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Etymologies
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Examples
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On it was set that inscrutable sign-manual, which our true character stamps on everything, as soon as nothing compels us to obey the various hypocrisies, necessary as they are, which Society insists on.
Honorine 2007
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On it was set that inscrutable sign-manual, which our true character stamps on everything, as soon as nothing compels us to obey the various hypocrisies, necessary as they are, which Society insists on.
Honorine 2007
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This seal of the devil is a small sign-manual, which, as demonological jurisconsults affirm, renders the skin insensible.
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There — there, take the sign-manual, and away with you and this young fellow.
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To satisfy the scruples of the messenger, Lord Glenvarloch opened the casket in his presence, and saw that his small stock of money, with two or three valuable papers which it contained, and particularly the original sign-manual which the king had granted in his favour, were in the same order in which he had left them.
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He had to solicit from the ministers certain forms of office, which were to render his sign-manual effectually useful; and these, though they could not be denied, were delayed in such a manner, as to lead Nigel to believe there was some secret opposition, which occasioned the demur in his business.
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She generally wrote on large note-paper; she twisted up her letters into the shape and sometimes into the size of cocked hats; she addressed them in a sprawling, manly hand and not unusually added a blot or a smudge, as though such were her own peculiar sign-manual.
Barchester Towers 2004
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Is not the fact that they surpass our unaided powers of comprehension and research a “sign-manual” of divinity?
Union and Communion 1832-1905 2000
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Her lips were full and her chin round, but she looked full her age, and between the brows was a line that I would call the Doctor's sign-manual.
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She was a gypsy-looking woman, with wandering, defiant black eyes, and her red face had the sign-manual of vice stamped upon it.
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880. Various
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