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Substantive   /sˈəbstəntɪv/   Listen
Substantive

adjective
1.
Having a firm basis in reality and being therefore important, meaningful, or considerable.  Synonym: substantial.
2.
Defining rights and duties as opposed to giving the rules by which rights and duties are established.  Synonym: essential.
3.
Being on topic and prompting thought.  Synonym: meaty.



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"Substantive" Quotes from Famous Books



... of course, an impossibility in any language, just as a negative substantive, another name for the same thing, is a direct contradiction in terms. No matter how negative the idea to be given, it must be conveyed by a positive expression. Even a void is grammatically quite ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... absolutely unable to check himself whenever he feels tempted thus to go off, lacks the very first qualifications of the critic:—lacks them, indeed, almost as much as the mere word-grinder who looks to see whether a plural substantive has a singular verb, and is satisfied if it has not, and horrified if it has. His most famous sentence "The Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities live for ever" is certainly noble. But it would have been better if the Humanities ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... toward foreign trade. Privately owned firms account for about 90% of industrial output, of which the engineering sector accounts for 50% of output and exports. Agriculture accounts for only 2% of GDP and 2% of the jobs. The government's commitment to fiscal discipline resulted in a substantive budgetary surplus in 2001, but is expected to shrink somewhat in 2002, due to the global economic slowdown, tax cuts, and spending increases. The Swedish central bank (the Riksbank) is focusing on price stability with an inflation target of ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... Islam", 3 21 5), which has been described as a nonce-word deliberately coined by Shelley 'on no better warrant than the exigency of the rhyme.' There can be little doubt that 'uprest' is simply an overlooked misprint for 'uprist'—not by any means a nonce-word, but a genuine English verbal substantive of regular formation, familiar to many from its employment by Chaucer. True, the corresponding rhyme-words in the passage above referred to are 'nest,' 'possessed,' 'breast'; but a laxity such as 'nest'—'uprist' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... classic adjective, but a barbarous substantive, (Ludewig, p. 245.) Justinian never collected them himself; the nine collations, the legal standard of modern tribunals, consist of ninety-eight Novels; but the number was increased by the diligence of Julian, Haloander, and Contius, (Ludewig, p. 249, 258 Aleman. Not ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... defiance, over the half-door of his hutch. Bark's parts of speech are of an awful sort - principally adjectives. I won't, says Bark, have no adjective police and adjective strangers in my adjective premises! I won't, by adjective and substantive! Give me my trousers, and I'll send the whole adjective police to adjective and substantive! Give me, says Bark, my adjective trousers! I'll put an adjective knife in the whole bileing of 'em. I'll ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... Subscribe (money) monoferi. Subscription monoferado. Subscription abono. Subsequent sekva. Subside mallevi. Subsidy helpa mono. Substance substanco. Substantial fortika. Substantiate pruvi. Substantive substantivo. Substitute anstatauxi. Subterfuge artifiko. Subterranean subtera. Subterraneous subtera. Subtile maldika. Subtle ruza. Subtract elpreni. Subtraction elpreno. Suburbs cxirkauxurbo. Subvention helpa ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... ever since I was born, about whether religion was part of education, about whether hygiene was an essential of education, about whether militarism was inconsistent with true education, I naturally pondered much on this recurring substantive, and I am ashamed to say that it was comparatively late in life that I saw the main ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... satisfy the demands of the spirit. It leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander without end. Then the heart resists it, because it balks the affections in denying substantive being to men and women. Nature is so pervaded with human life, that there is something of humanity in all, and in every particular. But this theory makes nature foreign to me, and does not account for that consanguinity which ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the Zapotec name therefore appears to be very doubtful. In Cordova's vocabulary, as given by Ternaux-Compans, "fleche" is given as the meaning of quii-lana. In Tzotzil gtox signifies "to split, break off, break open, to chop." In Maya we have tok; which, as a substantive, Perez explains by "pedernal, la sangria;" as a verb it signifies "to bleed, let blood." In this dialect tox denotes "to drain, draw off liquor, ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... sized blank space in the printed text. Punctuation at the end of entries was silently regularized, and missing or invisible periods (full stops) after standard abbreviations such as "m." or "pl." were silently supplied. Other errors in punctuation or typography are listed separately, after the more substantive errors. ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall

... I call attention is the use of the substantive "one" in a manner which, though not very uncommon, is used by no writer so frequently as Fletcher. Take ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various

... now by readers who were quite at home in the original languages: "earing nor harvest" (Genesis). Without some acquaintance with the earlier forms of our mother tongue, one is liable to take earing to mean the same as "harvest," from the association of ears of corn. But it is the substantive from the Anglo-Saxon verb erian, to plough, to till: so that "earing nor harvest" "sowing nor reaping." From erian we may pass on to arare, and from that to arista: in the long pedigree of language they are scarcely unconnected: but the Anglo-Saxon is not ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... Walsingham lived in Ireland, even there he might have found in the dialect of the lower Irish both a substantive and a verb, which would have expressed his idea. The editor once described an individual of the Beaumont species to an Irish labourer, and asked what he would call such a person—"I'd call her a policizer—I would say she was ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... the Creditor is Riah,' said Mr Fledgeby, with a rather uncompromising accent on his noun-substantive. 'Saint Mary Axe. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... recognition of physical fatherhood.[378] There is, therefore, an important distinction in the social position of the two parallel systems. Among the Semang people, their totemic belief and custom do not carry with them a superstructure of society. They form the substantive cult of the scattered social groups, which are kinless groups dependent upon ties local in character and derived from the conscious use of the facts of nature surrounding them. Among the Arunta people, on ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... to Dr. Whately, who taught me the existence of the Church as a substantive corporation, and fixed in me those anti-Erastian views of Church polity which characterized the Tractarian movement. That movement, unknown to ourselves, was taking form. Its true author, John Keble, had left Oxford for a country parish, but his "Christian Year" had waked ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... in fairness to have noticed. I had pointed out that we have only the Latin version here, and that the present tense is obviously due to the translator. The original would naturally be [Greek: ton sun auto], which the translator, being obliged to supply a substantive verb, has carelessly rendered 'his qui cum eo sunt.' If any one will consider what has been just said about the general character of the Epistle, he will see that this is the only reasonable explanation of the fact, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of "the survival of the fittest." This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... so he is. B-o-t, bot, t-i-n, tin, bottin, n-e-y, ney, bottinney. Noun substantive. A knowledge of plants. When a boy learns that bottinney is a knowledge of plants, he goes and knows 'em. That's our system, Nickleby. Third boy, ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... making fun of a fool, adopts the sarcastic manner with Master Hulker, and says, "Mr. Hulker, may I take the liberty to inquire if your brilliant intellect has enabled you to perceive the difference between those words which grammarians have defined as substantive and adjective nouns?—if not, perhaps Mr. Ferdinand Timmins will instruct you." And Timmins hops over ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... place, there exists no other. Yet am I but too apt to fancy the reverse. Nevertheless, when I am in Odo, talk not to me of Ohonoo. To me it is not, except when I am there. If it be, prove it. To prove it, you carry me thither but you only prove, that to its substantive existence, as cognizant to me, my presence is indispensable. I say that, to me, all Mardi exists by virtue of my sovereign pleasure; and when I die, the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... in the autumn of 1871, collated with the softcover editions of the First and Second Parts issued separately in the autumn of 1869 and the summer of 1870. Although prior English versions have often been heavily abridged, this new translation is complete to the smallest substantive detail. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... competent than the writer to judge questions of strength and of tone, especially when the general purpose of the journal is considered, of which the editor is the judge without appeal. An editor who meddles with substantive matter is likely to be wrong, even when he knows the subject; but one who prunes what he deems excess, is likely to be right, even when he does not know the subject. In the second place, a contributor knows that he is supplying ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... go back to the carriage instantly,' said Lady Palliser, almost shouting the substantive, in order that Jack might be reminded what kind of people he had insulted by his ruffianly bearing. 'I feel that I am bemeaning myself every moment I stay in ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... blanket is of continual utility to a poor wretch through a severe winter, but the benevolent act of the donor is not termed useful, because it confers the benefit and ceases. Utility is too narrow to comprehend all the actions that deserve approbation. We want an uncompounded substantive expressing the two attributes of conferring and conducing to happiness; as a descriptive phrase, producing happiness is as succinct as any. The term useful is, besides, associated with the notion of what is serviceable in the affairs and objects of common ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... hardly necessary to occupy further room with more instances of so familiar a phrase, though perhaps it may not be out of the way to remark, that miss is used by Andrewes as a substantive in the same sense as the verb, namely, in vol. v. p. 176.: the more usual form being misture, or, earlier, mister. Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary, most unaccountably treats these two forms as ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... officers and other ranks of the 23rd, and as the gratitude for these favours is always directed to the commanding officer who has obtained them, the influence which I was beginning to have in the regiment was greatly increased and went some way to calm my regrets at not having been awarded substantive rank for the position which ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... is easy for him to decide and condemn who does not even consider. That "instans" is not an adjective from the verb "instare," but it is a noun substantive used ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... First, that the only record of the early years of Columbus was written long after those years had passed away, and in circumstances which did not harmonise with them; second, that there is evidence, both substantive and presumptive, that much of those records, even though it came from the hands of Columbus and his friends, is false and must be discarded; and third, that the only way in which anything like the truth can be arrived at is by circumstantial and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... expressed by a second and abstract substantive. This peculiarity is common in the South African family, as in Ashanti; but, as Bowdich observes, we also find it in Greek, e.g. , "heresies of destruction" for destructive. Another notable characteristic ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... ready, and Elizabeth called the brother and sister to take their places at the table in the inner drawing-room. She then wrote a substantive at the upper end of a long strip of paper, and folding it down, handed it on to Lucy, who also wrote a noun, turned it down, and gave the paper to Helen, who, after writing hers and hiding it, passed it on to Rupert. Thus the paper was handed round till it was ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... after the intervals mentioned all six subjects recall movement couplets better than verb couplets. In view of the small difference here and of his whole record, however, M is probably to be classed as indifferent in both substantive and action series. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... evinced his taste in the elegantiae literarum. He was, nevertheless, a man of many strange notions. It is well known that about the commencement of the eighteenth century, in our English books, printed in the mother country, the substantive words were almost always begun with a capital; the like practice obtained in many newspapers; but Longworth, not content with the partial change which time had brought about, of sinking these prominent ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... head by a tiny ribbon of blue—then again escaping it went scattering and wavering over her shoulders wonderingly, like nothing on earth but Winsome Charteris's hair. It was small wonder that the local poets grew grey before their time in trying to find a rhyme for "sunshine," a substantive which, for the first time, they had applied to a girl's hair. For the rest, a face rather oval than long, a nose which the schoolmaster declared was "statuesque" (used in a good sense, he explained to the village folk, ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... excited by the repeated allusions to, and quotations from, her contributions to periodical literature, and a leading newspaper gives expression to a general wish when it says that "this series of striking essays ought to be collected and reprinted, both because of substantive worth and because of the light they throw on the author's literary canons and predilections." In fact, the articles which were published anonymously in The Westminster Review have been so pointedly designated ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... negotiation finally degenerated. And thus, the fear of compromising the dignity of England by some unguarded expression, or of failing from over caution to satisfy the demands of Ireland, had the effect of protracting the passage of a measure, upon the substantive justice and urgent necessity of ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... of the removal of Jewish disabilities. No ordinary degree of moral courage was needed for such a step by the member for such a constituency. 'It is a painful decision to come to,' he writes in his diary (Dec. 16), 'but the only substantive doubt it raises is about remaining in parliament, and it is truly and only the church which holds me there, though she may seem to some to draw me from it.' Pusey wrote to him in rather violent indignation, for Mr. Gladstone was the only man of that school who learned, or ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... dyes, are now very numerous; they dye cotton, linen and other vegetable fibres from a plain bath, and do not require those fibres to be prepared in any way. Hence the reason of their being named direct, or by some the substantive colours. They will also dye wool ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... It is rather a drawl that afflicts the ear than a nasal twang. You notice in every sentence a curious shifting of emphasis. America, with the true instinct of democracy, is determined to give all parts of speech an equal chance. The modest pronoun is not to be outdone by the blustering substantive or the self-asserting verb. And so it is that the native American hangs upon the little words: he does not clip and slur "the smaller parts of speech," and what his tongue loses in colour it ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... camera handed over bodily to the police. They, I think, may be trusted to honour one's last instructions, if only out of curiosity; their eyes will be the first to read what I fear they will describe as my 'full confession.' Well, it is 'full,' and the substantive must be left to them. So long as the document does not fall into one little pair of gentle hands, I shall lie easy in whatever ignominious grave they lay me. That is why I hide it where I do: since, if it fell first into those hands, it would ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... prosecution of the war until Her Majesty shall, in conjunction with her allies, obtain for this country a safe and honourable peace.' Mr. Disraeli's resolution was rejected by 319 votes to 219. Sir F. Baring's motion having become substantive, was met by an amendment of Mr. Lowe, to the effect, 'That this House having seen with regret, owing to the refusal of Russia to restrict the strength of her navy in the Black Sea, that the Conferences at Vienna have not led to a termination of hostilities, ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... may sum up the Substantive Being of the All-originating Spirit as Life, Love, Light, Power, Peace, Beauty, and Joy; and its Active Power as that of Initiative and Selection. These, therefore, constitute the basic laws of the underlying universal mentality which sets the Standard of ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... signifying instruments, are made from the future active: thus, the verb mtecan, I chop, having mtetze in the future, receives siven in lieu of the final syllable, and makes the substantive, mtesiven, axe or tool with which to chop. Many of these words likewise terminate in rina, as bcusirina, flute, from bcudan, I whistle, and bhirina, ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith

... interlocutor, "should always precede the substantive, for we should never utter the name of God without first giving Him ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... le recit de ta douleur. This is a Latin construction of frequent occurrence in this play. Cf. post urbem conditam "after the founding of the city." The past participle qualifying the noun takes the place of our abstract substantive. ...
— Esther • Jean Racine

... rendered iron-bound, brass-bound, hearth-encircling, curved like an eagle's beak, etc. Benches and helmets of ceremony are evidently intended, probably ornamented with brass-work or figures of eagles. But to whichever substantive applied, I take its meaning to ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... starling. The passage is ingeniously worked into its context; and if we were to consider it as only intended to serve the purpose of a sudden and dramatic discomfiture of the Traveller's somewhat inconsiderate moralizings on captivity, it would be well enough. But, regarded as a substantive appeal to one's emotions, it is open to the criticisms which apply to most other of Sterne's too deliberate attempts at the pathetic. The details of the picture are too much insisted on, and there is too much of self-consciousness ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... frigidum, it will also perish. The business of the physician is to keep the proportions just and harmonious; but, as no pure element exists alone, the physician must employ the qualitas in conjunction with the materia. These (to make a phrase) substantive qualities, are found in medicines or food, which, like all objects of sense, are either cold, hot, dry, or moist, and available of course in the management of a cold, hot, dry, or moist derangement of the ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... motion to instruct the committee would be improper, as there would be no committee to instruct.* [The 46th Rule of the House of Representatives requires the division of a question on the demand of one member, provided "it comprehends propositions in substance so distinct that one being taken away, a substantive proposition shall remain for the decision of the House." But this does not allow a division so as to have a vote on separate items or names. The 121st Rule expressly provides that on the demand of one-fifth of the members a separate vote shall be taken on such ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert

... differs essentially, as for example in magnitude, in other points? We have a sensation, and we enquire into its cause. This is always a question of some uncertainty. Is its cause something of absolute and substantive existence without me, or is it not? Is its cause something of the very same nature, as the thing that gave me a similar sensation in a matter of comparatively a pigmy and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... due measure. The sculptor did his best; but he was careful to do nothing which was out of harmony with its surroundings. He sank himself in his work. And even when he was engaged on a more serious substantive work, what he most avoided was the incongruous and unbecoming. He so worked that the attention of the spectator was concentrated not on the character of the workmanship, but on the person or the subject portrayed. The idea which he tried to incorporate in marble or bronze was not his ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... modest beginnings that the decipherment began. Step by step, the problem was advanced by dint of a painstaking labor, the degree of which cannot easily be exaggerated, until to-day the grammar of the Babylonian-Assyrian language has been clearly set forth in all its essential particulars: the substantive and verb formation is as definitely known as that of any other Semitic language, the general principles of the syntax, as well as many detailed points, have been carefully investigated, and as for the reading of the cuneiform texts, thanks to the various helps ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... weather was that in which the snails make their tracks, a melancholy time, and suitable to reverie, Blanche was in the house sitting in her chair in deep thought, because nothing produces more lively concoctions of the substantive essences, and no receipt, specific or philter is more penetrating, transpiercing or doubly transpiercing and titillating than the subtle warmth which simmers between the nap of the chair and a maiden sitting during ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... printed eighteen copies of the establishments, as they are and were last year, and as I proposed for the new system. I shall not let any one have a copy till your Lordship permits it, and they are all at your disposal if required. This, and the "Substantive Code," are the only papers connected with Oude, except the Diary that I have had printed, or shall have printed, unless ordered ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... Prostitution. A rare substantive, although 'Crack', whence it is derived, was common, cf. p. 93 ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... character and nature of Jehovah, he said—"Tell me now, I beseech thee, thy name". When the Apostle here says, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named," it is but another way of saying that it is He on Whom the Church depends—Who has given it substantive existence—without Whom it could not be at all. It is but another way of saying what he has expressed elsewhere—"that there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we may be saved." Let us not lose ourselves in vague generalities. Separate from Christ, there ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... his Art in this respect consists in his removing the Adjective, the Substantive, and even the Verb, from the Line or Verse in which the Sense is previously contained, and the grammatical Construction inverted, to the Beginning of the next Line. This has a wonderful Effect; especially when the Word is ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson

... older literature of the Jewish Canon, down to Jeremiah and Zephaniah, knows absolutely nothing. The verb QR there used invariably and exclusively of the BURNING of fat or meal, and thereby making to God a sweet-smelling savour; it is never used to denote the OFFERING OF INCENSE, and the substantive QRT as a sacrificial term has the quite general signification of that which is ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... to steady;—as a substantive, a comprehensive mind. A man is said to "lose his ballast" when his judgment fails him, or he becomes ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... alacrity, liveliness, vigour, and in this sense the expression is harsh. Perhaps we may read,—with good lift, with good will, with sincere zeal for my service. I should have proposed,—with good lief, in the same sense, but that I cannot find lief to be a substantive. With good life may however mean, with exact presentation of their several characters, with observation strange of their particular and distinct parts. So we say, he acted to the life. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... part of the person or thing to which it was applied and as containing part of his life, like his hair, spittle and the rest of his body. He would have used names for a long period before he had any word for a name, and his first idea of the name as a part of the substantive body to which it is applied has survived a more correct appreciation. Thus if one knew a person's name one could injure him by working evil on it and the part of his life contained in it, just as one could injure him through the clippings of his hair, his spittle, clothes or the earth pressed ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... the literary story bears most directly and clearly the impress of his character, and partly because, as will be seen, it was more continuous. I must, however, warn my readers against a possible illusion of perspective. To Fitzjames himself the legal career always represented the substantive, and the literary career the adjective. Circumstances made journalism highly convenient, but his literary ambition was always to be auxiliary to his legal ambition. It would, of course, have been injurious to his prospects at the bar had it been supposed that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... way, however, of taking these matters which is more in sympathy both with natural evolution and with transcendental philosophy. If we assert that evolution is infinite, no substantive goal can be set to it. The goal will be the process itself, if we could only open our eyes upon its beauty and necessity. The apotheosis will be retroactive, nay, it has already taken place. The ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the bye, I purpose ere long to compose a second epistle), thought proper one day to call my daughter a great horsemangander, thinking, I suppose, that that appellation contained as much unfeminine meaning as could be put into any decent compound. From this substantive the verb has been formed to denote an operation performed by the said daughter upon the said aunt, of which I was an astonished spectator. The horsemangander—that is to say, Edith May—being tall and strong, came behind ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... is now used in a most ignorant way; and from its misuse it has come to be a word wholly useless: for it is now never coupled, I think, with any other substantive than these two—faith and confidence: a poor domain indeed to have sunk to from its original wide range of territory. Moreover, when we say, implicit faith, or implicit confidence, we do not thereby indicate any specific kind of faith and ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... Greek noun, thrausma, meaning fragment, and the masculine Greek noun, sauros, meaning reptile. The specific name, serratidens, is formed from the Latin serratus, meaning serrate, and the masculine Latin noun, dens, meaning tooth. The specific name is used as a substantive in ...
— Two New Pelycosaurs from the Lower Permian of Oklahoma • Richard C. Fox

... monosyllable lys like a sprig, evoked the image of something rigid, slender and white; it rhymed with the substantive ingenuite, allegorically expressing, by a single term, the passion, the effervescence, the fugitive mood of a virgin faun amorously distracted by the sight ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... intended to form a summary guide to the vast and varied contents of the Dictionary and its Supplement. Every name, about which substantive biographic information is given in the sixty-three volumes in the Dictionary or in the three Supplementary Volumes, finds mention here in due alphabetical order. An Epitome is given of the leading facts and dates ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... the sense of the life reflection of divine image Souvestre, Emile Speech the omnipotence of inferior to gesture anticipated by gesture the sense of the intelligence the three agents of oratorical value of soul of visible thought Spontini Standard, value of a Subject, the Subjectivity in AEsthetics Substantive, the Sue, Eugene Sully-Prudhomme Surprise ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... Mysticism as implying the substantive union of the soul with God was the distinguishing feature of the pantheistic religious creeds of India, as it was also of some of the Greek philosophical systems. In the Middle Ages, while many of the ablest exponents of Scholasticism were also distinguished mystics, yet more than once Mysticism ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... grammar; but no alarming book of grammar was produced upon the occasion, nor did the father put on an unpropitious gravity of countenance. He explained to the smiling child the nature of a verb, a pronoun, and a substantive. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... the Father of the living Word, His substantive Wisdom, Power, and Eternal Image, the perfect Begetter of the perfect One, the Father ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... to join a substantive, as a modifier, to some other preceding word, and to show the relation of the substantive to that word; as, by, in, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

... race fast decaying,—specimen of the true fine gentleman, ere the word "dandy" was known, and before "exquisite" became a noun substantive,—let me here pause to describe thee! Sir Sedley Beaudesert was the contemporary of Trevanion and my father; but without affecting to be young, he still seemed so. Dress, tone, look, manner,—all were young; yet all had a certain dignity which does not belong to youth. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... anxious and puzzled. At last he said, "I know a large hollow tree with apertures. If I were to close them all but one, and keep that for the door? No: trees have betrayed me; I'll never trust another tree with you. Stay; I know, I know—a cavern." He uttered the verb rather loudly, but the substantive with a sudden feebleness of intonation that was amusing. His timidity was superfluous; if he had said he knew "a bank whereon the wild thyme grows," the suggestion would have been ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... Dorothea could have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should give him wifely help. Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought rather to have done—not even Sir James Chettam, who went no further than ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... you mean?" asked the lady. Her tone and accent made the substantive sound criminal. It almost hissed, ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... brindara: que ella se brindara is treated as a substantive clause, which el precedes as ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was good ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and time, you will not succeed in creating intelligence; this were an operation of transcendent alchemy utterly beyond our power. In the theory of slow causes, the adjective ends by devouring the substantive; it seems that by dint of becoming slow the causes become superfluous. A breath of reason upsets, like a house of cards, the structures of this erring and misnamed science. Time has a relative meaning and value. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... to doubt whether tarda is here an adjective. Several of the medieval naturalists used it as a substantive. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... long-suffering nature of the poor blind players at this compulsory game of national football that they should ever for one moment permit so monstrous an assumption—permit the idea that one single player may wield a substantive voice and vote to outweigh tens of ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... element in its verb is the minuteness with which it defines the time of an action. The causative form is made by the use of a suffix. It does not use the verb "to go" or "come" in order to express a future tense. Numerous particles are used in the substantive verb sense. The Mandingo language is rather smooth. The letters v and z are not in it. About one-fifth of the verbs and nouns commence with vowels, and the noun always ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... were unmarketable elements; which is just the reason why you have it here so briefly told. But his wonder has still kept growing; and I think the reader's will also, if he consider it ripely. For now he sees why I speak of the little people as of substantive inventors and performers. To the end they had kept their secret. I will go bail for the dreamer (having excellent grounds for valuing his candour) that he had no guess whatever at the motive of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Leonhardi in particular seemed to me, in some passages which he repeated out of Hamlet, to have learnt to sink his voice in the true English manner; yet any one might know from his speaking that he is not an Englishman. The English place the accent oftener on the adjectives than they do on the substantive, which, though undoubtedly the most significant word in any sentence, has frequently less stress laid on it than you hear laid on mere epithets. On the stage they pronounce the syllables and words extremely distinct, so that at the theatres you may always gain most instruction in English ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... of foolish, is also used by Gower, who likewise employs the substantive nicete in a ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... notes that some of the comments received in response to the NPRM had already been addressed, and some called for minor clarifications that have been made to the final regulations. Other comments, whether raised for the first or second time, raise substantive issues that ...
— Supplementary Copyright Statutes • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... provoking and has his full share of faults, and though the owner of a style, is capable of excruciating offences. His habitual use of the odious word "individual" as a noun-substantive (seven times in three pages of 'The Romany Rye') elicits the frequent groan, and he is certainly once guilty of calling fish the "finny tribe." He believed himself to be animated by an intense hatred of the Church ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... issued by him in the performance of what he believed to be an imperative official duty, but in the performance of what this honorable court will consider was, in point of fact, an imperative official duty. And he denies that any and all substantive matters in the said first article contained, in manner and form as the same are therein stated and set forth, do by law constitute a high misdemeanor in office within the true intent and meaning of the Constitution of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... subjects; existing in the brain which is full of substances and forms, they are called purely organic forms. No one who thinks rationally can help laughing at the fancies of some that affections and thoughts do not have substantive bases, but are exhalations given shape by heat and light, like images apparently in the air or ether. For thought can no more exist apart from a substantial form than sight can apart from its form, ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... as that which the Amphictyonic oath embodies, in regard to abstinence from injury as well as to mutual protection, gradually found their way into men's minds: the obligations thus brought into play acquired a substantive efficacy of their own, and the religious feeling which always remained connected with them, came afterward to be only one out of many complex agencies by which the later historical Greek was moved. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... to mislead our readers in their conceptions of any of our characters, and we therefore feel it necessary to add that the adjective, in the preceding agnomen of Mr. Van der School, was used in direct reference to its substantive. Our orthodox friends need not be told that all the merit in this world is comparative; and, once for all, we desire to say that, where anything which involves qualities or characters is asserted, we must be understood to mean, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... be called the juridical rules, embracing as well substantive law as the procedure ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... different character from the Irish saint, St. Kiran. If one might indulge in a conjecture, I should say that there probably was in the Celtic language a root kar, which in the Cymbric branch would assume the form par. Now cair in Gaelic means to dig, to raise; and from it a substantive might be derived, meaning digger or miner. In Ireland, Kiran seems to have been simply a proper name, like Smith or Baker, for there is nothing in the legends of St. Kiran that points to mining or smelting. In Cornwall, on the contrary, St. Piran, before he ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... were simply members of the same division with the Welshmen, Welshmen, so to say, when the Welsh area extended south of the Bristol Channel and north of the Mersey. The Picts were, probably, in a different category. They may indeed have been Gaels. They have formed a separate substantive division of Kelts. They may have been no Kelts at all, but Germans ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... other titles, such as "respectable" (spectabiles), "illustrious" (egregrie, illustres), were invented by the emperors of this century. They none of them appear to have conferred any substantive power. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... the old Iliad, that once was our most cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to amphikupellon being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman's fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from, us to hold up his translation as what a translation of Homer might be. But we can still dismiss Pope's Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... lectures generally, to overstate the efficacy of favorite methods of cure, and hence the premium offered for showy talkers rather than sagacious observers, for the men of adjectives rather than of nouns substantive in the more ambitious ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... most ungrammatical ould man, an' not fit to argue wid any one that knows Murray's English Grammar, an' more espaciously the three concords of Lily's Latin one; that is the cognation between the nominative case and the verb, the consanguinity between the substantive and the adjective, and the blood-relationship that irritates between the relative ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... substantive, is an example of absolute divergence of meaning, inherited from the Latin; but as they are different parts of speech, I allow their plea of identical derivation and exclude them from my list. On the other hand, the substantive beam is an example of such a false homophone as I ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... unanimity was necessary to render valid the decisions of a conference. Indeed, there was no precedent as regards questions of principle which told the other way; and at the Congress of Berlin Prince Bismarck had stated, as recorded in the first protocol, that as regarded substantive proposals it was an incontestable principle that the minority should not be bound to acquiesce in a vote of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... This is not correct, for the moment the word is generally used to denote an individual, it is to be considered as a pronoun in the singular number, the following verb should be regulated by that circumstance and considered as in the singular.... Indeed, in the substantive verb, the word has taken the singular form of the verb, you was, which practice is getting the better of old rules and probably will be established." But old rules have considerable vitality, and the general opinion still is that if an individual permits ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder



Words linked to "Substantive" :   adjective, law, word, meaty, meaningful, substantial, substantive dye, essential, noun, jurisprudence, substantival



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