"Solecism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... government which is frequently at a loss to know what feeling to apply. Sometimes it happens to discern the right feeling and apply it, sometimes it hits upon an inappropriate one and is thus induced to proceed from solecism to solecism till the consequences lead to a crisis from which we recover and which, then becoming a leading case, forms one of the decisions on which our future action is based. Sometimes it applies a feeling that is too inappropriate, as ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... cure, neither he nor any Surgeon, but can only alleviate by cutting off two toes. Pink of politeness, no doubt of it; but otherwise the strangest dilapidated hulk of a two-legged animal without feathers; probably, in fact, the chief Natural Solecism under the Sun at that epoch;—extremely complimentary to us Princesses, to me especially. "He quitted her Majesty's Apartment after an hour's conversation: she rose to reconduct him, but he would by no manner of means ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... head, and an upper choral plane reached by broad stairways of the bravest effect. I shall never forget the impression of majestic chastity that I received from the great nave of the building on my former visit. I then decided to my satisfaction that every church is from the devotional point of view a solecism that has not something of a similar absolute felicity of proportion; for strictly formal beauty seems best to express our conception of spiritual beauty. The nobly serious character of San Zenone is deepened by its single picture—a masterpiece of the most ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Field's confidence effected its purpose. Never again did he employ the type-worn expressions of country journalism, except with set prepense and self-evident satire. He shunned them as he did an English solecism, which he never committed, save as a decoy to draw the fire of the ever-watchful ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... wrote the petition which furnished the grounds for advising Her Most Gracious Majesty to extend her royal clemency to the deserving young man. The result of my petition by no means surprised me, for I was always confident that an English gentleman could never be guilty of the solecism against English customs implied by keeping in prison a young gentleman who could perform so meritorious an act as to fall heir to many bags of gold and sixteen thousand acres ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... whose arguments were unanswered and unanswerable; but nothing could stay the prevailing impatience of Congress for speedy legislation looking to the early return of the rebel districts to their places in the Union. The bill was a legislative solecism. It did not abrogate the existing Rebel State governments. It left the ballot in the hands of white Rebels, and did not confer it upon the black loyalists. It sought to conciliate the power it was endeavoring to coerce. It provided ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... of the measures recommended in the one case than in the other, in the obligations of ultimate decision there can be no difference. In the language of the Constitution, "all the legislative powers" which it grants "are vested in the Congress of the United States." It would be a solecism in language to say that any portion of these is ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... seen what is requisite in the man who would be respected in the Presidency, and has so unreservedly devoted his life to its attainment, that in protracted conversations with him I heard only a single solecism, ("a'n't you" for "aren't you,") and saw not one instance of breeding which would be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... mediocrity of wit, to one of a mean fortune, who manages his store with extreme frugality, or rather parsimony; but who, with fear of running into profuseness, never arrives to the magnificence of living. This kind of genius writes indeed correctly. A wary man he is in grammar, very nice as to solecism or barbarism, judges to a hair of little decencies, knows better than any man what is not to be written, and never hazards himself so far as to fall, but plods on deliberately, and, as a grave man ought, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... remaining in a quiet spot, that he might at his leisure watch what was going forward. Captain Calder felt very much as he did, for he was even still less accustomed to ball-rooms, though his true gentlemanly feelings and innate sense of propriety prevented him from committing any solecism in good manners. Sims and Dicky Glover ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... a domestic menage, "a wife not too learned..." She is not willing to lose a woman's birthright of love and devotion, but is not quite sure how far it might be affected by her ability to detect a solecism. Hence, she offers a great deal of subtle flattery to masculine self-love. With curious ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... solecism in the printed Flores Historiarum I find that a MS. in the Chetham Library agrees, the abbreviative mark used in the Hundred Rolls of Edward I. for the terminations us and er having ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... it as never before. The one invaded Irving's premieres at the Lyceum. The other sang paeans in praise of the Bancrofts. The French plays, too, were the feigned delight of all the modish world. Not to have seen Chaumont in Totot chez Tata was held a solecism. The homely mesdames and messieurs from the Parisian boards were 'lionised' (how strangely that phrase rings to modern ears!) in ducal drawing-rooms. In fact, all the old prejudice of rank was being swept away. Even more significant ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... hesitated, wondering whether her request might not be a social solecism, like asking ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Multitudes of nightingales are said to sing among them, but it was not the season for hearing them from the train; and we made what shift we could with the strawberry and asparagus beds which we could see plainly, and the peach trees and cherry trees. One of these had committed the solecism of blossoming in October, instead of April or May, when the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... costly essences.' He had no mercy on them here. 'Very bunglers in sensuality, who know not her laws, and confound her ordinances, flinging down their souls to be trampled beneath the heels of luxury! As the play has it, Door or window, all is one to them. Such pleasures are rank solecism.' One observation of his in the same spirit fairly caps the famous censure of Momus. Momus found fault with the divine artificer for not putting his bull's horns in front of the eyes. Similarly, Nigrinus complained that when these men crown themselves in their banquets, they put the garlands ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... married, I suppose, about six months, when, sitting one evening over a cozy wood-fire in our cozy little parlor, just under the work of art I have described at such length, Charlie committed his first matrimonial solecism. He yawned, actually ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... nervous step. There was a two-minute conference on the piazza; then both officers vanished within, were gone five minutes, and then Plume reappeared alone, went straight to his home, and slammed the door behind him, a solecism rarely known at Sandy, and presently on the hot and pulseless air there arose the sound of shrill protestation in strange vernacular. Even Wren heard the voice, and found something reminiscent in the sound of weeping and wailing that followed. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... agitations of the world. For this reason she was fond of seeing great crowds and large stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures—a class of efforts as to which she had often committed the conscious solecism of forgiving them much bad painting for the sake of the subject. While the Civil War went on she was still a very young girl; but she passed months of this long period in a state of almost passionate excitement, in which she felt herself at times ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... political doctrine, which must introduce still another element of barbarism, and interpose an additional obstacle to the progress of civilization. Shall this be? It is opposed to the political tendency of the times; and the common sense of mankind should forbid the acceptance of a political solecism in the organization of government, which virtually annuls the unity and integrity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... plural substantive Elohim is made to agree with the singular verb bara (the Elohim creates). The reason is that after the Babylonish captivity the unity of the Supreme Being was the prevailing opinion of the Jews; it was therefore thought proper to introduce a pious solecism in language, which it is evident had no existence before Moses; thus in the names of the children of Jacob many of them are compounded of a plural verb, to which Elohim is the nominative case understood, as Raouben (Reuben), they have looked upon me, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... they have literally lost all taste, and their palate is rather gratified than not by the most corrupt and arbitrary innovations. Hence the tutti unisono with which, despite the general lethargy and sickliness, every fresh solecism is greeted; it is with such impudent corruptions of the language that her hirelings are avenged against her for the incredible boredom she imposes ever more and more upon them. I remember having read "an ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this, that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses; and these I have frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... shun by all means: and however I may deserve from master Would-be, yet T'have one fair gentlewoman thus be made The unkind instrument to wrong another, And one she knows not, ay, and to persever; In my poor judgment, is not warranted From being a solecism in our sex, If ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... In the short space it took to cover the road between the path from Hamilton's shop and the first plank of the Combermere Bridge I had thought over half a dozen people who might have committed such a solecism, and had eventually decided that it must have been singing in my ears. Immediately opposite Peliti's shop my eye was arrested by the sight of four jharnpanies in "magpie" livery, pulling a yellow-paneled, cheap, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... as within his income; but if Hood had lived within his wit—which might then have possessed a vital and lasting quality—he would have had no income. His role in life was like that of a dancing bear, which is held to commit a solecism every time it settles wearily down on the four legs nature ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... carriages of any kind, and is still a little tenacious on this point. He often rails against the universal use of carriages, and quotes the words of honest Nashe to that effect. "It was thought," says Nashe, in his Quaternio, "a kind of solecism, and to savour of effeminacy, for a young gentleman in the flourishing time of his age to creep into a coach, and to shroud himself from wind and weather: our great delight was to outbrave the blustering Boreas upon a great horse; to arm and prepare ourselves to go with Mars and ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... said Glossin, beginning to fear lest the firm expostulation of Bertram should make some impression on Sir Robert, who would almost have died of shame at committing such a solecism as sending a captain of horse to jail—"This is all very well, sir; but is there no person nearer whom you ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... seen as much scenery as any gent present, an' should shore know how it's spelled. Scenery is what you sees. "S-e-e" spells see; an' tharfore I contends that "S-e-e-n-r-y" spells scenery. That "c" you springs on us, Doc, is a solecism, an' as much out of place as a ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... great; but the greatest difficulty, is often in their own mind. For it is common with princes (saith Tacitus) to will contradictories, Sunt plerumque regum voluntates vehementes, et inter se contrariae. For it is the solecism of power, to think to command the end, and yet ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... his garrisons. Policy and public safety absolutely require it. What state could exist that allowed its inferior members to hold forts and garrisons independent of the superior administration? It is a solecism in government ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... against good use, an impropriety, is the use of a proper word in an improper sense. In many cases an offense against good use may be called a barbarism, an impropriety, or a solecism, since the fields covered by the three terms somewhat overlap one another. Many improprieties have their origin in the similarities in sound, spelling or meaning of words. The following exercises deal with a number ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... A baronet should not be addressed as "my lord," and she had been guilty of a solecism. At the same time her manner had been perfect; her carriage admirably self-possessed. Her choice of a seat, too, at the end of the table and furthest from Sir Oliver—if she had come unwillingly—had been wittily taken, and on the moment, and with ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... would never be guilty of the solecism of recording a lady's age,' said Mr. Rollstone gravely; 'but as the Honourable Arthur was born in 1848, and the Honourable Michael in 1850, we may infer that the young lady is no longer ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other restoratives than fond words and caresses. Under this treatment, nevertheless, she recovered perhaps as quickly as under any which the faculty might have prescribed. She was, still, however, much more distressed than mere consciousness of the grave solecism she had committed could explain. But I had no other clue to her trouble, and could only hope that in repudiating this she would explain ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... and novelists of writing works concerning the British Peerage. Even putting the actual peerage aside, the question is important, whether the pictures in fiction—particularly in drama—of what one may call Belgravia or Mayfair are correct. We critics hardly know; and it may be a solecism to suggest that the same applies to the studies of the Faubourg St Germain. Perhaps that famous faubourg has ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... world of fine sentiments, a world of admirable sayings and foul practices, of good maxims and bad deeds; whose darker passions are not only restrained by custom and ceremony, but hidden even from itself by a veil of beautiful sentiments. This terrible solecism has existed in all ages. Romish sentimentalism has often covered infidelity and vice; Protestant straightness often lauds spirituality and faith, and neglects homely truth, candor, and generosity; and ultra-liberal Rationalistic refinement sometimes soars to heaven in its dreams, and wallows in the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... fact, composes the nation; it would insulate us in general negotiations for peace, making all the parties our opposers, and very indifferent about peace with us, if they have it with the rest of the world; and would exhibit a solecism worthy of Don Quixotte only, that of a choice to fight two enemies at a time, rather than to take them by succession. And the only motive for all this is a sublimated impartiality, at which the world will laugh, and our own people will turn upon us in mass as soon ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... laconically, indulging in his only frequent solecism, "that you wouldn't offer to plead to manslaughter unless you felt pretty sure your client was ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... with regard to ladies. It often is so felt; but we are inclined to say that it never produces half the discomfort or half the feeling of implied inferiority that is shown by a great man who desires his visitor to be seated while he himself speaks from his legs. Such a solecism in good breeding, when construed into English means this: "The accepted rule of courtesy in the world require that I should offer you a seat; if I did not do so, you would bring a charge against me in the world of being arrogant and ill-mannered; I will obey the world; but, nevertheless, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... important truth, which it unequivocally pronounces in the present case, is that a sovereignty over sovereigns, a government over governments, a legislation for communities, as contradistinguished from individuals, as it is a solecism in theory, so in practice it is subversive of the order and ends of civil polity, by substituting VIOLENCE in place of LAW, or the destructive COERCION of the SWORD in place of the mild and salutary ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... propositions, if the part of the class meant by the some were specified, the proposition would become either singular, or universal with a different subject including all the part. Indefinite in Logic is a solecism like doubtful gender in grammar, for the speaker must mean to make either a particular ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... it right! Ask their consciences. I should like to witness some of those interviews which take place in the night, and which make Christian distillers—(what a solecism!)—so much more irritable than they used to be. I know one of the brotherhood, at least, whose conscience has been goading him these five ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... now that, after all my care, the very solecism I had planned so carefully to avoid had tripped me ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... fellow-passengers, was how he put it—I could follow the thought in his mind, and knew his compliment to be such as we pay foreigners on their proficiency in English. I dare say this praise was given me immediately on the back of some unpardonable solecism, which had led him to review my conduct as a whole. We are all ready to laugh at the ploughman among lords; we should consider also the case of a lord among the ploughmen. I have seen a lawyer in the house of a Hebridean fisherman; ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some little solecism which is too slight for direct mention, and which a meaner man might hide or avoid. Unless you are very modern indeed, you twinkle back ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... and anticipates his falsehood: miserable excuse!—how could a magnanimous woman love a man, whose falsehood she believes but possible?—or loving him, how could she deign to secure herself by such means against the consequences? Shakspeare and Nature never committed such a solecism. Camiola doubts before she has been wronged; the firmness and assurance in herself border on harshness. What in Portia is the gentle wisdom of a noble nature, appears, in Camiola, too much a spirit of calculation: ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Hazlitt's valuation of Wordsworth than Timon's judgment of Alcibiades. Hazlitt sees through coloured glasses, but his vision is not the less penetrating. The vulgar satirist is such a one as Hazlitt somewhere mentioned who called Wordsworth a dunce. Hazlitt was quite incapable of such a solecism. He knew, nobody better, that a telling caricature must be a good likeness. If he darkens the shades, and here and there exaggerates an ungainly feature, we still know that the shade exists and that the feature is not symmetrical. De Quincey reports the saying of some admiring friend of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... church clock broke off our dialogue. He took out his diamond watch, compared it with the time, found that to delay a moment longer would be a solecism which might lose him a smile or be punished with a frown; repeated a couplet on the pangs of parting with friends; and with an embrace, in the most glowing style of Paris, bounded across the street, and was lost in the crowd which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... instead. An important principle is thus instanced—the essential identity of Nuisance and Waste. Nearly all the physical annoyances we are subjected to, and nearly all the influences that are operating actively for our hurt, are simply the exponents of some chemical solecism, which we are, through ignorance or indifference, committing or permitting. There is here a double evil—a positive and a negative. When the Londoner groans at the smokiness of his streets, and the particles of soot he finds spread over his shirt, his toilet-table, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... MARCELLUS, a very severe critic of the Latin tongue, who sometimes pleaded causes, in a certain address on the plaintiff's behalf, persisted in charging his adversary with making a solecism, until Cassius Severus appealed to the judges to grant an adjournment until his client should produce another grammarian, as he was not prepared to enter into a controversy respecting a solecism, instead of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... monstrous a solecism can long exist in the bosom of a nation which in all respects is the best exponent of the great principle of universal brotherhood. In America the Frenchman, the German, the Italian, the Swede, and the Irish all ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... excuse the unavoidable absence, which he deeply regretted, of the slices of Seville oranges that should have formed a part of the dish—being an obligatory accessory of roast goose—and they with charming courtesy smilingly expressed their willingness to overlook for this once such a culinary solecism. ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier |
