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More "Monosyllable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in his phraseology at times. The not very refined monosyllable in the text may, however, be tolerated as having a technical relation to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... in the language that conveys so little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the close, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blessed nothingness of Gautama and Meister Eckhart. But the loss of the feeling of personality and the sense of possession by a divine spirit are the same. How, then, is this state reached? By means, I believe, which recall the general formula for the Disappearance of self-feeling. To repeat the monosyllable OM (Brahm) ten thousand times; to circle interminably, chanting the while, about a sacred ire; to listen to the monotonous magic drum; to whirl the body about; to rock to and fro on the knees, vociferating prayers, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... and said no more, but the little monosyllable was more eloquent than any disclaimer. Lady Hayes flushed, and knitted ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the Roman grandeur?—With my conjecture, the sense would be;—"let higher, or the more northern part of Italy—(unless 'higher' be a corruption for 'hir'd,'—the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see," &c. The following "woo" and "wed" are so far confirmative as they indicate Shakespeare's manner of connection by unmarked influences of association from some preceding metaphor. This it is which makes his style so peculiarly ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... met it was only to be parted. Mary's subjects, outraged by her conduct, rose against her. As she passed through the streets of Edinburgh the women hurled after her indecent names. Great banners were raised with execrable daubs representing the murdered Darnley. The short and dreadful monosyllable which is familiar to us in the pages of the Bible was hurled after ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... dinner she hardly spoke. If she said nothing to Leeds, neither would she address the man on her other side, only giving such monosyllable answers as were necessary. The evening dragged slowly. Leeds did not approach her. Once or twice she looked toward him, but he did not appear to notice her. Indeed, he only came late from the smoking room and returned after a brief appearance ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... monoplane, monopoly, monocle, monarchy, monogram, monomania; (2) monosyllable, monochrome, monogamy, monorail, monograph, monolith, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... His power of articulation was slowly returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... island on which we were, and of which he was a native, was the best in the whole groupe, and the most populous, except that of Chu-san; the number of its inhabitants being ten thousand souls. It was discovered, however, before we had been long in the country, that when a Chinese made use of the monosyllable van, which in his language signifies ten thousand, he was not to be understood as speaking of a determinate or precise number, but only as making use of a term that implied amplification. A state criminal, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... they would allow one of their boys, who could speak English, to accompany me, as our loads were heavy; and his being known to belong to their establishment I thought might be some protection; but the short answer of the monosyllable "No" soon made me repent having asked it. I spread my bed in one of their empty rooms; and started at daybreak next morning, with my two native slaves. I could not banish from my remembrance the inhospitable conduct ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... consonant, and confound three vowels, (h i u,) and several diphthongs. Such was the vulgar pronunciation which the stern Gardiner maintained by penal statutes in the university of Cambridge: but the monosyllable bh represented to an Attic ear the bleating of sheep, and a bellwether is better evidence than a bishop or a chancellor. The treatises of those scholars, particularly Erasmus, who asserted a more classical pronunciation, are collected in the Sylloge ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the letter greatly surprised him. It had originally commenced with DEAR SIR; but these words had been carefully erased, and the monosyllable, SIR, substituted in their place. The rest of the contents shall be given ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... his hand across his wet eyelids. His lips were growing numb, and he bungled over the monosyllable "Why?" ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... of contemptuous mono-syllables uttered in a deep bass voice. She married, some twelve years ago, an Englishman, a member of the diplomatic corps, Lord A——, a personage equally handsome and impassive as herself. He addresses at intervals to his wife an English monosyllable, to which the latter replies imperturbably with a French monosyllable. Nevertheless, three little lords, worthy the pencil of Lawrence, who strut majestically around this Olympian couple, attest between the two nations a secret intelligence which ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... the monosyllable reply. She had had to deal with men of no compromise more than the majority of villa-dwelling women have the opportunity of doing, and she knew, perhaps, that such are the backbone ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... observed that the congregations made no responses and showed no signs of reverence. Soon in all the coffeehouses was handed about a brutal lampoon on the courtly prelates whose pens the King had employed. Mother East had also her full share of abuse. Into that homely monosyllable our ancestors had degraded the name of the great house of Este which reigned at ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rejoices in a two-gender, one-case article with a distinct form for the plural. The ripe product of tendency, the infant heir of the eloquent ages, to whose birth the law of Aryan evolution groaned and travailed until but now, the most useful, if not the "mightiest," monosyllable "ever moulded by the lips of man," the "the," one and indeclinable, was born in the Anglo-Saxon mouth, and sublimed to its unique simplicity ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... position that what should be objected to in the interests of society, is not egoism, a man's being interested in himself, but the lack of egoism, a man's having a self that does not include others. The trouble would seem to be—not that people use their own private special monosyllable overmuch, but that there is not enough of it, that nine times out of ten, when they write "I" it should be ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... for the first time. Fanny Brandeis would have given everything she had, everything she hoped to be, to be able to take back that monosyllable. She was gripped with horror at what she had done. She had spoken almost mechanically. And yet that monosyllable must have been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and thought. "Now I begin to understand you," Fenger ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... and his ways. The talkative fit was evidently over, and he might sit and talk, if he would, from then till evening, and get no more than a monosyllable here and there ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... great lack of expression in Garton's monosyllable, but as he swung about upon his stool, bending over the box of cigarettes which he swept up, Conniston thought that he saw a little twitch as of pain about the sensitive lips. Not understanding, feeling ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... the woods, the birds are trilling among the trees. It is their merry morning lay, but it gives him no gladness. There is still ringing in his ears that harsh monosyllable, "no." The wild-wood songsters appear to echo it, as if mockingly; the blue jay, and red cardinal, seem scolding him for ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... form of practical force, compounded of strong will, strong sense, and strong egotism, which long waited for a strong monosyllable to announce its nature. Facts of character, indeed, are never at rest until they have become terms of language; and that peculiar thing which is not exactly courage or heroism, but which unmistakably is "Grit," has coined its own word to blurt out its own quality. If the word has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... drove forth from my mouth a 'Yea,'" a monosyllable of confession which showed the depth of ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... "Yes." The monosyllable fell slowly but quite convincingly. "Why hasn't he been to see me lately?" she added after ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... face forward and peering at us. I could see that she was pretty, and from the gloss with which the light shone upon her dark dress I knew that it was a rich material. She spoke a few words in a foreign tongue in a tone as though asking a question, and when my companion answered in a gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly fell from her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered something in her ear, and then, pushing her back into the room from whence she had come, he walked towards me again with ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Scup. But to the excursionists and fishermen of New York he is known only as Porgy, or Paugie, a form as obviously derived from the last syllable of his Indian name as the emphatic "siree" of our greatest orators is from the modest monosyllable "sir." Porgy seems to be the accepted form of the word; but letters of the old, unphonetic kind are poor guides to pronunciation. And a beautiful, clean-scaled fish is Porgy,—whose g, by-the-by, as I learned ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... whole, we have to answer the questions, 'Does God love any? Does not God love all? Does God specially love some?' with the one monosyllable, 'Yes.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... and got short answers and long answers, pleasant ones and some that were not so pleasant; but all could be summed up in the single monosyllable: ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... hardy and of great courage at home, that is; in his own mind and heart, soul and body, that is. Young Captain Self-denial was a perfect hero at saying No! and at saying No! to himself. It is a proverb that there is nothing so difficult as to say that monosyllable. And the proverb is Scripture truth if you try to say No! to yourself. It takes the very stoutest of hearts, the most noble, the most manly, the most soldierly, and the most saintly of hearts to say No! to itself, and to keep on saying No! to itself ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... Weller burst at once into the following wild and beautiful legend, which, under the impression that it is not generally known, we take the liberty of quoting. We would beg to call particular attention to the monosyllable at the end of the second and fourth lines, which not only enables the singer to take breath at those points, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... to pass her with that monosyllable, but Perrote was not to be thus baffled. She laid a ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... to rise from their chairs and stamp about the street in ecstasy; and I looked on upon their mirth in a faint and slightly disagreeable bewilderment. 'Bread,' which sounds a commonplace, plain-sailing monosyllable in England, was the word that most delighted these good ladies of Monastier; it seemed to them frolicsome and racy, like a page of Pickwick; and they all got it carefully by heart, as a stand-by, I presume, for winter evenings. I have tried it since then with every sort ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contrast to these lines whose effectiveness springs from a lack of the normal quantity of stress are those which are metrically overweighted. A single stressed monosyllable, supported or unsupported by a pause, may occupy the place of a whole rhythmic beat, or it may be compressed to the value of a theoretically unstressed element. Thus Milton's ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... version, I do not know. But one unaccountable error was forced on one's notice. Thebes, which, by Milton and by every scholar is made a monosyllable, is here made a dissyllable. But Thebez, the dissyllable, is a Syrian city. It is true that Causabon deduces from a Syriac word meaning a case or enclosure (a theca), the name of Thebes, whether Boeotian or Egyptian. It ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... She has never changed her name and rather mournfully adds that she has no prospect at present of doing so. She is literally I. SOLA, or single, at present. Therefore she begs that the obnoxious monosyllable may be omitted on future Phials,—an innocent syllable enough, you'll say, but she has no claim to it. It is the bitterest pill of the seven you have sent her. When a lady loses her good name, what is to become of her? Well she must swallow it as well as she can, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Gor-wah the Old One, and said in the language of monosyllable and gesture: "We must ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... his long life. From childhood our hearts have been intertwined, and death only has the power to tear them apart. We sat together long hours, and talked of the past—alternately, as their memories floated up, asking each other, "Where is this one? and this?" and to each inquiry the sad monosyllable, "Dead!" was the reply, of all who were with us at school when we were boys. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... For heretofore, Henry Phipps had been an humble worshipper. She permitted several of his condescending remarks to pass without notice, but finally when he answered a question put by another groom with a bored monosyllable, the girl flew ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... upheaval of primal emotions; and perhaps he saw in her answer, if not sympathy, for she was too impersonal for that, a candid understanding of the little scene and an appreciation of its dramatic quality. "Then," said he, after his monosyllable, "there is nothing left me but to go." When he had risen, he stood looking down at his wife's beautiful dusky head. Incredible to think it had ever lain on his breast, or that the fact of its cherishing there made no difference to her embryo heart! A tinge of irony came into ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... together in the private room at Halfpenny and Farthing's office, Mr. Halfpenny, who had seemed somewhat mystified by the happenings at the bank, looked inquiringly at Professor Cox-Raythwaite and snapped out one suggestive monosyllable: ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... who had opened the door only a few inches, kept in the background, and I could see nothing of him, but I heard his grim, monosyllable reply: ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the long, sweet-sounding drawl of the last monosyllable, which seemed formed out of all the five vowels rolled into one. It was said in such a pleasant voice, with such a simple, child-like air of delighted astonishment, that Agatha, conquering her shyness at this first meeting ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... plain import of the word, imagined that Phutatorius, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of Didius's hands, in order to bemaul Yorick to some purpose—and that the desperate monosyllable Z...ds was the exordium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough kind of handling of him; so that my uncle Toby's good-nature felt a pang for what Yorick was about to undergo. But seeing Phutatorius stop short, without any attempt or desire to go on—a third ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... His monosyllable was sharp and incisive. His face was grey and anxious. She herself remained lifeless. All that there was of emotion between them seemed to have become vested in his ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... any reason arising from the nature of the language, which has properly but one conjugation, such as has been exemplified: from which all deviations are to be considered as anomalies, which are indeed, in our monosyllable Saxon verbs, and the verbs derived from them, very frequent; but almost all the verbs which have been adopted from other languages, follow the ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?—that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?—that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel from which a sharp fragment may ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... preferable for many reasons; not least because the actual Marguerite appears nowhere in the poem, and, except in the opening monosyllable, can hardly be said to be even rhetorically addressed. The poet's affection—it is scarcely passion—is there, but in transcendence: he meditates more than he feels. And that function of the riddle of the painful earth which Lucretius, thousands of years ago, put in ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... "sea-waist," "strait." There are, besides, a number of phrases which are harder to classify. Thus, [Ch] hu means "tiger." But in any case where ambiguity might arise, lao-hu, "old tiger," is used instead of the monosyllable. [Ch] (another hu) is "fox," and [Ch] li, an animal belonging to the smaller cat tribe. Together, hu-li, they form the usual term for fox. [Ch][Ch] chih tao is literally "to know the way," but has come to be used simply for the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... sport in my pearl venture, but no man likes to be "done," so I joined the guard over the pearl fishing. I could see little indication of success on the part of the two clammers, who went on in their work steadily, exchanging no more than a monosyllable now and then, but who were animated, it seemed to us, by the same excitement which governs the miner washing gravel in his pan. They scarce could rest, but went on from shell to shell, opening each as eagerly as though it meant a fortune. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... The monosyllable was curt. Telford was vainly seeking to nip Galletly's gossip in the bud. The name of Palmer conveyed no especial meaning to his ear. He knew where the Palmer homestead was, and that the plaintive-faced, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the affirmative monosyllable), "I was used most scurvily: faith I was. I bear 'em a grudge for it still, I can tell 'em that; for I have hardly been able to hold up my head like a man since—but am forced to go and come, and to do as they bid me. By my troth, I never was so ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... shadowy woodlands. With these were to be seen at intervals some of maturer years, full-blown flowers among the opening buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear during the period when they never meet a single man without having his monosyllable ready for him,—tied as they are, poor things! on the rock of expectation, each of them an Andromeda waiting for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... monosyllable not only sounded clear, but had the quiet and determined quality of tone at which he had striven, and as it sounded the other wheeled, flinching as if the word ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... formed of three letters, of which the first, a, signifies the principal of all, the creator, Brama; the second, u, the conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the destroyer, who puts an end to all, Chiven. It is pronounced like the monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three Gods. The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega mentioned in the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... lost upon Bruno, who had run out of the room, even while the great feat of The Unpronounceable Monosyllable was being ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... This monosyllable was expressive. It proved to me that Bonaparte was conscious how ill he had treated me; and, suspecting that I was actuated by the desire of vengeance, he was afraid of my going to England, lest I should there take advantage ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was bartered and its elect betrayed—by the questioner or by the mocker? Patience. Remember Epictetus. It is probably in his character to ask such a question at such a moment in such a tone and to pronounce the word SCIENCE as a monosyllable. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... emphasized the monosyllable with marked emphasis,—"if I asked you to marry me, what would ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... of that simple monosyllable expressed so perfectly, through such a trained larynx, all the sudden lack of interest!) "It never happened, then? So of course it does not matter. But why do you call ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... applause with an impressive monosyllable. "Wine," he said to Martine, who had peeped in to see if her services were needed, and in a twinkling the pannikins were filled again and lifted to eight thirsty mouths, and set down again empty of ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... suddenly and with such meaning in the monosyllable that Kate blushed as she turned. "Say! is that fellow still writing to you—the one with the ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... os ceann, the noun has almost {124} always been written cionn. Yet in all other situations, the same noun is uniformly written ceann. Whence has arisen this diversity in the orthography of a simple monosyllable? And is it maintained upon just grounds? It must have proceeded either from a persuasion that there are two distinct nouns signifying top, one of which is to be written ceann, and the other cionn[88]; or from an opinion ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... or pronoun to which the participle relates is a passive subject, it should not have the possessive form; as, "The daily instances of men's dying around us remind us of the brevity of human life." "We do not speak of a monosyllable's having a primary accent." Change men's to men, ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... talked of, and hurt at his brusque way of mentioning it, she was just going to give a sharp answer, when he added: 'Shall we make it true?' With characteristic straightforwardness she replied by the monosyllable, 'Yes,' and so they were engaged. Before her marriage she translated Niebuhr's 'Greek Legends,' which were published under ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... "Halt!" The monosyllable came from the yellow glare that the headlights dropped upon the changing road. The taxi-driver threw out his clutch and a sentry walked up, carrying his rifle at the port. With him, by an ill chance, was ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the same angry monosyllable, which I had received from my mother before; and then arose, and walked about the room. I arose too, with intent to throw myself at his feet; but was too much overawed by his sternness, even to make such an expression of my duty to him as my heart ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... able to repeat: "I am not in love with Georgiana!" There was one question which I put severely to Mrs. Walters: Had she told Georgiana of my foolish talk? She shook her head violently, and pressed her lips closely together, suggesting how impossible it would be for the smallest monosyllable in the language to escape by that channel; but she kept her eyes wide open, and the truth issued from them, as smoke in a hollow tree, if stopped in at a lower hole, simply rises and comes out at a higher one. "You should have shut your eyes also," I said. "You have told ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... will take their women and children, and lead them into captivity. The warriors shall fall by our war-clubs—we will give them no quarter. Our tomahawks we will dip in their brains! with our scalping knives we will scalp them." At each period comes on the chorus, which consists of one monosyllable only, that is sounded a number of times, and articulated like a faint, stifled groan. This word is "eh," and signifies "we will," or "we will go," or "we will do." While singing, they perform the ceremony of killing and scalping, with a great degree ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... amongst them now, very drawn and pale in the dim halo of light thrown down from the hanging lamp. His answering monosyllable was cold ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... chebec of the least flycatcher, though much less emphatic, as well as much less frequently uttered, while his twee, or tuwee, is quite in the voice and manner of the wood pewee's clear, plaintive whistle; usually a monosyllable, but at other times almost or quite dissyllabic. The olive-sided, on the other hand, imitates nobody; or, if he does, it must be some bird with which I have yet to make acquaintance. Que-que-o he vociferates, with a strong emphasis and drawl upon ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... still, staring vaguely at the dial as in a trance. And as the next hour creeps stealthily up, it starts all at once, and cries aloud, Gone!—Gone! The sun sinks lower, the hour-hand creeps downward with it, until I hear the thrice-repeated monosyllable, Gone!—Gone!—Gone! Soon through the darkening hours, until at the dead of night the long roll is called, and with the last Gone! the latest of the long procession that filled the day follows its ghostly companions into the stillness and ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... very beautiful and pathetic in the simple brevity of the unhesitating answer, 'Yea, Lord.' Sincerity needs few words. Faith can put an infinite deal of meaning into a monosyllable. Their eagerness to reach the goal made their answer brief. But it was enough. Again the hand which had clasped the maiden's palm is put out and laid gently on the useless eyes, and the great word spoken, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... at first set forth in this Work with the Character of a silent Man; and I think I have so well preserved my Taciturnity, that I do not remember to have violated it with three Sentences in the space of almost two Years. As a Monosyllable is my Delight, I have made very few Excursions in the Conversations which I have related beyond a Yes or a No. By this Means my Readers have lost many good things which I have had in my Heart, though I did not care ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... somewhat raised voice the squatting figure in the corner moved and rose slowly. Reb Moshe, with open mouth and stupid, glaring eyes, came into the light, and in his hoarse voice uttered the monosyllable "Hah!" ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... She made frequent use of that monosyllable. It generally gave the Babe the same sort of feeling as he had been accustomed to experience in the happy days of his childhood when he had been caught ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... up in a thick great-coat, though it was a warm day in June—a clear-eyed, small-featured, diminutive old man, who had sat the whole time, taking no apparent interest in the proceedings. All eyes were turned upon him in a moment, and he quietly repeated the awful monosyllable—"eight!" Mr Gillingham Howard looked at the old gentleman with detestation in every feature, for he felt that the person, whoever he was, was actually robbing him of a thousand pounds; and he would have had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... insurance broker and general shipping agent, was a very polite man, and extremely soft-spoken; but he was of an extremely inquisitive disposition, I thought, for he asked my father numberless questions about himself and me, to all of which he returned the short monosyllable "H'm," which did not inform us whether he was satisfied or not. I found all the time that he was merely trying to discover what amount of premium my father was likely to be able to pay, that he might ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... lovely and so spirited to look upon, so radiant with youth, animation, and innocence, that the eyes of the poor young officer were dazzled and sought the floor; completely intoxicated and bewildered, he could not join in the conversation, uttering here and there only a trembling monosyllable. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... expressed herself in the monosyllable. No words came to her lips, but to her eyes many tears, through which the pearls were visible. They whirled in her bewildered brain as a token that she was loved—loved by HIM, though but yesterday he had loved another. It was all so sudden, so beautiful. You might have knocked ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... on Whist) could not make up her mind to use the word 'Go.' Mounsey, from long practice, has got over this difficulty, and uses it incessantly. It is no matter what adjunct follows in the train of this despised monosyllable,—whatever liquid comes after this prefix is welcome. Mounsey, without being the most communicative, is the most conversible man I know. The social principle is inseparable from his person. If he has nothing to say, he drinks your ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... syllables, in both of which the rhyme is engaged; and an English version of the above verses, however faithful in other respects, which should omit to use the same species of double termination, and content itself with the monosyllable rhyme, would indubitably lose some of the harmony of the original. These double rhymes are far from abundant in our monosyllabic language; but we venture to affirm, that their conscientious employment would be found so valuable, as to amply repay the labour and difficulty attending ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... as he uttered this meditative monosyllable, and continued to regard his niece with keener scrutiny, if that were possible, than before. 'It is John's temper—a very firebrand. My dear, you are very young, and you should not be above taking advice. Let me advise you to control that fiery ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... way out to the club she sat between them, miserably indifferent to the glory of the spring day and refusing to contribute more than an occasional monosyllable to the conversation, which needed all the encouragement it could get ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... after he has submitted himself to the process, the experiments made upon him prove successful. He is naturally a fluent talker, but now cannot, without difficulty and stammering, pronounce his own name, an easy monosyllable—cannot strike the lecturer's hand—cannot rise from a chair, &c. We may add, that he cannot be made ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... halting monosyllable Joe judged that something was amiss. Observation had never been a slow or painful ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... greatly surprised him. It had originally commenced with 'Dear Sir'; but these words had been carefully erased, and the monosyllable 'Sir' substituted in their place. The rest of the contents shall be given in ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... horrified monosyllable broke in on the smug recital. She caught Lad protectingly by the ruff and stared in mute dread at the lanky and red-whiskered officer. Lad, reading her voice as always, divined this nasal-toned caller had said or done something to make her unhappy. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... alert, self-contained little riverman trudged along in almost entire silence, his keen chipmunk eyes spying restlessly on all there was to be seen. When Bob ventured a remark or comment, he answered by a grunt or a monosyllable. The grunt or the monosyllable was never sullen or hostile or contemptuous; merely indifferent. Bob learned to economize speech, and so got along well with ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... Latin grammar but with a new standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bash fulness. Tom, as you have observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address; but the difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr. or Mrs. Stelling was so great, that he even dreaded to be asked at table whether he would have more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he had almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart, that he would throw them into a neighboring pond; for not only was he ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Saxham; and the monosyllable seemed to drop from his grim lips like a stone. Her bosom heaved with short, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... pass her with that monosyllable, but Perrote was not to be thus baffled. She laid a detaining hand upon ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... ordinary monosyllable was slight but quite perceptible. "Mr. Packard has given you a task, concerning the necessity of which I should be glad to learn your opinion. Do you think it wise to—to probe into such matters? Not that I ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... then survey the immense extent of the city. The door of the cathedral stood invitingly open. My destiny prevailed. I entered the ominous archway. Where then was my guardian angel?—if indeed such angels there be. If! Distressing monosyllable! what world of mystery, and meaning, and doubt, and uncertainty is there involved in thy two letters! I entered the ominous archway! I entered; and, without injury to my orange-colored auriculas, I ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... either prevents our uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in expectation thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory monosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public Opinion is the Pope, the Anti-Christ, for us to protest against e corde cordium. And by what College of Cardinals is this our God's-vicar, our binder and looser, elected? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the first time. Fanny Brandeis would have given everything she had, everything she hoped to be, to be able to take back that monosyllable. She was gripped with horror at what she had done. She had spoken almost mechanically. And yet that monosyllable must have been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and thought. "Now I begin to understand you," Fenger went on. "You've decided to lop off all the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... night, Mr. Schmarck," he said, rubbing his hands on an oil-rag. I gruffly agreed with him in a monosyllable. "But it is ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... of nothing to add to the sympathetic little monosyllable. Twilight was reaching even the hilltop, the canyons were rilling with violet shadows; the sweet, pungent odour of the first dew, falling on warm ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... has made the men silent, for scarcely a word is spoken; if it were, in the stillness it must be heard, though they are at some distance. The wheels, well greased for the heavy harvest work, do not creak. Save an occasional monosyllable, as the horses are ordered on, or to stop, and a faint rustling of straw, there is no sound. It may be the flood of brilliant light, or the mirage of the heat, but in some way the waggon and its rising load, the men and the horses, have an unreality ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... rewards to which it is not entitled. Being a gardener, I like to call a spade as spelt; and if any one terms it an horticultural implement, or a mattock, I do not expect him to dig much. I have used the monosyllable "shop," and I will not recall it, though a thousand pairs of gleaming scissors were pointed at my breast, and I was told by an angry army of apprentices to talk shop no more—the word was vulgar, or rather obsolete, superseded by the more graceful terms ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Monetary mona. Money mono. Money-order posxtmandato. Mongrel hibrida. Monitor avertulo, avertanto. Monk monahxo. Monkey simio. Monograph monografo. Monogram monogramo. Monologue monologo. Monomania monomanio. Monopolise monopoligi. Monopoly monopolo. Monosyllable unusilabo. Monotonous (of form) unuforma. Monotonous (of tone) unutona. Monster monstro. Monstrous monstra. Month monato. Monthly (adj.) cxiumonata. Monument monumento. Mood modo. Moody silentema. Moon luno. Moonlight lunbrilo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... requires. The poorest logic is the soundest reasoning—if it conclude for him. The visits to the parsonage were, meanwhile, continued. Upon my return, I gained no news. I asked if all were well there, and the simple, monosyllable, "Yes," answered with unusual quickness and decision, was all that escaped the doctor's lips. He did not wish to be interrogated further, and was displeased. I perceived this and was silent. For some days, no mention was made of his dear friend the minister. He was accustomed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Cruden, our new friend, insurance broker and general shipping agent, was a very polite man, and extremely soft-spoken; but he was of an extremely inquisitive disposition, I thought, for he asked my father numberless questions about himself and me, to all of which he returned the short monosyllable "H'm," which did not inform us whether he was satisfied or not. I found all the time that he was merely trying to discover what amount of premium my father was likely to be able to pay, that ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... now Rose's turn to interrupt. Turning upon Edward, with an expression of deeply insulted feeling, "Sir," she said; and before she proceeded the cold monosyllable had entered his heart; "Sir, my cousin Helen did not lie in wait; a woman's beauty may be called a snare, if you please, but it is not one of her own making; she was sought and won, and not by an idiot; and it is ungenerous in you to speak thus now, when time, ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... not anxious to understand, if indeed her English ear detected all the hidden meaning of the monosyllable. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... mutton; hence they are familiarly and vulgarly termed "mutton-tugs," abbreviated to "tugs," which homely monosyllable they themselves derive from togati, on account of their wearing the toga—had they not better trace their origin at once from that mysterious and secret society of the Thugs of India? But their internal economy should be treated with ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... punctilious practitioner of Parliamentary forms, a stickler for the minutest observation of order. Whilst Mr. Gladstone and other members of old standing were content to preface their speeches with the monosyllable "Sir," nothing less than "Mr. Speaker, sir," would satisfy Mr. Biggar. No one who has not heard the inflection of tone with which this was uttered, nor seen the oratorical sweep of the hand that launched it on its course, can realize ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... my intended Project: It is very well known that I at first set forth in this Work with the Character of a silent Man; and I think I have so well preserved my Taciturnity, that I do not remember to have violated it with three Sentences in the space of almost two Years. As a Monosyllable is my Delight, I have made very few Excursions in the Conversations which I have related beyond a Yes or a No. By this Means my Readers have lost many good things which I have had in my Heart, though I did not care ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... hardly spoke. If she said nothing to Leeds, neither would she address the man on her other side, only giving such monosyllable answers as were necessary. The evening dragged slowly. Leeds did not approach her. Once or twice she looked toward him, but he did not appear to notice her. Indeed, he only came late from the smoking room and returned after a brief appearance ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... 3 (lines 230-239). First printed from the Bodleian manuscript by Mr. C.D. Locock. In the space here left blank, line 231, the manuscript has manhood, which is cancelled for some monosyllable unknown—query, spring? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Enid, throwing such a depth of expression into the brief monosyllable, that it seemed to convey a whole ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... life. From childhood our hearts have been intertwined, and death only has the power to tear them apart. We sat together long hours, and talked of the past—alternately, as their memories floated up, asking each other, "Where is this one? and this?" and to each inquiry the sad monosyllable, "Dead!" was the reply, of all who were with us at school when we were boys. We ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... is the lightest monosyllable, but fraught with much energy. She tilts the shoulder nearest to him, and peeps at him over it, with a ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... persuaded Veronica to drive with her, as on the previous day. But it was dark and gloomy, and there would be rain before night. She talked with the young girl, and began to make plans with her for going away. Gregorio ate nothing, and looked on, uttering a monosyllable now and then, and laughing frantically, two or three times. Nobody paid any attention to his laughter, now, for the household had grown used to it. It might break out just when a servant was handing him something; the man would merely draw back a step, and wait until the count was ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... some of maturer years, full-blown flowers among the opening buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear during the period when they never meet a single man without having his monosyllable ready for him,—tied as they are, poor things! on the rock of expectation, each of them an Andromeda ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... marriage an au dela is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble and the water, the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The monosyllable which epitomises the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard not, thought not there—only the nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes. Freedom limitless; the Mahometan stands on the verge of the abyss, and the spaces of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... been narrating this incident he was asked what reply the lady had made to so uncourteous a speech. 'I don't remember,' said the Bibliotaph, 'it was long ago; but my opinion is that she would have been justified in denominating me by a monosyllable beginning with the initial letter of the alphabet and followed ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... The simple monosyllable was strangely expressive, but Dug McFarlane had no understanding of the thought that prompted it. It would have been difficult indeed, even with understanding, to have probed the depths of feeling prompting it. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... fierce monosyllable. "All that lot—the poor devils you despise—are mostly made from the wrong sort of both races—in point of breeding, I mean. And that's a supreme point, in spite of the twaddle that's talked about equality. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... naked among the snow-drifts from morning till night. At a medical feast, some strange or unusual act was commonly enjoined as vital to the patient's cure: as, for example, the departing guest, in place of the customary monosyllable of thanks, was required to greet his host with an ugly grimace. Sometimes, by prescription, half the village would throng into the house where the patient lay, led by old women disguised with the heads and skins of bears, and beating with sticks on sheets of dry bark. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... twenty-two monosyllables to three of greater length, or rather to the same dissyllable thrice repeated; and that too in common parlance proncounced as a monosyllable. The passage in the Book of Ezekiel, which Coleride is said to have considered the most sublime in the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... of life and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?—that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?—that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking vessel from which a sharp fragment may be shattered, shall by any ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... not see the effort the monosyllable cost her. In bitter disappointment he dropped her hand. As Nancy turned abruptly away she tripped over the root of a tree. Instantly Goddard caught and steadied her. Her soft hair brushed his cheek ... one breathless moment ... he clasped her in his ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Chump. It was wickedly clever. Arabella resolved to put it by; but morning after morning she saw her father's anxiety for the reply mounting to a pitch of fever. She consulted with Cornelia, who said, "No; never do such a thing!" and subsequently, with a fainter firmness, repeated the negative monosyllable. Arabella, in her wretchedness, became endued with remorseless discernment. "It means that Cornelia would never do it herself," she thought; and, comforted haply by reflecting that for their common good she could do it, she did ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... out to the club she sat between them, miserably indifferent to the glory of the spring day and refusing to contribute more than an occasional monosyllable to the conversation, which needed all the encouragement it could get ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... turned his blue eyes wonderingly up to her. The corner of his mouth trembled, widened, his eyelids crinkled, and then he smiled delightfully, straight into the eyes of the nurse, stretched up a wavering pink hand, and patted her cheek. A soft, gurgling monosyllable, difficult of classification but easy to interpret, ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... that the pupils were contracted almost to nothing, with a large circle of white around them. He held in his hand a tankard full of a dark substance, and approaching the gleam of light shed by the lamp he uttered this single monosyllable: "Oh!" with such an expression of extreme terror that Mousqueton started, alarmed, and Blaisois was ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was sure that the impertinence of her monosyllable would be lost upon her elderly protege. "I'll make it clear to you, if I can. Millicent, ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... that remark, people were silent. It was known that the speaker had secret sources of information. In this case the monosyllable had a moral intention. Mr. Harford sometimes formed one of a little detachment which left the city shortly after noon on Sunday with the purpose of arriving as soon as possible at some public-house on the outskirts of the city where its members duly qualified themselves as ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... verb may find that he has two or three ambiguous monosyllables from which to select, and must be in doubt as to which promises best to give any meaning that he can welcome; and then, after his choice is made, he may be left with some homeless monosyllable still on his hands. (Homophones) Nor is our author apparently sensitive to the irrelevant suggestions that our numerous homophones cause; and he will provoke further ambiguities or obscurities by straining the ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... desk did not even look up. He merely flung a barbed "Well?" over his shoulder. It reminded Trotter of the preoccupied tail swish of a horse worried by a black-fly. The side flick of one casual monosyllable was plainly all he was worth. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... old plum-trees, where it climbs in search of the insects which there congregate. We shall frequently hear its voice, especially before rain, for it is a noisy creature. It has a liquid note, sounding like "el" frequently repeated, and then ending with a sharp, short monosyllable. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... This freezing monosyllable notwithstanding, Sir Terence pursued his course fluently. "The golden Venus!—sure, Miss Nugent, you that are so quick, can't but know I would apostrophize Miss Broadhurst that is—but that won't be long so, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... descend pressure accident fascinate misspelled accommodate mischievous possession accordance miscellaneous accuracy muscle recollection succeed susceptible dispelled occasional miscellaneous occur existence monosyllable experience intellectual across sentence parallel amount embellishment apart foregoing wholly arouse forehead woolly village already forty villain all right foreign till forfeit amateur formally perpetual grandeur formerly persuade perspiration appal fulfill apparatus willful ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... the congregations made no responses and showed no signs of reverence. Soon in all the coffeehouses was handed about a brutal lampoon on the courtly prelates whose pens the King had employed. Mother East had also her full share of abuse. Into that homely monosyllable our ancestors had degraded the name of the great house of Este which reigned ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great-coat, though it was a warm day in June—a clear-eyed, small-featured, diminutive old man, who had sat the whole time, taking no apparent interest in the proceedings. All eyes were turned upon him in a moment, and he quietly repeated the awful monosyllable—"eight!" Mr Gillingham Howard looked at the old gentleman with detestation in every feature, for he felt that the person, whoever he was, was actually robbing him of a thousand pounds; and he would have had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... not the answer for which she had hoped and her eyes dropped at the curt monosyllable. She put the cup back on the tray and folded her hands in her lap with a faint little sigh of disappointment, her head drooping pensively. Craven knew instinctively that he had hurt her and hated himself. It was like striking a child. But presently she looked up again and gazed at him soberly, ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... might be well to state, signified the prairie; its melancholy personality having penetrated the very marrow of their train existence, they had come to refer to it by the monosyllable, as in certain nether circles the head of the house receives ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... have in right Of the said monosyllable ravaged the lands And embezzled the goods and annoyed, day and night, Both the bodies and souls of the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Don Alonzo, evidently struggling to recall his energies, while the peculiar tone of the single monosyllable caused ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... recommendation with such an extraordinarily abrupt, short, and loud utterance of the monosyllable 'Oh!' that even the unwieldy Patriarch moved his blue eyes in something of a hurry, to look at him. Mr Pancks, with a sniff of corresponding intensity, then added, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... put severely to Mrs. Walters: Had she told Georgiana of my foolish talk? She shook her head violently, and pressed her lips closely together, suggesting how impossible it would be for the smallest monosyllable in the language to escape by that channel; but she kept her eyes wide open, and the truth issued from them, as smoke in a hollow tree, if stopped in at a lower hole, simply rises and comes out at a higher one. "You should have shut your eyes also," I said. "You have told her ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... I was carrying a pea rifle more for company than for anything else; for "Paddy," though of a most cheerful disposition, never made remarks. His conversation for the most part was compounded of eloquent looks and expressive gestures. A monosyllable to him was a laborious sentence; four or five words a speech. Once upon a time, it is said, a youthful German inadvertently blundered into a railway carriage reserved for Moltke. The glare of the great man brought three words of respectful apology for the intrusion. The great ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... instance so striking as this of the immense difference that sometimes lies in the mere accent given one monosyllable. Until Mrs. Siddons revealed the real Lady Macbeth, every actress had replied, "We fail?" interrogatively, and then encouragingly, "Screw your courage to the sticking-point and we'll not fail." Such the commonplace reciters. When genius touched the word it flashed and sparkled. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... poetry in the name, Job. But Rome and its vulgate vulgarized this hallowed name, and Britain followed Rome. His name in Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic, is Jobab. There is more poetry in this. There is no metre, no poetry in a monotone or monosyllable. Born among rocks and mountains, the proper theatre of a heaven-inspired Muse—not in Arabia the Happy, but in Arabia the Rocky—he was a heart-touching, a soul-stirring, emotional Bard. In such a case the clouds that overshadow the era of the man only enhance the genius ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... click of it Kaskisoon moved. He looked at the half-breed. His breath came in a low monosyllable of understanding. Over the top of the windfall he poked the barrel of his gun. Then he looked again at Jean. And Jean turned. Their eyes met. They were eyes red and narrowed by the beat of storm. Jean Croisset knew what that silence meant. ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... divided into families. Each family has a particular place of residence, from which is derived its distinguishing name. This is formed by adding the monosyllable Gal to the name of the place: thus the southern shore of Botany Bay is called Gwea, and the people who inhabit it style themselves Gweagal. Those who live on the north shore of Port Jackson are called Cam-mer-ray-gal, that part ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... telegram she had not noticed the little monosyllable 'us,' which was now affecting her so powerfully. Of course it meant a wife and possibly children, and her day was surely over at Tracy Park. It was in vain that her husband tried to comfort her, saying that they knew nothing positively, except ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... thinkers and brooders, what would you say if men answered you: No! Go yourself and spin in a factory, for you have shown clearly enough that your thinking and brooding are futile. All your fine phrases amount to nothing but the one dread monosyllable—Die! Are you so wicked as that, and know it? or so stupid, and ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... putting much eloquence Into the monosyllable. "That's a bum monniker out of a French love story. It's the Roosian princess. It's Helga, that's ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... him for an appreciable fraction of a minute ere she answered, and when she did, it was in the monosyllable - 'Yes.' ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made an attentive and genial nurse, discoursing so pleasantly and fluently that, greatly to my satisfaction (for I was very weak), my part in the conversation was limited to an occasional monosyllable; but he said nothing on the subject as to which I was most anxious for information—Mr. Fortescue—and, as he clearly desired to avoid it, I refrained from asking questions that might have put him in a difficulty and exposed me ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... appeared to have need of the monosyllable in order to collect and arrange his ideas. "'Tain't lack of sand exactly, either, for most of the fellows about here thinks it is ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... Breitmann himself knew what wild rage lay back of that monosyllable. He was sure now; that diagram brushed away any lingering doubt. The lock had been trifled with, but the man who had done the work had not been sure ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... in his chair behind the shelter of his hands, or gone down in any upheaval of primal emotions; and perhaps he saw in her answer, if not sympathy, for she was too impersonal for that, a candid understanding of the little scene and an appreciation of its dramatic quality. "Then," said he, after his monosyllable, "there is nothing left me but to go." When he had risen, he stood looking down at his wife's beautiful dusky head. Incredible to think it had ever lain on his breast, or that the fact of its cherishing there made no difference ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... understand little of it. The first smile (for the convulsive movement in sleep that is popularly adorned by that name is not a smile) is an uncertain sketch of a smile, unpractised but unmistakable. It is accompanied by a single sound—a sound that would be a monosyllable if it were articulate—which is the utterance, though hardly the communication, of a private jollity. That and that alone is the real beginning ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... word he took finished work from various drawers and put it on the table for my inspection. I praised it, asked questions to draw him out, but failed to get more than a lift of the eyebrows, or an occasional monosyllable. It was not exhilarating, and as soon as I ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... private room at Halfpenny and Farthing's office, Mr. Halfpenny, who had seemed somewhat mystified by the happenings at the bank, looked inquiringly at Professor Cox-Raythwaite and snapped out one suggestive monosyllable: ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... in any direction without difficulty. Our driver was a lively intelligent young fellow, having a civil word of inquiry or of greeting for every Indian we encountered: these were by no means numerous however, and they seldom replied by more than a monosyllable, hardly appearing ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... melody of that simple monosyllable expressed so perfectly, through such a trained larynx, all the sudden lack of interest!) "It never happened, then? So of course it does not matter. But why do you call ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... vouchsafe even a monosyllable in reply, and the tactless Kirk assumed the double burden of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... as how they comes to take up the nets in the morning, why then I think I may hold on; but if so be they waits, why they'll then find me dead as a fish," said Smallbones, who seldom ventured above a monosyllable, and whose language if not considered as pure English, was certainly amazingly Saxon; and then Smallbones began to reflect, whether it was not necessary that he should forgive Mr Vanslyperken before he died, and his pros and cons ended with his thinking he ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... that of MODERN ENGLISH, or the period of lost inflections. E.g. stones, care, will, bind, help, each being a monosyllable. Modern English extends from A.D. 1500 to the present time. It has witnessed comparatively few grammatical changes, but the vocabulary of our language has been vastly increased by additions from the classical languages. Vowels, too, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... peculiarly fertile in this sort of phrases, which spring up suddenly, no one knows exactly in what spot, and pervade the whole population in a few hours, no one knows how. Many years ago the favourite phrase (for, though but a monosyllable, it was a phrase in itself) was Quoz. This odd word took the fancy of the multitude in an extraordinary degree, and very soon acquired an almost boundless meaning. When vulgar wit wished to mark its incredulity and raise a laugh at the same time, there was no resource ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... curacy (for I have given it up), and only giving the outward, but equally true reason, that I found it on the whole an ineligible and distressing post. . . . I know you will apply to such an act that disgusting monosyllable of which Protestants are so fond. He felt with me and for me—for my horror of giving pain to my father, and for my wearied and excited state of mind; and strangely enough—to show how differently, according to the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... germ theory will make a note of this). The Arab with his rudimentary fiddle will repeat this fragment of melody by the hour, while a company of his unlaundered brethren dance, until exhausted, in dust to their ankles, with the temperature near the boiling point. This musical monosyllable is ample to satisfy his artistic craving. In other words it is the complete musical expression ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... becloud her face. I'll bribe Helen to find out for me. It may be some unfortunate love affair—who knows? I think I would like to put any fellow out of the way that might be seeking her hand. I believe I would kill him, if necessary. Perhaps, dear Journal, I should not have written that terrible monosyllable, but as you tell no ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... triumvirate was broken in upon by Tom, who, with his usual suavity of manners, politely addressed himself to the unknown, on the common topic of weather, et cetera, without eliciting in reply more than an assenting or dissenting monosyllable, "You have seen ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... merely lent their ears to the plain import of the word, imagined that Phutatorius, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of Didius's hands, in order to bemaul Yorick to some purpose—and that the desperate monosyllable Z...ds was the exordium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough kind of handling of him; so that my uncle Toby's good-nature felt a pang for what Yorick was about to undergo. But seeing Phutatorius ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... one-case article with a distinct form for the plural. The ripe product of tendency, the infant heir of the eloquent ages, to whose birth the law of Aryan evolution groaned and travailed until but now, the most useful, if not the "mightiest," monosyllable "ever moulded by the lips of man," the "the," one and indeclinable, was born in the Anglo-Saxon mouth, and sublimed to its ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... slow progress through the crowded rooms. Once or twice Wingrave fancied that his companion hung a little heavily upon his arm. She showed no desire to talk. She even answered a remark of his in a monosyllable. Only when they passed the Marchioness, on the arm of one of the foreign guests in whose honor the reception was given, she seemed to shiver a little, and her grasp upon his arm was tightened. Once, in a block, she was forced to speak to some acquaintances, ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... severe sternness, this monosyllable, she paused a little; and looking round upon the youths with a seriousness and dignity that sat upon her so well that they shrunk from her glance, she added, with a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... o'clock. Still the champions were as fresh as they had been at nine. No one could foretell the victor, though any one could easily have pointed out the poor victim. After ten o'clock the conversation was conducted almost entirely by Williams and Dic, with a low monosyllable now and then from Rita when addressed. She, poor girl, was too sleepy to talk, even to Dic. Soon after twelve o'clock the knight from Blue, pitying her, showed signs of surrender; but she at once awoke and ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... in that monosyllable of good cheer throughout the United States Army, and with Indian-like solemnity they said it, tin cup ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... no more than an occasional monosyllable in reply, he poured forth a flood of information about his estate: The architectural features of his house—the cost; the loveliness of his trees—the cost; the coloring of his flowers—the cost; the magnificence of his view, And all the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... one head. As to the higher literary virtues, too, his sentences were all carefully balanced in a pair of logical and rhetorical scales of the most sensitive kind; and he never perpetrated the atrocity of ending a sentence with a monosyllable, or using the same word twice within the same five lines, choosing always some judicious method of circumlocution to obviate reiteration. Poor man! in the pride of his unspotted purity, he little knew what a humiliation fate had prepared for him. It happened to him to have to state how ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of the period, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beside him, said, "Well!" He had long ago discovered that she could pack more meaning into that monosyllable than the average counselor could into a half-hour's speech. Prince Ganzay was thunderstruck, and from the Bench of Counselors six or eight voices were babbling loudly at once. Four Ministers were on their feet clamoring for recognition; ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... decoys, that had cost hard money, all for nothing—less than nothing—to be laughed at and postponed to his Methodist sister Scott? The impudence of deliberately telling him he "didn't want it, and was rich enough!" as if "enough" could ever be good grammar after such a monosyllable as "rich;" and "want it" indeed! of course he wanted it; if not, why had he slaved so many years? want it, indeed! if to hope by day, and to dream by night—if to leave no means untried of delicately showing how he longed for it—if to grow sick with care, and thin with coveting—if ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Vice-President, repeating the word without cessation until the broker's wrath has been appeased, and he returns to his chair with the disagreeable reflection that a heavy score is against him for the semi-annual settlement-day. Every repetition of that fatal monosyllable was a fresh mark of fifty cents or a dollar against his name. Generally, however, the Government brokers are more orderly than their neighbors in the Regular Board. Indeed, the whole proceedings are more decorous and respectful, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... but the same four letters to describe the salute which you perform on your grandmother's forehead, and that which you bestow on the sacred cheek of your mistress; but the same four letters, and not one of them a labial. Do we mean to hint that Mr. Arthur Pendennis made any use of the monosyllable in question? Not so. In the first place it was dark: the fire-works were over, and nobody could see him; secondly, he was not a man to have this kind of secret, and tell it; thirdly and lastly, let the honest fellow who has kissed a pretty girl, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the wretched free, And bid our treasurer disburse six pounds To pay their debts.—Let no one weep to-day. Come, Dollallolla; [1] curse that odious name! It is so long, it asks an hour to speak it. By heavens! I'll change it into Doll, or Loll, Or any other civil monosyllable, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... in the monosyllable, but a thoughtful expression in the hard gray eyes indicated that Varr had found food for reflection in Nelson's story. What direction his thoughts were taking he did not choose to reveal at the moment, but shot another question at the ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... hill, with rocks and thick shrubbery on each side of it, through a narrow defile, a harsh voice suddenly exclaimed through the gloom, something that sounded like the Greek imperative Statheets! Stop! and then again another monosyllable, which we certainly understood better, "Halt!" A gun was also fired off at the same time; and, by the flash of the discharge we could see several long gleaming rifle barrels peering out from the bushes on ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... conjugations, without any reason arising from the nature of the language, which has properly but one conjugation, such as has been exemplified: from which all deviations are to be considered as anomalies, which are indeed, in our monosyllable Saxon verbs, and the verbs derived from them, very frequent; but almost all the verbs which have been adopted from other ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... recorded in her Opinions on Whist) could not make up her mind to use the word 'Go.' Mounsey, from long practice, has got over this difficulty, and uses it incessantly. It is no matter what adjunct follows in the train of this despised monosyllable,—whatever liquid comes after this prefix is welcome. Mounsey, without being the most communicative, is the most conversible man I know. The social principle is inseparable from his person. If he has nothing to say, he drinks your health; and when you cannot, from the rapidity ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... it impossible to extract one monosyllable more from him, walked forward, and went ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... inheritors of the Roman grandeur?—With my conjecture, the sense would be;—"let higher, or the more northern part of Italy—(unless 'higher' be a corruption for 'hir'd,'—the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see," &c. The following "woo" and "wed" are so far confirmative as they indicate Shakespeare's manner of connection by unmarked influences of association from some ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... at his chill monosyllable and the ascending red increased the beauty of her face. "I have a brother who is condemned to die," she continued. "Condemn the fault, I pray you, and spare ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... first remark Mary had made in Rob's hearing, except an occasional monosyllable in regard to her choice of dishes on the bill of fare, and he turned to look at her with an amused smile, as if he had just waked up to the fact that she ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... man and his ways. The talkative fit was evidently over, and he might sit and talk, if he would, from then till evening, and get no more than a monosyllable here and there in return ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... crowds of boats and wheelbarrows." The native word for the country was something like Keugu, which the Chinese (as they still do with foreign words, as, for instance, Ying for "England") promptly turned into a convenient monosyllable Ngu, or Wu. The semi-barbarous King was delighted at the opening thus given him to associate with orthodox Chinese princes on an equal footing, and to throw off his former tyrannical suzerain. He annexed a number of neighbouring barbarian states hitherto, like himself, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... that Latin does to Italian. It is more nearly related to modern Siamese than to modern ahan, but possesses many groups of consonants which have become simplified in both. It is a language of the isolating class, in which every word is a monosyllable, and may be employed either as a noun or as a verb according to its context and its position in a sentence. In the order of words, the genitive follows the norm it governs, and, as usual in such cases, the relations of time and place ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... uttered this monosyllable, he made a feeble effort to rise from his seat, but sunk back, and again fixed his eye upon the floor in ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... do not know. But one unaccountable error was forced on one's notice. Thebes, which, by Milton and by every scholar is made a monosyllable, is here made a dissyllable. But Thebez, the dissyllable, is a Syrian city. It is true that Causabon deduces from a Syriac word meaning a case or enclosure (a theca), the name of Thebes, whether Boeotian or Egyptian. It is probable, therefore, that Thebes the hundred-gated ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... could see that she was pretty, and from the gloss with which the light shone upon her dark dress I knew that it was a rich material. She spoke a few words in a foreign tongue in a tone as though asking a question, and when my companion answered in a gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly fell from her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered something in her ear, and then, pushing her back into the room from whence she had come, he walked towards me again with the ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... water, impeded as we were by a growth of stiff, obstinate young birch-trees, laced together by grapevines. In the twilight, we now and then, to support ourselves, snatched at the touch-me-not stem of some ancient sweet-brier. Shaw, who was in advance, suddenly uttered a somewhat emphatic monosyllable; and looking up I saw him with one hand grasping a sapling, and one foot immersed in the water, from which he had forgotten to withdraw it, his whole attention being engaged in contemplating the movements of a water-snake, about ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... abdicated—only from the depths of her infinite tiredness she was smiling faintly and her smile was the dedication of this moment to him. Every now and then she would ask him a question and he would answer—rather shortly—or she would make a statement which he would seal with a monosyllable. There were never any comments between them. In the absoluteness of their understanding, explanations ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... words might be made, compounded with the monosyllable tang (which in Sakai and Semang means "hand"), and conveying an ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... gentleman with the malformation, before described, shocked the propriety of the breakfast-table by a loud utterance of three words, of which the two last were "Webster's Unabridged," and the first was an emphatic monosyllable.—Beg pardon,—he added,—forgot myself. But let us have an English dictionary, if we are to have any. I don't believe in clipping the coin of the realm, Sir! If I put a weathercock on my house, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... with its uptilt of question had been on George's tongue. It was a monosyllable that demanded an answer. Penny had got ahead of him, forced him, as it were, into the witness ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... parted. Mary's subjects, outraged by her conduct, rose against her. As she passed through the streets of Edinburgh the women hurled after her indecent names. Great banners were raised with execrable daubs representing the murdered Darnley. The short and dreadful monosyllable which is familiar to us in the pages of the Bible was hurled ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... room as even the least of these cabins. It was impossible, to be sure, that in one's amused researches one had not missed a cupboard ingeniously disguised somewhere. And the multiplicity of mirrors, and the message of the laconic monosyllable "Hot" on silver taps, and the discretion of the lighting, all indicated that the architect and creator of these marvellous microcosms had "understood." The cosy virtue of littleness, and the entire absurdity of space for the sake of space, were strikingly proved, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... now, very drawn and pale in the dim halo of light thrown down from the hanging lamp. His answering monosyllable was cold and restrained. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... invective and vituperation. The resources of his Latinised vocabulary enable him to rise by successive gyrations to a point of vantage above his prey, and then the downward rush that strikes the quarry is a Saxon monosyllable. In this cardinal point of art for those who have to do with the English speech he became the teacher of Burke, who, with a lesser wealth of Saxon at his command, employed it with a ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... a little earnest look. But Mrs. Dodd did not act upon the hint. She had learned who the young man was: had his very name been strange to her, she would have been more at her ease with him. Moreover, his rudeness to the other men repelled her a little. Above all, he had uttered a monosyllable and a stinger: a thorn of speech not in her vocabulary, nor even in society's. Those might be his manners, even when not aching. Still, it seems, a feather would have turned the scale in his favour, for she whispered, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and an occasional pause for thought, he walked towards me. When within half a dozen yards he stopped and took good stock of me, with brown eyes overhung by thick grizzled eyebrows. Then he offered a short, interrogative, authoritative bark, a mere monosyllable of inquiry. ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... wide, between two fences of reed, which inclosed extensive plantations on each side. Here we met many of the natives, who were travelling to the beach with loads of provisions, and courteously bowed their heads as they passed by us, in sign of friendship, generally pronouncing some monosyllable or other, which seemed to correspond to the Otaheitean tays. The inclosures, plantations, and houses, were exactly in the same style as at Ea-oonhe, and the people had never failed to plant odoriferous shrubs round their dwellings. The mulberry, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... with a volume of meaning in the monosyllable, as seizing her hand, he held it tightly and gazed earnestly ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... classes, just as we see them on the shelf in the bank! It is a curious sight. The little shop-girl there, what is she but a roll of pink ribbon?—nay, she is but half-a-yard. And the poor infinitesimal porters and guards, how pathetically small seems their share in the great monosyllable Man, animalcules in that great social system which, again, is but an animalcule in the blood of Time. Still more infinitesimal seems the man who is a subdivision, not of a form of work even, but merely of a form of taste; the man who collects foreign stamps, say, or book-plates, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
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