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Definition of pageant:

  • (noun) an elaborate representation of scenes from history etc; usually involves a parade with rich costumes
  • (noun) a rich and spectacular ceremony

Sentence Examples:

All repair to an ancient gallery, long disused, whence the sound proceeds, and here, indeed, a pageant has been secretly arranged.

All ceremony and court etiquette were forgotten; each one eagerly sought that place from whence he could best behold the dazzling pageant.

A deer-stalking peace drooped upon everything, and in it a man could invoke the passing of a lazy pageant of twenty years of his life.

As a practical illustration of Americanization, there was a wonderful pageant by the children of a public school in Pittsburgh, practically all of foreign lineage.

At length the blast of trumpets announced the coming of the Queen to the balcony before the window whence she was to see the pageant.

The good townsmen of Taunton, with their wives and their daughters, had meanwhile been assembling on the balconies and at the windows which overlooked the square, whence they might have a view of the pageant.

The two planes of suffering whence the great divisions of mankind view and envy the other's destinies, as we view a passing pageant, as those who stand on the decks of crossing ships gaze regretfully back.

That mysterious halo of attraction which always invests the forbidden undoubtedly heightened the reputed charm of the never-more-to-be-seen sacred pageants, and led people to continually depreciate the value of all entertainments offered as substitutes for them.

The festivities, which occupied several days, consisted of receptions, fireworks, reviews, games, dances, and religious ceremonies, culminating in a most impressive and colorful pageant, when the two bridegrooms proceeded to the palace in state to claim their brides.

They are blind, dumb forces, beautiful, barbaric pageants, careering without aim or design through the immensities of No-where and No-time, if they are not impregnated and nourished with Thought, that is to say, with Consciousness, vitalized and purified.

Pageant and pageantry are inferior to pomp, denoting spectacular display designed to impress the public mind, and since the multitude is largely ignorant and thoughtless, the words pageant and pageantry have a suggestion of the transient and unsubstantial.

The andante is hardly less elaborate than the first movement, but in the finale there is some laying off of the impedimenta of the pageant, as if the paraders had put aside the magnificence for a period of more informal festivity.

These "infernal pageants" were concerned with the destiny of souls after death, and their scope being different from that of the miracle plays, they are adduced simply as marking affection for theatrical display in conjunction with religious sentiment.

There has, perhaps, never been a richer and more beautiful subject-picture painted than this glowing canvas, or one which brings more vividly before us the magnificence of the pageants which made such a part of Venetian life in the golden age of painting.

This concerns the "extra-collegiate activities" and includes help on material needed in inter-class debates, dramatics, pageants, college publications, Bible classes, mission classes, commencement essays, and all the miscellaneous activities in which the student, not the instructor, takes the initiative.

The majority of us think of New York and other large cities as vast factories with the machine-like and vicious qualities of human nature uppermost, so it is most refreshing to contemplate "Old Home Week in Greenwich Village" and the "Henry Street Pageant."

The second pageant was styled "The seat of worthy governance," on the summit of which sat another representative of the queen; beneath were the cardinal virtues trampling under their feet the opposite vices, among whom Ignorance and Superstition were not forgotten.

The pageants and tableaux which afford women an opportunity to appear in the garb of statues, leave one somewhat in doubt whether Feminism relies chiefly upon arson and malicious mischief, or upon the arts Vivien practiced upon Merlin, for the accomplishment of its ends.

One is aware of vast and inscrutable forces, working in silence and indirection, which somehow control and direct the shadowy figures who move dimly, with grave and wistful pathos, through a no less shadowy pageant of griefs and ecstasies and fatalities.

There does not appear from Rudder's account to have been, in his time at least, any pageant commemorative of the achievement of the lady to whom the parishioners reckoned themselves to owe their privileges; nor have I been able to trace one by local inquiries.

The eastern sky blooms into vivid pink from the reflection of this fiery incandescence, which fades only to give place to the leaping brightness of phosphorescent waves, and the nightly pageant of tropical skies ablaze with lambent flames of summer lightning.

The third kind of biography, the expository, the kind with which we are here concerned, attempts to combine the other two, hopes to present the pageant of life which the hero lived, and especially to make an estimate of its importance, its significance.

While he rushed into every extravagance and pleasure, surpassing the companions of his own rank in his orgies, he suffered no symptoms of a deeper feeling to escape him, than that of excellence in trifling, the wine cup, the pageant, the passing show.

Surely not (says Sir John Herschel) to illuminate our nights, which an additional moon of the thousandth part of the size of our own would do much better; nor to sparkle as a pageant void of meaning and reality, and bewilder us among vain conjectures.

Through the mouths of these, now come forth, in national pageant groups, the creators of the art of the theater from antiquity to the verge of the living present: the world-famed actors, dramatists, producers, musicians, directors, and inventors of its art.

Indeed, all that was visible to the vulgar eye of this pageant was wholly masculine; though no one doubted that behind the gold-embroidered curtains of the litters which contained the female notabilities of the court still more dazzling wonders might be concealed.

It has the stateliness of highly artificial conditions of society, of the Court, the pageant, the tournament, as opposed to the majesty of the great events in human life and history, its real vicissitudes, its catastrophes, its tragedies, its revolutions, its sins.

Which petition being heard and understood, it was agreed and enacted that thenceforth every occupation in the said city should find and set forth in the said procession one such pageant as should be appointed by master mayor and his brethren aldermen.

Let the victorious conqueror look around beyond the dazzling scene, and the gorgeous pageant which attends his triumph, and he would shudder, were he to see the agony, the hopeless despair, of one alone out of the thousands, of whose misery he is the cause.

Of scarcely less significance and interest than the addresses was the pageant presented on the lawn during the intermission between the sessions, depicting scenes and incidents illustrating the origin and development of the Hospital, and of psychiatry and mental hygiene.

I was quite confident that at that hour I should find Elisabeth and her aunt in the big East Room at the president's reception, the former looking on with her uncompromising eyes at the little pageant which on reception days regularly went forward there.

The aromatic exudation from the dwarfish wattle, with its May-like blossom, which seemed to flourish under the protection of its gigantic compeers; and the bright acacia, decking, with its brilliant hue, the sloping sward, both lent their aid in the general pageant.

For an unmeasured interval the tutor, oblivious of time and actual place, stood on the brink of this majestic pageant, staring with breathless awe, while the swaying of the entire scenery increased, like the sway of an ocean lifted to the sky by many winds.

Certain localities are nothing without an occasional glance at the chronicles of olden times; but with those aids to imagination, the very stones become gifted with speech, and proclaim the joys and sorrows, the pageants and horrors which they witnessed in their days.

This statement of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, suggesting a glimpse at the great pageant of nature from the remotest times, shows how the organisms existing at this moment are the descendants of the victors in the world's greatest battles.

The pageant was incomparably splendid, the close of the ceremony being quite as fine as the beginning, for the Knights Grand Cross, the Knights Grand Commanders, and the Companions all formed once more in a procession in the reverse order of their entry.

Looking at his young, smiling, care-free face, one could easily imagine that he was taking part in a military pageant; but the headlong career and flashing weapons of his men, who deployed as they charged straight at the Confederates, dispelled any such illusion.

The joyous figures that peopled it are familiar to us, and the gorgeous pageants, the processions of princes and potentates and fair ladies, the stupendous display of wealth and beauty, the tourneys, feasts and dances, are tales oft told in biography and romance.

Sometimes the individual exhibitions in these floral pageants take the form of floats, which represent all sorts of myths and allegories, portrayed elaborately by means of statues, as well as living beings, lavishly adorned with ornamental grasses, and wild and cultivated flowers.

The noble animal, whose flowing mane and tail swept the ground, paced proudly along, tossing his head on high, and spurning the ground on which he trod, as though conscious he should perform a conspicuous part in the grand pageant about to take place.

During all the centuries that the rich dark stain has been gathering upon the carved oak in the ceiling and wainscot, it has been the scene of banquets and pageants without number, at which the most illustrious characters of English history have figured.

She had remained motionless, almost breathless; her face white as death, her large orbs distended to their utmost, gazing, not upon the tangible objects that were before them, but upon some fearful pageant that was passing within the shadowy precincts of her soul.

His skillful riding, however, and intimate knowledge of the country, soon enabled him to draw rein on a slope of rising ground, while the line of chase, bending towards him where he stood, afforded a general survey of the whole pageant as it swept on.

To repel these attacks he employed the talents of a number of court poets and artists, who in public recitation and pageant, in emblematic picture and banner and device, proclaimed the wisdom and kindness of his guardianship and the wickedness of his assailants.

The device worn on the Pontiff's liveries at this pageant, was in harmony with his previous character and present professions: under a golden "yoke" was inscribed the word suave, meaning something more winning than the scriptural phrase "easy," from which it was borrowed.

Lancaster, foreigner though she was, thrilled to the heart's core by the magnificent pageant; Francesca straining her eyes up the long street, through the vast sea of faces, to fasten them upon just one face that she knew would presently appear in the throng.

With joined hands they supported above the gate a copy of Latin verses, in which they obligingly expounded to her majesty the sense of all the pageants which had been offered to her view, concluding with compliments and felicitations suitable to the happy occasion.

As the proposer and planner of the pageant there were numerous details to arrange at the very last moment, and she was so afraid that she would oversleep, that she awakened several times with a nervous start, only to find everything enveloped in darkness.

We are spectators of a pageant that never repeats itself; for although there is a certain monotony in the character of the river and one would think that its narrow strips of arable land would soon be devoid of interest, the scenes are never twice alike.

When he spoke like this, simply and even with a gay indifference, she wondered whether the world was a pageant to him, which it cost him no pains to relinquish, and whether, too, though he had great kindliness and understanding, deep emotions were forbidden him.

In "Goblin Market," in the "Pageant of the Months," even in such a poem as the "Apple Gathering," and in many other poems she seems to revel in descriptions of fruit which the harsh apples and half-baked plums of English gardens can hardly have suggested.

As far as was possible each company took for its pageant some Bible story fitting to its trade; in York the goldsmiths played the three Kings of the East bringing precious gifts, the fishmongers the flood, and the shipwrights the building of Noah's ark.

It is like a Greek frieze placed on end; but whereas the frieze gives space for a multitude of processional figures, and is essentially a stage for the depiction of a social pageant, this slim panel demands the exclusion of all but a few significant lines.

"I think it is you they stare at and envy," said Margaret, glancing at the splendid woman at her side, whose beauty she knew well over-shadowed her own rarer loveliness, at any rate in a street pageant, as in the sunshine the rose overshadows the lily.

Every face wore a solemnly grave expression, and the bearing of their manly forms, wrapped in flowing garments, the dignified motion of their arms, the proud carriage of their heads, everything indicated that they were well versed in the art of exhibiting a public pageant.

It is full of fine and significant symbolism, it is an elaborate pageant of his own life, with all its miseries, heights, relapses, and flight after some eternity; but, as he writes it, it turns intellectual, and the voice is like that of one declaiming his confession.

Situated in the most beautiful part of the ornate and rich city, and amid the residences of other great nobles, the Nassau palace formed a fitting scene for the festivals, the hospitality, the pageants provided by one of the most wealthy and generous Princes in Europe.

In a general way, all unknown men who for three centuries had been producing miracle plays, moralities, interludes, masques and pageants were Shakespeare's predecessors; but we refer here to a small group of playwrights who rapidly developed what is now called the Elizabethan drama.

These pageants were erections placed across the principal streets in the manner of triumphal arches: illustrative sentences in English and Latin were inscribed upon them; and a child was stationed in each, who explained to the queen in English verse the meaning of the whole.

One night there came the most flaming and devastating sunset, descried beyond perilous and mountainous clouds, and from the north all the way to the west a grand processional mass of shadows was seen fleeing, like the pageant of the world's vanities going to judgment.

The pageants already seen, were criticized, praised, or condemned, and compared with those of the preceding year; and all the guests politely declared how they were looking forward to the play of the Parchment-makers and Bookbinders, the guild to which their host belonged.

The marines were formed into exact line, the horses of the officers clattered on the rough pavement as they dashed about to expedite the arrangements, the crowd pressed closer to the line of the procession, and in five minutes the grand pageant was set in motion.

Just as the procession was about to move down the hill to embark for Three-Mile Point, a small-sized Universalist, stirred by generous impulse, hailed young Dick, a small-sized Presbyterian, who stood on the opposite side of the street gazing with assumed stoicism on the fascinating pageant.

And he liked to enter into the humors of a Court; to devote his brilliant imagination and affluence of invention either to devising a pageant which should throw all others into the shade, or a compromise which should get great persons out of some difficulty of temper or pique.

Hastily thanking the honest citizen for the "goodly show" he had permitted him to witness, he slipped down into the street, and pushed his way through the throng anywhere, out of sight of the odious pageant of intolerance and bigotry which he had been witnessing.

To behold such a spectacle men came from every portion of the North; fathers brought their sons to see this historic pageant, while historians, poets, novelists, and painters thronged to see the unparalleled sight and there to gather material and inspiration for their future works.

Prompt and well-disciplined, with their bows on their shoulders, their quivers and their swords at their sides, and their heavy axes in their hands, the English archers at once took up the position assigned to them, with as much precision as if at some pageant or muster.

As the pageant moved along through the state it was joined ever and anon by other craft and at almost every village exercises and illuminations were the order of the day and the much-feted governor and committees were hauled to the best hotel and feasted.

At that point a delicious fairy pageant is introduced, presenting Queen Titania and her elves and illustrating at once the grievance of the fairies against the men whose heavy feet have crushed their toads and bats and flowers and mystic rings, and Marian's dream of love.

In the Middle Ages these combats, whether they were mere pageants or sportive contests with more or less of the element of danger, or were waged in deadly earnest, were, in one shape or other, of very common occurrence, and were reduced to system and regulated by legislation.

None but those who are within the walls of a jail, awaiting their arrival, can conceive the dread sensation of fear and hope awakened in the breasts of criminals by the clang of the trumpets and shouting of the mob, as the pageant proceeds through the streets.

The former had done little more than set courtly pageants to music, though he had done this with great skill and tact, enriching them with a variety of concerted and orchestral pieces, and showing much fertility in the invention alike of pathetic and lively melodies.

At all the principal places in his route, bands of music were stationed, that, as he approached, sent forth their spirit-stirring peals, which, with the vociferous shouts of thousands on thousands, and waving of handkerchiefs, flags, and banners, rendered his march like that of an oriental pageant.

He loved display, pageant, parade; she could see that by the way his men marched around him in regulated order, and by his gorgeous clothes, and she herself became a little intoxicated by the air of excitement and the singing of the laughing, jostling crowd.

During the days of furious social activity she had little time to give him, for the series of luncheons, of pageants, of gorgeous tableaux and brilliant masked balls kept her in a whirl of rapturous confusion, and left her scant leisure in which to snatch even her beauty sleep.

The Cavalry and Howitzers having been arranged in such order that each supported the other, and a prospect of some carnage supported them both, the word was given to advance, and the warlike pageant swept onward very much as we read in the reliable morning journals.

The girl of the lower classes, hypnotized by fashion plates, compelled to witness at the doors of fashionable churches, in the street, at the music halls, and even at the picture palaces, the continuous streaming past of the fashion pageant, develops an intolerable desire for finery.

The glamour of the night was gone and with it all that had lent semblance of plausibility to his incredible career; daylight forced all back into confused and distorted perspective, like the pageant of some fantastic and disordered dream uncertainly recalled long hours after waking.

Truthful, sober, severe, with a capacity for deep, if placid, enjoyment of the pageant of the world, and a quick eye for its varied sights and an eager ear for its delightful sounds, Matthew Arnold is a poet whose limitations we may admit without denying his right.

I believe that the introduction of the masque feature in all pageants, by increasing the gap which already exists between formal and creative pageantry and the familiar tawdriness of the street-fair and carnival, would do more to raise the standard of pageantry than any other single thing.

The survivors are thus reduced to a more pitiable condition than the deceased: while they in all probability are rolling about and dashing their heads on the ground, he, bravely attired and gloriously garlanded, reposes gracefully upon his lofty bier, adorned as it were for some pageant.

The word "company" here is not exactly synonymous with "gild," for several gilds might combine for the object of maintaining a pageant and training and entertaining actors, and the composition of the company varied according to the wealth or poverty, zeal or indifference, of different gilds.

The best possible national parade or pageant would be up and down through ten thousand cities to expose every laborer to long rows of employers who stand up for workmen, expose every employer to long rows of workingmen from all over the country who stand up for employers.

Troops of butchers, dressed in appropriate fancy costumes, both on horseback and on foot, are preceded by bands of music; and the heathen divinities, drawn by eight horses in a richly gilt triumphal car, form one of the most splendid and grotesque pageants of modern times.

Their ancestors have gaped at gilded coaches and gorgeous robes and sparkling jewels for centuries, and if the day ever comes when they shall have exchanged these amiable pageants of their betters for a full stomach, who shall dare predict that they will be entirely satisfied?

There are, of course, old men everywhere, in all life they are an integral part, and everywhere they are commentators on life once they feel that their day is done, spectators of a pageant from the forefront of which they have dropped to watch the following troupe pass by.

At that time singles, couples, groups and squadrons of the three thousand five hundred costumed characters who were to take part in the Pageant began to ooze and drip and stream through house doors, all over the old town, and wend toward the meadows outside the walls.

He retained the most effective portions of his poem, its high-sounding phrases, and picturesque descriptions of marshalling knights, the very category of whose arms, plumed helms, hauberks, blazoned shields, flaunting pennons, inlaid gauntlets, cross-hiked swords, golden spurs, and caparisoned steeds was in itself a pageant.

The wind, still charged with wild roses, stirred the lilac trees and mountain ash, and circled noiselessly around the chair where he sat, and played queer tricks with his memory, for all of us are young in June, when the pageant of summer is passing by.

Eleven strokes full half an hour ago had pealed from the clock of the Old South, when a rumor was circulated among the company that some new spectacle or pageant was about to be exhibited which should put a fitting close to the splendid festivities of the night.

Yet a few minutes later they were laughing sheepishly at one another, and bowing to us like actors before the curtain, and the Prime Minister was making a speech to explain that this was meant to be a pageant of the bad old times reproduced for our benefit.

Such is old Hall's description of the pageant which now entered: and it may easily be imagined that Sir Osborne, accustomed to a less luxurious court, was somewhat astonished at the splendor of the scene, if he was not much gratified by the good taste of the device.

Though these pageants were diverse in their origin, they had, at the epoch of which we write, begun to be confounded; and the Morris exhibited a tendency to absorb and blend them all, as, from its character, being a procession interspersed with dancing, it easily might do.

This pageant was performed in churches, in which the chief characters in society were supported in a sort of masquerade, mixing together in a general dance, in the course of which every one in his turn vanished from the scene, to show how one after the other died off.

As to their education, it continues abandoned to the efforts and totally inadequate means of private individuals and societies; except a comparative trifle from the State, not so much for the whole nation for the whole year as the cost of some useless, gaudy, barbaric pageant of one day.

This is the last remaining pageant which has been spared to the Ottoman monarchs by the rigorous reforming measures of Sultan Mahmoud, and shorn as it is of much of its former splendor, it probably surpasses in brilliant effect any spectacle which any other European Court can present.

A very interesting part of the pageant was the children of the different schools, in four-wheeled cars, covered with drapery, and decorated with flowers and plants; and it was really pleasing to see the happy little creatures enjoying such a holiday as they would never forget.

It was cast in an allegorical fashion, aiming to portray a pageant of fair women, each single verse seeking to picture some one of the many lovely ladies that in those days made Florence a very Venus Hill for the ravishment of the senses and the stirring of the blood.

Among these latter were the magistrates of the principal cities, clothed in their municipal insignia and crimson robes of office, who seem to have had quite as important parts assigned them by their democratic communities, in this and all similar pageants, as any of the nobility or gentry.

It being found necessary to inter the body before the conclusion of the public funereal pageant, the effigy was removed to another room, and placed in an erect instead of a recumbent position, with the emblems of kingship in its hands, and the crown royal on its head.