"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how far I cannot read! Yet if 'the invisible things of God' may be known 'by the things which are seen,' there is at least room for ample study. To some people, Miss Faith, the world is always (with the change of one adjective) an incomprehensible little green book; while others read a few pages now, and look forward to knowing the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... necklace of potatoes, a breastpin of potatoes—and lastly, an apron full of potatoes. She herself resembled indeed a gigantic potatoe, and philologians might have conjectured that her very name was no more than a corruption of the adjective mealy. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... artillery—furnished special occasions for organized—or disorganized—upheavals of animal spirits. For these exercises we then had scant respect. They were "soldiering;" and from time immemorial soldier had been an adjective to express uselessness, or that which was so easy as to pass no man's ability. A soldier's wind, for example, was a wind fair both ways—to go and to return; no demands on brains there, much less on seamanship. The curious irrelevancy of ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... think, merely fanciful. It seems to occur naturally to those who visit Athens with the language of Greek poets in their memory. I was glad to find, on reading a paper by the Dean of Westminster on the topography of Greece, that the same thought had struck him. Ovid, too, gives the adjective purpureus to Hymettus. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... characteristic, to our knowledge; and although it is indicated in the figures of G. cornatus of both Schaeffer and Schmidel, we think that there it is only an exaggeration of the very minute granular appearance cornatus has. The word "asper" is the first descriptive adjective applied by Michelius. Fries included it in his ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... positive destiny, is the form of distribution among that species of functionaries which Adam Smith has designated by the word UNPRODUCTIVE, although he admits as much as any one the utility and even the necessity of their labor in society. By this adjective, UNPRODUCTIVE, Adam Smith, whose genius dimly foresaw everything and left us to do everything, meant that the product of these laborers is NEGATIVE, which is a very different thing from null, and that consequently distribution ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... the first jump which language frequently takes is this, that instead of using a noun with a qualifying adjective, such as white-house, the noun by itself is used without any such qualification. This can, of course, be done with very prominent words only, words which are used so often, and which express ideas so constantly present to the mind of the speaker, that no mistake ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... was not being turned into a howling wilderness; and she observed, as is often done so astutely, that "when you do find a neat, capable, colored help, it's as good help as you can have." Which you may notice is just as true without the third adjective ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... requires special attention. The shrug is a gesture used by the Latin race for expressing a multitude of things, both objectively and subjectively. It is a language of itself. It is, as circumstances require, a noun, adverb, pronoun, verb, adjective, preposition, interjection, conjunction. Yet it does not supersede the spoken language. It comes in rather when spoken words are useless, to convey intensity of meaning or delicacy. It is not taught, but it ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... her, which would not yield. She lit on it at unexpected moments. Meanwhile, she groped for an epithet that would fit his behaviour. Beginning with some rather vague and high-flown terms she gradually came down, until with the sense of having found the right thing at last, she fixed on the adjective "silly"—a word which, for the rest, was in common use with Mary, had she to describe anything that struck her as queer or extravagant. And sitting over her fancywork, into which, being what Richard called "safe as the grave," she sewed more thoughts ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... as a ship out of soundings, Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings, Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle, Deaf to even the definite article - No verbal message was worth a pin, Though you hired an earwig to carry ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... undaunted courage. He has an indomitable will that cannot brook defeat. The word impossible he never knows, whatever difficulties intervene between him and duty. He feels like Napoleon, "that impossible is the adjective ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... love-distraught poet; Lane has "a distracted poet." My learned friend Professor Aloys Sprenger has consulted, upon the subject of Al-Walahn the well-known Professor of Arabic at Halle, Dr. Thorbeck, who remarks that the word (here as further on) must be an adjective, mad, love-distraught, not a "lakab" or poetical cognomen. He generally finds it written Al-Sh'ir al-Walahn (the love-demented poet) not Al-Walahn al-Sh'ir Walahn the Poet. Note this burst of song after the sweet youth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... Grand Jury." It is doubtful whether Napoleon ever contemplated a victory with the complacent satisfaction that filled my old friend when he alluded to his connection with "the grand jury," and emphasized the adjective which magnified the jury and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... fluent, and convincing, and everybody on board the cutter grinned while the old sea-dog expressed a highly colored opinion of the whole tribe of ship-fitters, machinists, and mechanics generally. After ten minutes of descriptive shouting, during which he never repeated an adjective twice, he wound up by saying that he considered "an engine-room an insult to a seaman's intelligence," and said that "he'd like to pave the bottom of the sea with the skeletons of engineers diving a thousand ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and to select the warmest railway rug she could find; for the teacher, though she was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart and affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word legibus (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third declension, legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this grammatical subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she had been Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had led to the end of Latin lessons at the ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... term Hindustani not only survives, but survives in a variety of significations. The word is an adjective, pertaining to Hindustan, and in English it has become the name either of the people of Hindustan or of their language. It is in the latter sense that the name is particularly confusing. The way out of the difficulty lies in first associating Hindustani clearly with the central region ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... At his best he could never have been that, and in the recent past he had managed to acquire a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth half-way across his cheek. Even when his face was in repose he had an odd expression; and when, as he chanced to do now, he smiled, odd became a mild adjective, quite inadequate for purposes of description. It was not an unpleasant face, however. Unquestionably genial, indeed. There was something in it that had a ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... pamphlet by Professor A. Lasson, entitled Deutsche Art und deutsche Bildung, the adjective "deutsch" occurs 256 times in 42 pages—sometimes 13 times in one page, often 10 or 11 times—and always, of course, with a sort of unctuous implication that human language contains no higher term of eulogy. This enumeration does not ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... to find fault with his million-times-quoted adjective "unique" as it is used. It has been stamped on stationery and menu cards, and has gone the world over in his volume "Our Italy," and no one ever visits this spot who has not made the phrase his own. To me it deserves a stronger word, or series of words. We say a pretty girl has ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... ourselves the question: "Could this writer have been an ancient Roman?" If we answer in the affirmative, how can we explain coming repeatedly across this sort of writing, "lacu IN ipso" (XII. 56), that is, a monosyllabic preposition placed between a substantive and an adjective or pronoun, a kind of composition found in the poets, but disapproved by the prose-writers, who, if so placing a preposition, used a dissyllable and put the adjective first. Independently of a monosyllabic preposition thus standing frequently between a substantive and ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... "Amphibious. Adjective, derived from two Greek words, amphi, a fish, and bios, a beast. An animal supposed by our ignorant ancestors to be compounded of a fish and a beast; which therefore, like the hippopotamus, can't live on the land, and ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... perhaps, not more than two can be recalled who have visited the United States as mature, great artists,—Wilhelmj and Ysaye. Many violinists of excellent ability have been heard, and to some of them some day the adjective great may be applied. The fact that they have devoted their energies to concert work, and have been favourably received by the most important musical organisations, makes them celebrated, but the word great can ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... adjective meant 'valiant.' At the present time the word is only used in the phrase preux chevalier. Preux as a noun is rare, but de Vigny has 'Charlemagne et ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... sing-song voice, and with an air of anxious simplicity, Doddle began, 'Article, noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, outerjection, beginning with ies in the plural—as, baby, babies; lady, ladies; hady, hadies. Please, sir, isn't that last one a ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... gay, but what a lovable nature if one can apply such an adjective to him. He entertained the rest of us for a week out of "Pickwick Papers." The proper number of hours in the forenoon were spent in building the giant depot cairn, then lunch, and then the cosy sleeping-bags and Day's reading. It was unforgettable, and I think ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... interpretations of the Chinese adjective for this type of ground. Ts'ao Kung says it means "ground covered with a network of roads," like a chessboard. Ho Shih suggested: "ground on ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... meaning of "I am well," and may be called a substitute for our verb "to be." By incorporating yalu with this expression, it makes it more emphatic, as, Yalu murrung nginyadhu, "Really I am well." Any adjective describing a human attribute may be taken as a predicate, as, good, bad, strong, sleepy, and employed with the ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews
... SENTENCE ELEMENTS. What are the four kinds of sentences? What are the different parts of speech? Define each. What is the difference between a clause and a phrase? What is the difference between a principal clause and a subordinate clause? Illustrate. Illustrate an adverbial clause. An adjective clause. Illustrate an adverbial phrase. An adjective phrase. What is an attribute complement? Illustrate. What is an object complement? Illustrate. Illustrate and explain the difference between simple, complex, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... world today is the concrete problem to be faced by Liberal Churchmen. To consistent Catholics such as Father Knox it is not, I suppose, a problem at all. He would say that such men deserve every adjective of approbation in the dictionary; but they are not Christian. If Christianity means a fixed set of opinions, "a faith once delivered to the saints," Father Knox is right; such men are not Christians, but, if so, the fact that they are not is the death warrant of the Church, for ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... private scheme. His rle is that of the brave, strong, patient victim of an alleged natural law, by reason of which the present must ever be sacrificed to the future, and he discovers a peculiar miserable delight in the rle. "Miserable" is the right adjective. ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... ... am quite confuse. [sic] Queen Victoria used the feminine form of the French adjective, "confus, e, confused, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... Futuna noun: Wallisian(s), Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, or ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... in a different environment and properly corseted and gowned would have been set down unquestionably as "a voluptuous beauty." Here in the laundry, in stocking-feet and an unbelted black shirt-waist turned far in at the neck, she was merely "mushy," to use the adjective of her detractors. The queen owed her nickname to the boss, with whom she was said to "stand in," being "awful soft after him." She was a sort of assistant to the foreman, bossing the job when he was not around, and lending a hand in rush hours with true democratic simplicity such as only the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... word shell implied that the Colonel knew what was what. To the New England inland native, beyond the reach of the east winds, the oyster unconditioned, the oyster absolute, without a qualifying adjective, is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the case with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness, replied, with the pleasantest smile in the world, that the chicken she had been ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... for a moment contemplated qualifying the word "missus" with some such adjective as "bonny," but a glance at Margaret's face nipped this poetical flower in the bud. After a moment she sat ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... the soliloquy, last night?"—"Oh! against all rule, my lord, most ungrammatically! Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus——stopping, as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which, your lordship knows, should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... old cottage!" she returned, with a shrill rendering of each adjective. "You would have us go and live in that damp, musty, ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... to the eye a new and delightful prospect. There were the numerous tales,—tales as perfect as the world has ever seen; "La Morte Amoureuse," "Jettatura," "Une Nuit de Cléopâtre," etc., and then the very diamonds of the crown, "Les Emaux et Camées," "La Symphonie en Blanc Majeure," in which the adjective blanc and blanche is repeated with miraculous felicity in ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... success as a salesman lay in his geniality and the thoroughly reputable standing of his house. He bobbed about among men, a veritable bundle of enthusiasm—no power worthy the name of intellect, no thoughts worthy the adjective noble, no feelings long continued in one strain. A Madame Sappho would have called him a pig; a Shakespeare would have said "my merry child"; old, drinking Caryoe thought him a clever, successful businessman. In short, he was as good ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... last Deane Elmer always spoke of as his hobby, but we may doubt whether all his interests were not hobbies in the same sense. He is the natural descendant of those earlier amateur scientists—the adjective conveys no reproach—of the nineteenth century, among whom we remember such striking figures as those of Lord ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... translated here, quite correctly, 'transgression,' and intensified by that strong adjective attached, 'a great transgression,' literally means rebellion, revolt, or some such idea; and expresses, as the ultimate issue of conscious transgression prolonged and perpetuated into habit, an entire casting off of allegiance to God. 'No man can serve two masters.' 'His servants ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... adjective (formaliter), signifies the complex of the determinations of a thing, connected according to an internal principle of causality. On the other hand, we understand by nature, substantive (materialiter), the sum total of phenomena, in so far as they, by virtue of an internal ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... "Sardinian." It is not certain whether the adjective employed is [Greek: sardanios] or [Greek: sardanikos]. I suspect that Oriphyles here makes an ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... over the horse's head with a movement that brought out the beautiful lines of her figure, she turned her back upon the pawing, restless animal with as little concern as though she had delivered him to a correctly uniformed groom. No she was not pretty; she was—magnificent. The adjective ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... Horning.—What is the meaning of "letters of horning," a term occasionally, though rarely, met with in documents drawn up by notaries? And, a propos, why should "notaries public," with regard to the noun and adjective, continue to place the cart ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... appeal to The Cleveland Plain Dealer of eleven years ago ("slushy and disgusting"), or to The New York Post ("sterile and malodorous ... worse than immoral—dull"), or to Ainslee's Magazine ("inconsequent and rambling ... rather nauseating at times"). These devotees of the adjective that hunts in pairs are hardly to be discussed, I suppose, in connection with any rewards except such as accrue to the possessors of a certain obtuseness, who always and infallibly reap at least ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... the bargain on the stairs, as we went down together. At the pawnbroker's shop, too, I began to be very well known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar relish in these ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... casually glanced at the other diners. At my table—one of those long marble-topped affairs by the wall—there was an old man reading a paper, and the handsomest girl I had set eyes upon in a month of moons. Sometimes the word handsome seems an inferior adjective. She was beautiful, and her half-lidded eyes told me that she was anywhere but at Mouquin's. What a head of hair! Fine as a spider's web, and the dazzling yellow of a wheat-field in a sun-shower! The irregularity of her features made them all the more interesting. I was an ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... left both hyphenated and separate depending on their part of speech, for example: science-fiction science fiction (adjective) (noun) ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... sometimes alone and undisguised, but more frequently in composition. Thus, in Estelan, you will have little difficulty in recognizing East-land: Cape la Hogue will readily suggest the idea of a lofty promontory; its appellation being derived from the German adjective, hoch, still written hoog, in Flemish: the Saxon word for the Almighty enters into the family names of Argot, Turgot, Bagot, Bigot, &c.; and, not to multiply examples, the quaking sands upon the sea-shore are to the present hour called bougues, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Mrs. Mencke, remarking the adjective for the first time, and looking somewhat annoyed. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... hated going home. She hated 'that putrid boy'—a forbidden adjective; but what else could you call him? She was glad he would be gone the day after to-morrow. She was even more glad his nose was bleeding and his eye bunged up and his important blazer all bloodied. Girl though she was, there ran a fiercer strain in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... tribes of American Indians, the word is used with a double signification,—a literal and narrow meaning, and a general and rather undefined application. It signifies not only physical remedies and the art of using them, but second-sight, prophecy, and preternatural power. As an adjective, it embraces the idea of supernatural as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... really adapted to the intrinsic nature of the pianoforte, and hence fail to arouse the enthusiasm of those whose taste has been formed by the works of Chopin and Schumann. It was no doubt an instinctive antipathy to Beethoven's unpianistic style (if the adjective be permissible), which prevented Chopin from admiring Beethoven as deeply as he did some other composers, whom he would have admitted to be his inferiors. And Beethoven himself does not seem to have regarded his pianoforte works ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... fails to include. Some Greek sophists could deny that we may say that man is good, for man, they said, means only man, and good means only good, and the word is can't be construed to identify such disparate meanings. Mr. Bradley revels in the same type of argument. No adjective can rationally qualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the substantive, it can't be united with it; and if not distinct, there is only one thing there, and nothing left to unite. Our whole pluralistic procedure in using subjects and predicates as we ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... very singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic et haec ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... 'Accost her, knight, accost!' in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakspearian in the phrase—'give a coasting welcome,' ('coasting' being taken as the epithet and adjective of 'welcome,') that had the following words been, 'ere they land,' instead of 'ere it comes,' I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome to a ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... to the old man, who, utterly confounded, stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with a dreadful adjective appended to the fools, and an emphasis in his voice which showed he ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... for all that. A People's—-Chaste word, it will bring forth no adjective. The plays of A People's Theatre are People's plays. The plays of A People's Theatre are plays ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... word "Vegetarianism" implies a judgment of the qualities which such a diet entails. This word is derived, in fact, from the Latin adjective "Vegetus" (strong). The word "Vegetalism," which we oppose to the preceding one, admits only the establishing of a fact, that of the choice—exclusive or preferred—of the nutritious matters ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... imagined. The logical coherence of any series of events, as of any process of Nature, possesses an innate attraction for the inquisitive element of which few intelligent minds are devoid. Unfortunately, technical men are prone to delight in their technicalities, and to depreciate, with the adjective "popular," attempts to bring their specialties within the comprehension of the general public, or to make them pleasing and attractive to it. However it may be with other specialties, the utility of which is more willingly admitted, the ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... a tree and eat nuts?" she asked, hoping that the use of the adjective "large" might ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... old Spanish the article was often used before a possessive adjective that preceded its noun. This usage is ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... slopes gentle. The culminating points are in the centre of the range: Yumrukchal (7835 ft.), Maraguduk (7808 ft.), and Kadimlia (7464 ft.). The Balkans are known to the people of the country as the Stara Planina or "Old Mountain," the adjective denoting their greater size as compared with that of the adjacent ranges: "Balkan" is not a distinctive term, being applied by the Bulgarians, as well as the Turks, to all mountains. Closely parallel, on the south, are the minor ranges of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... before the Royal Institution, is out of place in the "Iron-Manufacturer's Guide." We must also enter an earnest protest against the importation, upon any terms, of such words as "ironoxydulcarbonate," "ironoxydhydrate," and the adjective "anhydrate." Some descriptions of considerable imaginative power have found place even in the directory of works. From the description of the Allentown furnaces we learn, with some surprise, that "no finer object of art invites the artist"; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... 'civil demeanour' and of the reports of 'his uprightness of dealing which argues his honesty.' In 1601—when near the zenith of his fame—he was apostrophised as 'sweet Master Shakespeare' in the play of 'The Return from Parnassus,' and that adjective was long after associated with his name. In 1604 one Anthony Scoloker in a poem called 'Daiphantus' bestowed on him the epithet 'friendly.' After the close of his career Jonson wrote of him: 'I loved ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... him with something which, if not an oath, sounded very like one, and commanded him to attend to his duty. 'You be d—d for a——,' commenced the gallant cavalier; but, looking up in order to suit the action to the words, and also to enforce the epithet which he meditated with an adjective applicable to the party, he recognised the speaker, made his military salaam, and altered his tone. 'Lord love your handsome face, Madam Nosebag, is it you? Why, if a poor fellow does happen to fire a slug of a morning, I am sure you were never the lady to bring ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... state. Indeed, seeing that the progress towards perfection of a civilized state, or polity, depends on the obedience of its members to these commands, the Stoics sometimes termed the pure reason the "political" nature. Unfortunately, the sense of the adjective has undergone so much modification, that the application of it to that which commands the sacrifice of self to the common good would now sound ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... talked of herself, she was equally voluble in inquiry as to the colonel's habits, ways of life, friends and acquaintances, happily restricting her interrogations, in regard to those of her own sex, to "any LITTLE girls that he knew." Saved by this exonerating adjective, the colonel saw here a chance to indulge his postponed monitorial duty, as well as his vivid imagination. He accordingly drew elaborate pictures of impossible children he had known—creatures precise in language and dress, abstinent of play and confectionery, devoted to lessons ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sense the Caribbean is a mediterranean sea; but the adjective must be qualified when comparison is made with the Mediterranean of the Old World or with the Gulf of Mexico. The last-named bodies of water communicate with the outer oceans by passages so contracted as to be easily watched from near-by ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... he'll be danged if he will. (Excuse so many DANGEDS. It is the creature's only adjective.) He was engaged to work for this institution by the president of the board of trustees, and he will not move from that house until the president of the board of trustees tells him to go. I don't think poor Sterry realizes that since his arrival a new president ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... adjective comfortable should so invariably be descriptive of mothers in Germany. In England and France though you may be a mother, you yet, I believe, may be so without being comfortable. In Germany, somehow, you can't. Perhaps it is the climate; perhaps ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to do full credit to amateur journalism and the association which best represents it. To some minds the term conveys an idea of crudity and immaturity, yet the United can boast of members and publications whose polish and scholarship are well-nigh impeccable. In considering the adjective "amateur" as applied to the press association, we must adhere to the more basic interpretation, regarding the word as indicating the non-mercenary nature of the membership. Our amateurs write purely for love of their ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Phineus.—Ver. 399. Any further particulars of the person here named are unknown. Some commentators suggest 'Phini,' and that some female of the name of Phinis is alluded to, making the adjective 'justissime' of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... deep texture of a famous picture, and what you write will mean something to those who know the master's work; you may even conjure up an image before untutored eyes. But neither minute description nor well-turned phrase, neither sensuous adjective nor spiritual smile can tell half the truth of a ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... with any kind of fish. Terms like garatum (prepared with g.) have been derived from it. Prepared with the addition of wine it becomes {oe}nogarum,—wine sauce—and dishes prepared with such wine sauce receive the adjective of {oe}nogaratum, and ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... singing a merry song." In this sentence "singing"—equivalent to "who was singing"—describes Katharine, and is therefore used as an adjective; but it also partakes of the nature of a verb, for it has a direct object, "song." Such words, partaking of the nature of both adjective and verb, are called PARTICIPLES. 2. "Blithely singing pretty songs keeps ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... an entire continent. For some time he wrote beneath his own standard and with considerable success. Following the example of several successful New York authors, he plunged into a hectic portrayal of 'high' society, a set of people that makes one wonder as to the exact meaning of the adjective. For a short space he came under the influence of the studied Bohemianism of 'Greenwich Village,' and wrote deucedly clever things for the applause of the villagers, then sneered at American taste because people in Arkansas did not like his ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... chaqu'un selon son espece;" for which Pegge takes him to task, and interprets kindly "fair and good," through mistake or preference adopting the acquired and popular, in lieu of the radical and elementary meaning of the word. (Anonymiana, pp. 380—1. Century VIII. No. LXXXI.) The conjunction of this adjective with gird in a passage of King Henry VI. has sorely gravelled MR. COLLIER: twice over he essays, with equal success, to expound its purport. First, loc. cit., he finds fault with gird as being employed in rather ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... further in explanation of the use of Bold. The adjective has been retained simply because it has been so long identified with Charles in English usage. I should have preferred the word Rash as a better equivalent for the contemporary term, applied to the duke in his ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... to pique him with this adjective, she was disarmed by the heartiness of his admission, "As green as grass! But I'd like to help you all ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... its having come from the Gipsy. In Rommany, all the world over, cova means "a thing," but it is almost indefinite in its applicability. "It is," says Pott, "a general helper on all occasions; is used as substantive and adjective, and has a far wider scope than the Latin res." Thus covo may mean "that man;" covi, "that woman;" and covo or cuvvo, as it very often does in English, "that, there." It sometimes appears in the word acovat, or this. There is no ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, in fact, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... was looking unusually well, and even those who had dubbed her "The Beautiful Yankee" added another superlative adjective. A spot of bright red burned in either cheek and she held her head very high. "How haughty she is!" Prescott heard some one say. Her height, her figure, her look lent ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... their own. Some pleased me better than others by the distinctness of their meaning and the resonance of their rhythm; they produced a clearer image in my mind; after their fashion, they gave me a picture of the object described. Colored by its adjective and vivified by its verb, the name became a living reality: what it said I saw. And thus, gradually, was the magic of words revealed to me, when the chances of, my undirected reading placed a few easy standard pages in ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... romantic, impressionistic art is doomed; only symbolism will endure; for symbolism only is there a future. Signor Marinetti, who coined the hideous word, "Futurism," goes still further. Literature, too, must throw off the yoke of syntax. The adjective must be abolished, the verb of the infinite should be always employed; the adverb must follow the adjective; every substantive should have its double; away with punctuation; you must "orchestrate" your language (this outrivals Rene ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in the first. The manner of his criticism is not at all judicial. His prose is as lyrical as his verse, and his praise and blame both in excess—dithyrambic laudation or affluent billingsgate. In particular, he works the adjective "divine" so hard that it loses meaning. Yet stripped of its excited superlatives, and reduced to the cool temperature of ordinary speech, his critical work is found to be full of insight, and his judgment in matters of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Aunt Hannah, everything you would say if you could. But please skip the hysterics. We've all had them, and Kate has already used every possible adjective that you could think up. Now it's just this." And he hurriedly gave Mrs. Stetson a full account of the case, and told her plainly what he hoped and expected that she would do ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... Hebrew adjective, means firm, faithful; and, as an adverb, verily, or, as the Catechism explains it, so be it. "Its proper place is where one person confirms the words of another, and adds his wish for success to the other's vows and predictions" (Gesenius). Each of the first four Books of the ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take "ranch" eggs, how pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with "yard" eggs, such an "out in the open—let the rest of the world go by" impression they confer. ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... Earth Colours: White Earth Colours: White Clay (China Clay): White Gypsum; Baryta: Magnesium Carbonate: Talc, Soapstone.—V., Organic Colours—1. Colours of Vegetable and Animal Origin: (a) Substantive (Direct Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Annatto; Turmeric: Safflower; (b) Adjective (Indirect Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Redwood; Cochineal; Weld: Persian Berries; Fustic Extract; Quercitron: Catechu (Cutch); Logwood Extract—2. Artificial Organic (Coal Tar) Colours: Acid Colours; Basic Colours: Substantive ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... examining Mr Pickering with furtive side glances. He was not handsome, nor, on the other hand, was he repulsive. 'Undistinguished' was the adjective that would have described him. He was inclined to stoutness, but not unpardonably so; his hair was thin, but he was not aggressively bald; his face was dull, but certainly not stupid. There was nothing in his outer man which ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... interview, crisp as autumn ice and bitter as gallberries. Colonel Clark had no respect whatever for Hamilton, to whom he had applied the imperishable adjective "hair-buyer General." On the other hand Governor Hamilton, who felt keenly the disgrace of having to equalize himself officially and discuss terms of surrender with a rough backwoodsman, could not conceal ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... voice from the darkness, 'what did that American-heiress-globe-trotter girl say last season when she was tipped out of her 'rickshaw turning a corner? Some absurd adjective that made the man who ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... differences no less pronounced. No adjective has been more frequently applied to the Anglo-Saxon than the word "dull." The American mind has been accused of ignorance, superficiality, levity, commonplaceness, and dozens of other defects, but ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... that which pertains to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized by the epithet sylvaticus in Varro, De re rustica, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent silvestris, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... freshened off again. "The Foreys wish to see you; the girls are dying to know you. Do you know, you have a reputation on account of that"—she crushed an intruding adjective—"System you were brought up on. You mustn't mind it. For my part, I think you look a credit to it. Don't be bashful with young women, mind! As much as you please with the old ones. You know how to behave among men. There you have your Drawing-room Guide! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there is something in the utter vacuity of the refrain in this song which especially commends itself to the young. The simple statement, "Star of the evening," is again and again repeated with an imbecile relish; while the adjective "beautiful" recurs with a steady persistency, too exasperating to dwell upon here. At occasional intervals, a base voice enunciates "Star-r! Star-r!" as a solitary and independent effort. Sitting here in my balcony, I picture the possessor of that voice as a small, stout young man, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... holy wax to the unholy candlestick, the priests drank the King's health in what Mr Garnet is kind enough to tell us was "a reasonable glass"—a piece of information the more valuable, since this adjective was not always ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... mother with a humorous suggestion of self-depreciation. Now, as formerly, he entertained the very friendliest sentiments towards all good women, yet maintained an expensively extensive acquaintance with women to whom that adjective is not ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... shuddered openly at the adjective "lively" as applied to a child; her belief being that though children might be seen, if absolutely necessary, they certainly should never be heard if she could help it. "We're not much used to noise, Jane and me," she ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that they endeavoured to persuade the republican nationalists to give way; still less from any feeling that England's cause was their cause. When, at length, they became really earnest in pressing President Krueger to grant a "colourable" measure of franchise reform—to use Mr. Merriman's adjective—it was for their own sake, and not for England's, that they worked. This motive runs through the whole of their correspondence; but it emerges more frankly in the urgent messages sent during the three days (September 12th to 15th) in which the Transvaal reply to ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... and paper. The first thing to write on the paper is an adjective which applies to a man. The paper is then folded over and passed to the right. This time each one writes the name of a man (either present or absent), folds the paper so the next one can't see what is written, and ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... for a government which should act directly upon individuals, it obviously became necessary to abandon the articles of confederation, and work out a new constitution in all its details. The plan, as now reported, omitted the obnoxious adjective "national," and spoke of the federal legislature and federal courts. But to the men who were still blindly wedded to the old confederation this soothing change of phraseology did not conceal their defeat. On the very day that the compromise ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... comparative adjective, applied to any object in the hind part of a ship or boat; as, the after-cabin, the after-hatchway, &c.—After sails, yards, and braces—those attached to the main and mizen ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... mean in fun) That white was really black, and black was white; But I believe it has not yet been done. Black (Saxon, Blac) in any way to liken With candour may seem almost out of reach; Yet whiten is in kindred German bleichen, Undoubtedly identical with bleach: This last verb's cognate adjective is bleak— Reverting to the Saxon, bleak is blaek. [4] A semivowel is, at the last squeak, All that remains such difference wide to make— The hostile terms of keen antithesis Brought to an E plus ultra ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... that, on the west side of the block, there was only one drygoods dealer, whose shop front and awning posts were festooned with calicoes and other fabrics, ticketed with ingeniously deformed figures, and bearing some attractive adjective, expressing the owners private and conscientious opinion of their excellence. There was one boot-maker, who strung up his products in long branches, like onions; and, although his business was not at all flourishing, solaced himself with the reflection ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... insist that in view of the explicit assertions of the equal right of the whole people, both in the preamble and previous article of the constitution, this omission of the adjective "female" in the second, should not be construed into a denial; but, instead, counted as of no effect. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... takes possession of the minds of young men when they find themselves in the presence of those who are adepts in the arts of vice—a fear of being thought "green," "verdant," or being measured by some other adjective used in fast circles to caricature the innocence of a soul unsullied by contact with the vices and follies of the city. He half expected that some of the dissolute young wretches who were drinking, swearing, and pouring the filth of a poisoned mind from their lips, would ask him if "his ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... naperon), and adder should be nadder (A.-S. nddre). An amusing confusion has arisen in respect to the Ridings of Yorkshire, of which there are three. The word should be triding, but the t has got lost in the adjective, as West Triding became West Riding. The origin of the word has thus been quite lost sight of, and at the first organisation of the Province of Upper Canada, in 1798, the county of Lincoln was divided into four ridings and the county of York into ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... observation that in the matter of oaths the Anglo-Saxon tongue is strangely lacking in variety and spice. There are a few stand-by oaths—three or four nouns, two or three adjectives, one double-jointed adjective—and these invariably are employed over and over again. The which was undeniably true in this particular instance. This man who swore so steadily merely repeated, times without number and presumably with reference to the Germans, the unprettiest and at the same time the most familiar name ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... English language—more favourable to narrative poetry at least—than that which has been commonly termed heroic verse,"[363] and he proceeded to show that the first half-dozen lines of Pope's Iliad were each "bolstered out" with a superfluous adjective. "The case is different in descriptive poetry," he added, "because there epithets, if they are happily selected, are rather to be sought after than avoided.... But if in narrative you are frequently compelled ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... dwelt more fondly on the abstract pathos and purity of a maiden than on her individual gaiety and courage. In older women, also, these latter qualities were the spells for Browning; and, with him, a girl sets forth early on her brave career. That is the just adjective. His girls are as brave as the young knights of other poets; and in this appreciation of a dauntless gesture in women we see one of the reasons why he may be called the first "feminist" poet since Shakespeare. To ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... An adjective is like an infant in leading strings— it cannot go alone. It always requires to be joined to a substantive, of which it shows the nature or quality— as lectio longa, a long lesson; magnus aper, a great boar; pinguis puer, a fat boy; macer puer, a lean boy. In making ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... must gently point out to him that now the station is waking up it would be well to consider the proprieties a little more than we have done so far; or the 'Button Quail' will be forbidding Elsie the house. She is volubly disapproving already, denounces him as a 'dangerous man' . . . delectable adjective! But the cackle of Quails is nothing to me. So long as the man behaves himself, and amuses me, I shall continue to see just as much of him ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... must have shown it in my stony stare, for she put her arm around me and said it was a pity I had been to all the trouble to learn a poem which was—well, a trifle too—too old—but that she hoped to find something equally "pretty" for me to speak. At the use of that adjective in connection with William Lytle's lines, I wrenched away from her grasp and stood in what I was pleased to think a haughty calm, ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... in what is superficially the same way. Thus the word 'is' figures as the copula, as a sign for identity, and as an expression for existence; 'exist' figures as an intransitive verb like 'go', and 'identical' as an adjective; we speak of something, but also of something's happening. (In the proposition, 'Green is green'—where the first word is the proper name of a person and the last an adjective—these words do not merely have different meanings: they are ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... I would not refer to words which are gradually becoming obsolete, but which some of us, partly from admiration of the words themselves, and partly from old associations, would not willingly let die. Beginning alphabetically, the adjective ask is one of those grand old English monosyllables which convey the sense in the sound, It speaks to you of a day in March, when the wind is in the east, and all the clouds are of a dull slate colour, and the roads are white, and the hedges black, and the fallows are ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... [169] The adjective expers here is joined in the same sentence with two different cases; this is an unusual construction, though expers may be joined with the genit. as well as with the ablat. See Zumpt, S 437, note 1. [170] From what he quotes as the substance of the law, we see ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... mistaken. She liked Henry Hardwicke—she knew that he was honest and honorable and good—but if any one had said that he was a worthy young man, I believe she would have assented. And that is the last adjective which a girl would apply to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... round to her, startled and amused by the adjective. But the other two listeners took it quite quietly. It seemed to them apparently to express what ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you don't—of course. Used as a noun—you know what a noun is, don't you? It means the name of anything. Wight means a person—any creature. Originally it meant a fairy, a supernatural being. As an adjective it means brave, valiant, strong or powerful. Or, it used to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... had never seen a larger town than Santa Fe or a bigger body of water than the Pecos in flood. Some of them went by their own name; some had changed their names; and yet others possessed but half a name, colored by some adjective, like Cherokee Bill, Happy Jack of Arizona, Smoky Moore, the bronco-buster, so named because cowboys often call vicious horses "smoky" horses, and Rattlesnake Pete, who had lived among the Moquis and taken part in the snake-dances. Some were professional gamblers, ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... did not see that the very word he wanted was the next word before him. It puts one in mind of a man looking for his spectacles who has them already across his nose. "Wanton" is a noun as well as an adjective; and, to prevent it from being mistaken for an epithet applied to Ganymede, it will in future be necessary to place after it a comma, when the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... younger children go to sleep, and now and then Jacky complains of being "skeezed." More room is made for him. Presently Tommy says: "Mother! listen to them (adjective) little possums. I'd like to screw ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... the right name for sin in the seventh of the Romans. In that profoundest and intensest of all his profound and intense passages, the apostle has occasion to seek about for some expression, some epithet, some adjective, as we say, to apply to sin so as to help him to bring out to his Roman readers something of the malignity, deadliness, and unspeakable evil of sin as he had sin living and working in himself. But all the ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... to the same place, nor did he go to the same restaurant twice. Most carefully did he read the newspapers, but nothing appeared in their columns to alarm him; merely an occasional perfunctory paragraph about the Cornwall murder. The favourite adjective in the journalistic etymological garden was culled for the heading, and it was described as an amazing case. Charles felt that the definition was correct enough. Early developments were faithfully promised—by the newspaper. Charles understood very well what was meant ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... increasing the number of them. The French, I believe, have only one, musical; for though, like ourselves, they have made substantives of the Greek [Greek: mousike] (sc. [Greek: techne]), [Greek: phusike], &c., in all other cases they retain the Greek form of the adjective, as in physique, substantive and adjective, while we generally have pairs of adjectives, as philosophic, philosophical; extatic, extatical; &c. Some may think this ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... Moliere's. The terminal "e" played an important part in grammar; in many cases it was the sign of the infinitive — the "n" being dropped from the end; at other times it pointed the distinction between singular and plural, between adjective and adverb. The pages that follow, however, being prepared from the modern English point of view, necessarily no account is taken of those distinctions; and the now silent "e" has been retained in the text ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... adjective! Felix and I recognized its beautiful fitness at once. Yes, the Story Girl WAS fascinating and that was the final word to be said on ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... vexed the proud soul of Mrs. Pat. She was too good a sportswoman to school her horse over needless jumps when hounds were running, but it infuriated her to have to hustle with these outsiders for her place at a gap. So she complained to Major Booth, with a vehemence of adjective that, though it may be forgiven to her, need not be set ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... and Prince sent to us. Now Prince had proved himself an excellent wheeler, yet he had to go into the lead and let the Outlaw retain his old place. There is an axiom that a good wheeler is a poor leader. I object to the last adjective. A good wheeler makes an infinitely worse kind of a leader than that. I know . . . now. I ought to know. Since that day I have driven Prince a few hundred miles in the lead. He is neither any better nor any worse than the first mile he ran in the lead; and his worst is even extremely worse than ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... by desperate efforts at modernization, as in China; but he must do it. He represents the vast majority of mankind. To surrender would be far worse than physical death. There is no way out unless the white world gives up such insult as its modern use of the adjective "yellow" indicates, or its connotation of "chink" and "nigger" implies; either it gives up the plan of color serfdom which its use of the other adjective "white" implies, as indicating everything decent and every part of the world worth living in,—or ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... right about your curst 'Champs Elysees?'—are they 'es' or 'ees' for the adjective? I know nothing of French, being all Italian. Though I can read and understand French, I never attempt to speak it; for I hate it. From the second part of the Memoirs cut what ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... not surprising if, in Oxford, such an every-day commodity as a dog can be obtained through the medium of "filthy lucre;" for there was a well-known dog-fancier and proprietor, whose surname was that of the rich substantive just mentioned, to which had been prefixed the "filthy" adjective, probably for the sake of euphony. As usual, Filthy Lucre was clumping with his lame leg up and down the pavement just in front of the Brazenface gate, accompanied by his last "new and extensive assortment" of terriers of every ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... medley of glory and gain vexes me." If we attribute something ignominious or abject to the word medley, there is an ellipse in the phrase, because the ignominy is implied rather than expressed. Gesture is then necessary here to express the value of the implied adjective, ignominious. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... name, which seemed to pursue her since she had left New York; but her present companion was the first person who had applied to him the adjective 'poor.' ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... about forty years of age, although he looked much older, his long untrimmed brown beard and un-kept hair being thickly streaked with grey. He was quiet in manner and speech, and the latter was entirely free from the Great Australian Adjective. His story, as far as he told it to me, was a simple one, yet with an element of ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... in sound and sense between many Russian and Welsh words, for example 'tchelo' ([Russian]) is the Russian for forehead, 'tal' is Welsh for the same; 'iasnhy' (neuter 'iasnoe') is the Russian for clear or radiant, 'iesin' the Welsh, so that if it were grammatical in Russian to place the adjective after the noun as is the custom in Welsh, the Welsh compound 'Taliesin' (Radiant forehead) might be rendered in Russian by 'Tchel[o]iasnoe,' which would be wondrously like the Welsh name; unfortunately, however, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... and detailing his study of some bewitched children in Charlestown, one of whom he had taken into his own family, the better to observe the case. The king believed in it, and Queen Anne, to whose name we usually prefix the adjective "good," wrote to Governor Phips a letter which shows that she admitted witchcraft ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... 'The adjective is excellent,' she said with a little face, as she put her violin into its case. 'If I remember right, Catherine and I felt it personal. None of us were ever educated, except in arithmetic, sewing, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of adjectives.—In Anglo-Saxon each adjective had two forms, one definite and one indefinite. There is nothing of this kind in English. We say a good sword, and the good sword equally. In Anglo-Saxon, however, the first combination would be se gode sweord, the second ['a]n god sweord, the definite form being ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... play is indebted for these expressions to the "Promus;" mine is that the "Promus" is borrowed from the play.' And why should either owe anything to the other? The phrase 'Uprouse' or 'Uprose' is familiar in Chaucer, from one of his best-known lines. 'Golden' is a natural poetic adjective of excellence, from Homer to Tennyson. Yet in Dr. Abbott's opinion 'TWO of these entries constitute a coincidence amounting almost to a demonstration' that either Shakespeare or Bacon borrowed from the other. And this because each writer, one in making notes of commonplaces on ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... is an adjective formed from Peleus, the name of the father of Achilles.] *[Footnote: Fore-right means straight forward.] *[Footnote: The Scamander was a famous river that flowed near the city of Troy. According to the Iliad, its source was two springs, one a cold and one a hot spring.] *[Footnote: ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... language by an increase of words. But an examination of words in common use will show that they are nearly all the names of concepts. Proper names are the principal exception. Every common noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition is the name of a concept; for example, horse, beauty, to steal, running, over, early, yellow, grape, ocean, etc. To understand these concepts there must be somewhere a progress ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... craft made good headway for seven or eight uneventful days of exceptionally fine weather, while the ocean, somewhat deserving the adjective that designates it, displayed its prettiest combinations of blue tints and sunset effects as we steamed through miles of medusidae; and had it not been for the sight of occasional whales and the strange marine birds that characterize a higher latitude, we should ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... A word borrowed from Homer, signifying properly a round stone fit for rolling, or a stone that has been made round by rolling, as a pebble in the sea. It was originally an adjective, with [Greek: petros] understood. Most critics suppose it to be from [Greek: holos] and [Greek: trecho], totus teres atque rotundus. Liddell and Scott derive it from [Greek: eilo], volvo. See Theocr. ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon |
