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More "Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and on occasion, a very trivial and ill-considered word or phrase will cling closer and longer than a serious or thoughtful judgment. When Theodore Roosevelt called Thomas Paine "a filthy little Atheist" (or was the adjective "dirty"? I really forget!) he was very young,—only twenty-eight,—and doubtless had accepted his viewpoint of the great reformer-patriot from that "hearsay upon hearsay" against which Paine himself has so urgently warned us. Of course Mr. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... "There's a [adjective] body here," replies Ogg, with gloomy sarcasm, "flingin' bricks through this yin!" He picks up the red-and-white flag for the fourth time, and unfurls it indignantly to ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... coaxingly. "We're going for a nice walk." At the adjective, Hedrick's burdened shoulders were racked with a brief spasm, which recurred as his sister added: "Your darling little boy will let ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... fine 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 ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... suggestive words and phrases. Not many words, but words that suggest pictures, call up whole scenes, tell entire stories, are needed. And this is particularly true when you are writing to meet the "synopsis only" demand. Don't over-adjective your synopsis, but such qualifying words as you use should be vivid, clear and precise. One specific word outweighs a score of general statements. Consider the difference between "horse" and "broncho;" "house" and "bungalow;" "woman" ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... The adjective did double duty; but the tone was unmistakeably tender and anxious. Hazel had met her with both hands stretched out; now she drew her along ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... clean and homelike," said the girl quickly. At any other time he would have winced at the last adjective. It struck him now as ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sad abuse of the adjective little; I am quite aware of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little, finical; affected,—all Japan is contained, both physically and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... signifies what is completed, permanent, powerful, perfected, perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective [kije, kise], which they applied to the greatest ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... "H'm, the adjective appears to be an afterthought," grumbled the bachelor; then, when she merely laughed teasingly after the manner ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... am quite aware that the strength of the demonstration that no universal Deluge ever took place has produced a change of front in the army of apologetic writers. They have imagined that the substitution of the adjective "partial" for "universal," will save the credit of the Pentateuch, and permit them, after all, without too many blushes, to declare that the progress of modern science only strengthens the authority of Moses. Nowhere have I found the case of the advocates of this method of escaping from the difficulties ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... we have received many addresses, but in my humble opinion no address was more truly worded than the address that was presented to us at Kasargod. It addressed both of us as 'dear revered brothers.' I am unable to accept the second adjective 'revered.' The word 'dear' is dear to me I must confess. But dearer than that is the expression 'brothers.' The signatories to that address recognized the true significance of this travel. No blood brothers can possibly be more intimately related, can possibly be more united in ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... Fat; puffed out. A very rare adjective, perhaps only here. The N.E.D. quotes this passage with a reference to the adjective 'flaberkin' puffed out, puffy, and a suggestion that it is akin to the substantive 'flab' ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... then the adjective French became in Federal mouths an epithet of abhorrence and abuse; up went the flag of dear Old England, the defender of the faith and of social order. The opposition party, on the contrary, saw in the success of the French ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... first state, circa 1913. The obvious change is the change in title, but of far more importance are a multitude of little changes—a phrase made more musical, a word moved from one place to another, some small banality tracked down and excised, a brilliant adjective inserted, the plan altered in small ways, the rhythm of it made more delicate and agreeable. Here, in "The Line of Love," there is another curious example of his high capacity for revision. It is not only that the book, once standing isolated, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... isn't business-like, I don't know what is!" exclaimed Cadbury, when it was read through. "If ink was a shilling a drop, you couldn't have been more chary of it. There's not an 'a', 'an', or 'the' throughout, nor a comma, nor an adjective, and the contractions are masterly. We're all born commercial clerks, that's what ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... conceive as her oppressors, sitting in gauds and finery, and taking lessons which had better befitted their Cinderella—the figure of Mary Ann definitely reassumed some of its antediluvian poetry, if we may apply the adjective to that catastrophic washing of the steps. And Mary Ann herself had grown gloomier—once or twice he thought she had been crying, though he was too numbed and apathetic to ask, and was incapable of suspecting that Rosie had anything to do with her tears. He hardly noticed that Rosie had taken to ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... could have impelled Jack to apply the adjective "wild" to that ill-behaved and disreputable river, which, tipsily bearing its enormous burden of mud from the far North-west, totters, reels, runs its tortuous course for hundreds on hundreds of miles; and which, encountering the lordly and thus far ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... there was only one door, and it was locked. On the second there was also only one door, but when I turned the handle it opened. There came forth to meet me the chill musty air that is characteristic of a long unoccupied room. With it there came an indescribable odour. I use the adjective advisedly. Though very faint, diluted as it were, it was nevertheless an odour that made my gorge rise. I had never smelt anything like it before, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... that their definition 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 ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... used the adjective "humble" before the noun "friend," glossing it with a somewhat exaggerated account of Denas and their relationship, but with Denas herself she never thought of such qualification. Denas had all the native independence ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... de Bohun. While, if he holds that kind hearts are more than coronets, he has an alternative descent from some medieval le bon. This adjective, used as a personal name, gave also Bunn and Bunce; for the spelling of the latter name cf. Dance for Dans, and Pearce for Piers, the nominative of Pierre (Alternative Origins, Chapter I), which also ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... now go to Italian, and look at the word nicchia. Both from Alberti and from Baretti we find it to bear the meaning of "a charge, a duty, or an employment;" and if before this word we place the adjective piccola, we have piccola nicchia, "a small task, or trifling service to be performed." Now I think no one can fail to see the identity of the meanings of the expressions piccola nicchia and pique-nique; but it remains to show how the words themselves may be identical. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... you going to add?" broke in Sally, with a ripple of laughter. "I'm afraid not: enthusiastic would be the more likely adjective for you to use concerning me. Besides I don't think I am pretty. 'My dear,' said that candid old Miss Sykes to me the other day, 'you might have been very good-looking if all your features were as good as your eyes.' Why do ladies of a certain age take it for granted that they can say what ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... two sides is beyond the capacity of the average young amateur; but little skill is needed to manufacture a very fairly efficient substitute for the professionally-built article—to wit, a ladder of the kind to which builders apply the somewhat disparaging adjective "duck." ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... 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 (Direct Dyeing) Colours; Dissolving ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... 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
... two or three throats at once instead of one, expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary, although his song lacks the variety and the finish of his caged namesake. What tone of sadness in his music the man found who applied the adjective tristis to his scientific name it is difficult to imagine when listening to the notes that come bubbling up from the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... belief in witchcraft, 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 as ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... The very 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
... noblemen of the Netherlands was a German, William of Nassau, prince of Orange.[Footnote: William (1533-1584), now commonly called "the Silent." There appears to be no contemporaneous justification of the adjective as applied to him, but the misnomer, once adopted by later writers, has insistently clung to him.] He had been governing the provinces of Holland and Zeeland when Alva arrived, but as he was already at the point of accepting ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... king's divorce from Catherine of Arragon and his marriage with Anne Boleyn. More's philosophy is best reflected in his Utopia, the description of an ideal commonwealth, modeled on Plato's Republic, and printed in 1516. The name signifies "no place" (Outopos), and has furnished an adjective to the language. The Utopia was in Latin, but More's History of Edward V. and Richard III., written in 1513, though not printed till 1557, was in English. It is the first example in the tongue of a history ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... doorway and eyed Dane, Ali, and Rip with mock severity. "You're baaaad boys," he told them with a shake of the head and a drawl of the adjective. "You've been demoted ten files each on ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... metaphorical faculty, or whatever else we may choose to call it. Nor did he perceive or describe visible things, visible effects, in their own unmetaphorical shapes and colours: not a line of description, not an adjective can be found in his works except such as may be absolutely indispensable for topographical or similar intelligibility; Alfieri obviously cared as little for beautiful sights as for beautiful sound. This being the case, everything that we might call distinctly poetical, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... or old Reformers, who have been taught by experience, and are willing now to adopt the word 'Conservative,' at least in its adjective sense. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... properties. I could think of no other reason than this for calling a bath "black." Upon entering the "black bath," however, at Kluchei, I saw my mistake, and acknowledged at once the appropriateness of the adjective. Leaving our clothes in a little rude entry, which answered the purposes without affording any of the conveniences of a dressing-room, we stooped to a low fur-clad door and entered the bath-room proper, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... to keep your English pure. The use of slang is of course absolutely inexcusable, for it offends against good taste as well as good rhetoric; but the employment of words in a careless or perverted meaning is equally condemnable. It is also a mistake to use too many adjectives, to throw every adjective and adverb into the superlative degree, and in other ways to exaggerate every expression which you use. Much of this misuse of words is due to ignorance, but more to carelessness or laziness; in any case you can detect your faults if you seek for them, and you should ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... question in the polite language of the precincts of Durdlebury Cathedral, I might have been at a loss to reply. But the manly invocation of hell shows me that your foot is already on the upward path. If you had prefaced it by the adjective that gives colour to all the aspirations of the British Army, it would have been better. But I'm not reproaching you, laddie. Poco a poco. It is enough. It shows me you are not going to run away to a neutral country and present the unedifying spectacle of a mangy little British lion at the mercy ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... missed her old associates, busy as she was, and content with her simple tasks the whole day long. What a quiet, peaceful life was that at the California missions in the old days! Perhaps, reader, you think humdrum would be the more appropriate adjective to use than peaceful or even quiet. And to one like our Father Uria, thousands of miles from his early home, cut off from all the pleasures and advantages of ordinary social intercourse, it was, as we have seen, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... adj., adjective. adv., adverb. art., article. def., definite. demons., demonstrative. excl., exclusive (of personal pronouns, excluding the person addressed). exclam., exclamation. genit., genitive. gu, marks a noun as taking the suffixed pronouns gu, mu, na. incl., ...
— Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language • Walter G. Ivens
... different forms for the city and for the district. Thus we have Bourges and Berry, Angers and Anjou, Perigueux and Perigord, Le Mans and Maine.[26] So Constantia has become Coutances; but the adjective Constantinus has become Cotentin. City and district then bear the same Imperial name as that other Constantia on the Rhine with which Coutances is doomed to get so often confounded. How often has one seen Geoffrey of Mowbray described as "Bishop of Constance." In an older writer ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... materially from that of any of the cognate tribes. When they wish to distinguish between the actual father and a father's real or potential brothers, or between the actual mother and the mother's real or potential sisters, they use the adjective ka'ti (ka{LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H}t{LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN O}i), real, true, after the kinship term when the actual ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... 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 passes it on to the right. This is done each time and the order of names ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... will admit that this is lamentable. It is not even a good mixture, for I used to try it occasionally; and if there is one man in London who knows tobaccoes it is myself. There is only one mixture in London deserving the adjective superb. I will not say where it is to be got, for the result would certainly be that many foolish men would smoke more than ever; but I never knew anything to compare to it. It is deliciously mild yet full of fragrance, and it never burns the tongue. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... but English-speaking acquaintances often called him "old Stewart," and others "ce vieux Stewart." Indeed, at a first glance he might have passed for anything up to sixty, for his face was a good deal more lined and wrinkled than it should have been at his age. Ste. Marie's adjective had been rather apt. The man had a desiccated appearance. Upon examination, however, one saw that the blood was still red in his cheeks and lips, and, although his neck was thin and withered like an old man's, his brown eyes still held their fire. The hair was ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... quite done that, he seems to me to have very thoroughly discredited Pirkheimer's ungallant abuse. Sir Martin Conway bids us notice that Duerer speaks of his "dear father" and his "dear mother" and even of his "dear father-in-law," but that he never couples that adjective with his wife's name. It is very dangerous to draw conclusions from such a fact, which may be merely an accident: or may, if it represents a habit of Duerer's, bear precisely the opposite significance. For some men are proud to drop such outward marks ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... "He is certainly that, and more. Indeed, the English language does not supply us with an adjective ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... word is an adjective, formed with the proper termination from the noun, batture, which means a bank upon which the sea beats, reef or sand-bank. Cap Batturier may therefore be rendered sand-bank cape, or the cape of the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... logic and of style alike, which ordains that a single sentence shall be, as far as possible, the verbal presentation of a single thought, and not the agglomeration and sweeping together of a whole string and tissue of thoughts. It is noticeable, too, that Hobbes is very sparing of the adjective—the great resource and delight of flowery and discursive writers. Sometimes, as in the famous comparison of human life to a race (where, by the way, a slight tendency to conceit manifests itself, and makes him rather force some of his metaphors), his ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... exhibits a fine and bold peculiarity—a double declension of its Adjectives, depending on a condition of syntax. The Anglo-Saxon adjective, in its ordinary (or, as grammarians have called it, Indefinite) declension, makes the nominative plural for all the genders in E; and this remains as the regular plural termination of the adjective to Chaucer. Thus we have, in the more ancient language—eald; plural, eald-E; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... criticized a strange statement in de Republ. ii. 8, that all the cities of the Peloponnese had access to the sea, he excuses himself by saying that he found it in Dicaearchus and copied it word for word (Att. vi. 2. 3). In the same passage he used an incorrect adjective, Phliuntii for Phliasii; he says that he had already corrected his own copy, but the mistake survives in the single palimpsest in which this work has been preserved. The only merits, therefore, which can be claimed for Cicero ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Faraday's admirable lectures 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"; and again, "that the repose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... British sympathiser in the capital. On the strength of this all the houses of suspected persons were searched from top to bottom, and these unfortunate people were, I fear, put to a great deal of inconvenience. A special commission was also appointed to investigate 'stringently' (a most hateful adjective in such a connection) the causes 'which had rendered it possible for the War Correspondent of the "Morning ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... and simple and a little deserted, as though the heart of the Russian public had not, as yet, quite found its way there. I think "guileless" was the adjective that came to my mind, and certainly Burrows, the head of the place—a large, red-faced, smiling man with glasses—seemed to me altogether too cheerful and pleased with life to penetrate the ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... world a new adjective when he wrote his romance of The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha—a world in which the filibusters are those of commerce, the pirates those of trade. When we English call an action "quixotic," we do not exactly ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... "accosting?" "Accost her, knight, accost!" in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakespearian 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 ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... torn from our kindly associations with 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 /amphikipellon/ 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 ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... "the upper part of the ridge of some elevated and exposed land." As a prefix, its meaning depends upon the fact whether the word attached to it be an adjective or a substantive. If an adjective be attached, it has the second signification; i.e. it is the upper part of some exposed land, having the particular quality involved in the adjective, such as, "Cefndu," "Cefngwyn," "Cefncoch," ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... the word "unconventional" on Mr. Moore's objection that he would be at the mercy of Mr. Sims' judgment if the word was retained. "The Independent Theatre" played the play and Mr. Sims paid the money. It was perhaps just as well for Mr. Moore that the adjective was withdrawn, for the play was little less conventional than "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" or "Sowing the Wind," to mention two successes of that year by play-makers that took their art a little more seriously than Mr. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... used in the singular, both by Mir Amman and the original author, Amir Khusru according to a well-known rule in Persian syntax, viz., "a substantive accompanied by a numerical adjective dispenses with the plural termination," as "haft roz," "seven days," not "haft rozha. The Persian term darwesh, in a general sense, denotes a person who has adopted what by extreme courtesy is called a religious life, closely akin to the "mendicant friar" of the middle ages; ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... adjective referring to Balaklava. Does any one of you remember that word? You've ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... was from the late premier, I suppose. He merely forgot an adjective—it is cheap bread that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... here we can imagine an earnest protest: "But why do you ignore the human will? Why do you try to make man the creature of feeling? A high-grade man does—not what he wants to do but what he thinks he ought to do. In any person worthy of the adjective 'civilized' it is conscience, not desire, which is the motive power ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... the ranch 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 ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... frowned at the adjective; but she had reached a pitch of exaltation at which such ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... chance of any other sort of people lingering around. The truth of the matter is that these translators, like historians, have permitted their prejudices to warp their accuracy. There is not in the entire writings of Homer an adjective or description applying to any of the principals that even suggests a single one of them having blue eyes and golden hair. Indeed, it is quite the reverse. Athena is [Greek: glaukopis]; [Greek: glaukos] means blue like the sea ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... the hero, of course, another 'exalted criminal' in the style of Karl Moor. In the stage version we observe that the motto from Sallust has been dropped, and that while the title of 'tragedy' (Trauerspiel) is retained, the adjective 'republican' is omitted. Furthermore, without any radical revision of the preceding portraiture taken as a whole, a non-tragical conclusion has been substituted for the final catastrophe. Fiesco, hard pressed by the strenuous Verrina, declares that his heart has been right ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... have no doubt as to 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 expression ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... Person Gender Rules Governing Gender Number Compound Antecedents Relative Interrogative Case Forms Rules Governing Use of Cases Compound Personal Compound Relative Adjective Miscellaneous Cautions ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... peers in the State and bishops in the Church; surely she must be adequate to send her representatives to the lower House. I know the time may not have come for mooting a question of this sort; but I know the time will come, and that woman will be something more than a mere adjective to man in political matters. She will become a substantive also. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... garden of neatness 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
... Mrs. Smith, with her absurd figure—for really I can apply no other adjective to it—should wear that most absurdly tight dress. Some one should tell her what a fright it makes of her. She is nothing but convexities. She looks exactly like an hour-glass, or a sodawater machine. At a little distance you can hardly tell whether she is ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... French Numerals are differently pronounced according 1st—as they stand alone, or are joined to Noun or Adjective beginning, 2nd—with ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous
... the marked physical characteristics of the albinotic ferret is the red or pink eye. Shakespeare turns the noun 'ferret' into an adjective. The description of Cicero is purely imaginary; but the angry spot on Caesar's brow, Calpurnia's pale cheek, and Cicero with fire in his eyes when kindled by opposition in the Senate, make an ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... sincere regard for unaffected Marie Leczinska, I regret being obliged to admit that, even in youth, "comely" was the most effusive adjective that could veraciously be awarded her. And it is only in the lowest of whispers that I will admit that she was seven years older than her handsome husband, whose years did not then number seventeen. Yet is there indubitable charm in the simple grace wherewith Marie accepted her ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... water, war, and the top of the head. (Molina, Vocab. en lengua mexicana y castellana, etc.) From this comes a series of words, such as atlan, on the border of or amid the water, from which we have the adjective Atlantic. We have also atlaca, to combat or be in agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart from the water, and in the preterit makes atlaz. A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance of the Gulf of Uraba, in Darien, with a ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... BEAUTIFUL things that ever was done, perhaps,' said Inspector Wield, emphasising the adjective, as preparing us to expect dexterity or ingenuity rather than strong interest, 'was a move of Sergeant Witchem's. It was ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Brooks wrote a popular treatise on the labor situation in the United States. He called the volume Social Unrest. The term was, even at that time, a familiar one. Since then the word unrest, in both its substantive and adjective forms, has gained wide usage. We speak in reference to the notorious disposition of the native American to move from one part of the country to another, of his restless blood, as if restlessness was a native American trait transmitted in the blood. We speak more often ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the details with interest down to the end, where the name of the "famous Chatworth ring" finished the announcement with a flourish. Why "famous"? It was very provoking to advertise with that vague adjective and not ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... down at Wentworth's desk, and came upon an obstacle at the very beginning. He did not know how to address the young woman. Whether to say 'My dear Miss Longworth,' or 'My dear madam,' or whether to use the adjective 'dear' at all, was a puzzle to him; and over this he was meditating when Wentworth came ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... old Spanish the article was often used before a possessive adjective that preceded its noun. This usage is ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... felt the guilty caress of cold-cream or powder, and if it was mahogany in tint and deeply wrinkled, it was at least as respectable as her past. In her day that now bourgeois adjective—twin to genteel—had been synchronous with the equally obsolete word swell, but it had never occurred to even the more modern Mrs. Abbott and her select inner circle of friends, dwelling on family estates in the San Mateo valley, to change ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the Greek terminology was transplanted to Rome, real mischief began. Instead of rhma geniktaton, we now find the erroneous, or, at all events, inaccurate, translation, modus infinitus, and infinitivus by itself. What was originally meant as an adjective belonging to rhma, became a substantive, the infinitive, and though the question arose again and again what this infinitive really was, whether a noun, or a verb, or an adverb; whether a mood or not a mood; the real existence of such a thing as an infinitive could no longer be doubted. ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... 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 meant what ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... corrupt. Assuming these prefixes to have consisted once of two distinct particles, such as, for example, Nos. 1 and 3, Ngu-mu-, or the 6th plural prefix Nga-ma-, the first syllable seems to have been of the nature of a demonstrative pronoun, and the second more like a numeral or an adjective. Mu- probably meant "one," and Ma- a collective numeral of indefinite number, applied to liquids (especially water), a tribe of men, a herd of beasts—anything in the mass.[14] In the corresponding ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... independence, indomitable will, and never-ceasing purpose to "get on," which is a characteristic of the New England women, and which may be summed up in the expressive adjective "capable." Armed with this power, she cheerfully teaches school, makes dresses, binds books, or "keeps house," considering no honest work degrading, and proving ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... delicate shades of meaning; this helps you to appreciate Poetry, for one of the main beauties of great poets, such as Milton and Tennyson, is their marvellous perception of shades of difference, and the felicity with which they choose exactly the right adjective! ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... of course, with colour photography and process printing. This 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
... sweater of a strangely ugly red hue, impeccable clothes, and an immaculate velour hat which must have been worth easily fifty francs. We called this gent Rockyfeller. His personality might be faintly indicated by the adjective Disagreeable. The porter was a creature whom Ugly does not even slightly describe. There are some specimens of humanity in whose presence one instantly and instinctively feels a profound revulsion, a revulsion which—perhaps because ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... 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 ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Ayscough, when that was the best guide to be had? If you have, you remember your teasing search for the principal word in the passage,—how day seemed a less likely key than jocund, and yet, as this was only an adjective, perhaps tiptoe were better; or, if you pitched upon mountain-tops, it was a problem with which half of the compound to begin the search. Consider that Mrs. Clarke is no dry word-critic, to revel in pulling the soliloquy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... First—If a numeral adjective were joined to Sestertii, and agreed with it in case, it signified just so many Sesterces; as decem Sestertii, 10 Sesterces—thirty-five cents ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... on the scene of the Earl of Valletort and Count Ladislas Vassilan at a moment which, though undeniably critical, might be described as either opportune or inopportune—the choice of an adjective depending solely on the varying points of view of the one who gave and the one who received that powerful thump on the nose—was due to no feat of skill on the part of the engine-room staff of the Switzerland, but to a judicious combination of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... 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 upright, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... he lays aside rhyme, and writes in blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective to the substantive, and the substantive to the verb; and leaves out little particles, a, and the; her, and his; and uses frequent appositions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations of style be conformable to the ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... sylvaticus, salvaticus, 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 ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... what she called Mr. Carrington's "class," but then in all her experience she had never met a gentleman of such fashion and such a superior air, who adapted himself so charmingly to any society. In fact, "charming" was the very adjective ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... Louis XVI. are fond of speaking of him as "virtuous." The adjective is singularly ill-chosen. His faults were of the will more than of the understanding. To have a vague notion of what is right, to desire it in a general way, and to lack the moral force to do it,—surely this is ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... somewhat careless in our discrimination between words in the use of the English language, and yet it is interesting to note that there are some words about which we are very careful. We bestow the adjective "great" somewhat indiscriminately. A man who has made conquest of his fellow-men for his own gain may display such genius in war, such uncommon qualities of organization and leadership that we may call him "great," but there is a word which we reserve ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... Hutchinson—to use the adjective which John Adams was wont to apply to himself and other patriots to the manner born—was a Massachusettensian. He had sympathized with the people, but he now turned against them. Before Judge Sewall went away it was said and believed that Governor ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... forebode), anything contrary to omen, and therefore regarded with aversion; a word used often in the Bible to denote evil doctrines or ceremonial practices which were impure. An incorrect derivation was ab homine (i.e. inhuman), and the spelling of the adjective "abominable'' in the first Shakespeare folio is always "abhominable.'' Colloquially "abomination'' and "abominable'' are used to mean simply excessive ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... letters and suchlike documents, were it not that he happened to be the first man of affairs in England to imitate the "Republic" of Plato. By that chance it fell to him to give the world a noun and an adjective of abuse, "Utopian," and to record how under the stimulus of Plato's releasing influence the opening problems of our modern world presented themselves to the English mind of his time. For the most part the problems that exercised him are the problems ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Weller attached to this last-mentioned adjective, did not appear; but, as it was evident from the tone in which he used it that it was a favourable expression, Mr. Pickwick was as well satisfied as if he had been thoroughly enlightened ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... letters, addressed to newspapers, denouncing the name of a great quarter in London, Mary-le-bone, as ludicrously ungrammatical. The writers had learned (or were learning) French; and they had thus become aware, that neither the article nor the adjective was right. True, not right for the current age, but perfectly right for the age in which the name arose; but, for want of elder French, they did not know that in our Chaucer's time both were right. Le was then the article ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 as ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... 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 sleep, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... explanation of the famous adjective "netusxebla," applied by Dr. Zamenhof to his language, and so much resented in certain quarters. Surely not only is this degree of dogmatism amply justified by practical considerations, but it would amount to positive imprudence on the part of Esperantists to act otherwise. If the ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... make that term comprehensive enough to embrace the legitimate desires of a civilized and enlightened people determined in all their relations to pursue a conscientious and religious life. We can not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases. It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much disturbed by the thought of either isolation ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the man who has abjectly bowed before the distinction of wealth and social standing, always becomes insufferably pretentious when fortune or favor lifts him to the place of his desire. The man who shies those he esteems his betters is always a proud man at heart, or if the adjective be allowable, an aristocratic man; and he is very careful to preserve his position of comparative respectability with relation to those below him. He will always be found to be pretentious in his own circle, and supercilious with relation to those in lower life. Is it not true that half of ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... leering or "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Every epithet or adjective beyond what is needed to give the image, is a five-barred gate in the path of the eager mind travelling ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... [20] The verbal adjective in [Greek: tos] is almost universally used in a passive sense; [Greek: hypoptos], however, in this place is an exception to the rule, as are also, [Greek: kalyptes], Soph. Antig. 1011, [Greek: memptos], ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... from Waterloo, and my remembrances upon this subject go back to a period lying much behind that great era), I used to be annoyed and irritated by the false interpretation given to the Greek word aion, and given necessarily, therefore, to the adjective aionios as its immediate derivative. It was not so much the falsehood of this interpretation, as the narrowness of that falsehood, which disturbed me. There was a glimmer of truth in it; and precisely that glimmer it was which led the way to a general and obstinate misconception of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 scarcely ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... "The adjective," replied my interlocutor, "should always precede the substantive, for we should never utter the name of God without first giving Him some ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... they eat their supper. Una ate hers, and went upstairs to see grand-mamma; and Julian sat on my lap, very tired with play, eating a cold buckwheat cake, and gazing out. "Mamma! Mountain! Lake!" he kept ejaculating. Wise child! What could be added, in the way of adjective, that would enhance? "Thou eye among the blind!" thought his mother. At last he was so weary with sport that he slipped down upon the floor, and lay upon his back, till he finished eating his buckwheat cake. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... that this man, who had the moral hardihood to send a profane adjective over the wires, with the name of this noble girl, lost his election. While all other districts went strongly Republican, his was lost by a large majority. When the news came that the Republicans had carried the State, due credit was awarded to Anna Dickinson. The Governor-elect ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... from my mind was the adjective "incredible." I had to credit it; I had the proof in my vest pocket. The coincidence arising from our topic of conversation didn't bother me too much, either. It was the topic which had drawn him into it. And, as the sandy-haired man had pointed out, we know nothing, one way or another, ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper
... word. In its etymology it is harmless enough. Governmental is the adjective of government, and means "exercising the powers of government." Governmentalism, therefore, means the exercise of the powers of government considered as a principle. But the word when made the bogy ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... by representing me as constantly thinking of and for other people, whereas the rest think of themselves alone, but on the other hand you have contradictorily called me "unsocial," which is certainly the last adjective I should have expected to find in the neighborhood of my name. I deny, it is true, that what is now called "society" is society in any real sense, and my best wish for it is that it may dissolve too rapidly to make it worth the while of those who are "not in society" to facilitate its dissolution ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... agreed to substitute the adjective spendthrift: our sole authority has spendthrifts, and by it I hold. The meaning seems this: 'the would changes, the thing is not done, and then the should, the mere acknowledgment of duty, is like the sigh of a spendthrift, who regrets consequences ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... read Racine's or 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 of Chaucer only when required by the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... for several hundred yards—and pursuing a winding route, I at length stopped at the door of the principal hotel—au Grand Coq! I laughed heartily when I heard its name; for with the strictest adherence to truth the adjective ought to ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... quality, (2) the form or essence, (3) the end or design (in the sense of intention) of the act being performed, that is to say, at bottom, the design (in the sense of drawing) of the act supposed accomplished. These three aspects are those of the adjective, substantive and verb, and correspond to the three essential categories of language. After the explanations we have given above, we might, and perhaps we ought to, translate [Greek: eidos] by "view" or ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... one of fascinating human interest, and if a prose writer like Hawthorne had chosen to tell it in his Wonder-Book, we should doubtless speak of it as a "poetic" story. We should mean, in using that adjective, that the myth contained sentiment, imagination, passion, dramatic climax, pathos—the qualities which we commonly associate with poetry—and that Hawthorne, although a prose writer, had such an exquisite sympathy for Greek stories that his handling ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... male. The name is possibly connected with the Kayan word TENANG which means correct, or genuine. The termination AN is used in several instances in Malay (though not in Kayan) to make a substantive of an adjective. The name then possibly means — he who is correct or all-knowing; but this is a very ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Conn's volume entitled "The Living Machine." Professor Conn justifies his title by defining a machine as "a piece of apparatus so designed that it can change one kind of energy into another for a definite purpose." Of course the adjective "living" takes it out of the category of all mere mechanical devices and makes it super-mechanical, just as Haeckel's application of the word "living" to his inorganics ("living inorganics"), takes them out ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... easy to guess why Nash employed this Italian word instead of an English one. Lento means lazy, and though an adjective, it is used here substantively; the meaning, of course, is that the idle fellow ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... word when he could not find it, transposed phrases, inverted sentences, and never called a spade an agricultural implement. Not content with this, he put the spade on exhibition and this often at unnecessary times, and occasionally prefaced the word with an adjective. Had he been let alone he would not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Here lived Policeman T—— and B——. "First-class policemen" perhaps I should take care to specify, for in Zone parlance the unqualified noun implies African ancestry. But it seems easier to use an adjective of color when necessary. Among their regular duties was that of weighing down the rocking-chairs on the airy front veranda, whence each nook and cranny of Corozal was in sight, and of strolling across to greet the train-guard of the seven daily passengers; though the irregular ones ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... absolutely, apart from the general tenor of its context. Thus, taken singly, the character [Ch] conveys only the general idea "above" as opposed to "below." According to its place in the sentence and the requirements of common sense, it may be a noun meaning "upper person" (that is, a ruler); an adjective meaning "upper," "topmost" or "best"; an adverb meaning "above"; a preposition meaning "upon"; and finally a verb meaning "to mount upon," or "to go to." [Ch] is a character that may usually be translated "to enter" as in [Ch][Ch] "to enter a door"; yet in the locution [Ch][Ch] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Singha quietly omits the second half of the second line. The Burdwan translator, as usual, blunders in rendering it. The fact is, krosatah is not an adjective of vrikat, but stands for the roaring Vadava fire. The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... is easily accounted for. She was born on the twenty-ninth day of February, the year of her birth being bisextile. Unor means February, Unorna, derivative adjective, 'belonging to February.' Some one gave her the name ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... us do you intend that adjective to apply?" inquired Elnora. "I never was less ashamed in all my life. Please remember I am in my own home, and your presence here is not ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... admirable lectures 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
... another person than the penitent woman mentioned by St. Luke. It has also the official sanction of the governments of Great Britain and the United States. In England the word is pronounced Maudlin, whence maudlin, adjective, unpleasantly sentimental. With their Maudlin for Magdalene, and their Bedlam for Bethlehem, the English may justly boast themselves ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... it read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its male citizens, all of that class shall be counted out of the basis of representation." Male citizens! For the first time in the history of our Government that discriminating adjective was placed in the Constitution, and yet the men on the floor of Congress, from Charles Sumner down, all declared that this amendment would not in any wise ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... so sweet and clean and homelike," said the girl quickly. At any other time he would have winced at the last adjective. It struck him now as ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... ignores the dialogue of his characters, even the descriptive and editorial comments by Trollope himself at first seem anti-semitic. He consistently uses "Jew" as a pejorative adjective instead of "Jewish." His descriptions of the appearance of Jewish characters are usually unflattering and stereotypical. Even Anton Trendellsohn, the hero of Nina Balatka, ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... so neat," Mellicent said to herself; and the adjective was not inappropriate, for Peggy's small features looked as though they had been modelled by the hand of a fastidious artist, and the air of dainty finish extended to her hands and feet and slight, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... is an adjective meaning calm, and little glaring, and is specially attributed to the moon in spring. The line is ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... words as they possibly can, consistent with being understood. They inflect both their nouns and verbs regularly; and denote the cases of the former and the tenses of the latter, not like the English by auxiliary words, but like the Latins by change of termination. Their nouns, whether substantive or adjective, seem to admit of no plural. I have heard Mr. Dawes hint his belief of their using a dual number, similar to the Greeks, but I confess that I never could remark aught to confirm it. The method by which they answer a ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... familiar faces seen about the garrison again was that of a man whose eccentricities and personality are closely associated with the life of the fort.[157] In reporting the casualties of the battle of Molino del Rey, September 8, 1847, the general commanding the American forces applied an adjective to only one of the dead. The report reads, "the service mourns the high-souled Scott, brevet lieutenant colonel 5th infantry".[158] This was Martin Scott, one of the most human, most lovable, and most energetic men ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... monastery. There is a park between it, and the palace which is called Huytal; but why it is called Huytal, I am sure I don't know." His researches in the English language had not enabled him to recognize the adjective and substantive out of which the abstruse ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of everything is best—ne quid nimis. Avoid all extremes. So it is with sugar. Mr. Reding, you are putting too much into your tea. I lay down this rule: sugar should not be a substantive ingredient in tea, but an adjective; that is, tea has a natural roughness; sugar is only intended to remove that roughness; it has a negative office; when it is more than this, it is too much. Well, Carlton, it is time for me to be seeing after my horse. I fear he has not had so pleasant an afternoon as I. I have enjoyed myself much ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... character of some of the Asiatic explorers who must have visited this part of the Eastern Pacific prior to the Europeans. In Maori the word Karioi means debauched, profligate, good-for-nothing. In Raratonga [an island near Tahiti] the adjective appears as Kariei. These are probably slightly worn down forms of the Persian Khara-bati, which has precisely the same significance as the foregoing. One is forced to the conclusion that the Arabian Nights stories of the voyages ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... University, as asking triumphantly, 'Why don't you say 'welly?' I should like to have had Dr. Messer answer his own question. It would be truer to say that it was used by people who still remembered that ill was an adjective, the shortened form of evil, out of which Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible ventured to make evilly. This slurred evil is 'the dram of eale' in 'Hamlet.' I find, illy in Warner. The objection to illy is not an ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... has commonly been looked upon as an adjective; and the passage has been rendered Talis Tirynthius indefessus, which is scarce sense. Callimachus was very knowing in mythology, and is here speaking of the Cyclopian God Acmon, whom he makes the [Greek: theos propulaios], ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... it seems to aim almost exclusively at gratifying its hearers,[53] in this respect resembling poetry, which to Quintilian, seems to have no visible aim but pleasure.[54] Occasional speeches relied much more on style than did those of the law court and senate, thus meriting Aristotle's adjective "literary," that is written to be read instead of spoken to be heard.[55] Cicero, like Quintilian, considers these less practical, as remote from the conflict of the forum, written to be read, "to be looked at, as it were, like a picture, ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... 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 ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... "Eternal Fire," "Unquenchable Fire."—All these expressions are used in describing the fiery judgment upon sin and sinners. The effect of the fire is everlasting and eternal, and by a common usage in language the adjective that describes the effect is applied to the agent by which the effect ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... beautiful, wonderfully lovely?" cried Jessie, getting more excited with each adjective, and when the others laughed merrily at the extravagance of her description, she added, defiantly, "I don't care; it is! I'll leave ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... in a word, classic, 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 ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... most important part of the archaic necropolis was situated. Confirmation of this may be found in Cicero's description (Pro Milone, 85) of the destruction of the shrines and sacred groves of Alba by the construction of Clodius's villa, in the local application of the adjective Albanus, and in the position of Castel Gandolfo itself, which exactly suits Livy's description. No traces of the ancient city, except of its necropolis, the tombs of which are overlaid with a stratum of peperino 3 ft. thick, are preserved. The ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... from England the testimony of one who has seen the original draught of that 'Fare thee well.' This original copy had evidently been subjected to the most careful and acute revision. Scarcely two lines that were not interlined, scarcely an adjective that was not exchanged for a better; showing that the noble lord was not so far overcome by grief as to have forgotten his reputation. (Found its way to the public prints through the ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the duke she had found it so depressing to be invariably addressed with suave deference by every male voice she heard. If the butler could have snorted, or the rector have rapped out an uncomplimentary adjective, the duchess would have felt cheered. As it was, a fixed and settled melancholy lay upon her spirit until she saw in a dealer's list an advertisement of a prize macaw, warranted a grand talker, with a vocabulary of over five ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... doth us teach, That it hath nine parts of speech;— Article, adjective, and noun, Verb, conjunction, and pronoun, With preposition, and adverb, And interjection, as I've heard. The letters are just twenty-six, These form all words when rightly mix'd. The vowels are a, e, o, i, With u, and sometimes w and y. Without the little vowels' aid, No word or syllable is ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... in the English language more deadly in its vague import than that apparently harmless adjective. As applied to a human being, it generally conveys every kind of odious significance, and curiously enough it is seldom ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... 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 an unusual manner; or, if taken in its common meaning of taunt or reproof, then ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... "like" was habit with Mrs. Pennycook. She rarely took a decided stand in anything except Mr. Pennycook, and always modified her modifying adjective with the word "like"; an annoying practice which had always rendered her an object of terror to Mrs. Corblay. To the latter it always seemed as if Mrs. Pennycook was desirous of saying something nasty, but lacked the courage to come out flatfooted ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... and around through a rock-spilled barranco with two sheer walls of the densest jungle and forest shutting it in. Where it crossed a stream, Dakin and I found a shaded, sandy hollow scooped out behind a broad flat rock in the form of a huge bathtub of water, clearer than any adjective will describe. Ems, whose swarthy tint and strong features suggested the opposite, was the least able to endure the hardships of the road, and lay lifeless in the shade at ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... game when a party has reached its frivolous mood. The method of playing is this: Sheets of paper and pencils are handed round, and every one writes at the head (1) an adjective suitable to be applied to a man, such as "Handsome." This word is then folded over so that it cannot be read, and each paper is passed on to the next person. The name of a man (2) is then written, either some one you know, or a public person, such as the ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Man[a]t (fate), Sa'd (fortune), Ru[d.][a] (favor), Wadd (love), Man[a]f (height), 'Au[d.] (time). Whether these are all abstract terms is doubtful. Wadd means also 'lover,' divine friend or patron. Sa'd occurs as adjective 'fortunate,' is the appellation of certain stars, and the god Sa'd is identified by an Arab poet with a certain rock[1190]—the rock is doubtless an old local divinity. Ru[d.][a] is found apparently only as a divine name (in Palmyrene and Safa inscriptions ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... was the strangeness of the form of my imprecations or the length of my adjective that scared Yorke, certain it is that he was sobered at once, and with the solemnity of the Spanish don himself he soon made the soldiers understand that they must put me down. Once on my own feet, though I still felt a little shaky, I was able, by availing myself ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... the newly married man, and "bride-bell," "bride-banquet" are old equivalents of wedding-bells, wedding-breakfast. "Bridal" (from Bride-ale), originally the wedding-feast itself, has grown into a general descriptive adjective, e.g. the bridal party, the bridal ceremony. The bride-cake had its origin in the Roman confarreatio, a form of marriage, the essential features of which were the eating by the couple of a cake made of salt, water and flour, and the holding by the bride of three ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... 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 complex ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... was little chance of any other sort of people lingering around. The truth of the matter is that these translators, like historians, have permitted their prejudices to warp their accuracy. There is not in the entire writings of Homer an adjective or description applying to any of the principals that even suggests a single one of them having blue eyes and golden hair. Indeed, it is quite the reverse. Athena is [Greek: glaukopis]; [Greek: glaukos] means blue like the sea and the unclouded sky; ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of itself. In the universe, therefore, the only principle which is indifferentiable is this "I am that I am" and the manifold modes of manifestation can only exist in reference to it. The eternal ignorance consists in this, that as there is but one substantive, but numberless adjectives, each adjective is capable of designating the All. Viewed in time the most permanent object or mood of the great knower at any moment represents the knower, and in a sense binds it with limitations. In fact, time itself is one ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... creature. But Casaubon and his followers, with reason, condemn this derivation, and prove that from Satyrus the word satira, as it signifies a poem, cannot possibly descend. For satira is not properly a substantive, but an adjective; to which the word lanx (in English a "charger" or "large platter") is understood: so that the Greek poem made according to the manners of a Satyr, and expressing his qualities, must properly be called ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... means "a state or condition of doing well; prosperous or satisfactory course or relation; exemption from evil;" in other words, well-being. This is the primary meaning of the word. But, to-day, it is used so often as an adjective, to describe work which is being attempted for the good of industrial workers, that any use of the word welfare has that fringe of ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... or "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a led ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... required the formula—"always being begotten, and as instantly perishing, in order to be rebegotten perpetually." They showed a real disbelief in our English statement "begotten, not made." I overruled the objection, that in the Greek it was not a participle, but a verbal adjective; for it was manifest to me, that a religion which could not be proclaimed in English could not be true; and the very idea of a Creed announcing that Christ was "not begotten, yet begettive," roused in me an unspeakable loathing. Yet surely this ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... softening adjective, "I have learnt with pain and indignation that you have dishonoured yourself again by breaking the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics. With still greater pain and indignation do I learn that your name has become in a few short days a byword, that you have discarded ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... function, the Greek word SOPHROSYNE would be a very good one, as it signifies a self-controlled and reasonable nature. The verb ANDRISO, signifying to render hardy, manly, strong, to display vigor, and make a manly effort of self-control, would be equally appropriate in the adjective form, ANDRIKOS, and still more in the noun ANDRIA, which signifies manhood or manly sentiments and conduct. It would not, however, be preferable to the English word, MANLINESS, which is as appropriate a term ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... breathing round me. Yes, you were! I felt it in my hair. And YOU too—you're always snoopin' and snoodgin'. Oh, yes, you want to know WHY I've got an extry copy-book and another 'Rithmetic, Miss Curiosity. Well, what would you give to know? Want to see if they're PRETTY" (with infinite scorn at the adjective). "No, they ain't PRETTY. That's all you girls think about—what's PRETTY and what's curious! Quit now! Come! Don't ye see teacher lookin' ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... and [Greek: nomos], law), in general, freedom from external restraint, self-government. The term is usually coupled with a qualifying adjective. Thus, political autonomy is self-government in its widest sense, independence of all control from without. Local autonomy is a freedom of self-government within a sphere marked out by some superior authority; e.g. municipal corporations in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... endeavor to be good," she said, and then flushed with annoyance at the adjective. Half-dazed by the cold as she was, she could not think of a more suitable one. Winston, however, ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... the lap of Judge Preston in the corner, when Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of admonitory fingers. Then, taking his head between her two hands, she again looked into his brimming eyes, and said, simply, "GOOD dog," with the gentlest of emphasis on the adjective, and popped into ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... possibly vigilant and reassuring beyond the common, but one was quite silently so; the other, who spoke a little English, encouraged us from time to time to believe that they were "strong mans," afterward correcting himself in conformity to the rules of Portuguese grammar, which make the adjective agree in number with the noun, and declaring that they were "strongs mans." We met many toboggan men who needed to be "strongs mans" in their ascent of our track, with their heavy toboggans on their heads; but some of them did not look strong, and our ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... mistakenly, to belong to the article; thus apron should be napron (Fr. 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 two. York was ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... eat their supper. Una ate hers, and went upstairs to see grand-mamma; and Julian sat on my lap, very tired with play, eating a cold buckwheat cake, and gazing out. "Mamma! Mountain! Lake!" he kept ejaculating. Wise child! What could be added, in the way of adjective, that would enhance? "Thou eye among the blind!" thought his mother. At last he was so weary with sport that he slipped down upon the floor, and lay upon his back, till he finished eating his buckwheat ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... venture 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 ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... Poussiren - To court. Pretzel,(Ger.) - A kind of fancy bread, twist or the like. Prezackly - Pre(cisely), exactly. Protocollirt, protocolliren - To register, record. Pully, i.e., Bully - An Americanism, adjective. Fine, capital. A slang word, used in the same manner as the English used the word crack; as, "a bully horse," "a bully picture." Pumpernickel - A heavy, hard sort of rye-bread, made in Westphalia. Put der Konig troo - To put through, (Amer.), to qualify, ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... I speak of her in these formal terms? To me, when I thought of her, which I did only too often, she was Juliet, with perhaps an adjective thrown in; and as Juliet I shall henceforth speak of her (but without the adjective) in this narrative, wherein nothing has been kept back from the reader—Juliet's visit, then, had been a great success, for my colleague was ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... we know they are sure to die in time. Stones were thrown on this occasion by Sally and her stepfather, who was credulous enough to suppose that his pebbles passed the undertow and reached the sea itself. Sally was prevented by the elements from misusing an adjective; for she wanted to say that the effect of a stone thrown into such a sea was merely "homoeopathic," and abstained because her ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... intelligent basis. These men have become specialists in the pecan industry and they know more about it than we do in the North. Consequently they do not need our assistance, even if we were able to give it, and, therefore, without any fear of our being criticised for using the adjective "northern" we can limit our investigations and discussions to nut culture in the northern part of the United States with a full knowledge that our southern brethren can take care of themselves, and, in addition, can render us much valuable assistance which assistance ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... angulus, an angle), shaped with corners or angles; an adjective used in botany and zoology for the shape of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... 4: The whole body.—Ver. 7. The adjective 'commune' is here used substantively, and signifies ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... framework, how am I to fill it in so as to be intelligible to outsiders? For practical purposes, I give numerals, personal, possessive, and demonstrative pronouns, the mode of qualifying nouns, e.g., some languages interpose a monosyllable between the substantive and adjective, others do not. The words used (as it is called) as prepositions and adverbs, the mode of changing a neuter verb into a transitive or causative verb, usually by a word prefixed, which means do or make, e.g., ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the plural of a noun or adjective, the rule appears to be to add le as a postfix, sometimes previously supplying a terminal vowel if required: Example: geta hand becomes getale in the plural: kuku foot, kukule: kutai yam, kutaile: ipi wife, ipile: kerne lad ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... proprietor, nor a professor, not even a master. Nor could she conscientiously say, "the celebrated Dr. Eynhardt." He had no military title, and to introduce him as "the handsome Dr. Eynhardt" would hardly do. Fortunately she had no need to mention the latter adjective. The ladies observed without further assistance how remarkably handsome this gentleman was with his girlish complexion, silky, raven-black hair and beard, and lustrous dark eyes. Charming lips drew him constantly into the conversation, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... a common name of women. It means one who has no vala or strength or power. The word is also used as an adjective. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... statement unaccompanied by proof. The agreement of an adjective with its noun displeased him, because an arbitrary rule ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... beauty is only attributed to sounds and sights, where, and because, they recall what is pleasing, sublime, pathetic, and set our ideas and emotions flowing in one of these channels. But he does not get fairly on the track of either Alison's or any other decisive and marking adjective, with which to qualify his rapports. He wastes some time, moreover, in trying to bring within the four corners of his definition some uses of the terms of beauty, which are really only applied to objects by way of analogy, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... 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
... last-century poet's dictionary. One would not have it away; one can hear the caress with which the master pronounces it, "making his mouth," as Swift did for his "little language." Nor does the customary adjective fail in later literature. It was dear to the Realist, and it is dear to the Symbolist. The only difference is that in the French of the Symbolist ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... 7. Epithet. An adjective or term placed upon a person or thing and expressing some quality especially appropriate to that ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... Carlingford would have been horrified to hear, and grasped Mrs Smith's shoulder with a closer pressure. "What did she tell you?" said the doctor. "Let me have it word for word. Did she say she was going away?—did she speak of this—this—fellow?" exclaimed the doctor, with an adjective over which charity drops a tear. "Can't you tell me without any supposes, what did ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... our first Sunday we attended the Free Kirk in the morning, and the Established in the evening. The bonnets of the Free Kirk were so much the more elegant that we said to one another, "This is evidently the church of society, though the adjective 'Free' should by rights attract the masses." On the second Sunday we reversed the order of things, and found the Established bonnets much finer than the Free bonnets, which was a source of mystification to us, until we discovered that it was a question of morning or evening service, not of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 navy and army in our country cannot afford ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... structures with as much astonishment as do we, and attributed them (of at least those in Argohs) to the Cyclopes, a mythical folk, conceived in this connection as masons of superhuman strength. Hence the adjective Cyclopian or Cyclopean, whose meaning varies unfortunately in modern usage, but which is best restricted to walls of the Tirynthian type; that is to say, walls built of large blocks not accurately fitted together, the ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... I nodded, "but 'foolish' is an adjective which in this instance should be an adverb and which we will proceed to make so by the suffix 'ly.' Thus instead of saying, I talk 'foolish,' you ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Graham Brooks wrote a popular treatise on the labor situation in the United States. He called the volume Social Unrest. The term was, even at that time, a familiar one. Since then the word unrest, in both its substantive and adjective forms, has gained wide usage. We speak in reference to the notorious disposition of the native American to move from one part of the country to another, of his restless blood, as if restlessness was a native American trait transmitted in the blood. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... who, while strictly mere subjects and citizens of their own state, may have had conferred upon themselves, or inherit, titles of dignity and privilege in a foreign one. We usually (as in the case of the Rothschilds, &c.) acknowledge their highest title in address, but without any adjective or epithets to qualify with honor, such as "honorable;" as is the case, too, with doctors of foreign universities, whose title from courtesy we also admit, though this does not place them on a footing with those of England. The present Duke of Wellington and the Earl Nelson inherit, I believe, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... the Church; surely she must be adequate to send her representatives to the lower House. I know the time may not have come for mooting a question of this sort; but I know the time will come, and that woman will be something more than a mere adjective to man in political matters. She will become a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... elementary criticism of knowledge suffices to make clear the absurdity of the attempt. When such expressions as a historical law, a historical concept are not simply metaphors colloquially employed, they are true contradictions in terms: the adjective is as unsuitable to the substantive as in the expressions qualitative quantity or pluralistic monism. History means concretion and individuality, law and concept mean abstraction and universality. If, on the other hand, the ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... Wallisian(s), Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... right," Tavernake confessed, shortly. "I know I was a fool—a fool! If I could think of any adjective that would meet the case, I'd use it, but there it is. I chucked things and I came here. You haven't come down to tell me your opinion of ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have impelled Jack to apply the adjective "wild" to that ill-behaved and disreputable river, which, tipsily bearing its enormous burden of mud from the far North-west, totters, reels, runs its tortuous course for hundreds on hundreds of miles; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... sun. As it was—having with all his three livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own—he remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not making any merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly, if any one ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... ask 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 ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... source of the poet's obscurity; that in aiming at condensation he neglects the need that there is for care in the placing of words that are grammatically ambiguous. English swarms with words that have one identical form for substantive, adjective, and verb; and such a word should never be so placed as to allow of any doubt as to what part of speech it is used for; because such ambiguity or momentary uncertainty destroys the force of the sentence. Now our author ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... 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
... them, in the mass of them, representing as they do all sections and callings of America, there had returned the ancient spirit of knighthood. I measure my words. I am not exaggerating. If I had to find one single word with which to characterize our boys, I should select the adjective "knightly." ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... shop-girl. His fine 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 as ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... equivalent to a transference of power. As a consequence, Bel and Marduk are blended into one personage, Marduk becoming known as Bel-Marduk, and finally, the first part of the compound sinking to the level of a mere adjective, the god is addressed as 'lord Marduk,' or 'Marduk, the lord.' The old Bel is entirely forgotten, or survives at best in conventional association with Anu and Ea, as a member of ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... "halte" from us or from the German, for their tactics. For the same reason, you want to prune out the unnecessary words from your sentences, and even the classes of words which seem put in to fill up. If, for instance, you can express your idea without an adjective, your sentence is stronger and more manly. It is better to say "a saint" than "a saintly man." It is better to say "This is the truth" than "This is the truthful result." Of course an adjective may be absolutely necessary. But you may often detect extempore ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... company with the Concord philosopher. The latter, as we know, decried the mystical conception of fixed symbolism in any domain. But Freud, although theoretically agreed, falls victim in practice to the fascinations of the dream-book cipher method which he has condemned. The adjective Freudian is now justly a by-word, among psychopathologists, for a stereotyped habit of reducing each item of a dream to some cryptic allusion or roundabout reference to the primitive demands of the infantile and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... of production," they say. That is true. But when, changing the noun into an adjective, they alter the phrase, thus, "The land is a productive instrument," they ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Conservative Liberals, or old Reformers, who have been taught by experience, and are willing now to adopt the word 'Conservative,' at least in its adjective sense. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... synonyms through "rag-time," etc., to an almost subliminal thought—an adjective resembling "verisimilitudinarious," perhaps, qualifying the "con" or confidential talk that proved useless to bring ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... you may do well, in some—comfortable kind of business," he said heartily. That adjective "comfortable" was a hasty substitute for the adjective "honest," which had been almost on his lips as he uttered his friendly wish. He was too well disposed to all the world not to feel profound pity for this white-headed ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... in Belgium to comfort somewhere beyond. It seemed to be a point of courtesy on the part of the Belgians not to bother their king with ceremony at this trying time. I doubt if he cares much for ceremony, anyhow. Searching around for a single adjective to describe him, I should call him off-handed. His manner, even then, while alert, was casual. It is easy to see why the Belgians love him. If kings had always been as simple and direct as Albert, I am inclined to think democracy ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... such bodies were present they would combine with the basic parts of those precipitated salts as soon as the latter were formed, and all would be precipitated together as one complex compound. Just such peculiar quasi-acid, or phenolic substances are Alizarin, and most of the natural adjective dyestuffs, the colouring principles of logwood, cochineal, Persian berries, etc. Hence these substances will be combined and carried down with such precipitated basic salts. The complex compounds ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... a euphemism. The adjective Hawkins actually used was, as a matter of fact, closely associated with the exercise of the reproductive functions, and ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... used DEAR as an adjective except at the beginning of a letter, but always, and very unnecessarily, as an interjection; and this time it was so emphatic as to bring ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Alege, v. Fr. in Chaucer signifies to alleviate. It is here used either as an adjective or as an adverb. Chatterton interprets it to mean idly; upon what ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... same she 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
... case in the arts and sciences,)—no synonyme exists, we must either invent or borrow a word. In the present instance the appropriation has already begun, and been legitimated in the derivative adjective: Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful mind. If therefore I should succeed in establishing the actual existence of two faculties generally different, the nomenclature would be at once determined. To the faculty by which I had characterized Milton, we should confine ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... coquette," remarked Thiel, pushing his hand away. He had had "an old coquette" on the tip of his tongue, but suppressed the adjective. "A man can speak of his age without regret, when he is only in ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... of the book has given an adjective to our language—we call an impracticable scheme Utopian. Yet, under the veil of a playful fiction, the talk is intensely earnest, and abounds in practical suggestion. It is the work of a scholarly and ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... the richest in the world, and yet somehow in moments when words count most we generally choose the wrong ones. The adjective "cross" as a description of his Jove-like wrath that consumed his whole being jarred upon Derek profoundly. It was as though Prometheus, with the vultures tearing his liver, had been asked if ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... photography and process printing. This 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 Avebury and Sir ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... 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 tragedy ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... doubt that the Arabic name, Usdum, is identical with Sodom, by a well-known custom of the language to invert the consonant and vowel of the first syllable. But even this is brought back to the original state in the adjective form. Thus I heard our guides speak of the Jebel Sid'mi, meaning the Khash'm or Jebel Usdum, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... distinguished scientist, Miss Timson's chief, was the only man she could think of to whom Tims could possibly apply the possessive adjective. Tims bridled. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... England; and turned rich men into a mythology. The effect can be well summed up in that decorous abbreviation by which our rustics speak of "Lady's Bedstraw," where they once spoke of "Our Lady's Bedstraw." We have dropped the comparatively democratic adjective, and kept the aristocratic noun. South England is still, as it was called in the Middle Ages, a garden; but it is the kind where grow the plants called "lords ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... material gathered in such a manner is that it be reproduced exactly as first delivered. The man who told a woman that a critic had pronounced her singing "heavenly" had good intentions but he was not entirely accurate in changing to that nattering term the critic's actual adjective "unearthly." The frequency with which alleged statements published in the daily press are contradicted by the supposed utterers indicates how usual such misrepresentation is, though it may be honestly unintentional. The speaker before an audience must be scrupulously correct in quoting. This ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the new substantial, but mean-looking cloister, on the other side rose the church of polished white marble, a splendid specimen of pure Byzantine architecture, if I dare apply such an adjective to that fantastic middle manner, which succeeded to the style of the fourth century, and was subsequently re-cast by Christians and Moslems into what are called ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... that the writing could be as cold in tone as the criticism of those who consider everything other than polished ice almost amusing—to judge by the way they handle it, dismissing it with an airy grace and a hurting adjective. Would they be quite so cool, we wonder, if the little wronged girl were their own? But we do not write for such as these. The thought of the cold eyes would freeze the thoughts before they formed. We write for the earnest-hearted, who are not ashamed to confess they care. And yet we write with reserve ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... of the famous adjective "netusxebla," applied by Dr. Zamenhof to his language, and so much resented in certain quarters. Surely not only is this degree of dogmatism amply justified by practical considerations, but it would amount to positive imprudence on the part ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... &c. It had been conventional for over a century to apply this adjective to the Boeotians, and therefore to the Thebans. For a more favourable view, see W. Rhys Roberts, Ancient ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... considered, the present tranquillity of this country is to my mind perfectly miraculous. Already our presence has been infinitely beneficial in allaying animosities and in pointing out abuses.' If it had been the case that the country was tranquil, his adjective would have been singularly appropriate, but not precisely in the ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... bitterly cold; but the Commodore soon made it hot all round. Fell upon JOKIM spars and sails, stem and starn. "Regularly claw-hammered him," as GEORGE HAMILTON said, drawing on naval resources for adequate adjective. Accused him of making a speech that would have become CHARLES THE FIRST. Talked about levying Ship Money; threatened a revolution; hinted at HAMPDEN, and, unrebuked by the SPEAKER, called unoffending ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... was not only an account of phenomena which had been seen; it was accompanied by measures, and the computations based on these led to heights and dimensions for mountains on Venus which were, to say the least, extravagant. The adjective will not seem too strong when we say that the very existence of the mountains themselves ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... 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 ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... gave him employment for the rest of the morning, and lunch-time found him still dissatisfied. An adjective avoided his quest—the right adjective; the one and only word which expressed the precise shade of meaning desired. From the recesses of his brain it peeped at him, now advancing so near that it was almost within grasp, anon retreating to a shadowy ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ancient Northmen it was a great disgrace to die a natural death. Death from self-inflicted wounds was more honorable. The use of den without an adjective is archaic. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... character, with a fine war record, usually bears the name of the buffalo or bear, lightning or some dread natural force. Another of more peaceful nature may be called Swift Bird or Blue Sky. A woman's name usually suggested something about the home, often with the adjective "pretty" or "good," and a feminine termination. Names of any dignity or importance must be conferred by the old men, and especially so if they have any spiritual significance; as Sacred Cloud, Mysterious Night, Spirit Woman, and the like. Such a name ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... noun Filipinos to designate collectively the eight civilized, Christianized peoples, called respectively the Cagayans, Ilocanos, Pangasinans, Zambalans, Pampangans, Tagalogs, Bicols and Visayans, or any of them; the adjective Filipino to designate anything pertaining to these peoples, or any of them; the noun Philippines to designate the country, and the adjective Philippine to designate anything pertaining to the country as distinguished ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... back from Europe. Their very sincerity made them the more dangerous. In estimating any one's sincerity, it is indispensable to inquire with what other qualities is this sincerity linked,—to what nouns of activity is it a qualifying adjective? ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Australasian English words is the turning and twisting of an already existing English name. The settler saw a fruit somewhat like a cherry. Though he knew well that it was not a cherry, he christened it the "native cherry." It may here be remarked that the prefix native is not a satisfactory distinguishing adjective. Native bear, native cherry, may teach the young Australian that the bear and the cherry so named are not as the bear of the Arctic Regions or the cherry of Europe. But in the British Museum the label does ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... rather—rather comfortable when you get there," said Mr. Lanley, suddenly becoming embarrassed over his choice of an adjective. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... certain; and the intermediate steps are very clear. From dies, comes diurnus. Diu is, by inaccurate ears, or inaccurate pronunciation, easily confounded with giu; then the Italians form a substantive of the ablative of an adjective, and thence giurno, or, as they make it, giorno; which is readily contracted into giour, or jour' He observed, that the Bohemian language was true Sclavonick. The Swede said, it had some similarity with the German. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, to be sure, such parts of Sclavonia ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... believed? Bushybeard was lying in wait for me at the door, ready to receive me, wreathed in smiles which I can describe only by the detestable adjective "affable," as I took pains to pass his establishment on my way back. Then the spirit of mischief entered into me. I reciprocated his smiles and said: "Ivan Baburin, at shop No. 8, round the corner, has dozens of lamps such as you deal in, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the Johnsonian period has assumed, in spite of the lexicographer's own dislike of that adjective, prodigious dimensions. After the critical labours of Malone, Murphy, Croker, J. B. Nichols, Macaulay, Carlyle, Rogers, Fitzgerald, Dr Hill and others, it may appear hazardous to venture upon such a well-ploughed field where the pitfalls are so numerous and ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... college and the training for his profession. But at the beginning of his career he had won a rich prize in an architectural competition, and afterwards commissions and rewards and honors had flowed in upon him in constantly increasing measure. While he did not yet quite merit the adjective which Isabella Marne had applied to him, there was every promise that he would soon be, in truth, ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... her name, it is easily accounted for. She was born on the twenty-ninth day of February, the year of her birth being bisextile. Unor means February, Unorna, derivative adjective, 'belonging to February.' Some one gave her the name to commemorate ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... possible to blunder; going to the wrong people; despising the subtly powerful; paying court to the more advertised and less controlling of the English public men, and in a word behaving themselves after that fashion for which we have coined the adjective "newspaper." ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... much better. We wish he had stuck to his text, and persisted in his refusal to play; for then the fate that awaited him would but have been poetical justice for his utter and criminal want of taste—an adequate retribution on a wretch patronising an instrument whose demerits transcend every adjective that occurs to us at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... 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 reward of not being ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... rose, began as what would now be called a romantic poet. With no mastery of verse, for even the English heroic (a balancing-pole which has enabled so many feebler men to walk the ticklish rope of momentary success) was uneasy to him, he essayed the Cowleian Pindarique, as the adjective was then rightly spelled with a hint of Parisian rather than Theban origin. If the master was but a fresh example of the disasters that wait upon every new trial of the flying-machine, what could be expected of the disciple who ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... said Mosey imperatively, and deftly weaving into his address the thin red line of puissant adjective; "You dunno what you're doin' when you're foolin' with this run. She's hair-trigger at the best o' times, an' she's on full cock this year. Best watched station on the track. It's risk whatever way you take it. We're middlin' safe to be collared in the selection, an' ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the figure of "Nature" on top of the music niche and the capital bulls on the pylons toward the north of the court. These terra cotta bulls are surely worthy of the adjective derived from them. Their relative size is very good, and to see them in the richness of their color against the upper regions of a dark blue sky ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... that gerr'l, Christian Lowry," he said to Father Greer. "She's a good gerr'l enough. Decent! Civil!" Each adjective of approval was launched on a snort that indicated some co-existing irritation; "but I have me own opinion of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... note the fourth word in the second title of this book. The common talk is of a "League of Nations" merely. I follow the man who is, more than any other man, the leader of English political thought throughout the world to-day, President Wilson, in inserting that significant adjective "Free." We western allies know to-day what is involved in making bargains with governments that do not stand for their peoples; we have had all our Russian deal, for example, repudiated and thrust back upon our ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... small touch of color burned like a flame. And thus, little step after little step, they went from little wonder to little wonder. Dolly liked small things; it was the microscopic aspect of Nature that touched her heart; she had an adjective all her own for such: they were "baby" things—baby flowers, baby brooks, baby stars. This appealed less to Charles-Norton, hungry for big sweeps. And even now, he caught himself yawning once, and casting a look ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... taught you to look upon the Suburban Furnace as part of the machinery or property of a merry jest; and you will be shocked to discover that to the new-comer it is a stern and cold reality. I use the latter adjective deliberately and advisedly. There will surely come an awful night when you will get home from New York with Mrs. Modestus in the midnight train, too tired for anything but a drowsy chat by the lingering embers of the ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... marvel that God's hand has wrought. It can never be pictured. It can never be described. Only those who have stood as Patricia Doyle stood that morning and viewed the sublime masterpiece of Nature can realize what those homely words, "The Grand Canyon" mean. Grand? It is well named. Since no other adjective can better describe it, that much abused one may well be accepted to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... satin from cardinals' beds and the rest." Before long Browning amused himself in picking up for a few pauls this or that picture, on seeing which an accomplished connoisseur, like Kirkup, would even hazard the name of Cimabue or Ghirlandaio, or if not that of Giotto, then the safer adjective Giottesque. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... orchards cannot be made profitable. I am of the opinion that reasonable sized orchards in proper locations and proper soil, of proper varieties, with proper care in handling, are good investments, and, as proof of my confidence, I am planting orchards both in the north and south. The adjective "proper" which I have used here may seem insignificant at the start but, believe me, before you have begun to clip the coupons off your orchard bonds this adjective will loom up as important as Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. In fact you will wonder how it has been possible for anyone to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... account of all that was done; for it was so many and sundry ceremonies that my weak head will not hold them. I know only there was kneeling and courtesying and bowing and censing, and holy water, and a deal more of the like trumpery, wherewith I am no wise compatient [the lost adjective of compassion]; and going up unto the altar, and coming down from it; and five several times was she led thereto, once to offer there her pall of baudekyn and twenty shillings, and once, leaving her crimson velvet mantle behind the travers, she was ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... important role of Sempronius, which proved in every way a better disposition of affairs, for Mills was a plodder rather than a genius. He belonged to the order of actors to whom, in the present day, we apply the charitable word of painstaking, an adjective which shows very plainly the nature of the man, while it likewise allows the critic to escape the charge of unkindness. We all know the painstaking player, and always cheerfully acknowledge his virtues, but who shall blame us if, after giving him the benefit ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... writes a book] writer, author, litterateur[Fr], essayist, journalism; pen, scribbler, the scribbling race; literary hack, Grub-street writer; writer for the press, gentleman of the press, representative of the press; adjective jerker[obs3], diaskeaust[obs3], ghost, hack writer, ink slinger; publicist; reporter, penny a liner; editor, subeditor[obs3]; playwright &c. 599; poet &c. 597. bookseller, publisher; bibliopole[obs3], bibliopolist[obs3]; librarian; bookstore, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... up his shoulders. This is the shrug. The shrug 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, ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... which look like huge hay-cocks,—those, for instance, which rise in the rear of Cap Haytien. The aspect of the higher hills in the interior might mislead an etymologist to derive the word morne from the French adjective which means gloomy, they are so marked by the ravages of the hurricane and earthquake, so ploughed up into decrepit features by the rains, the pitiless vertical heat, the fires, and the landslides. The soft rock cannot preserve its outlines beneath all these influences; its thin covering of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... daughter understood in the adjective applied to her a hint which the wily lady would not have dared to make direct to the high-spirited old soldier, namely, that the continuance of his livelihood might depend on his consent. Betty knew likewise enough of the terrible world of the early eighteenth century to be ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sentiment. After the demise of the duke she had found it so depressing to be invariably addressed with suave deference by every male voice she heard. If the butler could have snorted, or the rector have rapped out an uncomplimentary adjective, the duchess would have felt cheered. As it was, a fixed and settled melancholy lay upon her spirit until she saw in a dealer's list an advertisement of a prize macaw, warranted a grand talker, with a vocabulary ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Anne Boleyn. More's philosophy is best reflected in his Utopia, the description of an ideal commonwealth, modeled on Plato's Republic, and printed in 1516. The name signifies "no place" (Outopos), and has furnished an adjective to the language. The Utopia was in Latin, but More's History of Edward V. and Richard III., written in 1513, though not printed till 1557, was in English. It is the first example in the tongue of a history as distinguished ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... distinguishing excellence of Hawthorne's imaginative writings in the union of profound, keen, psychological development of characters and problems with the most lucid objectivity and a joyous modern realism. Occasionally there appears a light and delicate humor, sometimes hidden in a mere adjective, or little phrase which lights up the gloomiest situation with a gentle ray of hope. Far from unimportant do I rate the charm of his language, its purity, its melody, its graceful flexibility, the wealth of vocabulary, the polish which rarely betrays the touch of the file. After, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... "arretez-vous" The French have, in fact, borrowed "halte" from us or from the German, for their tactics. For the same reason, you want to prune out the unnecessary words from your sentences, and even the classes of words which seem put in to fill up. If, for instance, you can express your idea without an adjective, your sentence is stronger and more manly. It is better to say "a saint" than "a saintly man." It is better to say "This is the truth" than "This is the truthful result." Of course an adjective may be absolutely necessary. But you may often detect extempore speakers in piling in adjectives, ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... work is not compounded because the word color, by usage common in English, has the force of an adjective, and the words are used in their accepted sense. In other languages it would be differently expressed, for example, in French it would be oeuvre, or imprimerie en couleur, work, or, ...
— Compound Words - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #36 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... rule, rounded, and the 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. 'Wuthering' being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... "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, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... avait l'air gne, 'seemed very uneasy.' With the expression avoir l'air the adjective may agree indifferently with the subject or with air when it refers to either; but if it cannot refer to one of them it must agree with the other, e.g. cette pomme a l'air mre, not mr, because ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... and favour] The favour of your leave granted, the kind permission. Two substantives with a copulative being here, as is the frequent practice of our author, used for an adjective and substantive: an adjective sense is given ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a led ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... much of a type, being either shop-girls or lady clerks, with a sprinkling of maid-servants and board school teachers. They were pale-faced, hard-working, over-dressed young women who read Marie Corelli, and considered her "deep"; who had one adjective with which to express appreciation of things, this "artistic"; anything they condemned was spoken of as "awful"; one and all liked to be considered what they called "up-to-date." Marriage they desired more than anything else in the world, not so much that they wished to live in an atmosphere ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... had sought their favorite pine parlor, and were deep in talk. High would be a more descriptive adjective; for Viola Vincent was the principal talker, and her shrill, clear treble quivered up to the very tree-tops, startling the birds in their nests, and sending the squirrels scampering to and fro ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... 217.) is partly right and partly wrong; he adopts the anglicised spelling of the second syllable, although he seems aware that the first syllable ought to be Ard; and he admits also that this word is a substantive, signifying a height, not the adjective high. "A high plain," in Irish, would be, not Ardmagh, or Ardmoy (as it would have been anglicised), but Magh-ard (Anglice Moyard). Great light will be thrown on the whole subject of the etymology of Irish typographical names, when the Index to my friend Mr. O'Donovan's edition of ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... you for the adjective, though. I got the contract from him. By the way, he's not my uncle, of course; he was simply a great friend of my mother's. I inherited the friendship, and in these last five years he and I have somehow ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was only now, when the tide was just on the turn, that the limpets there got a sprinkling. Mr. Tryan was the first Evangelical clergyman who had risen above the Milby horizon: hitherto that obnoxious adjective had been unknown to the townspeople of any gentility; and there were even many Dissenters who considered 'evangelical' simply a sort of baptismal name to the magazine which circulated among the ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... (avowedly based upon Webster's American work, which I cannot at this moment refer to in its original form), the word in question is given both as an adjective and as a verb, and the derivatives "sparsed," "sparsedly," "sparsely," and "sparseness," are also admitted. The reference given for the origin of "sparse" is to the Latin "sparsus, scattered, from spargo;" and the definitions are, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of young pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs [Footnote: China pigs. What adjective would we use now?] have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest periods ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... reasons, and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than a brief seven seeming insufficient, and more, superfluous; again, so mystical a number has a staid propriety, and a due double climax of rise and fall. Now, as to our adjective "classical:" Why not, in heroic drama, have something a-kin to the old Greek chorus, with its running comment upon motives and moralities, somewhat as the mighty-master has set forth in his truly patriotic 'Henry the Fifth?'—However, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... descent from de Bohun. While, if he holds that kind hearts are more than coronets, he has an alternative descent from some medieval le bon. This adjective, used as a personal name, gave also Bunn and Bunce; for the spelling of the latter name cf. Dance for Dans, and Pearce for Piers, the nominative of Pierre (Alternative Origins, Chapter I), which also survives in Pears and Pearson. Swain may go back to the father of ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... the foundation was thus laid 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
... known about him. In the course of time as the original name of the deity began to be thought of entirely as a proper name without any meaning, rather than as a common noun explaining the nature of the god to which it was attached, it became necessary to add to the original name some adjective which would adequately describe the god and do the work which the name by itself had originally done. And as the nature of the various deities grew more complicated along with the increasing complications of daily life, new adjectives were added, each one expressing some ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... An adjective is a word used to qualify, limit, or define a noun, or a word or phrase which has the value of a noun. Nouns are ordinarily very general and indefinite in meaning, for example, man conveys only a very general idea. To make that idea definite ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... instinct thus far could equally well be said of reflex action. A reflex is a native reaction, and it is taken care of by a team of neurones in the way just stated. We might speak of a reflex as "instinctive", using this adjective as equivalent to "native"; but we should shrink for some reason from speaking of the pupillary reflex to light as an instinct, or of the "knee jerk instinct", or the "swallowing instinct", or the "flexion instinct". There is some ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... ones, which only succeeded in making her laugh. The conversation proceeded something as follows: "I am charmed that I have fallen to your Highness." "Equally charmed," I replied; "but my rank does not admit the adjective you do me the honor to apply." "No?" was the answer. "Well, I'll wager you anything that when the butler pours your wine in the first course he will call you Count, and in the next Prince. You see, they become exhilarated as the dinner progresses. But tell me, how many wives ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... outpouring from two or three throats at once instead of one, expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary, although his song lacks the variety and the finish of his caged namesake. What tone of sadness in his music the man found who applied the adjective tristis to his scientific name it is difficult to imagine when listening to the notes that come bubbling up from the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... live in a tree and eat nuts?" she asked, hoping that the use of the adjective "large" might be ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... Maggie?" answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... commentaries, the Northern reader probably needs to be informed that the phrase "peerten up" means substantially 'to spur up', and is an active form of the adjective "peert" (probably a corruption of 'pert'), which is so common in the South, and which has much the signification of "smart" in New England, as e.g., a "peert" horse, in antithesis to a "sorry" — i.e., poor, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... an adverb instead of an adjective. Thus on page 332, speaking of a tame frog on the bar at ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... that what you ask is impossible," said the young man, taking his adjective for granted in a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... new substantial, but mean-looking cloister, on the other side rose the church of polished white marble, a splendid specimen of pure Byzantine architecture, if I dare apply such an adjective to that fantastic middle manner, which succeeded to the style of the fourth century, and was subsequently re-cast by Christians and Moslems into what are called ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... music-case under his arm. He had an eternal interest for Jeremy because, whenever he was mentioned, the phrase was: "Poor little Mr. Dawson!" Why he was to be pitied Jeremy did not know. He looked spruce and bright enough, and generally whistled to himself as he walked; but "poor" was an exciting adjective, and Jeremy, when he passed him, felt a little shudder of drama run down ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... 8vo. containing 500 pages, on the Superstitions, Ghosts, Legends, &c. of all parts of the principality, to be delivered before February 3, 1831. Now when the limited period proposed for the collection of 500 pages of matter, and the above little adjective all is considered, it must appear obvious that such an Herculean labour is not capable of being accomplished by one individual alone.—Imagining it, therefore, to be a matter of impossibility to perform what the very reverend gentleman requires, I cannot consistently ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... bravery, amounting even to rashness, there can be no reasonable question. He is a patriot of the most zealous sort; a hot, impulsive man, who meant what he said, when he started with the gun to go and shoot some of the Rebels qualified with the strong adjective. A thoroughly honest man, too, I think; although some of his remarks are to be taken with considerable allowance. His temper causes him to form immoderate opinions and to make strong statements. "He always goes beyant," said my landlord, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... natives of the adjoining valley. In all these denunciations my companion and I acquiesced, while we extolled the character of the warlike Typees. To be sure our panegyrics were somewhat laconic, consisting in the repetition of that name, united with the potent adjective 'motarkee'. But this was sufficient, and served to conciliate the good will of the natives, with whom our congeniality of sentiment on this point did more towards inspiring a friendly feeling than anything else ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Taiwan (singular and plural) note: example - he or she is from Taiwan; they are from Taiwan adjective: Taiwan ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... ground-hog, a rodent that can climb, destroy vegetables, and bite hard if necessary; dried bats and rats, which the African as well as the Chinese loves, and fish cuits au soleil, preferred when 'high,' to use the mildest adjective. From the walls hung dry goods, red woollen nightcaps and comforters, leopards' and monkeys' skins, and the pelt of an animal which might have ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the condition of our natural resources and what is being done with them to-day. As a people, we have been in the habit of declaring certain of our resources to be inexhaustible. To no other resource more frequently than coal has this stupidly false adjective been applied. Yet our coal supplies are so far from being inexhaustible that if the increasing rate of consumption shown by the figures of the last seventy-five years continues to prevail, our supplies of anthracite coal will last but fifty years and of bituminous ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... 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 meant what ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... 'imperator', but it was first 'empereur'. It will often happen that the substantive has past through this process, having reached us through the intervention of the French; while we have only felt at a later period our want of the adjective also, which we have proceeded to borrow direct from the Latin. Thus, 'people' is indeed 'populus', but it was 'peuple' first, while 'popular' is a direct transfer of a Latin vocable into our English glossary. So too 'enemy' is 'inimicus', but it was ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... forgiven, when they serve to vivify truth, to quicken or to widen the moral judgment, but Macaulay's hardy and habitual recourse to strenuous superlatives is fundamentally unscientific and untrue. There is no more instructive example in our literature than he, of the saying that the adjective is the enemy ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... State, failed and failed lamentably, in spite of the noble lives that were spent in labouring for such a compromise. For it is the whole essence of a Supernatural Religion to be supreme in it own province—the very adjective asserts it; and any endeavour to compromise on this entirely vital point is in itself a denial of the principle, For a while this was not perceived. Men regarded the Christian Church—or rather, that which they took to be the Christian Church—merely, on its earthly side, as an ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... noun Algonkin, meaning an Indian, is also spelled Algonquin. But the adjective from this noun is spelled Algonquian when applied to Indians, and Algonkian when applied to a time or period ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... probably know anything about "Mystics;" know even what the term means: but as it is plainly connected with the adjective "mystical" they probably suppose it to denote some sort of vague, dreamy, sentimental, and therefore useless and undesirable personage. Nor can we blame them if they do so; for mysticism is a form of thought and feeling now all but extinct in England. There ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... this sound advice to his pupil, Guy de Maupassant: "Whatever may be the thing which one wishes to say, there is but one word for expressing it, only one verb to animate it, only one adjective to qualify it. It is essential to search for this word, for this verb, for this adjective, until they are discovered, and to be ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... evidence derived from a more careful analysis of the words of the inscription itself. Niba, which Lassen translated as pomoerium, occurs in three other places, where it certainly cannot mean suburb. It seems to be an adjective meaning splendid, beautiful. Besides, niba is a nominative singular in the feminine, and so is the pronoun hya which precedes, and the two words which follow it—uvaspa and umartiya. Professor Holtzmann ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... shining brown hair. It frizzled like a furze-bush about her tiny face, and curled over her forehead. Her white even teeth showed prettily between her lips. She was not without points, but notwithstanding these it could not be said that she deserved the adjective pretty; and he was already convinced that it was not good looks that prejudiced her in Father Peter's eyes. Nor was the excuse that her singing attracted too much attention an honest one. What Father Peter did not like about the ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... was an elder of the kirk, but because he was a good-tempered, kindly, honest man; or to sum up all in one word—a douce chield—by which word douce is indicated every sort of propriety of behaviour—a virtue greatly esteemed by the Scotch. This adjective was ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... shrilled. "Look! GOOD!" And to emphasize the adjective she indelicately patted the region of her body in which she believed her stomach to be located. "There's a slice for you on the dining-room ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... an instrument of production," they say. That is true. But when, changing the noun into an adjective, they alter the phrase, thus, "The land is a productive instrument," ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... passed the actress' lips when a howl of execration rose from the devotees of Racine, outraged by the author's heresy in permitting an adjective to stray into the second line of verse. The Romanticists, led by Theophile Gautier, answered in withering blasphemies; the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... 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 modifications ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews
... Dante gives to his trilogy and posterity has added the prefix adjective divine. The term comedy however is not used in the modern sense which suggests to us a light laughable drama written in a familiar style. "Comedy" Dante himself explains in his dedication of the poem, "is a certain kind of poetical narrative which differs from all others. ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... regarded with aversion; a word used often in the Bible to denote evil doctrines or ceremonial practices which were impure. An incorrect derivation was ab homine (i.e. inhuman), and the spelling of the adjective "abominable'' in the first Shakespeare folio is always "abhominable.'' Colloquially "abomination'' and "abominable'' are used to mean simply excessive in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as "the castled crag" in relation to the Rhine, since no commonplace mind of the present day acquainted with his works but has fallen back on "the castled crag" to describe Drachenfels or Marksburg or Rheinfels, because, forsooth, its own English is too limited to supply a better adjective. So it is that conventional and inadequate English is perpetuated and individual force and expression are lost because people accept the ideas of others and will not seek language to convey ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... Answer. - There is not. Principle and its idea is one, 465:18 and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni- 466:1 present Being, and His reflection is man and the universe. Omni is adopted from the Latin adjective signifying all. 466:3 Hence God combines all-power or potency, all-science or true knowledge, all-presence. The varied manifesta- tions of Christian Science indicate Mind, never matter, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... his friend the Duke of Rutland. It may, however, be doubted whether the epithet "unconstitutional" could be properly applied to the bill on either ground. There is, indeed, a certain vagueness in the meaning, or at all events in the frequent use of this adjective. Sometimes it is used to imply a violation of the provisions of the Great Charter, or of its later development, the Bill of Rights; sometimes to impute some imagined departure from the principles ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Philadelphian, I am not sure if the nights that succeeded have yet lost for me their novelty. As a consequence, if, in looking back, my days appear to be wholly monopolized by work, my nights seem consecrated as wholly to amusement. The poet's "hideous" is the last adjective I could apply to the night my ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... carefully tailored Abstractions bombinating mellifluously in a void. The precision of logic was in them. The precision of even tempers. The precision of aloof eyes fastened upon finalities. Theoretical radicals. Theoretical conservatives. Theoretical philosophers. Any appellation preceded by the adjective theoretical fitted them snugly. Of contact with the hurdy-gurdy of existence which he as a journalist felt under the ideas of the day, there was none. Life in the minds of the intellectual staff of the New Opinion ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Mrs. Mencke, remarking the adjective for the first time, and looking somewhat annoyed. "How old ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... stretching down amid the sunless roots of Being and Consciousness, mock the plummet; scarce one but could speak with condescending approval of that prodigious intelligence so utterly without congener that our baffled language must coin an adjective to qualify it, and none is so audacious as to say Shakesperian of any other. And yet, in the midst of our impatience, we cannot help thinking also of how much healthy mental activity this one man has been the occasion, how much good he has ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... very 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
... I would not give, For all their plotless plays, One round Flagstaffian adjective Or ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... because, they recall what is pleasing, sublime, pathetic, and set our ideas and emotions flowing in one of these channels. But he does not get fairly on the track of either Alison's or any other decisive and marking adjective, with which to qualify his rapports. He wastes some time, moreover, in trying to bring within the four corners of his definition some uses of the terms of beauty, which are really only applied to objects by way of analogy, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Dun Cow described it, was a bitter pill to him. "Who could have foreseen this?" said he. "It's devilish." We did not ourselves intend our readers to feel it so, or we would not have spent so much time over it. But as regards that one adjective, Mr. Monckton is a better authority than we are. He had a document with him that, skillfully used, might make mischief for a time between these lovers. But he foresaw there could be no permanent result ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... and which, moreover, is in current use, "survival of the best or of the best fitted," ought to be corrected. We must suppress the adjective best. This is simply a persisting relic of that teleology which used to see in Nature and history a premeditated goal to be reached by means of a process of continuous amelioration ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and conflicts of ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... to note how the old adjective "whoreson" bothers M. de Chatelain, who seems to consider it a word of weight and meaning. The "whoreson dead body" of the gravediggers' scene is turned into "le cadavre des enfants de nos meres;" and in like manner that "whoreson mad fellow Yorick" is presented to us as "un fou ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... it. Let those officious neighbors keep on talking; and when they have talked themselves blind, you may tell them, for me, that what money we have is safe," said Marcy, with a good deal of emphasis on the adjective. "If you want to see what mother brought back from the city, go and look at the servants. Every one of them is dressed in a new suit. Now go on and tell me the bad news. I'm getting impatient to ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... 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 ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... men have become specialists in the pecan industry and they know more about it than we do in the North. Consequently they do not need our assistance, even if we were able to give it, and, therefore, without any fear of our being criticised for using the adjective "northern" we can limit our investigations and discussions to nut culture in the northern part of the United States with a full knowledge that our southern brethren can take care of themselves, and, in addition, can render us much valuable assistance ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... carry no charm of womanhood,—nothing that can draw from sweater or general employer more than a sneer at the quality of the labor of those waiting always in numbers far beyond any real demand, until for both the adjective comes to be "superfluous," and employer and employed alike wonder why the earth holds them, and what good there is in an existence made up ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... the use of words in the wrong parts of speech, as a noun for a verb, or an adjective for an adverb. Sometimes newspapers are guilty of such faults; for journalistic English, though pithy, shows here and there traces of its rapid composition. You must look to more leisurely authorities. The speakers and writers on whom you may rely will not say "to burglarize," "to ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... usually bears the name of the buffalo or bear, lightning or some dread natural force. Another of more peaceful nature may be called Swift Bird or Blue Sky. A woman's name usually suggested something about the home, often with the adjective "pretty" or "good," and a feminine termination. Names of any dignity or importance must be conferred by the old men, and especially so if they have any spiritual significance; as Sacred Cloud, Mysterious Night, Spirit Woman, and the like. Such ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... I will, however, admit that this misleading adjective comes as a boon in the discourse I am now meditating. Since, returning to my old theme of the Garden of Life, I find that the misapplication of that word Hanging, and its original literal suggestion, lends ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... (2) the form or essence, (3) the end or design (in the sense of intention) of the act being performed, that is to say, at bottom, the design (in the sense of drawing) of the act supposed accomplished. These three aspects are those of the adjective, substantive and verb, and correspond to the three essential categories of language. After the explanations we have given above, we might, and perhaps we ought to, translate [Greek: eidos] by "view" ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... ever to be absolutely ours (and it is an impoverishing desire that she should be), we have beaten out the golden sentence—the essential she and we in one. But is it so precious after all? A suspicious ring of an adjective drops us on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to exist unnaturally that he has invented the adjective sane. But here and there in the streets of cities walk the damned—creatures denied the miracle of sanity and who move bewilderedly through their scene, staring at the flying days as at the fragments of another world. They are conscious of themselves only as vacuums within which life ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... peoples. LAKI in Malay means a male. The name is possibly connected with the Kayan word TENANG which means correct, or genuine. The termination AN is used in several instances in Malay (though not in Kayan) to make a substantive of an adjective. The name then possibly means — he who is correct or all-knowing; but this is ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Quantitative Infinite with the Qualitative Infinite—the totality of existence with the infinitely perfect One. "Qualitative infinity is a secondary predicate; that is, the attribute of an attribute, and is expressed by the adverb infinitely rather than the adjective infinite. For instance, it is a strict use of language to say, that space is infinite, but it is an elliptical use of language to say, God is infinite. Precision of language would require us to say, God is ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... pleasant to record that this man, who had the moral hardihood to send a profane adjective over the wires, with the name of this noble girl, lost his election. While all other districts went strongly Republican, his was lost by a large majority. When the news came that the Republicans had carried the State, due credit was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Pelian 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.] ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... man can not talk and eat at once. It was true that he was hungry, that hunger is a piquant sauce, and that artist was an adjective too mild to apply to the cook. But the other reason was his chief one. Yasmini ate daintily, as if only ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the forms were too common and therefore too deeply imbedded in language entirely to drop out. The same verbs in the same meaning may sometimes take one case, sometimes another. The participle may also have the character of an adjective, the adverb either of an adjective or of a preposition. These exceptions are as regular as the rules, but the causes of them ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... Roget's[816] Thesaurus gives more than fifty synonyms—colleagues would be the better word—of "celebrated," any one of which might be applied, either in prose or poetry, to Newton or to his works, no one of which comes near to the meaning which Conduitt's adjective immediately suggests. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... democratic at heart, Mackworth laid it on in theatric outward appearance, in true line with the Kansas tradition of a sockless Jerry Simpson, who went without socks, as the adjective implies, and made Congress on that one platform of his sartorial lack ... of William Roscoe Stubbs, who rode into the office of governor partly on the fact that his daughter could make salt-rising bread ... a form of bread-making cultivated by the hardy pioneers of the state, and now ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... addresses the crowd, over and over again, exhorting, apostrophizing, preaching, elevating his soul to the Supreme Being, and with what oratorical combinations! What an academic swell of bombastic cadences, strung together to enforce his tirades! How cunning the even balance of adjective and substantive![31166] From these faded rhetorical flowers, arranged as if for a prize distribution or a funeral oration, exhales a sanctimonious, collegiate odor which he complacently breathes, and which intoxicates him. At this moment, he must certainly be in earnest; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is derived from a Greek verb employed to describe the dawn, and the adjective derived from the Greek verb was applied in classic Greek, to the appearances of the gods bringing help to men. In Christian liturgy, the feast was instituted to celebrate the appearance, the manifestation of ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... returned 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 ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... my mind perfectly miraculous. Already our presence has been infinitely beneficial in allaying animosities and in pointing out abuses.' If it had been the case that the country was tranquil, his adjective would have been singularly appropriate, but not precisely in the sense ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... too, or, as we ought to write it, salvage,[9] is nothing more grim or terrible than one who dwells in sylvis, in the woods—a meaning we can appreciate from our still comparatively pure application of the adjective sylvan. A 'backwoodsman' is therefore the very best original type of a savage! 'Savage' seems to be hesitating between its civil and its ethical applications; 'villain,' 'pagan,' and 'heathen,' however, have become quite absorbed in their moral sense—and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... take in the last chapter, and its comparative giants, with the present and its heroes, ordinary folk, and pygmies, we shall scarcely find more than one great master, Fielding, and one little masterpiece, Vathek, deserving the adjective "consummate." No doubt the obvious explanation—that the hour was not because the man had not come except in this single case—is a good one: but it need not be left in the bare isolation of its fatalism. There ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... ravine to the other are of great interest. This must have been a prosperous place at one time. The whitish clay soil has been quaintly corroded by the action of water, and one finds curious grottoes and deep, contorted, natural channels. A mosque and several impressive buildings—the adjective only applies when you do not get too near them—stand high up against the cliff side. The whole ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... persons and even professional philosophers speak of reason as if it were a jewel that can be placed in a drawer or in a human skull, they are simply myth-makers. It is precisely in this ever recurring elevation of an adjective or a verb to a noun, of a predicate to a subject, that this disease of language, as I have called mythology, has its deepest roots. Here lies the genesis of the majority of gods, not by any means, as it is generally believed ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... chic is always a little different. Not different in being behind fashion, but always slightly apart from it. "Chic" is a borrowed adjective, but there is no English word to take the place of "elegant" which was destroyed utterly by the reporter or practical joker who said "elegant dresses," and yet there is no synonym that will express the individuality of beautiful taste combined ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... be reckon'd the placing the Adjective after the Substantive, the Transposition of Words, the turning the Adjective into a Substantive, with several other Foreign Modes of Speech which this Poet has naturalized to give his Verse the greater Sound, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... others that he will walk three miles for it. Surely every one will admit that this is lamentable. It is not even a good mixture, for I used to try it occasionally; and if there is one man in London who knows tobaccoes it is myself. There is only one mixture in London deserving the adjective superb. I will not say where it is to be got, for the result would certainly be that many foolish men would smoke more than ever; but I never knew anything to compare to it. It is deliciously mild yet full of fragrance, and it never burns the tongue. If you try it once you ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... invert this order, and to express what is unimportant by some word indicating the mere fashion or external manner of an object as opposed to its substance. This is effected by the word modal or modern, as the adjective from modus, a fashion or manner; and in that sense Shakspeare employs the word. Thus, Cleopatra, undervaluing to Caesar's agent the bijouterie which she has kept back from inventory, and which her treacherous steward had betrayed, describes ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... apron should be napron (Fr. 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 ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... two pieces L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, and Lycidas. He was probably in the early stage of acquiring the language, when he superscribed the two first poems with their Italian titles. For there is no such word as "Penseroso," the adjective formed from "Pensiero" being "pensieroso". Even had the word been written correctly, its signification is not that which Milton intended, viz. thoughtful, or contemplative, but anxious, full of cares, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... been looked upon as an adjective; and the passage has been rendered Talis Tirynthius indefessus, which is scarce sense. Callimachus was very knowing in mythology, and is here speaking of the Cyclopian God Acmon, whom he makes the [Greek: theos propulaios], ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... a staff officer, when Napoleon gave directions for a daring plan. "Impossible!" thundered the great commander, "impossible is the adjective of fools!" ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... literature has laboriously mastered the adjective, wherever it may be in relation to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with all his three livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own—he remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not making any merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... call my works "symphonies," "arrangements," "harmonies," and "nocturnes"? I know that many good people think my nomenclature funny and myself "eccentric." Yes, "eccentric" is the adjective they ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... often called him "old Stewart," and others "ce vieux Stewart." Indeed, at a first glance he might have passed for anything up to sixty, for his face was a good deal more lined and wrinkled than it should have been at his age. Ste. Marie's adjective had been rather apt. The man had a desiccated appearance. Upon examination, however, one saw that the blood was still red in his cheeks and lips, and, although his neck was thin and withered like an old man's, his brown eyes still held their fire. The hair was almost gone from the ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... blundered as hard and as heavily as it was possible to blunder; going to the wrong people; despising the subtly powerful; paying court to the more advertised and less controlling of the English public men, and in a word behaving themselves after that fashion for which we have coined the adjective "newspaper." ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... field 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 ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... 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 art, without the stultifying influence of commercialism. Many ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... perhaps he's crossed to Akimiski Island. The fleet have been mostly round that way this week past. Shall I show you round a bit, sir? I'm the acting manager, formerly sole manager." Oily Dave contrived to throw a withering emphasis on the latter adjective, and roiled up his eyes in a manner meant to imply injured innocence, which, however, only expressed ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... the Treasury on "Finance," the art critic of a Philadelphia paper on "Raphael," and as a fitting climax to the course we were to listen to the famous Armenian scholar and philosopher, the Reverend Valerian Harassan in a discourse on "Life." The adjective is not mine. I had never heard of the famous Armenian until Doctor Todd in chapel announced his coming, and made it clear that it was a special privilege to listen to the eloquent preacher, and that we ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the ill-favoured and uncouth, so he liked to make men feel that even in a disordered intellect all kindly virtues might find a home, and a happy one. M. Taine may call this "horrible" if he likes. I think myself it would be possible to find a better adjective. ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... of obscure origin, but may have been an adjective meaning wild. Elk is derived from the same root as eland, and the history of the latter word is an interesting one. It meant a sufferer, and was applied by the Teutons to the elk of the Old World on account of the awkward gait and stiff movements of this ungainly animal. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... smooth stem, which rises from one to two feet high in the woods throughout a southerly and westerly range. As several other skullcaps have distinctly saw-edged leaves, this plant might have been given a more distinctive adjective, thinks one who did not have ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... 20. horribili. Here the adjective is made emphatic by being put before its noun; in 4, 14 the same effect is gained by putting ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thing I ever liked about Frances Andrews was that she got into bigger scrapes than I did and made my misdemeanors seem small in comparison. She was clever enough, I'll grant you that, but peculiar is a kind adjective to use in describing that girl. Why, Molly, she was the most unpopular girl at Wellington. Even her own class did not stand by her. She was crooked, as crooked ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... 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 colour ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... French 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 ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... out on the distant sacred mountain, Fujiyama, which is revered by all Japan. Sometimes the clouds rested lovingly on its crest, and sometimes almost veiled it, but twice we saw the entire snow-covered space and no adjective can describe the matchless glory of that view. Poets have sung of it, and legend has woven fantastic tales around it, which the natives ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... is said to be a corruption of Mondongue, the name of an African coast tribe who had the reputation of being cannibals. A Mondongue slave on the plantations was generally feared by his fellow-blacks of other tribes; and the name of the cannibal race became transformed into an adjective to denote anything formidable or terrible. A blow with a stick made of the wood described being greatly dreaded, the term was applied first to the stick, and afterward to ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... from one another either in mineral or chemical composition. Thus the terms Trachytic porphyry, Trachytic tuff, etc., merely refer to the same rock under different conditions of mechanical aggregation or crystalline development which would be more correctly expressed by the use of the adjective, as porphyritic trachyte, etc., but as these terms are so commonly employed it is considered advisable to direct the student's ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... have used the word, it occurs to me that "childlike" is an adjective the best applied to this man, in spite of his portliness, and his ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... was being reduced, but perhaps not with the same rapidity as at first when Mr Barelli was at the top of enthusiastic—if the adjective was applicable—vigor. Oftener and oftener and oftener he paused to sharpen his implement and I thought the cropped shocks were becoming smaller and smaller. As the movement of the scythe swept the guillotined grass backward, the trailing stolons entangled themselves with the uncut stand, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... 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, Russian grammar would compel any one wishing to Russianise ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... 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 ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... gathered in such a manner is that it be reproduced exactly as first delivered. The man who told a woman that a critic had pronounced her singing "heavenly" had good intentions but he was not entirely accurate in changing to that nattering term the critic's actual adjective "unearthly." The frequency with which alleged statements published in the daily press are contradicted by the supposed utterers indicates how usual such misrepresentation is, though it may be honestly ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... perfected, perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective [kije, kise], which they applied to the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Thesaurus gives more than fifty synonyms—colleagues would be the better word—of "celebrated," any one of which might be applied, either in prose or poetry, to Newton or to his works, no one of which comes near to the meaning which Conduitt's adjective immediately suggests. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... sound, the odd creature that goes Into Hottentots' traps when he follows his nose: But in sense 't is an adjective, short, spick and span, Well hated by Hunkers and kept under ban. My second it qualifies, also my third, Though a high fen between can't be crossed nor be stirred. Now my next, like a swindler when cleaned out of tin, Has always its tick, and takes most people in. Amphibious its habit, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... through his life he never wasted an hour on controversy. He had no time, he said. But once when a rival made a particularly nasty attack upon him, he named a new plant after him, adding the descriptive adjective detestabilis—the detestable so-and-so. On the whole, he had the best of it; for the ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... word, wherein a cab-horse differs from the fifty others that follow or precede him.'... Whatever may be the thing which one wishes to say, there is but one word for expressing it; only one verb to animate it, but one adjective to qualify it. It is essential to search for this verb, for this adjective, until they are discovered, and never to be satisfied with ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... could see her face. Black hair that shone with a fine silken lustre grew thickly about a white forehead. Brows that lay like smooth touches of satin swept in two fine lines above gay, kind brown eyes. Her smile merited the adjective "sweet" more than any Sylvia had ever seen; but the boatman's next words ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... sonatas are not 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
... must not be torn from our kindly associations with 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. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... peculiarity of its construction, it makes a kind of humming noise when it is drawn along; hence, the origin of the adjective humdrum. ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... ill indeed.' The young gentleman then shakes his head, and looks very desponding (he has been smiling perpetually up to this time), and after a short pause, gives his glove a great wrench at the wrist, and says, with a strong emphasis on the adjective, 'Good morning, good morning.' And making a great number of bows in acknowledgment of several little messages to his sister, walks backward a few paces, and comes with great violence against a lamp-post, knocking ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... mere subjects and citizens of their own state, may have had conferred upon themselves, or inherit, titles of dignity and privilege in a foreign one. We usually (as in the case of the Rothschilds, &c.) acknowledge their highest title in address, but without any adjective or epithets to qualify with honor, such as "honorable;" as is the case, too, with doctors of foreign universities, whose title from courtesy we also admit, though this does not place them on a footing with those of England. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... his marriage with Anne Boleyn. More's philosophy is best reflected in his Utopia, the description of an ideal commonwealth, modeled on Plato's Republic, and printed in 1516. The name signifies "no place" (Outopos), and has furnished an adjective to the language. The Utopia was in Latin, but More's History of Edward V. and Richard III., written in 1513, though not printed till 1557, was in English. It is the first example in the tongue of a history as distinguished ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... a copula, a bridge, a link, a word connecting sentences? That is undoubtedly its use, but what is its origin?" Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this question satisfactorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians, "familiar as his garter," when he said, "It is the common pronoun, adjective, or participle, that, with the noun, thing or proposition, implied, and the particular example following it." So he thought, and so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and writers upon grammar. Mr. Windham, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... waiting secretary. He groped in the chambers of his imagery for some superlative adjective to express his emotion before this colossal display of wealth. But his ample vocabulary had faded quite. He could only shake his head and give vent to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... at the masses of blond hair drawn softly back from the high round forehead, at the large blue eyes beneath the long sweep of darker lashes, at the exquisite curve of the lips and the firmly modeled chin. Yes; Jim had seen truly; the ordinary adjective "pretty"—applicable alike to a length of ribbon, a gown, or a girl of the commoner type—could not be applied to Lydia Orr. She was beautiful to the discerning eye, and ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... the laminitis following feeding on new oats that has caused us to apply to the food the adjective 'irritating.' Here, more often than not, the peristaltic action of the bowels is found to be abnormally in evidence, and the excessive use of the diet is always accompanied by a more or less fluid discharge of the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... is not ever to be absolutely ours (and it is an impoverishing desire that she should be), we have beaten out the golden sentence—the essential she and we in one. But is it so precious after all? A suspicious ring of an adjective drops ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pewter vessels glinting down from the dresser, than I heard the voice of Miss Irma asking to be informed if I had come. To Agnes Anne she called me "your big brother," and I hardly ever remember being so proud of anything as of that adjective. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... example, if I have read one, I have read twenty letters, addressed to newspapers, denouncing the name of a great quarter in London, Mary-le-bone, as ludicrously ungrammatical. The writers had learned (or were learning) French; and they had thus become aware, that neither the article nor the adjective was right. True, not right for the current age, but perfectly right for the age in which the name arose; but, for want of elder French, they did not know that in our Chaucer's time both were right. Le was then the article feminine as well as masculine, and bone was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... her earlier work, is heavy reading, the account given by "Old Age" in her "Four Ages of Man," of what he has seen and known of Puritan affairs, being in somewhat more lively strain. But lively was an adjective to which Mistress Anne had a rooted objection. Her contemporaries indulged in an occasional solemn pun, but the only one in her writings is found in the grim turn on Laud's name, in the "Dialogue" just quoted, in which is also a sombre jest on the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Note 3. This adjective also was peculiar to the peerage and the Royal Family. It was given to every relation except between husband and wife: and the French beau-pirt for father-in-law is doubtless derived from it. Nay, it was conferred on the Deity; and "Fair Father Jesu Christ" was by no means an uncommon title ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... abbey built by St. Etheldreda, and at this fair a famous "fairing" was "St. Audrey's laces." St. Audrey, or Etheldreda, in the days of her youthful vanity was very fond of wearing necklaces and jewels. "St. Audrey's laces" became corrupted into "Tawdry laces"; hence the adjective has come to be applied to all cheap and showy ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Italian, and look at the word nicchia. Both from Alberti and from Baretti we find it to bear the meaning of "a charge, a duty, or an employment;" and if before this word we place the adjective piccola, we have piccola nicchia, "a small task, or trifling service to be performed." Now I think no one can fail to see the identity of the meanings of the expressions piccola nicchia and pique-nique; but it remains to show how the words themselves may be identical. Those who have ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... not like the adjective. "I am one of them," wondering what the effect of this admission would be. "I am not English, but of the brother race. Forgive me if I have imposed on you, but it was your fault. You said that I was English, and I was too lonesome to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... of languages exhibits a fine and bold peculiarity—a double declension of its Adjectives, depending on a condition of syntax. The Anglo-Saxon adjective, in its ordinary (or, as grammarians have called it, Indefinite) declension, makes the nominative plural for all the genders in E; and this remains as the regular plural termination of the adjective to Chaucer. Thus we have, in the more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... he had learned no more than forty words of this language, but believes that there are perhaps thirty more. Much however is expressed, as he says, by mere intonation. Anger, for instance; and scores of allied words, such as terrible, frightful, kill, whether noun, verb or adjective, are expressed, he says, by a mere growl. Nor is there any word for "Why,'' but queries are signified by the ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... flabber. Fat; puffed out. A very rare adjective, perhaps only here. The N.E.D. quotes this passage with a reference to the adjective 'flaberkin' puffed out, puffy, and a suggestion that it is akin to the substantive 'flab' ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... we live. Of course serenity does not always go with genuineness. We must say of Dr. Johnson that he was genuine, and yet we know that the stormy tyrant of the Turk's Head Tavern was not serene. Carlyle was genuine (though that is not quite the first adjective we should choose to describe him), but of serenity he allowed cooks and cocks and every modern and every ancient sham to deprive him. Serenity is a product, no doubt, of two very different things, namely, vision and digestion. Not the eye only, but the courses of the blood must ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... speak of KINDS of pleasure is to mean KINDS OF EXPERIENCE which have the common attribute of pleasantness. In themselves all kinds of experience that are equally pleasant are equally worthy; there is no meaning to that adjective as applied to intrinsic immediate good. "Worthy" and "unworthy" apply to experience only when we begin ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... should be the law of every language. Thus, having adopted the adjective fraternal, it is a root which should legitimate fraternity, fraternation, fraternization, fraternism, to fratenate, fraternize, fraternally. And give the word neologism to our language, as a root, and it should give us its ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... that I am" and the manifold modes of manifestation can only exist in reference to it. The eternal ignorance consists in this, that as there is but one substantive, but numberless adjectives, each adjective is capable of designating the All. Viewed in time the most permanent object or mood of the great knower at any moment represents the knower, and in a sense binds it with limitations. In fact, time itself is one of ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... cricket or hunting. He was therefore troubled by an unwonted confusion of feelings. For he felt that his ordinary vocabulary—made up of such substantives as lark, cheek, and bounder, and the comprehensive adjective "rum"—fell short of coping with this extraordinary speech. He even felt that he might possibly have answered in a different way, but for that unspeakable offer of money. And the rumble of Magin's bass ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... observe parallelism in form. (The stranger seemed courteous in his conduct and to have a solicitude for my welfare.) Although this sentence is grammatically correct, the shift in structure from the adjective and its phrase to the infinitive phrase leads to confusion in thought. How much clearer and smoother this rendering: (The stranger seemed courteous in his conduct ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... self-delusion, for he continued: 'All things considered, the present tranquillity of this country is to my mind perfectly miraculous. Already our presence has been infinitely beneficial in allaying animosities and in pointing out abuses.' If it had been the case that the country was tranquil, his adjective would have been singularly appropriate, but not precisely in the sense he ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... The moment he saw a possibility of a money return, he even began to plume himself upon his liberality and sagacity in having educated her. "I've spared nothin'—Sam—in giving her a——" he searched an instant for a suitable adjective, "a commodious education." The phrase pleased him so well that he smoked for awhile contemplatively, so as not to mar the effect of ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... to be found every day. In the past twenty years, 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 apply ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... kirkyard, and there is only one historical instance in which judgment was reversed. It was a strong proof of Lachlan Campbell's individuality that he impressed himself twice on the parish, and each time with a marked adjective. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... only an old saying about sailors. The children do it for fun when we're becalmed sometimes. Well, there's no signs of it yet. I'll tell you what I'll do, children. While you're whistling up the wind, I'll write an adjective ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... an aim and intelligent activity is enough to show its value—its function in experience. We are only too given to making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." We forget that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be conscious is to be aware of what we are about; conscious signifies the deliberate, observant, planning traits of activity. Consciousness is nothing which we have which gazes idly on the scene around one or which ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... circumstance of their being very much in nature's hands with Duchess Susan, of whom it might be said that her character was good, yet all the more alive to the temptations besetting the Spring season. He allied Chloe's adjective to a number of epithets equally applicable to nature and to women, according to current ideas, concluding: 'Count, they call your Caseldy at his lodgings. "The Count he is out for an airing." He is counted out. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... something so scientific and so logical as Esperanto. Take, for instance, analysis. I will not say it is difficult but I will say it is impossible to analyze an English word, because every word can be so many things. It can generally be an adjective, a noun, a verb, a preposition, a conjunction, and an interjection, that is, the same word, without any structural change, so that it is difficult for a child to discriminate and label the word. Take ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... always have been decent reasons, and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than a brief seven seeming insufficient, and more, superfluous; again, so mystical a number has a staid propriety, and a due double climax of rise and fall. Now, as to our adjective "classical:" Why not, in heroic drama, have something a-kin to the old Greek chorus, with its running comment upon motives and moralities, somewhat as the mighty-master has set forth in his truly patriotic 'Henry the Fifth?'—However, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of Louis XVI. are fond of speaking of him as "virtuous." The adjective is singularly ill-chosen. His faults were of the will more than of the understanding. To have a vague notion of what is right, to desire it in a general way, and to lack the moral force to do it,—surely this is the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... 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 his millions would not offset. As regarded his other qualities, his ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... gradually came to use the English language with artistic effect and finish. His style is direct and energetic, and it shows his determination to say a thing as simply and as effectively as possible. One of the rules in Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar is, "As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out." He followed this rule. Some have complained that the great humorist's mind, like Emerson's, often worked in a disconnected fashion, but this trait has been exaggerated in the case of both. Mark Twain has certainly made a stronger impression ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... 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, Russian grammar ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Tennyson. Sometimes, as in The Sicilian Hermit, we get merely the metre of Locksley Hall without its music, merely its fine madness and not its fine magic. Still, elsewhere there is good work, and Caliban in East London has a great deal of power in it, though we do not like the adjective 'knockery' even ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... English language, the Daisy has had little influence, though some have derived "lackadaisy" and "lackadaisical" from the Daisy, but there is, certainly, no connection between the words. Daisy, however, was (and, perhaps, still is) a provincial adjective in the eastern counties. A writer in "Notes and Queries" (2nd Series, ix. 261) says that Samuel Parkis, in a letter to George Chalmers, dated February 16, 1799, notices the following provincialisms: "Daisy: remarkable, extraordinary excellent, as 'She's a Daisy lass to work,' i.e., 'She ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Novellae is a 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... that my companion was a man of 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
... Clarke? Did you ever try to find anything by the help of Ayscough, when that was the best guide to be had? If you have, you remember your teasing search for the principal word in the passage,—how day seemed a less likely key than jocund, and yet, as this was only an adjective, perhaps tiptoe were better; or, if you pitched upon mountain-tops, it was a problem with which half of the compound to begin the search. Consider that Mrs. Clarke is no dry word-critic, to revel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... works which a well- brought-up public ought to know by heart. You will do well therefore to reproduce them often. There is no criticism admissible on this subject; and, if you absolutely exact it that I should make one at all, it would only be on the adjective "celebrated," appended to the Schumann Quintet, which would do without it without disadvantage. Pardon ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... which they modify; and, by the help of a process no less simple than ingenious and profound, he has made the deaf and dumb comprehend the most arduous difficulty, the nature of abstraction; he has initiated them in the art of generalizing ideas by presenting to them the adjective in the noun, as the quality is in the object, and the quality subsisting alone and out of the object, having no support but in the mind, for him who considers it, and but in the abstract noun for him who reads the expression of it. He has, in like manner, separated ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the summits are, as a rule, rounded, and the 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 Sredna Gora or "Middle Mountains" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... presented with the problem of interpreting the grammatical value of the word driving in the sentence, "The boy driving the horse is very noisy," he is compelled to apply to its interpretation the ideas noun, adjectival relation, and adjective, and also the ideas object, objective relation, and verb. In this way the child secures the mental elements which he may organize into the new experience, or knowledge (participle), and thus gain control of the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... some more of us, wondered vaguely where the adjective applied, especially on a gloomy evening without candles, but she ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... make a sad abuse of the adjective little; I am quite aware of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little, finical; affected,—all Japan is contained, both physically and morally, in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which, like ours, is becoming sated with cleverness, it is a delight to read the unvarnished story of Champlain. In saying that the adjective is ever the enemy of the noun, Voltaire could not have levelled the shaft at him, for few writers have been more sparing in their use of adjectives or other glowing words. His love of the sea and of the forest was profound, but he is never emotional in his expressions. Yet with all his soberness ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... my gig-lamps," puffed Beetle, emerging. "Wasn't it glorious? Didn't I 'Eric' 'em splendidly? Did you spot my cribs from King? Oh, blow!" His countenance clouded. "There's one adjective I didn't use—obscene. Don't know how I forgot that. It's one of ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... in the fourth group was named by Bancroft the "adjective" group, because they require the aid of a second body, named the mordant, to properly develop and to fix the colour of the dye-stuff on the wool. It is sometimes known as the "mordant dye-stuff" class, and ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... contributor in brief fiction to the Contrary Magazine; a beauty of the tea-after-tennis type; the best dancer in St. Swithin's Lenten Circle, and the most romantic creature that ever took up the cause of Progress with a large P. It would not be fair to call her strong-minded, because the adjective seems to imply some kind of a limitation in her strength. She was even stronger in her impulses than in her mind; original in every direction; in fact, originality was a kind of convention with her. It was wonderful how ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... make the plurals poveren and sturnen. In the phrase, "o sy[gh]te[gh] so quyke[gh]"[53] (those sights so living), the -e[gh] ( -es) is a mark of the plural, very common in Southern writers of the fourteenth century, and employed as a plural inflexion of the adjective until a very late period in ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... Grammar doth us teach, That it hath nine parts of speech;— Article, adjective, and noun, Verb, conjunction, and pronoun, With preposition, and adverb, And interjection, as I've heard. The letters are just twenty-six, These form all words when rightly mix'd. The vowels are a, e, o, i, With u, and sometimes w ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... book published the present season which will more delight the wide-awake, adventure-loving boy. It is, to borrow the adjective from the title, ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... account of phenomena which had been seen; it was accompanied by measures, and the computations based on these led to heights and dimensions for mountains on Venus which were, to say the least, extravagant. The adjective will not seem too strong when we say that the very existence of the mountains themselves ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... searched it in vain for a trace of the suffering Machin. It was, however, full of typographical traces of himself and his family. The description of the reception was disturbingly journalistic, which adjective, for Mr. Prohack, unfortunately connoted the adjective vulgar. All the wrong people were in the list of guests, and all the decent quiet people were omitted. A value of twenty thousand pounds was put upon the necklace, contradicting another part of the report ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... it perfectly, beautiful, wonderfully lovely?" cried Jessie, getting more excited with each adjective, and when the others laughed merrily at the extravagance of her description, she added, defiantly, "I don't care; it is! I'll leave it ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... ever quite equalled the combined simplicity and majesty of this phrase, he has constantly come close to it. The Suspiria are full of such passages—there are even some who prefer Savannah la Mar to the Ladies of Sorrow. Beautiful as it is I do not, because the accursed superfluous adjective appears there. The famous passages of the Confessions are in every one's memory; and so I suppose is the Vision of Sudden Death. Many passages in The Caesars, though somewhat less florid, are hardly less good; and the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... enough to embrace the legitimate desires of a civilized and enlightened people determined in all their relations to pursue a conscientious and religious life. We can not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases. It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much disturbed by the thought of either isolation ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... they differ from one another either in mineral or chemical composition. Thus the terms Trachytic porphyry, Trachytic tuff, etc., merely refer to the same rock under different conditions of mechanical aggregation or crystalline development which would be more correctly expressed by the use of the adjective, as porphyritic trachyte, etc., but as these terms are so commonly employed it is considered advisable to direct the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... 'seemed very uneasy.' With the expression avoir l'air the adjective may agree indifferently with the subject or with air when it refers to either; but if it cannot refer to one of them it must agree with the other, e.g. cette pomme a l'air mre, not mr, because ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... a plain sensible girl,' exclaimed the old gentleman the moment I entered the room.' (You will notice I put no comma after 'plain.' I am taking it he did not intend one. You can employ one adjective to qualify another, can't you?) 'And I will put it to her, What difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... leader— something that flowed like water from a smooth-running pump. This I admit I could never manage to produce. Mr. Curtis's standard of style was solely governed by the question of the repetition of the same word. It was an unforgivable sin to repeat a substantive, adjective, or verb without an intervening space of at least four inches. This, of course, leads to that particular form of "journalese" in which a cricket-ball becomes a "leathern missile" and so forth. Apropos ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... "commercial" banks (as the adjective indicates) serve mainly the special needs of the commercial elements of the community—business men borrowing for short terms to carry out particular transactions. Loans made on short-time commercial paper (quick assets) are very suitable to the needs of a bank that has its liabilities ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... Garrick speak 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, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... Kshurupras, i.e., arrows sharp as razors, (2) Vatsadantas, i.e., arrows having heads like the calf-tooth, (3) Vipathas, i.e., long arrows having stout bodies, (4) Narachas, long arrows; Ardhachandrabhais, i.e., looking like shafts furnished with heads of the form of the half-moon; it is an adjective qualifying Narachis, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Fancy having orthodox unorthodox words! I remember one day getting into a third-class smoking carriage on the Metropolitan Railway about one o'clock, and finding it full of rough working men. Everything they said was seasoned with one incredibly stupid adjective, and no doubt they thought they were very desperate characters. At last I asked them not to say that word again. One forthwith asked me 'What the ——'—I really cannot quote these puerilities—'what the idiotic cliche ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... another source of the poet's obscurity; that in aiming at condensation he neglects the need that there is for care in the placing of words that are grammatically ambiguous. English swarms with words that have one identical form for substantive, adjective, and verb; and such a word should never be so placed as to allow of any doubt as to what part of speech it is used for; because such ambiguity or momentary uncertainty destroys the force of the sentence. Now our author not only neglects this essential propriety but he would seem ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... to-day on the possibility that he may be an enemy to-morrow. And there is a wide and deeply-rooted prejudice in favour of holding the imperatives of integrity on the same terms. Our very language in this direction betrays us. We talk about "smart" business men, "smart" professional men, and by the adjective we may mean men who, though "keen," are yet honourable in their methods; or we may mean men who are just as scrupulous as the law of the land or the arbitrary criterions of society oblige them to be. And young men feel the impress of this widely-shared ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... draw your sister's younger brother into danger," Roger began. His adjective was tactfully chosen. "I am almost equally reluctant to implicate you in what seems likely to confront us, because you are an old friend of mine and a good deal younger than I am. But when the time comes to go home, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... as his compeers irreverently termed him, was, by common consent of her Majesty's Guards, a "good fellow." Whether the St. James' Street definition of that adjective be the perfect one or not, we will not stay to inquire; but in the Guards' club-house it meant this: that Scoutbush had not an enemy in the world, because he deserved none; that he lent, and borrowed not; gave, and asked not again; envied not; hustled not; slandered ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... interesting," she remarked, in a reserved tone, which, nevertheless, sent the colour mounting slowly up her friend's sensitive cheek. They both understood that no more commendatory adjective than "interesting" was to be ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... 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 their ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Latin, the substantive deliciae, delight, pleasure, enjoyment; and the adjective (derived from the same root, and guiding us to the original meaning of the substantive) delicatus, which amongst other meanings, has that of tender, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... also called a round stone 'clogh crene', where the variation is merely dialectic. Hence, too, our crane-berries,—i.e., round berries,—from this Celtic adjective 'crene', round. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Horse, it was considered quite impossible to convey the wires over sea, but now we are at a loss to comprehend where the difficulty lay! So wags the world. Tempora mutantur—excuse me for quoting the Etruscan. What would we do without the Atalantic telegraph? (Pundit says Atlantic was the ancient adjective.) We lay to a few minutes to ask the cutter some questions, and learned, among other glorious news, that civil war is raging in Africa, while the plague is doing its good work beautifully both in Yurope and Ayesher. Is it not truly remarkable that, before the magnificent light shed upon philosophy ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 'ripping,' isn't it?" he said, smiling. "But whatever the adjective, the fact is the same. Lady Herenden's dinners are always the refinement ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... originally excited; or thirdly, of the operations of our minds, which are termed reflex ideas by metaphysical writers; or lastly, they are the names of our ideas of parts or properties of objects; and are termed by grammarians nouns adjective. ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... oak (Sanskrit, daru, a tree), and da, good. It is worth remarking that this idea survives in the personal name, Holyoak; for who ever heard of "Holyelm," or "Holyash," or a similar form compounded of the adjective and the name of any other tree than the oak. If there is an exception it is in the name of the holly. The Cornish Celtic word for holly was Celyn, from Celli (or Kelli), a grove; literally a grove-one; so that the holly was probably planted as a grove or screen round the sacred oak. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... heard when he returned from St. Louis, a heavy-hearted, dispirited man. Two recent failures had borne heavily upon him. If last winter had been dull, there was no adjective to apply to this. His first step was to mortgage Hope Terrace. He had deeded it to his wife, unincumbered; but now it appeared his only chance of salvation. Mrs. Lawrence made a feeble protest at first, and demanded that Fred should be sent for, but there was no time. He met his pressing ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... and Doctor and Mrs. Strong in the back seat. Ten days afterward Marian's head of beautiful dark hair was muslin white. Now it framed a face of youth and beauty with peculiar pathos. "Striking" was perhaps the one adjective ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... as he averaged ten hours a day steady work, and when the spell was on him would pass night after night at his study table, rewriting, cutting, modelling his play, never contented, always striving after a more expressive adjective, a more harmonious or original rhyme, casting aside a month’s finished work without a second thought when he judged that another form expressed his ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... way intended by the writer; and in doing this he can receive assistance in various ways. Partly by the inflection of the words; partly by their arrangement; partly also by punctuation. As to inflection, we see in Latin an adjective and a substantive standing together, yet differing in gender, in number, or in case; and we know that the adjective does not qualify the substantive. But English has not the numerous inflections of Latin. More scrupulous ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... "unconventional" on Mr. Moore's objection that he would be at the mercy of Mr. Sims' judgment if the word was retained. "The Independent Theatre" played the play and Mr. Sims paid the money. It was perhaps just as well for Mr. Moore that the adjective was withdrawn, for the play was little less conventional than "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" or "Sowing the Wind," to mention two successes of that year by play-makers that took their art a little more seriously than Mr. Sims. In a way, too, "The Strike ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... sometimes that it may have referred to some band of people, perhaps to these very gipsies in the plantation. I do not know whether the spotted handkerchiefs which so many of them wear over their heads might have suggested the strange adjective which she used." ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... course absolutely inexcusable, for it offends against good taste as well as good rhetoric; but the employment of words in a careless or perverted meaning is equally condemnable. It is also a mistake to use too many adjectives, to throw every adjective and adverb into the superlative degree, and in other ways to exaggerate every expression which you use. Much of this misuse of words is due to ignorance, but more to carelessness or laziness; in any case you can detect your faults if you seek for them, and you should take immediate ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... title of the work, in manuscript, from which the grammatical notices have been elaborated is Arte y Vocabulario de la lingua Dohema, Heve Eudeva; the adjective termination of the last and first name being evidently Spanish, as is also the plural terminations used elsewhere in some of the modifications of those words. We have only the definition of Heve with certainty given as "people;" to the word "nation" in the vocabulary, there being ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... bright," he said contemptuously. "The average American is bright. If one prefixes no stronger adjective than that to his name, he accomplishes very little in life. Don't think me a pessimist," he added, smiling. "All over the country the Schools and colleges are instilling the principles of conservatism and practical politics on the old lines, and therein lies hope. I feel sure I shall ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... quite original. I told my cousin, Thayer, that if she could hail you with a new adjective, I should present you as a candidate for a ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... I read and sung hymns to them; they were very much surprised that I was not afraid to sleep alone in such a big room—said Miss Juliana and Miss Lynch, Mass' Sam and Mass' Willie and their Mamma used to sleep there. These people do not use any feminine adjective, and their "hims" are very confusing sometimes. Harriet walked down to the house behind me from school the other day for some sugar for a sick baby, and I asked her the name of a bird that flew across our path. ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... so charming as her father," replied Lady Laura, with whom that favourite adjective served for everything in the way of praise. To her the Pyramids and Niagara, a tropical thunderstorm, a mazourka by Chopin, and a Parisian bonnet, were all alike charming. "I suppose solidity isn't so nice in a girl," she went on, laughing; "but ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... players must describe the minister's cat, going right through the alphabet to do so. "The minister's cat is an angry cat," says one; "an anxious cat," says another; and so on until everyone has used an adjective beginning with "A." Then they take the "B's." "The minister's cat is a big cat," ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... (fate), Sa'd (fortune), Ru[d.][a] (favor), Wadd (love), Man[a]f (height), 'Au[d.] (time). Whether these are all abstract terms is doubtful. Wadd means also 'lover,' divine friend or patron. Sa'd occurs as adjective 'fortunate,' is the appellation of certain stars, and the god Sa'd is identified by an Arab poet with a certain rock[1190]—the rock is doubtless an old local divinity. Ru[d.][a] is found apparently only as a divine name (in Palmyrene ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... of Rutland. It may, however, be doubted whether the epithet "unconstitutional" could be properly applied to the bill on either ground. There is, indeed, a certain vagueness in the meaning, or at all events in the frequent use of this adjective. Sometimes it is used to imply a violation of the provisions of the Great Charter, or of its later development, the Bill of Rights; sometimes to impute some imagined departure from the principles which guided the framers of ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... it means anything at all; it may be made an adjective or a verb, or almost any part of speech, to serve a purpose or express a thought. Here it meant that there was to be no fooling at the helm, that she was to be steered as by Gunter himself. "Full an' by," was the word. "Full an' by, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... of which one small touch of color burned like a flame. And thus, little step after little step, they went from little wonder to little wonder. Dolly liked small things; it was the microscopic aspect of Nature that touched her heart; she had an adjective all her own for such: they were "baby" things—baby flowers, baby brooks, baby stars. This appealed less to Charles-Norton, hungry for big sweeps. And even now, he caught himself yawning once, and casting a look ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... to punning. There were times when the hungry boarders thought the name facetious, but they conceded it to be quite exact in a descriptive sense, if its brick and mortar were intended to honor monumentally the tales of the host. His first name, August, was not an adjective of limitation as to time, for the proprietor was A. Stuffer every month and day in the year; and his son Emil, a quiet, inoffensive student of birds, a taxidermist, ornithologist and mechanical engineer, and ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... Edwin held him by the legs, and his hand was on Edwin's cap. The feel of the boy was delightful; he was so lithe and so yielding, and yet firm; and his glance was so trustful and admiring. "Rough!" thought Edwin, remembering Maggie's adjective. "He isn't a bit rough! Unruly? Well, I dare say he can be unruly if he cares to be. It all depends how you handle him." Thus Edwin reflected in the pride of conquest, holding close to the boy, and savouring intimately his charm. Even the boy's slightness attracted him. Difficult to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Goosecappe? I assure your soule, they are as subtill with their suters, or loves, as the latine Dialect, where the nominative Case, and the Verbe, the Substantive, and the Adjective, the Verbe, and the [ad]Verbe, stand as far a sunder, as if they were perfect strangers one to another, and you shall hardly find them out; but then learne to Conster, and perse them, and you shall find them prepared and acquainted, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... on watch were taking it easy. Like unto their officers, submarine sailors are an unusual lot. They are real sailors, or machinist sailors—boys for whose quality the navy has a flattering, picturesque, and quite unprintable adjective. A submarine man, mind you, works harder than perhaps any other man of his grade in the navy, because the vessel in which he lives is nothing ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... hedone. Pater's definition "the pleasure of the ideal now." The adjective monochronos means, literally, "single or unitary time." See also Marius the Epicurean, Vol. 1, Cyrenaicism, and Vol. 2, Second Thoughts, where Pater quotes ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... of grass. This smoke, also laden with arsenic, sometimes hovers over Butte like a London fog. More wealth is every year dug out of the earth in Butte, and more money is squandered there by more different kinds of people, than in any place of its size on earth. The dictionary needs one adjective which should qualify Butte and no other place. Many a time while there I've expected to see Satan rise up out of a hole. Whenever I start to leave I feel I am going away from the domain of ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... serve to vivify truth, to quicken or to widen the moral judgment, but Macaulay's hardy and habitual recourse to strenuous superlatives is fundamentally unscientific and untrue. There is no more instructive example in our literature than he, of the saying that the adjective is ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... in another place; they bear a marked relation to the theory of observation I have just laid down. Whatever the thing we wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it. We must seek till we find this noun, this verb, and this adjective, and never be content with getting very near it, never allow ourselves to play tricks, even happy ones, or have recourse to sleights ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... notably fair, notably discriminating, and notably independent. It gives its own views fearlessly, and resents any efforts made by publishers to get their own adjective-besprinkled puffs printed. In rush seasons it will make use of publisher's description, after carefully blue-pencilling obtrusive adjectives, but it goes no farther. In fact, the newspaper-review part of publishing ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... epithet marshalled to attend its noun in a last-century poet's dictionary. One would not have it away; one can hear the caress with which the master pronounces it, "making his mouth," as Swift did for his "little language." Nor does the customary adjective fail in later literature. It was dear to the Realist, and it is dear to the Symbolist. The only difference is that in the French of the ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt had been 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 ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... ill-natured—it wasn't that—was distinctly ironic. A very competent, good-looking young woman, you'd have said, if you'd seen her with her shoulder-blades flattened down and her chest up. Seeing her to-day, drooping a little over the cold lunch, you'd have left out the adjective young. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... President of the United States with that of her Majesty on an occasion like this. I was struck, both in what he said, and in what our distinguished guest of the evening said, with the frequent recurrence of an adjective which is comparatively new—I mean the word "English-speaking." We continually hear nowadays of the "English-speaking race," of the "English-speaking population." I think this implies, not that we are to forget, not that it would be ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... which Carlingford would have been horrified to hear, and grasped Mrs Smith's shoulder with a closer pressure. "What did she tell you?" said the doctor. "Let me have it word for word. Did she say she was going away?—did she speak of this—this—fellow?" exclaimed the doctor, with an adjective over which charity drops a tear. "Can't you tell me without any ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... form or essence, (3) the end or design (in the sense of intention) of the act being performed, that is to say, at bottom, the design (in the sense of drawing) of the act supposed accomplished. These three aspects are those of the adjective, substantive and verb, and correspond to the three essential categories of language. After the explanations we have given above, we might, and perhaps we ought to, translate [Greek: eidos] by "view" or rather by "moment." For [Greek: eidos] is the stable view taken of the instability of things: ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... why Mrs. Smith, with her absurd figure—for really I can apply no other adjective to it—should wear that most absurdly tight dress. Some one should tell her what a fright it makes of her. She is nothing but convexities. She looks exactly like an hour-glass, or a sodawater machine. At a little distance you can hardly tell whether ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... pronoun. It is used as such in legal documents, but it is incorrect to employ it in business letters as other than an adjective. Use instead "they," ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... 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 case was inverted; ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... a query about this alleged derivation of the name of the city, a competent Hebrew scholar writes to me: "The nearest approach to Nauvoo in Hebrew is an adjective which would be transliterated Naveh, meaning pleasant, a rather rare word. The letter correctly represented by v could not possibly do the double duty of uv, nor could a of the Hebrew ever be au in English, nor eh of the Hebrew be oo in English. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... 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 forced itself upon him. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... area was being reduced, but perhaps not with the same rapidity as at first when Mr Barelli was at the top of enthusiastic—if the adjective was applicable—vigor. Oftener and oftener and oftener he paused to sharpen his implement and I thought the cropped shocks were becoming smaller and smaller. As the movement of the scythe swept the guillotined grass backward, the trailing stolons entangled themselves with the uncut stand, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the ideas embraced in mental science. In ancient times "pneuma" signified both mind and wind, or air. In later times it lost its physical currency, and no longer signifies, in its general currency, breath or air. The adjective, "pneumatikos," is never used in a physical sense. It came into use ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... Brown means 'young girls,'" said one of the nieces, who was not as slow in the uptake as her aunt, and it turned out that this was what Miss Brown did mean; but she had not known that in everyday life Maedchen without an adjective usually means a servant. She had heard of Das Maedchen aus der Fremde and Der Tod ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... her oppressors, sitting in gauds and finery, and taking lessons which had better befitted their Cinderella—the figure of Mary Ann definitely reassumed some of its antediluvian poetry, if we may apply the adjective to that catastrophic washing of the steps. And Mary Ann herself had grown gloomier—once or twice he thought she had been crying, though he was too numbed and apathetic to ask, and was incapable of suspecting ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the word—and a dash of Cato Censor to sour the whole—a delight to school-masterly spirits, a terror to lively damsels, the laughing-stock of the worldly wise and only just too wise to find a congenial atmosphere in the every-day world. However, as San Miniato just escaped the application of the adjective I have been trying to translate, it is enough to say that he was not exactly a "serious man," being excluded from that variety of the species by his passion for play, which was dominant, and by the incidents of his past history, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... mis manos: in old Spanish the article was often used before a possessive adjective that preceded its noun. This usage is now archaic ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... 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 ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as luscious and effulgent as a seed catalogue, with rhetorical pictures about as florid and unconvincing. To him the town was a veritable Troy—full of heroes and demigods, and honourables and persons of nobility and quality. He used no adjective of praise milder than superb, and on the other hand, Lige Bemis once complained that the least offensive epithet he saw in the Banner tacked after his name for two years was miscreant. As for John Barclay, he once told General Ward that ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... point to each of the three, with distinct yet rapid motion. The phrase would be a strange one, but not unlike Shakspere. Compare Cymbeline, act v. sc. 5: 'And your three motives to the battle,' meaning 'the motives of you three.' Perhaps, however, it is only the adjective for the adverb: 'having concealed it hitherto, conceal it trebly now.' But tenible may be the word: 'let it be a thing to be ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... returned to the ranch 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 ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... take some fine specimens of the peculiar quality distinguishing the heroic style, in prose that is very near poetry. Nothing can be more simple than the narrative, it is cool and quiet: there are whole chapters without an unnecessary adjective; and yet it is most impressive, both in the drawing of such characters as Saul, David, and Joab, who stand out dramatically, like Homeric heroes, and in the stories of their ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... years, 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 apply but ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... f, showed a tendency to drop off and become silent, especially as finals. In vocabulary Cornish follows Breton more closely than Welsh, though there are cases where in its choice of words it agrees with the latter, and cases in which it is curiously impartial. An instance of the last is the common adjective good. The ordinary Welsh word is da, though mad (Gaelic math) does exist. In Breton mad is the regular word, though da is used as a noun in the sense of satisfaction or contentment (da eo gant-han, good is with himhe is pleased). In Cornish da and mas are used about equally. ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... go to Italian, and look at the word nicchia. Both from Alberti and from Baretti we find it to bear the meaning of "a charge, a duty, or an employment;" and if before this word we place the adjective piccola, we have piccola nicchia, "a small task, or trifling service to be performed." Now I think no one can fail to see the identity of the meanings of the expressions piccola nicchia and pique-nique; but it remains to show how the words themselves may be identical. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... the writing could be as cold in tone as the criticism of those who consider everything other than polished ice almost amusing—to judge by the way they handle it, dismissing it with an airy grace and a hurting adjective. Would they be quite so cool, we wonder, if the little wronged girl were their own? But we do not write for such as these. The thought of the cold eyes would freeze the thoughts before they formed. ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... the virginal bosom of which one small touch of color burned like a flame. And thus, little step after little step, they went from little wonder to little wonder. Dolly liked small things; it was the microscopic aspect of Nature that touched her heart; she had an adjective all her own for such: they were "baby" things—baby flowers, baby brooks, baby stars. This appealed less to Charles-Norton, hungry for big sweeps. And even now, he caught himself yawning once, and casting a look at the crest ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... held him by the legs, and his hand was on Edwin's cap. The feel of the boy was delightful; he was so lithe and so yielding, and yet firm; and his glance was so trustful and admiring. "Rough!" thought Edwin, remembering Maggie's adjective. "He isn't a bit rough! Unruly? Well, I dare say he can be unruly if he cares to be. It all depends how you handle him." Thus Edwin reflected in the pride of conquest, holding close to the boy, and savouring ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... brilliant Frenchman sent this sound advice to his pupil, Guy de Maupassant: "Whatever may be the thing which one wishes to say, there is but one word for expressing it, only one verb to animate it, only one adjective to qualify it. It is essential to search for this word, for this verb, for this adjective, until they are discovered, and to be satisfied with ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... it, and Sodom was destroyed because a long-suffering deity could not find ten men in the entire city who were not addicted to its practice. So saturated was this city of the ancient world with the vice that the very name of the city or the adjective denoting citizenship in that city have transmitted the stigma to modern times. That the fathers of Israel were quick to perceive the tortuous ramifications of this vice is proved by a passage in Deuteronomy, chap. 22, verse .5: "the woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... gentlemanly book. Whatever excellence of commendation belongs to the adjective we have Italicized must be awarded to Mr. Dicey. And it is ill-adapted to the manufactures of most British tourists who have preceded him. For, to make no mention of the vulgar buffooneries of Bunn or Grattan, we hold that neither the exalted and irrepressible prosiness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a led ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Flaubert, or better still, Pierre Loti, could have known Chopin so intimately we should possess a memoir in which every vibration of emotion would be recorded, every shade noted, and all pinned with the precise adjective, the phrase exquisite. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... characteristic of certain periods, like that of the Alexandrian Greeks and their Roman imitators, to whom we shall recur in a later chapter, and the mediaeval Troubadours and Minnesingers. To the present day sentimentality in love is so much more abundant than sentiment that the adjective sentimental is commonly used in an uncomplimentary sense, as in the following passage from one of Krafft-Ebing's books ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... and more interested in him. It is not, I am sure, his—do you know any noun corresponding to the adjective "handsome"? One does not like to say "beauty" when speaking of a man. He is handsome enough, heaven knows; I should not even care to trust you with him—faithful of all possible wives that you are— when he looks his best, as he always does. Nor do I think ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... author's account of the verb. Why it cannot be compared like the adjective. The verb is an adjective or name in the fourth degree. It does not represent an action. TO and DO. Shown how it does not represent an action, and how grammarians have been led to suppose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... plain sensible girl,' exclaimed the old gentleman the moment I entered the room.' (You will notice I put no comma after 'plain.' I am taking it he did not intend one. You can employ one adjective to qualify another, can't you?) 'And I will put it to her, What difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church in ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... all. Khokhriakov presided. His neck is like a bull's, but rougher—and red. He started the meeting by a thunderous "Shut up, you over there!" and "Somebody open the window; who in hell is smoking such ... tobacco (I omit the adjective, though correct and strikingly expressive, ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... discuss the style, there are at least three separable elements, each contributing after its kind to the effect on our minds. When the general effect is to throw us into a state of pleasure, it is our habit to qualify the style with an adjective of praise, selecting the adjective according to the degree of restraint or of enthusiasm with which we are accustomed to express our emotions; when the general effect is to throw us into a condition of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... were left both hyphenated and separate depending on their part of speech, for example: science-fiction science fiction (adjective) (noun) ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... wondered why Miss Maxwell flushed and the others laughed. But, in actual fact, he was not far wrong in his curious choice of an adjective that morning. Dr. Christobal's dismal foreboding had been justified on the second day out. Leaden clouds, a sullen sea, and occasional puffs of a stinging breeze from the southwest, offered a sorry exchange for the sunny skies ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... to all others that he will walk three miles for it. Surely every one will admit that this is lamentable. It is not even a good mixture, for I used to try it occasionally; and if there is one man in London who knows tobaccoes it is myself. There is only one mixture in London deserving the adjective superb. I will not say where it is to be got, for the result would certainly be that many foolish men would smoke more than ever; but I never knew anything to compare to it. It is deliciously mild yet full of fragrance, and it never burns the tongue. If you try it once you smoke it ever afterward. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and conflicts of ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... he said, perceiving back of an enormous chocolate eclair the human anaconda famine and opportunity had at this moment made of Finnegan, the discoverer of the double adjective. ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... Have Idioms Interjections It If Key to the exercises Letters, sounds of Like Manner of meaning of words Moods Signs of Subjunctive Nouns Gender of Person of Number of Case of Orthography Rules of Parsing Participles Poetry transposed Prepositions Pronouns Personal Compound personal Adjective Relative Pronunciation Prosody Provincialisms Punctuation Rhetoric Rules of syntax Sentences, definitions of simple and compound Transposition of Standard of grammatical accuracy Syntax To Tenses Signs of the The That Terminations Verbs Active-transitive Active-intransitive Passive Neuter Defective ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Macbeth as the Weird Sisters; and it is probably from this connexion that weird has become an adjective for all ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... aim and intelligent activity is enough to show its value—its function in experience. We are only too given to making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." We forget that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be conscious is to be aware of what we are about; conscious signifies the deliberate, observant, planning traits of activity. Consciousness is nothing which we have which gazes idly on the scene around one or which has ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... in all seriousness to look abroad on this colossal universe of concrete facts, on their awful bewilderments, their surprises and cruelties, on the wildness which they show, and then to tell me whether 'refined' is the one inevitable descriptive adjective that ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... in the adjective applied to her a hint which the wily lady would not have dared to make direct to the high-spirited old soldier, namely, that the continuance of his livelihood might depend on his consent. Betty knew likewise enough of the terrible world of the early eighteenth century to be aware that even ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Here the adjective is made emphatic by being put before its noun; in 4, 14 the same effect is gained by putting horribili last in ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... represent abstractions are Man[a]t (fate), Sa'd (fortune), Ru[d.][a] (favor), Wadd (love), Man[a]f (height), 'Au[d.] (time). Whether these are all abstract terms is doubtful. Wadd means also 'lover,' divine friend or patron. Sa'd occurs as adjective 'fortunate,' is the appellation of certain stars, and the god Sa'd is identified by an Arab poet with a certain rock[1190]—the rock is doubtless an old local divinity. Ru[d.][a] is found apparently only as a divine name (in Palmyrene and Safa inscriptions and as a god of an Arabian tribe)—the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... faculty of the dramatist! But, in the first place, I do not believe that, having regard to the relative scope of the play and of the novel, the necessity for leaving out is more acute in the one than in the other. The adjective "photographic" is as absurd applied to the novel as to the play. And, in the second place, other factors being equal, it is less exhausting, and it requires less skill, to refrain from doing than to do. To know when to refrain from doing may be ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... of having in a formulary of worship too many things that have to be laboriously explained, it might be well if in the Litany the adjective "sudden," which ever since Hooker's day has given perpetual occasion for cavil, were to yield to "untimely," or some like word more suggestive than "sudden" of the thought clumsily expressed in the "Chapel Liturgy" by the awkward ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... theory which we possess. Among other computations, Ptolemy gives the precise formula of the first four notes of the scale as we now have it, but as this occurred only as one among many of a similar character, and is in no way distinguished from any of the others by any adjective implying greater confidence in it, we can only count it as a lucky accident. The eminence that has been awarded to Ptolemy as the original discoverer of the correct ratio of the major scale, therefore, does not ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... newspapers have today, and the requirement that when a fact is to be proven in court it should be proven by those who have a personal knowledge of it, is one of the most wholesome and searching tests of truth that the whole range of adjective law furnishes. The opportunity for cross-examination, for finding out the bias of the witness, the advantage or disadvantage of his point of observation, the accuracy or inaccuracy in his recollection of the details of what he saw, are all means of ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... noun: Wallisian(s), Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, or Wallis and ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... a 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 include ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... he, following my eye. "It is a handsome machine, a full dress concern with all its plating and brown leather, and in use it is as willing and quiet as any tricycle could be, a most urbane and gentlemanly affair—if you will pardon the adjective. I am glad these things have not come too late for me. Frankly, the bicycle is altogether too flippant for a man of my age, and the tricycle hitherto, with its two larger wheels behind and a smaller one in front, has been so indecently suggestive of a perambulator that ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... startled and amused by the adjective. But the other two listeners took it quite quietly. It seemed to them apparently to express what had to ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a strange statement in de Republ. ii. 8, that all the cities of the Peloponnese had access to the sea, he excuses himself by saying that he found it in Dicaearchus and copied it word for word (Att. vi. 2. 3). In the same passage he used an incorrect adjective, Phliuntii for Phliasii; he says that he had already corrected his own copy, but the mistake survives in the single palimpsest in which this work has been preserved. The only merits, therefore, which can be claimed for Cicero are that he invented a philosophical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... set me 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... wrote it, but he signed it. No single man living could write all the stuff Wuffle signs. It's turned out as they turn out cheap motor-cars. One man roughs it out, passes it to the adjective department, thence to the punctuation-room, where they sprinkle it with commas and exclamation marks, and then Wuffle touches it up, fits it with headlines and signs it. Oh, I forgot. Before it goes to press the libel expert looks it over to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... England. At least, it was probably as near to deserving that adjective as at any time before or since. There was plenty of time for amusement. There were public bowling-greens and archery butts in Stratford, though the corporation was very strict in regard to the hours when these could be used. Every one enjoyed ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... at Wentworth's desk, and came upon an obstacle at the very beginning. He did not know how to address the young woman. Whether to say 'My dear Miss Longworth,' or 'My dear madam,' or whether to use the adjective 'dear' at all, was a puzzle to him; and over this he was meditating when Wentworth ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... Poulderie - Poultry. Poussiren - To court. Pretzel,(Ger.) - A kind of fancy bread, twist or the like. Prezackly - Pre(cisely), exactly. Protocollirt, protocolliren - To register, record. Pully, i.e., Bully - An Americanism, adjective. Fine, capital. A slang word, used in the same manner as the English used the word crack; as, "a bully horse," "a bully picture." Pumpernickel - A heavy, hard sort of rye-bread, made in Westphalia. Put der Konig troo - ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... 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
... been decent reasons, and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than a brief seven seeming insufficient, and more, superfluous; again, so mystical a number has a staid propriety, and a due double climax of rise and fall. Now, as to our adjective "classical:" Why not, in heroic drama, have something a-kin to the old Greek chorus, with its running comment upon motives and moralities, somewhat as the mighty-master has set forth in his truly patriotic ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... square-toed boots rising above his knees. A blizzard outside; snow and wind; bitterly cold; but the Commodore soon made it hot all round. Fell upon JOKIM spars and sails, stem and starn. "Regularly claw-hammered him," as GEORGE HAMILTON said, drawing on naval resources for adequate adjective. Accused him of making a speech that would have become CHARLES THE FIRST. Talked about levying Ship Money; threatened a revolution; hinted at HAMPDEN, and, unrebuked by the SPEAKER, called unoffending Prince ARTHUR ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... help me, as I speak truth. But who is the god of faith? Dius, say some, is the same as Deus (Plautus has Deus fidius, Asin i. 1, 18); and the god here meant is probably Jupiter (sub dio being equivalent to sub Jove); so that Dius fidius (fidius being an adjective from fides) will be the [Greek: Zeus pistios] of the Greeks. "Me dius fidius" will therefore be, "May Jupiter help me!" This is the mode of explication adopted by Gerlach, Bernouf, and Dietsch. Others, with Festus (sub voce Medius fidius) make fidius equivalent to filius, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... which the Fordborough gossips took for a flirtation. They could not have been more utterly 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... distinctly ironic. A very competent, good-looking young woman, you'd have said, if you'd seen her with her shoulder-blades flattened down and her chest up. Seeing her to-day, drooping a little over the cold lunch, you'd have left out the adjective young. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... shops for further explorations. Scutari has always been described as such a beautiful town. The adjective does not seem picturesque: yes, quaint, strange decidedly. One's second impression ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... considerable renown among her acquaintance, not only for its peculiar charm, which combined and reconciled the tastes of two very different generations, but also for its radiant cleanness. There are many clean houses in the Five Towns, using the adjective in the relative sense in which the Five Towns is forced by chimneys to use it. But Mrs. Maldon's sitting-room (save for the white window-curtains, which had to accept the common grey fate of white window-curtains ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... the word blond is as inevitable as any epithet marshalled to attend its noun in a last-century poet's dictionary. One would not have it away; one can hear the caress with which the master pronounces it, "making his mouth," as Swift did for his "little language." Nor does the customary adjective fail in later literature. It was dear to the Realist, and it is dear to the Symbolist. The only difference is that in the French of the Symbolist it ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... call liberal in that affair,"—half the critics of the day would use the adjective instead of the adverb here, and why should Deacon Prates English be any better than his neighbours?—"and so I've admitted to his friends over on the Vineyard. But, Gar'ner, our great affair still remains to be accounted ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... "amateur" fails 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 art, without the stultifying influence of commercialism. Many of them ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... 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 case was inverted; and as a matter of ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... truly democratic at heart, Mackworth laid it on in theatric outward appearance, in true line with the Kansas tradition of a sockless Jerry Simpson, who went without socks, as the adjective implies, and made Congress on that one platform of his sartorial lack ... of William Roscoe Stubbs, who rode into the office of governor partly on the fact that his daughter could make salt-rising bread ... a form of bread-making ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... this complaint, I will, however, admit that this misleading adjective comes as a boon in the discourse I am now meditating. Since, returning to my old theme of the Garden of Life, I find that the misapplication of that word Hanging, and its original literal suggestion, lends added significance to this allegoric dictum: ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... words 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, anything of which we can have either thought or idea. There are two ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not be torn from our kindly associations with 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 ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the word audacity or the adjective audacious to you again, Christy. I see that it nettles you, to say the least," added the captain, pressing his hand with ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Jean Jacques was a champion worth while! He did nothing by halves. He was of the breed of men who grow more intense, more convinced, more thorough, as they talk. One adjective begets another, one warm allusion gives birth to a warmer, one flashing impulse evokes a brighter confidence, till the atmosphere is flaming with conviction. If Jean Jacques started with faint doubt regarding anything, and allowed himself betimes the flush of a declaration of belief, there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... adequate to send her representatives to the lower House. I know the time may not have come for mooting a question of this sort; but I know the time will come, and that woman will be something more than a mere adjective to man in political matters. She will become a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 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, xxx. 22. (Occasionally it is used of men, as in Pliny, viii. 79.) ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... construction. Still, it has some authority for being considered idiomatic, for does not "Pilgrim's Progress" tell us of the "Palace Beautiful?" And doubtless many other instances might be cited of the substitution of an adjective for a noun. At all events, the worthy owner, who built his house in the most approved style of former New England architecture, spacious, square, and with projecting windows in the roof, made some pretensions ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... excited and said it was damnable. He wasn't going to stand by and see people believe a lot of scandalous lies about me. He had no idea people had given me the cold shoulder. He would jolly well (such were his words) take a something (I forget the adjective) megaphone and trumpet about society what a ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... intended to open or purge the bowels, a diuretic has the property of exciting the flow of urine, a diaphoretic excites perspiration, and a demulcent protects or soothes irritated tissues, while hmoptysis denotes a peculiar variety of blood-spitting and aphthous is an adjective applied to ulcerations in ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... in the habit of meeting. It should be added that Eva herself appears in the photograph as well as the simulacra of humanity. The faces are, on the whole, both pretty and piquant, though of a rather worldly and unrefined type. The latter adjective would not apply to the larger and most elaborate photograph, which represents a very beautiful young woman of a truly spiritual cast of face. Some of the faces are but partially formed, which gives them a grotesque or repellant appearance. What are we to make of such phenomena? There ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 me, indeed, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... earlier part, a series of incidents that is, we believe, the most ingenious yet planned by its author.... The adventure develops and grows, the tension increases with each page, to such an extent that the hackneyed adjective, 'breathless,' finds an appropriate place."—NEW YORK MAIL ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... have not had to wade through Harbottles, I remain unstirred by Old Mole. Not a single character, male or female, moved me to the least interest; they were all cold, dead people, and Mr. CANNAN talked over their bodies. Clever talk, certainly—he shall have that adjective again—but when it was over I had a wild mad longing to take to the Harbottle. Even Mr. HALL CAINE ... but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... of either of them if the name is abruptly mentioned in a gossip or a poem. On the other hand, there are tame tigers and tame cobras, but if one says, "I have a cobra in my pocket," or "There is a tiger in the music-room," the adjective "tame" has to be somewhat hastily added. If one speaks of beasts one thinks first of wild beasts; if of flowers one thinks first of ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... became excessively cruel, but it had to be done by some one before you could expect to have great and peaceful civilizations like our own. The warfare of Rome is by no means adequately explained by the theory of a deliberate immoral policy of aggression,—"infernal," I believe, is the stronger adjective which Dr. Draper uses. The aggressive wars of Rome were largely dictated by just such considerations as those which a century ago made it necessary for the English to put down the raids of the Scotch ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... doctrine required the formula—"always being begotten, and as instantly perishing, in order to be rebegotten perpetually." They showed a real disbelief in our English statement "begotten, not made." I overruled the objection, that in the Greek it was not a participle, but a verbal adjective; for it was manifest to me, that a religion which could not be proclaimed in English could not be true; and the very idea of a Creed announcing that Christ was "not begotten, yet begettive," roused in me an unspeakable loathing. Yet surely this would have ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... It is used as such in legal documents, but it is incorrect to employ it in business letters as other than an adjective. Use instead "they," ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... you intend that adjective to apply?" inquired Elnora. "I never was less ashamed in all my life. Please remember I am in my own home, and your presence here is ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... his hips, "if you had posed the question in the polite language of the precincts of Durdlebury Cathedral, I might have been at a loss to reply. But the manly invocation of hell shows me that your foot is already on the upward path. If you had prefaced it by the adjective that gives colour to all the aspirations of the British Army, it would have been better. But I'm not reproaching you, laddie. Poco a poco. It is enough. It shows me you are not going to run away to a neutral ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... of declension, which were not created for your incult sport—your Boeotian diversion. You will, therefore, Vernon, write out and bring to me to-morrow a word-for-word English-Latin translation of the Ode, together with a full list of all adjectives—an adjective is not a verb, Vernon, as the Lower Third will tell you—all adjectives, their number, case, and gender. Even now I haven't begun to ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... of dye-stuffs included in the fourth group was named by Bancroft the "adjective" group, because they require the aid of a second body, named the mordant, to properly develop and to fix the colour of the dye-stuff on the wool. It is sometimes known as the "mordant dye-stuff" class, and this is perhaps its best name. This (p. 069) group ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... Fire," "Unquenchable Fire."—All these expressions are used in describing the fiery judgment upon sin and sinners. The effect of the fire is everlasting and eternal, and by a common usage in language the adjective that describes the effect is applied to the agent by which the effect ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... left indicated that a heavy conflict had begun in that quarter. The Federal troops were charging Marye's Hill, which was to prove the Cemetery Hill of Fredericksburg. This frightful charge—for no other adjective can describe it—was made by General French's division, supported by General Hancock. The Federal troops rushed forward over the broken ground in the suburbs of the city, and, "as soon as the masses became dense enough,"[1] were received ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... now," he said, after Miss Morris had left them. "A most charming young lady. Is it not so?" he added, waving his cigarette in a gesture which expressed the ineffectiveness of the adjective. ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... the sun. As it was—having with all his three livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own—he remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not making any merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly, if any one alluded to it, that he made it an excuse ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Fritz has been telling the Germans that his father, the ex-Kaiser, is now 'legally' dead. We must get rid of that adjective without delay."—John Bull. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... reaction which affects the synovial membrane of a joint. It is usually associated with effusion of fluid, and this may be serous, sero-fibrinous, or purulent. As the term synovitis merely refers to the tissue involved, it should always be used with an adjective—such as gouty, gonorrhoeal, or tuberculous—which indicates its ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... belong to the article; thus apron should be napron (Fr. 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 two. ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... while the polite forms mean "yours." To translate these terms, "my foolish wife," "my swinish son," is incorrect, because it twice translates the same word. In such cases the Japanese thought is best expressed by using the possessive pronoun and omitting the derogative adjective altogether. Japanese indirect methods for the expression of the personal relation are thus numberless and subtile. May it not be plausibly argued since the European has only a few blunt pronouns wherewith to state this ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... only one door, but when I turned the handle it opened. There came forth to meet me the chill musty air that is characteristic of a long unoccupied room. With it there came an indescribable odour. I use the adjective advisedly. Though very faint, diluted as it were, it was nevertheless an odour that made my gorge rise. I had never smelt anything like it before, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... instance, a teacher has explained to a large class in grammar the difference between an adjective and an adverb; if he leave it here, in a fortnight one half of the pupils would have forgotten the distinction, but by dwelling upon it a few lessons he may fix it forever. The first lesson might be to require the pupils to write twenty short sentences containing only adjectives. The ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... change their forms to indicate some change in sense or use, as, is, are; was, were; who, whose, whom; farmer, farmer's; woman, women. This is called /inflection. The inflection of a noun, adjective, or pronoun is called its /declension, that ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... 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 ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... all her earlier work, is heavy reading, the account given by "Old Age" in her "Four Ages of Man," of what he has seen and known of Puritan affairs, being in somewhat more lively strain. But lively was an adjective to which Mistress Anne had a rooted objection. Her contemporaries indulged in an occasional solemn pun, but the only one in her writings is found in the grim turn on Laud's name, in the "Dialogue" just quoted, in which is also a ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... language is largely polysyllabic. It is burdened with personal pronouns, and its adjectives have numerous changes in addition to their degrees of comparison. We find no inflections to suggest case or gender. The adjective mpolo, which means "large," carries seven or eight forms. While it is impossible to tell whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter, they use one adjective for all four declensions, changing its form ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... further, this faithful, steadfast heart and mind, kept by God, is a mind filled with deepest peace. There is something very beautiful in the prophet's abandoning the attempt to find any adjective of quality which adequately characterises the peace of which he has been speaking. He falls back upon the expedient which is the confession of the impotence of human speech worthily to portray its subject when he simply says, 'Thou shalt keep in peace, peace ... because he trusteth in Thee.' The ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... presupposes another: That a simile should never require explanation. In the two first instances adduced—"The Lord God is a sun and shield," and "Jesus said, I am the door"—the beauty of the similes would be entirely destroyed by the use of the adjective moral, and the only reason why the fourth instance, "A moral blight," is not so glaring an abuse of language as the two former is, that the term blight is so frequently used in a figurative sense, that, when it is so used, we are liable to forget that the expression is figurative. ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... sisters, and the wounded man will, to his dying day, remember the patient skill bestowed upon him by these devoted women. A patient recently remarked to a friend of mine, who asked him whether he didn't think the sister was an angel, 'Indeed she is, sir, a regular fallen angel.' His adjective was a little out of place, but he meant to describe exactly what we all feel with regard to these splendid ministers ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... for having, I believe for the first time, coupled the name of the President of the United States with that of her Majesty on an occasion like this. I was struck, both in what he said, and in what our distinguished guest of the evening said, with the frequent recurrence of an adjective which is comparatively new—I mean the word "English-speaking." We continually hear nowadays of the "English-speaking race," of the "English-speaking population." I think this implies, not that we are ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... John Graham Brooks wrote a popular treatise on the labor situation in the United States. He called the volume Social Unrest. The term was, even at that time, a familiar one. Since then the word unrest, in both its substantive and adjective forms, has gained wide usage. We speak in reference to the notorious disposition of the native American to move from one part of the country to another, of his restless blood, as if restlessness was a native American trait transmitted in the blood. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... atmospheres of Venus, the Moon, etc. It was not only an account of phenomena which had been seen; it was accompanied by measures, and the computations based on these led to heights and dimensions for mountains on Venus which were, to say the least, extravagant. The adjective will not seem too strong when we say that the very existence of the mountains themselves ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... nor powers,' says Paul. Here we pass from conditions affecting ourselves to living beings beyond ourselves. Now, it is important for understanding the precise thought of the Apostle to observe that this expression, when used without any qualifying adjective, seems uniformly to mean good angels, the hierarchy of blessed spirits before the throne. So that there is no reference to 'spiritual wickedness in high places' striving to draw men away from God. The supposition which the Apostle makes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... writing in the 4th century A.D., calls certain instruments used for fusion and calcination "chuika organa," that is, instruments for melting and pouring. Hence, probably, came the adjective chyic or chymic, and, at a somewhat later time, the word chemia as the name of that art which deals with calcinations, fusions, meltings, and the like. The writer of a treatise on astrology, in the 5th century, speaking of the influences of the stars on the dispositions ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
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