with.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- Neither Dr. Sprague nor Dr. Minchin said that he disliked Lydgate's knowledge, or his disposition to improve treatment: what they disliked was his arrogance, which nobody felt to be altogether deniable.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- …evening in March, Rosamond in her cherry-colored dress with swansdown trimming about the throat sat at the tea-table; Lydgate, lately come in tired from his outdoor work, was seated sideways on an easy-chair by the fire with one leg over the elbow, his brow looking a little troubled as his eyes rambled over the columns of the "Pioneer," while Rosamond, having noticed that he was perturbed, avoided looking at him, and inwardly thanked heaven that she herself had not a moody disposition.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- This proposal was only one more sign added to many since his memorable interview with Lydgate, that Mr. Casaubon's original reluctance to let Dorothea work with him had given place to the contrary disposition, namely, to demand much interest and labor from her.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- The men of Frick were not ill-fed, and were less given to fanaticism than to a strong muscular suspicion; less inclined to believe that they were peculiarly cared for by heaven, than to regard heaven itself as rather disposed to take them in—a disposition observable in the weather.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- It was the harder to Fred's disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no longer rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- "I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good reason," said Fred, his spirit rising a little at the perception of something like a disposition to lecture him.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- This could hardly have been more galling to any disposition than to Lydgate's, with his intense pride—his dislike of asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- Death and other striking dispositions, such as feminine trustfulness, had come; and Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell's words—"Do you call these bare events?†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- I am of a cheerful disposition myself, and Mr. Vincy always likes something to be going on.
Chpt 7 (definition 3) *disposition = normal mood and personality
- Very different from a husband out at odd hours, and never knowing when he will come home, and of a close, proud disposition, I think"—indiscreet Mrs. Vincy did lower her tone slightly with this parenthesis.†
Chpt 7 (definition 3)
- But I have had a strong disposition to be otherwise.†
Chpt 7 (definition 3)
- She is, you are aware, a woman of most munificent disposition, and happily in possession—not I presume of great wealth, but of funds which she can well spare.†
Chpt 7 (definition 3)
- It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men's dispositions.†
Chpt 7 (definition 3)
- He had then cared but little about Lydgate's painful impressions with regard to the suggested change in the Hospital, or about the disposition towards himself which what he held to be his justifiable refusal of a rather exorbitant request might call forth.†
Chpt 7 (definition 3)
- But the moral grounds of suspicion remained: the strong motives Bulstrode clearly had for wishing to be rid of Raffles, and the fact that at this critical moment he had given Lydgate the help which he must for some time have known the need for; the disposition, moreover, to believe that Bulstrode would be unscrupulous, and the absence of any indisposition to believe that Lydgate might be as easily bribed as other haughty-minded men when they have found themselves in want of money.†
Chpt 7 (definition 3)
- It is possible—I have often felt so much weakness in myself that I can conceive even a man of honorable disposition, such as I have always believed Lydgate to be, succumbing to such a temptation as that of accepting money which was offered more or less indirectly as a bribe to insure his silence about scandalous facts long gone by.†
Chpt 8 (definition 3)
- There was no spiteful disposition towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain what it would be well for her to feel and do under the circumstances, which of course kept the imagination occupied with her character and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy till now.†
Chpt 8 (definition 3)
- "Selina" received her with a pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on the commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary quarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation of Mr. Bulstrode's health.†
Chpt 8 (definition 3)
Definitions:
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(1) (disposition as in: disposition of the assets) the giving, selling, or transferring of something to another
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(2) (disposition as in: disposition of the matter) the decision or action taken when an issue was settled so that it no longer requires attention
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(3) (disposition as in: a kind disposition) someone's normal mood, personality, or typical way of behaving