I need to tell you about my shamefully Machiavellian motive for sending her packing and the subdolous way in which her death facilitated my crowning achievement. Clanash Farjeon, A Handbook for Attendants on the Insane: The Autobiography of 'Jack the Ripper' as Revealed to Clanash Farjeon, 2003

The doctor's mind pursued its own schemes with Machiavellian subtlety. Joseph Conrad, Nostromo, 1904

Using the GPS collars that updated an animal’s location regularly and other data, the project found that vagility—the ability of an organism to move—declines in areas with human footprints by as much as half to two-thirds the distance than in places where there is little or no human activity. Jim Robbins, "Animals Are Losing Their Vagility, or Ability to Roam Freely," New York Times, February 19, 2018

With this combination of low vagility and narrow habitat requirements, the mayfly faunas of islands around New Zealand provide a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of isolation, dispersal ability and the response of communities to reduced diversity. D. R. Towns, "The mayflies (Ephemeroptera) of Great Barrier Island, New Zealand: macro- and micro-distributional comparisons," Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 17, 1987

Antagonism in my family comes wrapped in layers of code, sideways feints, full deniability. Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves, 2013

... it always had been understood that when the Germans did decide to take the desperate risk of trying to invade England they would make a feint in a couple of places, and, having drawn off the British fleet, would direct their serious attacks somewhere else. "Coast Attack Expected," New York Times, December 17, 1914

Much skill had they in runes, and were exceeding deft in scoring them on treen bowls, and on staves, and door-posts and roof-beams and standing-beds and such like things. William Morris, The Roots of the Mountains, 1889

In old time we had treen chalices and golden priests; but now we have treen priests and golden chalices. John Jewel (1522–1571), "Sermon on Haggai," The Works of John Jewel, 1847

... the frugivorous bats, and the fruit-eating quadrumana, including the gorgeous mandrill, are the most highly-coloured of the Mammalia. Grant Allen, The Colour-Sense: Its Origin and Development, 1879

Fruit, by the way, was all their diet. ... while I was with them, in spite of some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, 1895

... let him read those Pharsalian fields fought of late in France for religion, their massacres, wherein by their own relations in twenty-four years I know not how many millions have been consumed, whole families and cities, and he shall find ours to be but velitations to theirs. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621

While the ladies in the tea-room of the Fox Hotel were engaged in the light snappish velitation, or skirmish, which we have described, the gentlemen who remained in the parlour were more than once like to have quarrelled more seriously. Sir Walter Scott, St. Ronan's Well, 1823

Digital utopians have come in for criticism (sometimes in these pages) for failing fully to grok the messy realities of politics and the virtues of old-fashioned shoe leather in political protest ... Ben McGrath, "Nerd Parade," The New Yorker, January 30, 2012

Our gray matter is so complex, scientists lament, that it can’t quite understand itself. But if we can’t grok our own brains, maybe the machines can do it for us. Robbie Gonzalez, "AI Just Learned How to Boost the Brain's Memory," Wired, February 6, 2018