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noun
Grammar  n.  
1.
The science which treats of the principles of language; the study of forms of speech, and their relations to one another; the art concerned with the right use and application of the rules of a language, in speaking or writing. Note: The whole fabric of grammar rests upon the classifying of words according to their function in the sentence.
2.
The art of speaking or writing with correctness or according to established usage; speech considered with regard to the rules of a grammar. "The original bad grammar and bad spelling."
3.
A treatise on the principles of language; a book containing the principles and rules for correctness in speaking or writing.
4.
Treatise on the elements or principles of any science; as, a grammar of geography.
Comparative grammar, the science which determines the relations of kindred languages by examining and comparing their grammatical forms.
Grammar school.
(a)
A school, usually endowed, in which Latin and Greek grammar are taught, as also other studies preparatory to colleges or universities; as, the famous Rugby Grammar School. This use of the word is more common in England than in the United States. "When any town shall increase to the number of a hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University."
(b)
In the American system of graded common schools, at one time the term referred to an intermediate school between the primary school and the high school, in which the principles of English grammar were taught; now, it is synonymous with primary school or elementary school, being the first school at which children are taught subjects required by the state educational laws. In different communities, the grammar school (primary school) may have grades 1 to 4, 1 to 6, or 1 to 8, usually together with a kindergarten. Schools between the primary school and high school are now commonly termed middle school or intermediate school.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Grammar" Quotes from Famous Books



... to pry into their secrets, and their position as confessors and spiritual advisers affords them plenty of pretexts for being alone with the women. The confessional, in particular, must be a perilous rock-a-head for most of them. In an appendix to the "Tagal Grammar" (which, by-the-bye, is not added to the editions sold for general use) a list of questions is given for the convenience of young priests not yet conversant with the Tagal language. These questions are to be asked in the confessional, and several pages of them relate exclusively to the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... indeed not only with this, of which it is my function to show you the laws, but much more with the art of all men, which you came here chiefly to learn, that of language, the chief vices of education have arisen from the one great fallacy of supposing that noble language is a communicable trick of grammar and accent, instead of simply the careful expression of right thought. All the virtues of language are, in their roots, moral; it becomes accurate if the speaker desires to be true; clear, if he speaks with sympathy ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... you were at school, sonny; your grammar doesn't improve. I wish I could hear of someone who would teach you; but I'm ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre

... doubt of the greatest importance to secure a career for special talent so that poverty shall not prevent a really able boy or girl following such a course of study as would enable his or her talents to have their full scope. The old Grammar Schools, especially in the North of England, afford many examples of poor boys who by means of their school and University scholarships were enabled to obtain the best training the country could give, and so attain the highest positions in Church and State. These must ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... in tears, and his mother, who sat listening too eagerly to correct her little boy's ethics or grammar, was as nearly overcome as he. She wished she knew where Ranald was. He had not appeared at the evening Bible class, and Murdie had reported that he could ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... something very particular to say to her cousin, that Cecile and her Werther might be left together for a moment. Cecile chattered away volubly, and contrived that Frederic should catch sight of a German dictionary, a German grammar, and a volume of Goethe hidden away in a place where he was likely ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... admitted conjectures sometimes, we have not done so as often as perhaps will be expected. For, in the first place, we admit none because we think it better rhythm or grammar or sense, unless we feel sure that the reading of the Folio is altogether impossible. In the second place, the conjecture must appear to us to be the only probable one. If the defect can be made good in more ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare

... to recover the church from its degradation. He succeeded in getting a charter for William and Mary College, but the generous endowments of the institution were wasted, and the college languished in doing the work of a grammar school. Something was accomplished in the way of discipline, though the cane of Governor Nicholson over the back of an insolent priest was doubtless more effective than the commissary's admonitions. But discipline, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... people, who continually make war upon the invaders of their soil. I was greatly amused by the recital of his part in the affair, by a non-commissioned officer, who informed me that he was born a Belgian, and gave his story in broken French, broken in words as well as grammar, for he had been imbibing something stronger than water. It appeared that his valiant self and two others equally brave—one a Frenchman, the other a Prussian—had been selected to serve as a picket, or avante garde, as he termed it, some ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... shops were not numbered in the cities, for porters, coachmen, and errand-runners could not read. The shopkeeper distinguished his place of business by painted signs and graven images. Oxford and Cambridge Universities were little better than modern grammar and Latin school in a provincial village. The country magistrate used on the bench language too coarse, brutal, and vulgar for a modern tap-room. Fine gentlemen in London vied with each other in the lowest ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... and straightforward in the letter, in spite of the utter ignorance of grammar and spelling; and while I smiled at the evident pride in the "brutther" who was a "verry good hite," and the offer to take less wages if "I would do his washin," I found myself wondering what sort of waif upon the sea of life was this not very tall ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand

... had been tutor to Prince Arthur, probably took no small part in the education of his younger brother; to him he dedicated, after Arthur's death, two of the annual summaries of events which he was in the habit of compiling. Giles D'Ewes,[44] apparently a Frenchman and the author of a notable French grammar, taught that language to Prince Henry, as many (p. 021) years later he did to his daughter, Queen Mary; probably either D'Ewes or Andre trained his handwriting, which is a curious compromise between the clear and ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... boy, I saw a young colored man, who had spent several years in school, sitting in a common cabin in the South, studying a French grammar. I noted the poverty, the untidiness, the want of system and thrift, that existed about the cabin, notwithstanding his knowledge of French and other academic subjects. Another time, when riding on the outer edges of a town in the South, I heard the sound ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... They learned a few lines of poetry by heart, and committed all the "meanings and allusions" to memory, with the probable result—so sickening must the process have been—that they hated poetry for the rest of their lives. In geography, history, and grammar they were the victims of unintelligent oral cram, which they were compelled, under pains and penalties, to take in and retain till the examination day was over, their ability to disgorge it on occasion being ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... 22. Pratisrotas; strict grammar would require pratisrotasas; the meaning is that those that flowed east to west now flow west to east, &c. For kurddanti some texts have narddanti which is certainly better. Kurddanti means play or sport; ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... of such information as we now give in a single talk. In addition to such nature-study work and simple biology and physiology and hygiene as should be included in the lower grades, there should be instruction in biology and in personal hygiene required for all upper-grammar and all high-school students, as soon as well qualified teachers are available. In personal hygiene a proper amount of sex hygiene should be incorporated; and with the treatment of other diseases, gonorrhea and syphilis should be given adequate attention; the idea ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... visits doleful hells as a stratum of chalk or hornblende! He has no sympathy. He goes up and down the world of men, a modern Rhadamanthus in gold-headed cane and peruke, and with nonchalance, and the air of a referee, distributing souls. The warm, many-weathered, passionate-peopled world is to him a grammar of hieroglyphs, or an emblematic freemason's procession. How different is Jacob Behmen! he is tremulous with emotion, and listens awe-struck, with the gentlest humanity, to the Teacher whose lessons he conveys; and ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Royal Court, where his ducal father was autocrat, the handsome boy of all the accomplishments found immediate favour and rapid promotion. He was dubbed a knight when most youths of his years were still wrestling with their Latin Grammar; he was appointed for life Master of the Buckhounds; and was chosen one of the six gilded youths who ministered to the King in the Privy Chamber. And in love he was as precocious as at the Royal Court and in mental and manly accomplishments, for ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... character in which the Koran was originally written. In the seventh century, the Arabs adopted the invention of Moramer ben Morra, a native of Babylonian Irak, which was afterwards improved by the Kufik. The Kufik and the Niskhi are synonymous. Richardson, in his Arabic Grammar, p. 4. say, "The Mauritannick character, which is used by the Moors of Marocco and Barbary, descendants of 351 the Arabians, differs in many respects considerably from the other modes of writing." But this is incorrect; ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... degree of knowledge. We shall see this, if we consider what we mean by knowledge; and, without going into a more general definition of it, let us see what we mean by it here. We mean by it, either a knowledge of points of scholarship, of grammar, and matters connected with grammar; or a knowledge of history and geography; or a knowledge of mathematics: or, it may be, of natural history; or, if we use the term, "knowledge of the world," then we mean, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... of teaching a language is, not at first to weary the pupils with the dry rules of grammar, but to store their memories with words. He read a word or a short sentence in French, for instance, and asked the pupils to translate it into English. Then, with closed books, he would give them the English in like manner to be turned into French. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... best—in the large situations of affairs, in these large, tranquillizing horizons of nature. He, too, began to forget that she was a refined, delicate, sensitive lady, with nerves that writhed under breaks in manners and could in no wise endure a slip in grammar, unless, of course, it was one of those indorsed by fashionable usage. His health came flooding and roaring back in its fullness; and day by day the difficulty of restraining himself from loud laughter and strong, plebeian action became more appalling to him. He would ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... Andrews walked in front, with a Miss Foster, the daughter of one of the larger farmers in the neighbourhood; and a short limping woman, clinging to the arm of a vigorously-built girl, the Science Mistress of the small but ancient Grammar School of the village, came behind. They talked in low voices, and any shrewd bystander would have perceived the mood of agitated expectancy in which they ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... gaze grew humid; the face of the young student was covered with a veil of mist and seemed to shine with the radiance of an unstained soul. If he had been as other men he might have had such a son. At this moment Gabriel Hamburg was speaking of paragoge in Hebrew grammar, but his voice faltered and in imagination he was laying hands of paternal benediction on Joseph Strelitski's head. Swayed by an overmastering impulse he burst ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Restoration, to say nothing of his constant intercourse with the Farehams and other English exiles in France; but he was encouraging the young lady to talk to him in French, which was spoken with an affected drawl, that was even more ridiculous than its errors in grammar. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... master-works of modern literature. And this was all the more creditable because there were no good teachers to be found at Dessau, and people had to learn what they wished to learn by themselves, with the help of a grammar and dictionary. We learnt French at school, but the result was deplorable. As in all public schools, the French master who had to teach the language at the Ducal Gymnasium could not keep order among the boys. He of course ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... elder pupils of the high-school in grammar and eloquence; he is also an excellent observer of the starry heavens, and a most skilled interpreter of dreams," replied Gagabu. "But here he is again. To whom is Paaker conducting our stammering ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... she had teachers at home—recluse old scholars, decayed clergymen in shiny black coats, who taught her Latin, and looked at her through round spectacles, and, as they looked, remembered that they were once young. She had teachers of history, of grammar, of arithmetic—of all English studies. Some of these Mentors were weak-eyed fathers of ten children, who spoke so softly that their wives must have had loud voices. Others were young college graduates, with low collars and long hair, who read with Miss Wayne in English literature, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... popular than productions for the honour, reputation, and advantage of those seats of learning. But the wisdom and benevolence of our fathers rested not here. They made an early provision by law, that every town, consisting of so many families, should be always furnished with a grammar school.—They made it a crime for such a town to be destitute of a grammar school-master for a few months, and subjected it to an heavy penalty.—So that the education of all ranks of people was made the care and expence of the public in a manner, that I believe has been unknown ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... of music as "Haydnish" conveys as distinct a meaning as to refer to a poetic stanza as "Miltonic." When Haydn arrived on the scene, music—through the labors of many earnest workers—had become a language of definite expression, with a logical grammar and with principles of structure. The time was ripe for the use of this language in a more artistic way, i.e., for a more intense personal expression and for more subtle treatment of the material. The composer could count upon the public following his ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... was staunch and true. He reminds me of something that my illustrious model says of another man. She says that he "would risk telling me or anyone he loved, before confiding to an inner circle, faults which both he and I think might be corrected." Grammar was no doubt made for slaves—not for the brilliant and autobiographical. All the same, a prize should be offered to anybody who can find the missing "risk" in mentioning to another a point on which ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... observed that most of my mistakes in grammar occurred in the feminine gender, and thinking over the cause of it, it dawned upon me that, belonging to the masculine sex, I was in the habit of thinking in that gender, and that my teachers were men, and that my text-books and grammars had been written by men, and that the ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... consisted of reciting A.B.S.s [TR: A.B.C.s?] from the McGuffy's [HW: ?] Blue backed speller with his unlettered sister for a teacher. In later years he attended a school conducted by the Freemen's Association. He bought a grammar from a white school boy and studied it at home. When sixteen years of age he was employed to teach negro children and grieves to recall how limited his ability was bound to have been. "When a father considers sending his son or daughter to school, today, he orders catalogues, consults his ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... use of force, said the Attorney-General, would not turn them aside by a hair's-breadth. Mr. Asquith, equally vigorous in his speech, was less decisive in his conclusions. Speaking at Ladybank on October 5th, he denounced "the reckless rodomontade of Blenheim, which furnishes forth the complete grammar of anarchy." But he was careful to point out that there was no demand for separate treatment for Ulster, and that Irish Unionists were simply refusing to consent to Home Rule under any conditions. He refrained from saying how a demand ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... 77.) He thinks that 'we find, both in the writers and the records of Scripture, every evidence of human infirmity that can possibly be conceived; and yet we are to believe that God himself specially inspired them with false philosophy, vicious logic, and bad grammar.'(P. 74.) He denies the originality both of the Christian ethic (which he says are a gross plagiarism from Plato) as also in great part of the system of Christian doctrine.* Nevertheless, it would be quite a mistake, it seems, to suppose that Mr. Foxton is no Christian! He is, on the ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... task was begun, How to join them two in one; Till you got (these first steps past) To your fine text-hand at last. So though I at first commence With the humble accidence, And my study's course affords Little else as yet but words, I shall venture in a while At construction, grammar, style, Learn my syntax, and proceed Classic authors next to read, Such as wiser, better, make us, Sallust, Phaedrus, Ovid, Flaccus: All the poets (with their wit), All the grave historians writ, Who the lives and actions show Of men famous long ago; ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... and German, and a modicum of Greek and Latin. These last I teach them by a free use of translations; rudiments of grammar first, and then we attack the books, and let grammar be incidental. We don't compose in any of these languages; it's a ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the upper windows; and Miss Virginia sobbed out a blessing, which was rendered of a striking and original character by being mixed up with instructions never to forget what she had taught him in his Latin grammar, and always to be careful to guard against the toothache. And amid the good-byes and write-oftens that usually accompany a departure, the carriage rolled down the avenue to the lodge, where was Mr. Mole the gardener, and also Mrs. Mole, and, moreover, the Mole olive-branches, all gathered at ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... interesting but tragic stories. The Baron does not like being left in doubt as to the fate of any hero or heroine in whom he may have been interested, and therefore calls for "part second" to the first story. Delilah, short and dramatic. The Baron shrinks from correcting a lady's grammar, but to say "Mrs. Randal Morgan lay down the law" is not the best Sunday English as she is spoke. From Fin-de-Siecle Stories, by Messrs LAWRENCE AND CADETT, the Baron selects "A Wife's Secret" (nothing to do with the old play of that name), "Mexico," and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various

... Ke-uk-sa signifies—The village of law-breakers; so-called because this band broke the law or custom of the Dakotas against marrying blood relatives of any degree. I get this information from Rev. Stephen R. Riggs, author of the Dakota Grammar and Dictionary, "Takoo Wakan," etc. Wapasa, grandfather of the last Chief of that name, and a contemporary of Cetan-Wa-ka-wa-mani, was a noted Chief, and a friend of the British in the war of the Revolution. Neill's Hist. Minn., ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... should never learn then! I must stop where I was! How I longed now for the wasted time, for the classes when I played truant to go birds'-nesting, or to slide on the Saar! The books which I was used to find so wearisome, so heavy to carry—my grammar, my history—now seemed to me old friends whom I was very sorry to part with. The same with M. Hamel. The idea that he was going away, that I should never see him again, made me forget the punishment and the ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... class in a school like this was an honor of which any boy might have been proud; and Fred, when he heard his name read off at the head of the roll, could have thrown up his well-worn Latin grammar, which he happened to have in his hand just at that moment, and hurrahed. It was quite a wonder to him ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger

... procession and receive resolutions "engrossed and framed" from his admiring friends. Blunkers was chairman and made a plain speech which set the boys cheering by its combination of strong feeling and lack of grammar. Then Justice Gallagher made a fine-sounding, big-worded presentation. In the enthusiasm of the moment, Dennis broke the programme by rising and giving vent to a wild burst of feeling, telling his audience ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... hand with the grand air of someone assuring a grammar-grade pupil that multiplication tables were quite reliable and could be used with confidence. But his eyes fixed themselves on Bors's face. As the Captain realized the implications of his statement, the eyes of the Mathematical Talent of Talents, Incorporated ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... in the text is mlecchibhutam. The Sanskrit grammar affords a great facility for the formation of verbs from substantives. Mlecchify may be hybrid, but it correctly and shortly signifies ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Founded by Bishop John de Pontissara in 1301 it was dedicated to St. Elizabeth of Hungary. After the Dissolution it was sold to the Warden of St. Mary's for three hundred and sixty pounds, subject to the condition that the church should become a grammar school for seventy-five students, or that it should be pulled down. This fate befell the building, which had three altars and a total length of 120 feet as was shown in the dry summer of 1842 when the outline of the walls was distinct in the ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... schools, an arsenal, and eleven churches, the finest of which is St Martin's, of the 15th century, with many excellent paintings and a tower 300 ft. high. A former Jesuit monastery is now used for a grammar school and seminary. There are also a pilgrimage church on a hill 1621 ft. high, a large convict prison for men, an industrial, commercial and other schools. The principal manufactures are firearms, ironmongery, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Sacrifices! It is sacrifice for the children that you profess to mean. Well, let us call it that. Have you ever heard of a father sacrificing himself for his children? There's no such phrase. There's only the feminine gender for that. 'Sacrificed himself for his wife and children.' It's a solecism. If grammar means good sense, it isn't grammar because it's meaningless. It can't be said. It's grotesque. But 'Sacrificed herself for her husband and her children,'—why, that the commonest of cliches. It's written on half the mothers' brows; it should be carved on ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... who was as innocent of English Grammar as of murder, how was she to be expected to understand the definite and indefinite when it was all indefinite; and as for the participle past, she did not believe any body understood it. And so she worked and puzzled, and sometimes almost cried, for a week, and then went to the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... his grammar, there was no mistaking the look that brightened like the dawn in the depths of his clear eyes. My breath ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... two objectives—the subject taught and the person taught. When we teach John grammar (or the Bible) we teach grammar (or the Bible), of course; but we also teach John. And the greater of these two objectives is John. It is easy enough to attain the lesser of the objectives. Anyone of fair intelligence can master a given amount of subject matter and present ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts

... 480-524) upon the Topica. Among scholiasts may be mentioned the Scholiasta Bobiensis who is assigned to the 5th century, and a pseudo-Asconius, who wrote notes upon the Verrines dealing with points of grammar and rhetoric. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... they are now to meet again. In the first volume, "The High School Freshmen," our readers became acquainted with Dick Prescott, Dave Darrin, Greg Holmes, Dan Dalzell, Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, six young chums who, back in their days in the Central Grammar School Gridley, had become fast friends, and had become known as ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock

... Greek Testament sold for 48 cents, a Latin Testament for half that amount, a Latin folio Bible published in 1532 for $4, Luther's first New Testament at 84 cents. One might get a copy of the Pandects for $1.60, of Vergil for 10 cents, a Greek grammar for 8 cents, Demosthenes and Aeschines in one volume at 20 cents, one of Luther's more important tracts for 30 cents and the condemnation of him by the universities in a small pamphlet at 6 cents. One of the things that ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Eastern States. A principal and four women teachers form the faculty of the John Swaney school. The number of scholars in 1910 was one hundred and five, the number of boys slightly exceeding that of girls. Of these about half were in the primary and the grammar grades and about half in the high school. Of the latter some twenty-five were tuition pupils from outside of the district, so that the actual school group of the McNab consolidated school, the children of the tax-payers, was in that year ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... story of Oedipus. His passionate attachment to Aurelia in after-years shows that between mother and child the relations had been affectionate and happy. But there is nothing to indicate that there was any early precocity of talent; and leaving Caesar to his grammar and his exercises, we will proceed with the occurrences which he must have heard talked of in his father's house, or seen with his eyes when he began to open them. The society there was probably composed of his uncle's friends; soldiers and statesmen who had ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... bundle of seals of portentous size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it,—which, in the ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling with evident satisfaction. His conversation was in free and easy defiance of Murray's Grammar,* and was garnished at convenient intervals with various profane expressions, which not even the desire to be graphic in our account ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bit of board lying on my lap was ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... possessed as many heads as the hydra, she could have "coiffe'd" them all with fools' caps during one morning's recitations. She entirely monopolized the "Daily Bee." Madame Joubert was forced to borrow from "madame" the stale weekly "Courrier des Etats-Unis" for the rest of the room. From grammar, through sacred history, arithmetic, geography, mythology, down to dictation, Pupasse could pile up an accumulation of penitences that would have tasked the limits of the current day had not recreation been wisely set as a term which disbarred, ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... to hurt one's eyes to look at her! She had beautiful rings in her ears, and a collier-choux of four rows, brooches, tremblants, bracelets,—everything fine of that sort."—[Story of Cinderella in Turinault's Creole Grammar. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... which a cardinal mildly remarking, "Domine, schisma est generis neutrius (schisma is neuter, your Majesty)," Sigismund loftily replies: "Ego sum Rex Romanus et super grammaticam (I am King of the Romans, and above Grammar)!" For which reason I call him in my note-books Sigismund Super Grammaticam, to distinguish him in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... possess a culinary experience of no ordinary scope, and the air of the house was heavy with the delicate incense of waffles and dough-nuts. When the evening happened to be mild, and that comfortable estate of fulness whose adjectives the Latin Grammar tells us require the ablative had been attained, there was more music, secular, but highly decorous, beneath the rustling boughs of the oak. Then the merriment grew hearty, and mocked the sombre night. In vain the crickets chirped their shrill jeer at fallen humanity; the crackling leaves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... she were telling the story; nor in the second person, as if she were listening to one; nor in the third person, as if she were somewhere else; for, in fact, she was not anywhere. And as there is no such thing as a fourth person in grammar, she cannot be put into ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... at that time, abounded with the best professors, he made a voyage to Greece [d], and thence to Asia, in order to enrich his mind with every branch of learning. Hence that store of knowledge which appears in all his writings. Geometry, music, grammar, and every useful art, were familiar to him. He embraced the whole science of logic [e] and ethics. He studied the operations of nature. His diligence of enquiry opened to him the long chain of causes and effects, and, in short, the whole system of physiology ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... no claims to fine writing, but his own manuscript reports, written mostly in camp and hastily, attest his possession of a fair chirography, a pretty good knowledge of grammar and spelling, together with a style of expression both lucid and simple; in short, these are such compositions as come naturally from a man, who, favored in youth with but a limited common school education, has in mature life mingled much with superiors and ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... built just north of the mansion about the time of the girls' dormitory, was burned some years ago, and now on its site stands the Ballard Building, containing the study and recitation rooms of the grammar and intermediate departments, which lead up to the normal and the chapel, where all general exercises and Sabbath services are held. One of the greatest needs of the school is a church building, that ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 4, April, 1895 • Various

... of his life, how he walked eight miles every day for three months of the year to learn to read and write; how he worked for 20 cents a day to raise enough money to get away from his limitations for an education; how he became bell-boy at a hotel until he earned enough to buy a grammar, an arithmetic, and a dictionary; how he found himself at last at Fisk University with $1.25 with which to continue his studies for eight years before he could graduate; how he worked his patient way along ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various

... by me while travelling through various parts of the Wiradyuri country, for the purpose of visiting and interviewing the old native men and women who still speak the native tongue, from whom I noted down all the information herein reproduced. When the difficulties encountered in obtaining the grammar of any language which is purely colloquial are taken into consideration, I feel sure that all necessary allowances will be made for the ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews

... The jocose vindictiveness with which Browning returns again and again to the assault of the bad grammar and worse rhetoric of Byron's once so much belauded address to the ocean is very amusing. The above is only one out of four or ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... profitable comprehension of what he said. Fakredeen gave him no hint of this: the young Emir trusted to his quick perception to sustain him, although his literary training was confined to an Arabic grammar, some sentences of wise men, some volumes of poetry, and mainly and most profitably to the clever Courier de Smyrne, and occasionally a packet of French journals which he ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... He is an efficient teacher of vocal and instrumental music. He received his musical training from his father, Mr. P.M. Williams, who, a native of Massachusetts, was a proficient vocalist and organist. Professor Williams is a man of decided intellectual merit, and is principal instructor in a grammar-school in New Orleans. ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... establishment we are not told: and probably the "struggle with adverse fortune for about two years" which he records was merely the difficulty in making himself known which affects every young man. At the end of that time he got an appointment in the College of St. Barbe as Professor of Grammar, and was henceforward exempted at least from the heart-sickening conflict with ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... language—why YOU never see a bluejay get stuck for a word. No man ever did. They just boil out of him! And another thing: I've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that uses as good grammar as a bluejay. You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does—but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the NOISE which fighting cats make ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... his master's ticket prior to his twenty-fifth birthday was one of two things—a disgrace to the family or a corpse. Consequently, since the traditions of his tribe were very strong in Matthew Peasley VI, it occasioned no comment in Thomaston when, having acquired a grammar school education, he answered the call of his destiny and fared forth to blue water and his first taste of dog's body ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... this letter, saying, "What do you think of it? is it not good?" He was never offended when I pointed out to him an error of grammar or style, and I therefore replied, "As to the substance, if such be your resolution, I have nothing to say against it; but," added I, "I must make one observation on the style. You cannot say that you shall learn ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... is such a dearth of black pedagogues in the least extraordinary. The mission of Tuskegee Institute is largely to supply measurably well-equipped teachers for the schools—teachers able and eager to teach gardening and carpentry as well as grammar and arithmetic, teachers who seek to organize the social life of their communities upon wholesome principles, tactfully restraining grossness and unobtrusively proffering new and nobler sources of enjoyment. And so the academic studies ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... this we conclude that also in injunctory sentences that which is expressed by imperative and similar forms is only the idea that the meaning of the root—as known from grammar—is to be effected by the effort of the agent. And that what constitutes the meaning of roots, viz. the action of sacrificing and the like, possesses the quality of pleasing the highest Person, who is the inner ruler of Agni and other divinities ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... settlements were sparse, and school-houses were at long intervals, and in these the mere rudiments of an English education were taught—spelling, reading, and writing, with the four elementary rules of arithmetic; and it was a great advance to grapple with the grammar of the language. As population and prosperity increased, their almost illiterate teachers gave place to a better class; and many of my Georgia readers will remember as among these the old Irish preachers, Cummings, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... my Lord," said Richard, "I should say, send him to a grammar school, where among lads of his own age, the dreams about captive princesses might be driven from him by hard ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... translation was poor; and that a friend or friends of Mrs. Eddy mended its English three times, and finally got it into its present shape, where the grammar is plenty good enough, and the sentences are smooth and plausible though they do not mean anything. I think I am right in this surmise, for Mrs. Eddy cannot write English to-day, and this is argument ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... scheme does not admit the frequent notice of verbal inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps, better skilled in grammar than in poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he imputed to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the author's blindness obliged him to employ; a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought it true; and vile and pernicious, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... away the time to some extent under depressing circumstances like these, I put into my diary on leaving Framheim a few loose leaves of a Russian grammar; Johansen solaced himself with a serial cut out of the Aftenpost; as far as I remember, the title of it was "The Red Rose and the White." Unfortunately the story of the Two Roses was very soon finished; but Johansen had a good remedy for that: he simply began it over again. My reading had the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... the school, as grammar-master, he must have been a bachelor of arts, and approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the appointment was attached a house and salary ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... evenings with only five errors. The following year, at the age of ten, he went to work in the cotton factory near his home, as a "piecer." Out of his first week's wages he saved enough to purchase a Latin grammar, and set himself resolutely to the task of thoroughly mastering its contents, studying for the most part alone after leaving his work at eight o'clock in the evening. His biographer tells us that he often continued his studies until after midnight, returning to work in the factory ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... to blacken the fair fame of a woman, insinuate that he is also guilty of the most shocking immorality? I blush to think it." There was also a letter in a similar strain from "John Bull," and another from "An Eton Boy," animadverting upon Mr. Seekamp's grammar. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... times of the first (Turano-Cushite) kingdom, since even in Assyria it is found that the literature was in the main Turanian, down to the very close of the empire. Astronomy, astrology, and mythology were no doubt the chief subjects which the priests studied; but history, chronology, grammar, law, and natural science most likely occupied some part of their attention. Conducting everywhere the worship of the gods, they were of course scattered far and wide through the country; but they had certain special seats of learning, corresponding perhaps in ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... material for study. Their industry is not confined to the study of Holy Scripture. He speaks of them as searching carefully into the writers of history, as having a knowledge of ancient law and chronography, and in writing, of the rules of grammar and orthography, punctuation, metre, together with the use of allegory and tropology; all of which goes to prove that the field of secular knowledge was not particularly limited for nuns in those days. Aldhelm enlarges on the charms of their peaceful life ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney

... years of age when he began to learn English grammar and improve his writing and spelling. Benjamin Franklin was past fifty before he began the study of science and philosophy. Milton, in his blindness, was past the age of fifty when he sat down to complete his world-known epic, and Scott at fifty-five took up ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... author, having presumably grown in knowledge of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, was asked to revise the text, and being confronted with the printed page, was overcome by the temptation to add now and then a sentence, line, or paragraph, while the charming ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the work. Persons wishing to revive their knowledge of neglected Hebrew, or desirous to learn it anew without a teacher, can find no book better adapted to facilitate the acquisition than this, in addition to a grammar ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... was jolly—it was just like hearing him talk (I mean reading, not hearing, of course, but reading him talk is not grammar, and if you can't be both sensible and grammarical, it is better to ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit

... especially such as were poor; and she prudently managed us and our property. Scarcely had we learned the first elements of letters, which she herself, being convent-bred, taught us, when, eager to have us instructed, she confided us to a master of grammar, who incited us to work, and taught us to recite verses and compose them according ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... anxious to improve himself, and to show that he was worthy of the kind patronage of Master Gresham. He soon made himself acquainted with Paul's Accidents, written by Dean Colet for the use of his scholars, and consisting of the rudiments of grammar, with an abridgment of ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... the commercial subjects until recently. Only four of the schools had pupils in Greek. The Spanish classes outnumbered the Greek both by schools and by enrollment. In the classification by subjects, English is made to include (in addition to the usual subjects of that name) grammar, literature, and business English. Mathematics includes all subjects of that class except commercial arithmetic, which is treated as a commercial subject, and shop-mathematics, which is classed as non-academic. Industrial history, and 'political and social science' are regarded ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien

... no safer guide could be commended to the young architectural pen-man for the study of principles than Mr. Gregg. Architectural illustration in America owes much to his influence and, indeed, he may be said to have furnished it with a grammar. Take his drawing of the English cottages, Fig. 50. It is a masterly piece of pen work. There is not a feeble or tentative stroke in the whole of it. The color is brilliant and the textures are expressed with wonderful skill. The student ought to carefully observe the rendering of ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... 10. Act of the Generall Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, for the establishing and putting in execution of the Directory for the publick Worship of GOD. 7. February, 1645. Post meridiem. Sess. 14. Overtures for advancement of Learning and good Order in Grammar Schools and Colledges. The Humble Petition the Generall Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland. Overtures propounded by the Committee, appointed by this venerable Assembly, for ordering of the Bursars of Theologie, and maintaining of them at Schools of Divinitie. The opinion of the Committee ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... the Grammar of the Gaelic language by the Rev. Dr Stewart of Moulin has been out of print. This has been a source of regret to scholars and students of that tongue. Not but that there are other Grammars of real value, which it would ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... Comedy' some six hundred years ago, while Jasmin was merely reviving a gradually-expiring dialect. Drouilhet de Sigalas has said that Dante lived at the sunrise of his language, while Jasmin lived at its sunset. Indeed, Gascon was not a written language, and Jasmin had to collect his lexicon, grammar, and speech mostly from the peasants who lived in the neighbourhood of Agen. Dante virtually created the Italian language, while Jasmin merely resuscitated for a time the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... has the art of saying bitter things in a sweet way. In his language, however, although pungent, and sometimes even eloquent, he is singularly incorrect. He cannot utter a sequence of three sentences without violating common grammar in the most atrocious way; and his tropes and figures are so distorted, hashed, and broken—such a patchwork of different patterns, that you are bewildered if you attempt to make them out; but the earnestness of his manner, and a certain ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt



Words linked to "Grammar" :   grammatical constituent, possessive, grammatical category, genitive, descriptive, head, rule of grammar, contrastive, optative, predicative, stative, limiting, nonrestrictive, syndetic, unrestricted, attributive, coordinating, subjunctive, endocentric, normative, main, morphology, prenominal, dependent, future, grammatical, subordinative, gerundial, subordinate, copulative, illative, transitive, correlative, descriptive linguistics, exocentric, intransitive, nominative, article, active, nominal, aoristic, non-finite, grammatic, qualify, linguistics, reflexive, scopal, weak, parse, attributively, declarative, clause, syntactic category, dynamic, infinite, imperative, descriptive grammar, attributive genitive, subordinating, prescriptive, asyndetic, head word, object, indicative, accusative, syntax, finite



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