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Primer   Listen
noun
Primer  n.  
1.
Originally, a small prayer book for church service, containing the little office of the Virgin Mary; also, a work of elementary religious instruction. "The primer, or office of the Blessed Virgin."
2.
A small elementary book for teaching children to read; a reading or spelling book for a beginner. "As he sat in the school at his prymer."
3.
(Print.) A kind of type, of which there are two species; one, called long primer, intermediate in size between bourgeois and small pica (see Long primer); the other, called great primer, larger than pica. Note: Great primer type.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Primer" Quotes from Famous Books



... charming escort he is, too—grimmer than old Time in the primer. No; if you leave, so ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... sera el primer pueblo en donde se encendera esta guerra patriotica que solo puede libertar a Europa.—Hemos oido esto en Inglaterra a varios de los que estaban alli presentes. Muchas veces ha oido lo mismo al duque de Wellington el general Don Miguel de Alava, y dicho duque refirio el suceso ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... good. You are here to learn not only the secret of life, but something of how to live that life; and I, in my capacity, am only striving to teach what Nature has been showing you for thousands of centuries, though you have not cared to master her lessons. The science of to-day is but Nature's first primer—a spelling-book as it were, with the alphabet set out in pictures. You are told by sagacious professors,—who after all are no more than children in their newly studied wisdom,—that human life was evolved in the first ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... it. If godliness wants to stay next to cleanliness when she's around it has to keep on the jump. I always buy shirts two degrees heavier'n I need, 'cause I know she'll have 'em scrubbed thin in a fortni't. When it comes to real Domestic Science, Caroline, Abbie ain't in the back row of the primer class, now I ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... had said it, but it exactly met the case in point. He would convince the scorners that poetry might be seriously useful, and show Master Bull his new way of making fine words butter parsnips, in a rhymed moral primer. Allegory, as then practised, was imagination adapted for beginners, in words of one syllable and illustrated with cuts, and would thus serve both his ethical and pictorial purpose. Such a primer, or a first instalment of it, he proceeded to put ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... from .50 to .25 About 100 volumes covering literature for high school reading. Send for list. Hooker's Study Book in English Literature 1.00 A handbook to accompany the appreciative study of the greater writers. Howes's Primer of American Literature .52 A brief, satisfactory account of the facts of American literary history. Howes's Primer of English Literature .52 The essentials concerning great writers and important periods. Meiklejohn's ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various

... comrade, or fellow"), also panggal ("pillow"), and panggan ("bedstead"); see Ling Roth's Natives of Sarawak, ii, p. xxvii. See Porter's Primer and Vocabulary of Moro Dialect (Washington, 1903) p. 65, where the Moro phrase for "sweetheart" is given as babay ("woman") ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... New England Primer, small though it has been, was one of the most influential of publications. It was in every home. From it the children learned their A, B, C's. In it were pert rhymes expressing the theology of the people, such as "In Adam's fall, We sinned all"; and the set ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... fonetik sistem ov speli[n], the Primer iz masterd within tree m[u]n[t]s at most. The children then proseed tu praktis this fonetik readi[n] for s[u]m teim, til they kan read with fluensi from the jeneral luk ov the w[u]rd, and not from konsideri[n] ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... the various theories or principles which have been put forward somewhere or sometime in the past, and then to submit each theory or principle to criticism.[68] Or, in other words, no attempt will be made to give a primer of opinions either as to the difficulties to be encountered in any attempt to formulate a policy of wage settlement, or of the suggested ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... next post.... Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed in tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is also a very great scholar: he can read his primer; and I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. We are very intimate friends and playfellows. He begins to be very ragged; and I hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him with new clothes and frocks, or what Mrs. Evans ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... military science. Amid an environment of unfavourable conditions Soko preached the cult of bushido, and was the first to embody that philosophy in a written system. His books—the Shi-do (Way of the Warrior) and Bukyo Shogaku (Military Primer)—contain minute instructions as to the practice and the morale of the samurai. Soko rejected the Chutsz interpretation, then in vogue, of the Chinese classics, and insisted on the pure doctrine of the ancient sages, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... it? You just put the yearlings through the yard, and then tackle the two-year-olds." he commented, finding that after a run through the Alphabet we had settled down to the first pages of Bett-Bett's discarded Primer. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... am ready to go upon; and in Great Primer, and Pica notes, I reckon on sending in half a sheet a day; but the money for that shall likewise lye by in your hands till it is done. With the debates, shall not I have business enough? if I had but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... hastily. There was no thought that ye should part till you had some purpose in view. Nay, we should be fain for Ambrose to bide on here, so he would leave his portion for me to deal with, and teach little Will his primer and accidence. You are a quiet lad, Ambrose, and can rule your tongue ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... feudal conditions to be observed, by the fulfilment of which the great barons and their followers held their lands. For their tenure was liable to homage and fealty, as understood in the feudal sense, to wardships and impediments to marriage, to fines for alienations, to what English legists call primer seizins, rents, reliefs, escheats, and, finally, forfeitures; this last was at all times more strictly observed in England than in any other feudal country, and by its enactments so many noble families have, in the course ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... child about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... bed, he came down past our room, and went into the kitchen. R. followed him to see what was the matter, and, as the boy looked a little wild, thought perhaps he was going into a fit. He had seized the primer, and was flourishing it about and gesticulating with it; and finally R., who has a wonderful faculty for comprehending the Chinese, divined that he had gone to bed without a lesson, and could not sleep ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... there are no secrets in this shebang," he said smiling. Then the smile went out, and his face grew suddenly grave, for, as the book fell open in his hand, he saw that it was the first primer of a child, and on the thumbed and tattered page the word "RAT" stared ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... yards, word was passed through our men to open to the right and left on the sides of the road. The artillerymen had turned the gun and loaded it with a solid shot. Instantly a wide lane opened through our ranks; the man with the lanyard drew the fatal cord, fire burst from the primer and the muzzle, the long gun sprang up and recoiled, and there seemed to be a demoniac yell in its ear-splitting crash, as the heavy ball left the mouth, and tore its bloody way through the bodies of the struggling mass ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... and appalled him, by showing what sort of associates the boy must have chosen since he had learnt such words at all, and what a shame and disgrace he felt it that one of the brothers should ever have uttered them. And Bernard— who had learnt that Satanic primer with a certain shame and repugnance, under the strong desire to show himself neither girl, muff, nor choir-boy, and certainly would never in his right senses have betrayed his proficiency at home—was a good deal impressed, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... see his face Sounds long, until I read the place Where this is said to be But just the primer to a life Unopened, rare, upon the shelf, Clasped yet ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... when Columbus discovered the new world, Martin, a boy of very nearly nine, was sitting at his desk in the school at Mansfeld. Though both diligent and quick, he found the crabbed Latin primer, itself written in abstract Latin, very difficult, and was flogged fourteen times in one morning by {63} brutal masters for faltering in a declension. When he returned home he found his mother bending under a load of wood she had gathered in the forest. Both ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... work in the temperance cause. If a text book on this subject be not in use, there are still ways in which a conscientious teacher, thoroughly alive to its importance, may convey to the minds of her pupils much of the truth about alcohol. She may procure Dr. Richardson's Lesson Book, or Dr. Ridge's Primer, so largely in use in the schools of England, Dr. Steele's Physiology and Hygiene, or the book authorized by the Educational Department of Ontario, now in course of preparation, and from any of these prepare a lesson, occasionally, for her scholars. Different phases of the temperance ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... woodwork to receive one coat of primer, one coat half primer & half enamel & finish ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton

... and was unlikely to find it in conversation, the Prophet was greatly impressed by the astronomer's enormous brick-red face, round body, turned legs, eyes like marbles, and capacity for drinking port-wine—so much so, in fact that, on leaving the club, he hastened to buy a science primer on astronomy, and devoted himself for several days to a minute investigation of ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... a prayer, then tremblingly approached the master, saying, "Your hand, Senor Maestro," when with a grunt the hand would be extended to him to be kissed. Little was taught besides the reading of the primer and the catechism. ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini

... to push their conversance with the literary history of France farther than the present volume will enable them to do, will consult with profit either the Primer, or the Short History, of French Literature, by Mr. George Saintsbury. Mr. Saintsbury is a well-informed writer, who, if the truth must be told, diffuses himself too widely to do his best possible work. He has, however, made French literature a specialty, and he is in general ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... was weak; I suffered; I died. But God was in me, and the courage, the patience, the love He gave to me, the scenes of the poor human life He inspired, have become by His will the world's eternal lesson—man's primer of Divine things, hung high in the eyes of all, simple and wise, that all may see and all may learn. Take it to your heart again—that life, that pain, of mine! Use it to new ends; apprehend it in new ways; but knowledge shall not take it from you; and love, instead ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... child should begin its studies. I feel sure that the boy who commences his studies at ten will far outrun the one who commences study at six. Every child should commence his lessons in the best kindergarten, the nursery. Let object lessons be his primer—let him be taught by word of mouth—then, when his brain is what it should be for a boy of ten, his eyes will be the better able to bear the fatigue of the burdens which will be forced upon him. Listen to what Milton has left on record as a warning to those young ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... always been my contention, is the fatal fallacy of modern education, and you may see it carried to its extreme in Germany, for men who have not lived broadly are merely hampered by books. It is as though one studied a primer with an etymological dictionary at his side. Germans are renowned writers of commentaries, but you cannot deal with men and with life by the aid of commentaries. Exegesis solves no international quarrels, and the mastery of men is not gained ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... the pantomimic fight. Shooting with the bow, the gun, and the pistol, is an exercise for Circassian boys at an age when those of countries more civilized are spelling, syllable by syllable, the lessons of the primer and the catechism. The art of thieving adroitly is also reckoned an accomplishment by these mountaineers, as formerly by the Spartans, when the despoiled is an enemy, or at least a member of another tribe. And as in their council-rings there is as often an opportunity for the display of ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... driving past Biery's hotel from a meeting he had been holding in the town of Geneva, Joseph Smith entered and laid before Susannah books for the cultivation of her mind—a Latin grammar and exercise book like his own, a Universal History, and a primer of Natural Philosophy. He told her that in two weeks, when she had mastered their contents, he would bring her others. He left hastily, the business ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... saved a shipload of panic-stricken foreign emigrants, and (to help point the moral) within the year, in an almost similar case, another shipload had been drowned through that same blind, helpless, hopeless panic. The pride of race bubbled through the British Daily Press in prosaic long primer and double-leaded bourgeois. There was no saying aloud, "We rejoice that an Englishman has done this thing, after having it proved to us that it was above the foreigner's strength." The newspaper man ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... A primer of information about composing sticks, galleys, leads, brass rules, cutting and mitering machines, etc. 47 pp.; illustrated; 50 ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton

... childhood by their white playmates. Others knew their letters, but could not "put them together," as they said. I remember of a summer's afternoon seeing a young married woman, perhaps twenty-five years old, seated on a door-step with her primer before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... believe he is right in saying that while we cannot dispense with the schools—indeed the whole work without these would be unorganized and fruitless—yet for "sowing the seed," for reaching those who are far off, we must depend on street preaching. The English primer has largely lost its power as a bait for the gospel hook. We must do our fishing for ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various

... The Primer was the layman's service-book, and consisted largely of matter taken from the Horae or Hours of ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... price fourpence, of a Miscellany, to be continued every eighth day, under the name of "The Watchman", by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This Miscellany will be comprised in two sheets, or thirty-two pages, closely printed in 8vo; the type, long primer. Its contents, 1:—A history of the domestic and foreign policy of the preceding days. 2:—The speeches in both Houses of Parliament; and, during the recess, select parliamentary speeches from the commencement of the reign of Charles ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... They long regarded it as merely the persecuting ecclesiastical arm of the British Government. Such of them as had been brought up in any faith at all had for the most part originally professed some form of Calvinism; they had very probably learnt their letters from a primer which in one of its rude cuts represented John Rogers at the stake, surrounded by his wife and seven children, and in their after lives they were more familiar with the "Pilgrim's Progress" than with any ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... later Brant translated into the Mohawk tongue the Liturgy of the Anglican Church as well as a doctrinal primer. Copies of these were sent to Harvard University, and its corporation replied with a cordial vote of thanks to the War Chief for his gift. Brant also planned to write a comprehensive history of the Six Nations, but unfortunately this work seems ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... There is 'The Raven,' the first primer, the multiplication table. Is it for your ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... instructors will do well to give a grounding in logic. I have inserted a brief discussion of the subject with the hope that it will furnish a basis for a short study; it can be reenforced by a few weeks on such a manual as Jevons's "Primer of Logic," or Bode's "Outline of Logic" if there is time. Whatever be one's view of the positive value of deductive logic, there can be no doubt that every student should have some knowledge of the canons of inductive logic, and that a study of propositions ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... while the hand is trembling with pleasure!—Then to dazzle the eyes of our wealthier and emulous rivals by showing them such a treasure as this' (displaying a little black smoked book about the size of a primer)—'to enjoy their surprise and envy, shrouding meanwhile, under a veil of mysterious consciousness, our own superior knowledge and dexterity;—these, my young friend, these are the white moments of life, that repay the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... had made his kill, again one of the Pal-ul-don specimens of antelope, all species of which Tarzan had known since childhood as Bara, the deer, since in the little primer that had been the basis of his education the picture of a deer had been the nearest approach to the likeness of the antelope, from the giant eland to the smaller bushbuck of the hunting ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Salve Regina, and when it was ended she bade him go, for she would fain spend some time in prayer upon her primer. ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... all the alphabet. No student of Greek or Hebrew ever deserved so much praise for ingenuity and diligence. But the years pass on, and still you cannot read. Your master-brother now and then gives you a copper. You hoard them, and buy a primer; screening yourself from suspicion, by telling the bookseller that your master wants it for his sister's little boy. You find the picture of a cat, with three letters by its side; and now you know how cat is spelt. Elated with your wonderful discovery, you are eager to catch ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child

... was wanted. Single charges of powder were carried by the musketeers in wooden, tin, or copper boxes, and twelve of these boxes, fitted to a belt and slung over the left shoulder, made the "bandolier," which jingled like a band of sleigh-bells if the boxes were metallic. The belt also secured the "primer with priming-powder," the "bullet-bag," the "priming-wire," and the "match-cord." The soldier being thus a slave to his weapon, we are not surprised to note that his manual of arms was the following, from Elton's "Postures ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... is outstanding; and literally so, for I bear the scar to this day. My elder sister Uma and I were seated in the early morning under a NEEM tree in our Gorakhpur compound. She was helping me with a Bengali primer, what time I could spare my gaze from the near-by parrots eating ripe margosa fruit. Uma complained of a boil on her leg, and fetched a jar of ointment. I smeared a bit of the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... a cricket by the kitchen fire. He has a primer open before him at the alphabet. His round eyes are fixed upon the page as long as Frank is looking at him, but he requires constant watching. His teacher sits near-by, with a Latin dictionary resting ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... petites remarques que je fais tous les jours, et je n'en suis pas surprise. Du caractere dont elle est, celui du Marquis doit etre de son gout. La Comtesse est une femme brusque, qui aime a primer, a gouverner, a etre la maitresse. Le Marquis est un homme doux, paisible, aise a conduire; et voila ce qu'il faut a la Comtesse. Aussi ne parle-t-elle de lui qu'avec eloge. Son air de naivete lui plait: c'est, dit-elle, le meilleur homme, ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

... use blinking the fact," said Bristow in a quiet, calculating way, trying to keep in his mind all the other peculiar circumstances surrounding this crime. "From the way we've put it, the thing reads as plainly as a primer. Now, what are we to do? Even now, we haven't the ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... Caradoc Smith, and fetched down a furious doubled-handed blow on the primer of the big steel ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... that is all the civilian ever sees) the book brings you to a region where nothing else is considered than the one thing, attack, attack, attack. There is something very grim and inexorable in this primer of war, this A B C of the principles of destruction. And if the innocent little pocket manual contains a codification, so condensed as to be amazing, of the ways to slay your enemy, the officers ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... the children together, took her Catechism and primer, and went down to the summer-house. She noticed that Polly's expression was sulky, and that she was rolling her eyes at Dilsy. But Polly was always tormenting Dilsy. Dilsy was a little hunchback negro, that ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea

... the selectmen "to call and settell a gramer scoll according to ye best of yower judgement and for ye advantag [Keais is obviously dead now] of ye youth of ower town to learn them to read from ye primer, to wright and sypher and to learne ym the tongues and good-manners." On this occasion it was Mr. William Allen, of Salisbury, who engaged "dilligently to attend ye school for ye present yeare, and tech ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Robinson, used to preach in Cornish down to the year 1678, that being the only tongue well understood by his parishioners. Scawen mentions the MSS. of the aforesaid “Anguin,” as he spells him, and laments their destruction. He also speaks of a “Matins” (possibly a Primer, or Hours of our Lady) in Cornish, which had belonged to ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner

... statement that!" continued the Idiot. "It's something like asserting that a man looks like himself, or, as in the case of a child's primer...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs

... was not satisfied with the ordinary routine of the week-day school room, but felt that the teacher of a mission school should aim to educate the children for eternity as well as for time. She found great assistance in the primer, catechism, and other elementary religious books, with which she had been furnished. She felt that the teachings of the week-day school ought to be largely preparatory to the rehearsals of the Sabbath school. What an impression for ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood

... but so standing a little to one side of the passing crowds on the sidewalk, looking into that upturned face, seeing those eyes so sad and prayerful above the smiling mouth, I betrayed my wife for the first time, and Lucy read me like a primer, and she knew that I loved her—either still or once more. Of her own emotions ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris

... pronto muy sobresaltado.) Ser Miguel! Y an estoy sin vestir! Entretenle un poco. Mal haya amn mi suerte![2] (Vase precipitadamente por la primer puerta ...
— Ms vale maa que fuerza • Manuel Tamayo y Baus

... gazed at the books on the table: "Nutting's Grammar," "Adams' Arithmetic," "David's Tears" and the "New England Primer and Catechism"—all useful books undoubtedly, but not calculated long to engross the attention of the traveler. Turning from these prosaic volumes, the occupant of the chamber drew aside the curtain of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... we watered our horses and started again at 11.15; at 12.8 made two miles and a half north-east by east half east to west side of a range; at 12.35 made one mile and a half north-east to Heales Creek and gap in Primer Range; at 12.55 made three-quarters of a mile north-east down the creek to the last hill coming down and the first going up the river (I have named it Mount Heales after the premier of Victoria). It was about one mile to the eastward of our course; at 1.5 made half a mile ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough

... primer was published in the first six numbers of Public Libraries in 1896. It was quite largely made up of extracts from an article by Dr W.F. Poole on The organization and management of public libraries, which formed part of the report on Public libraries in the U.S., published by the U.S. ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... a "Primer of Political Economy" (1878), which is a simple, bird's-eye view of the subject in ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... Doctor Swishtail's scholars, and was "taken down" continually by little fellows with pink faces and pinafores when he marched up with the lower form, a giant amongst them, with his downcast, stupefied look, his dog's-eared primer, and his tight corduroys. High and low, all made fun of him. They sewed up those corduroys, tight as they were. They cut his bed-strings. They upset buckets and benches, so that he might break his shins over them, which he never failed to do. They sent him parcels, which, when opened, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Archdeacon Farrar and others, and has some vogue. But the popular taste prefers it tinned. And yet it is very tough, in Articles. I am surprised that no one has written a simple explanation of them: "Primer of the Thirty-nine Articles," "The Thirty-nine Articles made Easy," or "Thirty-nine Articles for Beginners;" but no one ever has. It is a book that is very much needed, and if I had any influence with the theologians I would ask them to do it at once. In days like ours, when floods ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... gibbeted criminal, looked grimly at me as I entered the room devoted to the students of the school I had joined, just as the fleshless figure of Time, with the hour-glass and scythe, used to glare upon me in my childhood from the "New England Primer." The white faces in the beds at the Hospital found their reflection in my own cheeks, which lost their color as I looked upon them. All this had to pass away in a little time; I had chosen my profession, and must ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... enterprising people. Geography, teaches a knowledge of the world, and Political Economy, a knowledge of the wealth of nations; or how to make money. These are not abstruse sciences, or learning not easily acquired or understood; but simply, common School Primer learning, that every body may get. And, although it is the very key to prosperity and success in common life, but few know any thing about it. Unfortunately for our people, so soon as their children ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... ancient easy-chair, which I had exhumed, along with a good many other useful articles, from the garret at Oaklands. The two older children we interrupted taking a lesson at their mother's knee. The primer was gladly laid aside, while the children came coyly to my side, quite certain there was a delectable bite for them somewhere in my pockets. I dismissed that care from my mind by dividing the sweets, and ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... Dean Swift of St. Patricks, Dublin, edited some curious poetry for "A Royal Primer," sqr. 32mo, published in the Seven Dials, of ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson

... of God's word, we detail, among many others, the following occurrence. One William Maldon, living at Greenwich in servitude, was instructing himself profitably in reading an English primer one winter's evening. A serving man, named John Powell, sat by, and ridiculed all that Maldon said, who cautioned him not to make a jest of the word of God. Powell nevertheless continued, till Maldon came to certain English Prayers, and read aloud, Lord, have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... this she pored over her new treasures, until one day Miss Fletcher brought her a primer, and the seventeen-year-old girl grappled for the first time with the alphabet. After that she was loath to have the book out of her hand, going painfully and slowly over the lessons, mastering each ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice

... thought of Cissie Dildine who did understand him. This thought might have been Cissie's cue to enter the stage of Peter's mind. Her oval, creamy face floated between Peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer. He thought of Cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good English, good manners, and good taste. There ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... engaged in them,—he was reading his proof. And he smiled, and pointed to it (the proof I mean) pathetically, and with a kind of humor, as much as to say: "What can you expect, Pisistratus? My new baby in short clothes—or long primer, which is all ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... boys; an' he says,—an' he says, 'Oh tuts, I know you now. You're Big Malcolm's English grandson!' He would be saying that, Hamish! An' he wrote a name for me; see!" He had been growing more and more excited as the recital proceeded, and at this point he jerked from his bosom a torn and battered primer that had done duty in the few days that Hamish had attended school. Under the scrawling marks that stood for Hamish's name was written in a fine ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... kindness of him and his woman, and of his little gal, that teached me my a-b-c's. For she said, 'With your head-piece, Aunt Dally, it hain't too late for you to die a scholar yet; you got to git l'arning.' And, women, I got it. I knowed all my letters and were quite a piece in the primer before I left, and Evy here she aims to finish my education and have me reading Scriptur' come summer. Yes, it all seemed too good and fair to be true, and I lived in a daze. I come to myself sufficient', though, to have the little gal write John to hire ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman

... CARTRIDGE consists of the brass case or shell, the primer, the charge of smokeless powder, and the bullet. The bullet has a sharp point, is composed of a lead core and a jacket of cupro nickel, and weighs 150 grains. The bullet of this cartridge, when fired from the ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... long settles beside the fireplace and here the children seated themselves, Peregrine on one side, and Patience on the other, to study their lessons. They were given queer little books, called the New England Primer, in wooden covers, and having funny, tiny pictures for each letter of the alphabet, and beside each, a jingle. There were verses to be learned from the Bible, too. Patience held her primer up close to her nose and studied very diligently, ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... teacher's "desk" copies of Clodd's Childhood of the World, two of that excellent series of History Primers, and The Young Geologist, all carefully selected, in the fulness of Mary's ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination. She had brought no primer, as Mrs. Yellett's letter had distinctly said that the youngest child was ten and that all were comparatively advanced in their studies. More than ever Mary longed to penetrate the mystery of that Irish linen decoy, for ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... hours, sacred to arithmetic or algebra, the construing of verbs, or the drawing of figures. If separate hours merely mean that the master is not to have all his classes up at once—here gabbling Latin or Greek, there discussing the primer or reciting from Scott's Collection, yonder repeating the multiplication table or running over the rules of Lindley Murray—we at once say religion must have its separate hour, just as English, the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... perfectly safe to manufacture, handle and transport. There is no more danger of its exploding accidentally than there would be of an explosion of shavings or sawdust; for, unless well confined and set off with a strong primer, it will not explode at all. In the open its combustion is so slow as to in no way resemble or partake of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... The Primer Class according to the degree of its precocity was divided in three sections. Emmy Lou belonged to the third section. It was the last section, and she was the last one in it, though she had no idea what a section meant nor why she was in it; and Emmy Lou ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... delicate finger of the gypsy moved over the lines of the palm like that of a little school-girl over the pages of a primer. They did not realize how dangerous was that proximity, nor how fatal that touch. Through those two poles of Nature's most powerful battery, the magnetic and mysterious current of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... associated with my dear father and mother that schools I did not need. In my seventh year, under their supervision, I commenced a systematic course of scientific reading which I kept up until after I graduated from college. I commenced with the Science Primer Series, reading aloud to my parents one half hour each morning and evening, conversing and commenting on the different topics as we went along. This proved to be a continuation of the game of blocks: just as interesting, equally entertaining; all about the same familiar ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... horror the hearts of the old Norse sea-robbers. What child, although Anglo-Saxon born, escapes a temporary sojourn in fairy-land? Who of us does not remember the intense satisfaction of throwing aside primer and spelling-book for stolen ethnographical studies of dwarfs, and giants? Even in our own country and time old superstitions and credulities still cling to life with feline tenacity. Here and there, oftenest in our fixed, valley-sheltered, inland villages,—slumberous Rip Van Winkles, unprogressive ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... school; school of art; kindergarten, nursery, creche, reformatory. pulpit, lectern, soap box desk, reading desk, ambo[obs3], lecture room, theater, auditorium, amphitheater, forum, state, rostrum, platform, hustings, tribune. school book, horn book, text book; grammar, primer, abecedary[obs3], rudiments, manual, vade mecum; encyclopedia, cyclopedia; Lindley Murray, Cocker; dictionary, lexicon. professorship, lectureship, readership, fellowship, tutorship; chair. School Board Council of Education; Board of Education; Board of Studies, Prefect of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... was in a tin can, was then poured into the torpedo case, and the torpedo was carefully lowered into the well, which contained at the time about 250 ft. of water, until the end of the anchor rested on the bottom of the well. A traveling primer or "go-devil squib" was then prepared as follows: A tin cone, 14 in. in length by 2 in. in diameter at the open end, was partially filled with sand to give it the necessary weight. A piece of double tape fuse, 2 ft. long, was inserted into a Nobel's treble detonator, and over the detonator and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... with a hair-pin, there was just the faintest glimmer of humor in the eyes that looked up into the young man's face. He was being read, and he knew it; his dark intentions in regard to that waterfall were probably as legible to her as if they had been printed in great-primer type on his forehead. On two or three occasions at Geneva she had wrested his unworded thought from him with the same effortless sorcery. Lynde evaded her look, and studied a spire-like peak on his left. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... instructed and amused; and thus, with nature for his hornbook, and art for his primer, did the little parlour of Edward ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... cold hearts freeze Allegeance in them; their curses now Liue where their prayers did: and it's come to passe, This tractable obedience is a Slaue To each incensed Will: I would your Highnesse Would giue it quicke consideration; for There is no primer basenesse ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... at the bedside, bare feet wrapped in a ragged quilt, and a shawl around her shoulders, she picked out the first shell and placed it in the block. With one tap she forced out the old primer, inserted a new one, and drove it in. Next she plunged the rusty measuring-cup into the black powder and poured the glistening grains into the shell, three drams and a half. On this she drove in two wads. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... he taught me and other, I fear, reluctant pupils all we were capable of learning of the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, contained, at that time, in a small but miscellaneous volume called the Primer. He was a great lover of the writings of Cowper, which name, in the English manner, he always pronounced Cooper, and of the Psalms and Hymns and the lyrical productions, in general, of Dr. Watts; and long after I had grown up, he pointed out to me a verse ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... actally askt if her minnyster mite be aloud to come and prepair me for Heavn; but I told the uzzy to prepair herself for another place and gav her a munths warnin to soot herself—but about the parleymeant—Hurl Grey the Primer has a load on his sholders wich I hop he will be able to discharg an all go off quiet: He has pledgd himself for to the caws for Riform an says hell Redrench evry Place where he has Grounds: and they all talk about Pooling Mesurs; but the Wetterun Bishop Sincurers and Cloaths ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various

... believe, the vital principle of the intellectual life, is the first to be exercised by our young men who lead that life; and quite in the spirit of that education which would repeat in the child the history of the race, we are scarce out of the swaddling bands of the primer and catechism before we would remove all questions to the court of our own jurisdiction. The mind is not a tabula rasa at birth, we learn, but, so soon as may be, we will remedy that, and erase all records copied there. ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... differ materially from those of the previous decade, but the enlarged scope gave greater play to his fancy and more opportunity for his talents as a master of satire. The publication of "The Denver Primer" and "Culture's Garland," while adding to his reputation as a humorist, happily did not satisfy him. He was now past the age of thirty-five, and a great psychical revolution was coming on. Though still on the sunny side of middle life, he was wearying of the cup of pleasure ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... price being paid for the "idea;" but the expenditure is worth while to those who value historical associations. One may find in the silver-basket salient reminders of all important epochs in our national life, a sort of primer of United States history, to say nothing of the innumerable "souvenirs" of Europe. Its subtle testimony to the intelligent taste of its owner gives the souvenir collection its chief ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... Icones Mortis: that is, in French and Latin, "Images of Death,"—for the title "Dance of Death" is of recent origin. The leaves on which the cuts are printed make but part of a little book not so large as a child's primer; but a copy of it is now worth ten times its weight in gold. It was copied and republished in numberless editions, as a popular book, merely for the sake of the subject, and the great lesson taught by it,—each ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... and pregnant principle of all, viz., that Art is one, is not partial, but includes all times and forms and sorts—is not exclusively aristocratic or democratic, or oriental or occidental. My favorite symbol would be a good font of type, where the impeccable long-primer rejects nothing. Or the old Dutch flour-miller who said, "I never bother myself what road the folks come—I only want good wheat ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... age implies a corresponding difference in attainments. 'What are your most advanced classes studying?' is very often asked of the teachers, when a moment's reflection would convince the inquirer, that the Primer and First Reader are the only books which we expect to see in the hands of children who have but just learned their letters. Viewing the rapid progress which these colored children have made in learning to read during the past year—many of them being obliged to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Brown, commonly known as 'Carrots' from his fiery hair, 'you could 'a done what the goats did in the primer at school—you ought ter have laid flat down and let ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... were fired. Billy White, "No. 2," had only to reach down for them, and he would have loaded the guns to the muzzle if "No. 1" had given him time. The gun got so hot that, once, in jumping in to put in the friction primer, the back of my left hand touched it, and the skin was nearly taken off. The sponge was entirely worn off the rammer, so "No. 1" stopped sponging out the gun, and only rammed shot home. We fired so fast that the powder did not have time to ignite in the gun. After firing the gun, "No. 4" could ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame

... little primer this morning," she remarked after a short silence, "and I want you to say a ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun

... the great exposition at New Orleans this winter, and would be willing to yield you a few words of editorial opinion, set in long primer type next to pure reading ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... of any kind. She is in the Third Reader but does not like stories in books. I am in the Sixth Reader but just because I cannot say the seven multiplication Table Miss Dearborn threttens to put me in the baby primer class with Elijah and Elisha Simpson ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... ductile, yet tough; flowing freely, yet hardening quickly." Body type, that is, those classes ever seen in ordinary print, aside from display and fancy styles, is in thirteen classes, the smallest technically called brilliant and the largest great primer. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... Wilbur who went again to the Advance office to learn the loose trade, as his father had written him from New Orleans that he must be sure to do. He had increased his knowledge of convention in the use of capital letters, and that summer, as a day's work, he set up a column of leaded long primer which won him the difficult praise of Sam Pickering. Sam wrote a notice of the performance and printed it in the Advance—the budding craftsman feeling a double glow when he sat this up, too. The item predicted that Wilbur Cowan, son of our fellow townsman, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... read, not in a primer, but by means of movable letters, printed in red on cubes of wood. He amused himself by arranging the blocks so as to form words. Sometimes Mrs. Weldon took these cubes and composed a word; then she disarranged them, and it was for Jack to replace ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... smile and a sigh he took up the primer, and began heavily to con over the task which had been assigned him. As if banished from the society of the two others, he sat sad and solitary in one of the deep window-recesses, and after in vain ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... end is traditionally the season for moralizing and retrospect. Eheu! fugaces anni is a sigh that even the Latin primer teaches us; and though in schoolbook days calling the years fugacious seems absurd, we catch the meaning as they glide away. To schoolboys the man of fifty is immoderately old: thirty marks a milestone on the downhill of life. People whom we looked upon as of great antiquity, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... shall be washed with zinc sulphate neutralizer. First paint coat shall be wall size and primer. Second coat two parts flat wall paint & one part size. Finish with egg-shell wall paint. Plaster cornice to receive first coat of size, second coat half size & half enamel. Finish coat semi-gloss enamel. ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton

... from 1626-1681, and was the first learned man to become tutor to a Tzarevitch. The spirit of the times no longer permitted the heir to the throne to be taught merely to read and write from the primer, the Psalter, and the "Book of Hours"; and Alexei Mikhailovitch appointed Simeon Polotzky instructor ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... extrano rumor de voces delgadas, dulces y misteriosas que hablaban entre si, reian o cantaban cada cual por su parte y una cosa diferente, formando una algarabia tan ruidosa y confusa como la de los pajaros que despiertan al primer rayo del sol entre las frondas ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... said Mr. Osborn, handing a book out of the pulpit. "It's a larger character—'long primer,' as I believe the printers call it. We'll have the lamps directly; but we are all of us rather partial to blind man's holiday—not to mention that oil is oil, and that Brother Spiers doesn't give it away. We know he couldn't afford to do that. But there it is—Take care ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell



Words linked to "Primer" :   coat of paint, fuse, textbook, prime, fusee, school text, fuze, priming coat, light, text edition, igniter, undercoat, fuzee, safety fuse, flat coat, couch, ignitor, speller, lighter, priming, hornbook



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