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Verb   Listen
noun
Verb  n.  
1.
A word; a vocable. (Obs.)
2.
(Gram.) A word which affirms or predicates something of some person or thing; a part of speech expressing being, action, or the suffering of action. Note: A verb is a word whereby the chief action of the mind (the assertion or the denial of a proposition) finds expression.
Active verb, Auxiliary verb, Neuter verb, etc. See Active, Auxiliary, Neuter, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Verb" Quotes from Famous Books



... them to the Red Amber Room of the Chop Suey. We forgot to be amazed, as till then we had been amazed, over the Song or 'The Gubby,' or the full tide of Fate that seemed to run only for our sakes. It did not even interest Ollyett that the verb 'to huckle' had passed into the English leader-writers' language. We were studying the interior of a soul, flash-lighted to its grimiest corners by the dread of ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... possessed a vocabulary of only a dozen words or so. The only properly English words were "poor," "dirty," and "cook," and of these the two adjectives, no less than the noun-substantive, were always appropriately used. The remaining words were nursery words, and of these "ta-ta" was used as a verb meaning to go, to go out, to go away, etc., inclusive of all possible moods and tenses. Thus, for instance, on one occasion, when the child was wheeling about her doll in her own perambulator, the writer stole away the doll without her perceiving the theft. When she thought that the doll had had ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... suppose not," said Bowie, using the verb which, in his cautious, Scottish tongue, expresses complete certainty. The truth is, that Bowie adores both Sabina and her husband, who are, he says, "just fit to be put under a glass case on the sideboard, like twa wee ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... name taken from the invented verb Asolare, "to disport in the open air") was published on the day of Browning's death. He died in Venice, and his body was brought to England, and buried in Westminster Abbey on the last day of the year. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... The verb rimanere is constantly used by the old Italian writers in the sense of "to become," so that the proverb cited in the text may be read "The deceiver becometh (i.e. findeth himself in the end) at the feet (i.e. at the mercy) of ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... thing is going to happen next week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last. Even more previously, sometimes. Examination and inquiry showed me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed the hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... to play it all over again," Kirk advised him. "I'm only just learning to conjugate the verb 'amar.' What seems to be ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... the bourree, but slower. (In French the verb lourer means "to hold," which may have been a characteristic ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... cleanliness, brotherhood, race-spirit, the excellence of sacrifice—a thousand perfect analogies to show the way of human ethics and ideal performance.... But beyond all their service to literature, he perceived that these masters among men had loved the bees. This was the only verb that conveyed Bedient's feelings for them; and he found that they literally swarmed through Hindu simile in its expressions of song and story ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... advertisements, of college yells, of chautauqual oratory, of smoke-room anecdote—and arranges them in mosaics that glitter with an almost fabulous light. He knows where a red noun should go, and where a peacock-blue verb, and where an adjective as darkly purple as a grape. He is an imagist in prose. You may like his story and you may not like it, but if you don't like the way he tells it then there is something the matter with your ears. As for me, his experiments with words caress me as I am caressed ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... as applied to birds, is synonymous to the verb to sing: thus in "The Spanish Tragedy," ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... I might have used the word "sped," only that verb could not be truthfully applied. Never before in the history of time (so our jehu thought) did four days cast their shadows more slowly across the dial of the hours. From noon till night there was a madding nothing to do but polish bits and buckles and stirrups ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... L') the French, name for a fox, so called from M. Escobar the probabilist, whence also the verb escobarder, "to play the fox," "to play fast ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... the King, and there was none was like me a servant, before this man lied to the King of the Land of Egypt. But they have mastered the lands of our home." They have slain Egyptians, he continues, and have done something (the verb is lost) to the temples of the Gods of Gebal; they have carried off a chief and shed his blood. He finally mentions ...
— Egyptian Literature

... things of which you can have had no real experience—and therein lies your charm! You restore the lost youth of manhood by idealisation, and you compel your readers to 'idealise' with you— but 'to idealise' is rather a dangerous verb!—and its conjugation generally means trouble and disaster. Ideals—unless they are of the spiritual kind unattainable on this planet—are ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... few and far between. But he carried his Greek grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjective or part of a verb, without being noticed by ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... nous-memes,"—adding, in a note, as follows: "J'avais d'abord vu un tout autre sens dans la phrase anglaise. Si celui que j'adopte n'etait pas encore le veritable, j'en demande sincerement pardon a l'auteur." In turn, I may not be precisely informed of the meaning and force of the verb "abuser"—used by my translator: but I had been better satisfied with the verb tromper—as more closely conveying the sense ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... diversities of human speech and of the great ruined tower at Babylon. The name Babel (bab-el) means "Gate of God" or "Gate of the Gods." All modern scholars of note agree that this was the real significance of the name; but the Hebrew verb which signifies TO CONFOUND resembles somewhat the word Babel, so that out of this resemblance, by one of the most common processes in myth formation, came to the Hebrew mind an indisputable proof that the tower was connected with the confusion ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... inscr., the verb [Greek: prokathemai] is twice used about the Roman Church ([Greek: prokathetai en] [to be understood in a local sense] [Greek: topoi khorion Rhomaion]—[Greek: prokathemene tes agapes] presiding in, or having the guardianship of, love). Ignatius (Magn. 6), uses the same verb ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... superficiality and a superficial elegance about her that I can never forget, nor yet her extraordinary volubility in a foreign language,—the fluency with which she expressed her inmost soul on all topics without the aid of a single irregular verb, for these she was never able to acquire; oh, it was wonderful, but there was no affectation about it; she had simply been a kind of blotting-paper, as Miss Monroe says, and France had written ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... but not childhood in general merely because it is childhood. So I love some poems rather than poetry in general just because it is poetry.... I object to the tinkle. I object to the poetic license which performs a Germanic divorce between subject and verb, so that instead of a complete thought which can be mastered before another is set before the brain, there is a twist in the grammatical sequence that requires a conscious effort of will to keep the original thread. The world is too busy to do this; reading must be a relaxation, not a study.... ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... yet we do not know what knowledge is. 'Why, Socrates, how can you argue at all without using them?' Nay, but the true hero of dialectic would have forbidden me to use them until I had explained them. And I must explain them now. The verb 'to know' has two senses, to have and to possess knowledge, and I distinguish 'having' from 'possessing.' A man may possess a garment which he does not wear; or he may have wild birds in an aviary; these in one sense he possesses, and in another he has none of them. Let this aviary be an ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... enjoyed his wife's successes; he was happy in seeing her happy. He loved her dearly—a little more than she loved him. She loved him very much, and that was all. There is a great difference between dearly and very much when these two adverbs are placed after the verb ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... time she looked at them, to think how much there was to be learned of which she was ignorant. But all this wore away, and presently they were the best friends in the world. He gave her books to read, and he gave her lessons in French, nothing puzzled by that troublesome verb which must be first conjugated, whether in French, Latin, or English. Then he gave her a deal of good advice about the cultivation of her mind and the formation of her character, all of which was very improving, and tended greatly to consolidate their friendship. But, unfortunately ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... is the use of words in the wrong parts of speech, as a noun for a verb, or an adjective for an adverb. Sometimes newspapers are guilty of such faults; for journalistic English, though pithy, shows here and there traces of its rapid composition. You must look to more leisurely authorities. The speakers and writers on whom you may rely ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... least attractive. I confess that I felt a more than usual, indeed a quite irrational, perturbation of the blood, as, coming level with her, I dared to look into her face. As I did so she involuntarily turned to look at me—turned to look at me, did I say? "To look" is a feeble verb indeed to express the unexpected shock of beauty to which I was suddenly exposed. I cannot describe her features, for somehow features always mean little to me. They were certainly beautifully moulded, and her skin was of a lovely pale olive, ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... know (more or less hypothetically) some of the correlations and abstract properties of the appearance of the star, we do not know the appearance itself. Now you may, for the sake of illustration, compare the different appearances of the star to the conjugation of a Greek verb, except that the number of its parts is really infinite, and not only apparently so to the despairing schoolboy. In vacuo, the parts are regular, and can be derived from the (imaginary) root according to the ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... denote action as, I eat, I love, I work. Passive verbs, denote suffering, they are only the participle passive of an active verb with a tense of the neuter verb to be before it; as, I am loved, you ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley

... evolution, checked in mid career by the brilliant ambition of France and the cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. Students are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It must ever be an undecided question whether the Italians, undisturbed by foreign interference, could have passed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... heighten, nay, to coarsen, the description of these masses of animated beef, who formed the standing army of the woman-commonwealth. Few would have obeyed this law without violating another; but Mr. Tennyson saw that the verb was admissible, while the adjective would have ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... as often in the selection of the apt word as in the construction of elaborate phrases with a half-humorous intention. A cowboy once told me of the arrival of a tramp by saying, "He SIFTED into camp." Could any verb be more expressive? Does not it convey exactly the lazy, careless, out-at-heels shuffling gait of the hobo? Another in the course of description told of a saloon scene, "They all BELLIED UP TO the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... a scientific necessity. No exposition of the case could be more truly scientific than this: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."[42] The verb here, it will be again observed, is potential. This is not a dogma of theology, but a necessity of Science. And Science, for the most part, has consistently accepted the situation. It has always proclaimed its ignorance of the Spiritual World. When Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, "Regarding ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... again connects with the Linns or Ailinus of the Greeks and Egyptians * * * which Wilkinson connects with the Coptic "ya lay-lee-ya lail." The Alleluia which Lescarbot heard the South Americans sing must have been the same wail. The Greek verb [Greek: ololuzo] and the Latin ululare, with an English howl and wail, are probably derived from ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... was growing weak about riots, and shooting, and burning; and she gathered the bed-clothes around her ears every night, when her feet were tucked up; and prayed not to awake until morning. In the next place, much rebellion (though we would not own it; in either sense of the verb, to "own") was whispering, and plucking skirts, and making signs, among us. And the terror of the Doones helped greatly; as a fruitful tree of lawlessness, and a good excuse for everybody. And after this—or rather before it, and first of all indeed (if I must state the true order)—arose ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... well as postpositions; sometimes the preposition is used with the noun and sometimes the postposition: for example, cad o gav, from the town; chungale mannochendar, evil men from, i.e. from evil men. The verb has no infinitive; in lieu thereof, the conjunction 'that' is placed before some person of some tense. 'I wish to go' is expressed in Gypsy by camov te jaw, literally, I wish that I go; thou wishest to go, caumes te jas, thou wishest that thou goest; caumen te jallan, they wish ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow

... this aspect of Italian civilization, it is better to look first at a very noticeable trait of Italian character,—temperance in eating and drinking. As to the poorer classes, one observes without great surprise how slenderly they fare, and how with a great habit of talking of meat and drink, the verb mangiare remains in fact for the most part inactive with them. But it is only just to say that this virtue of abstinence seems to be not wholly the result of necessity, for it prevails with other classes which could ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... The phrase appears to have been imperfectly copied by the scribe. As it stands the subordinate sentence reads "the king of Erech who built with the people of Erech". Either the object governed by the verb has been omitted, in which case we might restore some such phrase as "the city"; or, perhaps, by a slight transposition, we should read "the king who built Erech with the people of Erech". In any case the first building ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... for his system. He says, "And a better and nearer example herein may be our most noble Queen Elizabeth, who never took yet Greek nor Latin grammar in her hand after the first declining of a noun and a verb; but only by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily, without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tully every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath attained to such a perfect understanding in both tongues, and to such a ready utterance ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... by saying, "I shall consider it my duty to inform Mrs. Elder of your charming sentiments; in the meantime, kindly excuse me from continuing such highly edifying conversation." With that she bent her head over the French grammar, and soon appeared thoroughly engrossed in the conjugation of the verb avoir, to have, while her mischievous school-mate turned away with a light shrug of ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... intoxicated, or had the mysterious stranger mixed the "insane verb" with the family pottage? He returned before I could answer this self-asked inquiry, and resumed coolly his broken narrative. Finding myself forgotten in the man I had so long hesitated to introduce ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... expect to always have things as you would like to have them," instead of, "You must not expect to have always things as you would like to have them." It is claimed by some writers, however, that it is not only correct to separate the infinitive from the verb, but that such construction adds force to the sentence; as, "A pure heart is necessary if we wish to thoroughly enjoy the beauties of nature," in place ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson

... eat the man; or, here is the man that smoked and dined off the hams of the grizzly. Basing our opinion upon such familiar and well-known instances, we are apt to take it for granted far too readily that between eating and being eaten, between the active and the passive voice of the verb edo, there exists necessarily a profound and impassable native antithesis. To swallow an oyster is, in our own personal histories, so very different a thing from being swallowed by a shark that we can hardly realise at first the underlying fundamental identity of eating with mere coalescence. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... Troano. For example, in the third division of Plate XVII* it appears in this form, while immediately below is the representation of an idol head in a vessel covered with a screen or basket, as shown in Fig. 388. The Maya verb Kal signifies to "imprison" or "inclose," which is certainly appropriate to what we see in the figure. As the symbol is over each of the three similar figures in the division, it is probable that it is intended to denote something relating to or observable in them. ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas

... the name CUKULCAN, or 2021, was associated in these pairs with some adjective or verb, and therefore examined the other members ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden

... that she would apply art and archaeology as plasters to the wound life had given her already. She would stay her heart's hunger with moods and tenses, but not of the verb "amare." Learning and teaching, she might make her mind lord ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... that form especially, it is difficult to guess. The change of Scylla into a lark, or partridge, and of her father into a sea eagle, are poetical fictions based on the equivocal meanings of their names, the one Greek and the other Hebrew; for the name 'Ciris' resembles the Greek verb keiro, which signifies 'to clip,' or 'cut short.' 'Nisus,' too, resembles the Hebrew word 'Netz,' which means a bird resembling the osprey, or sea eagle. Apollodorus says, that Minos ordered Scylla to be thrown into the sea; and Zenodotus, that he caused her ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... who bordered on the river Sala, called 'Salts,' by the Allemaignes, were on their descent into Dutch lands called by the Romans 'Franci Salici'" (whence 'Salique' law to come, you observe) "and by abridgment 'Salii,' as if of the verb 'salire,' that is to say 'saulter,' to leap"—(and in future therefore—duly also to dance—in an incomparable manner) "to be quicke and nimble of foot, to leap and mount well, a quality most notably ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... is to say, in one of the dialects of the common language of lower Asia, Yahouh is the participle of the verb hih, to exist, to be, and signifies existing: in other words, the principle of life, the mover or even motion (the universal soul of beings). Now what is Jupiter? Let us hear the Greeks and Latins explain their theology. "The Egyptians," ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... p. 65.).—The Scotch, and English, clunk must have different meanings: for Jamieson defines the verb to clunk "to emit a hollow and interrupted sound, as that proceeding from any liquid confined in a cask, when shaken, if the cask be not full;" and to guggle, as a "straight-necked bottle, when it is emptying;" and yet I am inclined to believe that the word also signifies to swallow, as in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... Umfraville's host," young Calverley at once began, "you cannot with decorum convey to the ignoramus my opinion as to his ability to conjugate the verb to dare." ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... result will the General Election produce? Politicians who belong to the family of Mr. Despondency and his daughter, Muchafraid, reply that Monarchy will be abolished, Capital "conscripted" (delightful verb), debt repudiated, and Anarchy enthroned. Strangely dissimilar results are predicted by the Party-hacks, who, being by lifelong habit trained to applaud whatever Government does, announce with smug ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... "ungrammatical" as far as the Hebrew language is concerned, notwithstanding that it was rejected in the reign of James I. *lechem*, "bread," is evidently the accusative noun to the transitive verb *yiten*, "He shall give." Nor is it "false," for the same noun, *lechem*, "bread," is no doubt the antecedent to which the word ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various

... is the title of the Lutheran corpus doctrinae, i.e., of the symbols recognized and published under that name by the Lutheran Church. The word symbol, sumbolon, is derived from the verb sumballein, to compare two things for the purpose of perceiving their relation and association. Sumbolon thus developed the meaning of tessara, or sign, token, badge, banner, watchword, parole, countersign, confession, creed. A Christian ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... bamboo pole about five feet in length, and thus carried across the shoulder. Hence the expression. Apropos of marriage, the guitar string is broken, is an elegant periphrasis by which it is understood that a man's wife is dead, the verb "to die" being rarely used in conversation, and never of a relative or friend. He will not put a new string to his guitar is, of course, a continuation of the same idea, more coarsely expressed as putting on a new coat. His father has been gathered to the west—a phrase evidently ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... in the Ode. Here there is no question of communal origins or of communal influence upon structure. The ode is a product of a single artist, working not naively, but consciously, and employing a highly developed technique. Derived from the Greek verb meaning "to sing," the word "ode" has not changed its meaning since the days of Pindar, except that, as in the case of the word "lyric" itself, we have gradually come to grow unmindful of the original musical accompaniment ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... you understand what I mean by the verb to koepenick? That is to say, to replace an authority by a spurious imitation that would carry just as much weight for the moment as the displaced original; the advantage, of course, being that the koepenick replica would ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... of woods and orchards. She is called Feronia from the verb fero, to bring forth, because she produced and propagated trees, or from Fer{o}n{)i}ci, a town situated near the foot of Mount Soracte, in Italy, where was a wood, and a temple dedicated to her; ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... loved. It was the newly awakened Benedick brushing his hat in the morning; but unhappily his conversion was not so complete as Benedick's. Love-making and Armenian do not go together, and in the colloquy that ensued, Belle could not feel assured that the man who proposed to conjugate the verb "to love" in Armenian, was master of his intentions in plain English. It was even so. The man of tongues lacked speech wherewith to make manifest his passion; the vocabulary of the word- master was insufficient to convince the workhouse girl of one of the plainest meanings ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... to be taught for the use of learners, and for the hurt in changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that which follows: "wherein it is profitable that he can orderly decline his noun, and his verb." His noun! ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... Let it be noticed that the tense of the verb in this connection denotes singleness of action, so that Paul's prayer may be answered not gradually but immediately. If this be true then let it be answered now for you ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman

... Anadyomene. Euploea means "fair voyage"; Anadyomene, a participial form derived from the verb anadyo, "to rise, esp. from the sea," (Liddell-Scott) may be rendered "she ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... white was really black, and black was white; But I believe it has not yet been done. Black (Saxon, Blac) in any way to liken With candour may seem almost out of reach; Yet whiten is in kindred German bleichen, Undoubtedly identical with bleach: This last verb's cognate adjective is bleak— Reverting to the Saxon, bleak is blaek. [4] A semivowel is, at the last squeak, All that remains such difference wide to make— The hostile terms of keen antithesis Brought to an E plus ultra all ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various

... the benefit of her father, she rattled off into a spirited account of her struggles with the algebraic x and the Urdu compound verb. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... against the window; the divine morning clamor of the birds; their invitations to come out that will take no nay; and last, but oh! not, not least, the importunate voices of Barbara and Tou Tou. Every morning at this hour they have a weary tussle with the verb "aimer," "to love." It is hard that they should have pitched upon so tender-hearted a verb for the battle-field of so grim ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... need not be told that patience and passion are derived from different participles of the same verb. Patience comes from the present participle, and fittingly denotes the spirit in which present suffering should be met; while passion comes from the perfect or past participle, and as fittingly denotes the condition ensuing upon any physical, mental, or moral affection, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... unpardonably, because unlicensed, had spread a report of his great wealth and power. I was thus the object of a universal stare. At one time on the banks there were considerably over a thousand natives going through the several tenses and moods of the verb "to stare," or exhibiting every phase of the substantive, viz.—the stare peremptory, insolent, sly, cunning, modest, and casual. The warriors of the Sultana, holding in one hand the spear, the bow, and sheaf or musket, embraced with ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... his daring and unschooled genius to strike out not only into new lines of thought, but even to find a mystic mode of expression. This term is evidently a portion of a language wholly differing from our own. It is at once a noun, adjective, and verb, and, in the full flood of his eloquence, it changes from the one to ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... know what we are and how we look, and the fanciful picture presented to our eyes gives us only food for laughter, not cause for resentment. The jokes he made on our long words, our inverted sentences, and the position of the verb have really led to a reform in style which will end in making our language as compact and crisp as the French or English. I regard Mark Twain as the foremost humorist ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... writer of the history of the Dominican Order in Portugal, Frei Luis de Souza, boldly said they were Greek, and in this opinion he was supported by 'persons of great judgment, for "Tanyas" is the accusative of a Greek word "Tanya," which is the same as region, and "erey" is the imperative of the verb "ereo", which signifies to seek, inquire, investigate, so that the meaning is, addressed to Dom Manoel, seek for new regions, new climes.' Of course whatever the meaning may be it is not Greek, indeed at that time in Portugal there was hardly any one who ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... everywhere." Mr. MASEFIELD however soon abandoned this manner and made the rest of his way in a good solid pedestrian style. But he did not disdain to go so far in flattery of the Americans, his audience, as to use the word "gotten" for the past tense of the verb "to get." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various

... fit to interfere, and gravely point out that the habit of striking bears as large as a horse with a school-slate was equally dangerous to the slate (which was also the property of Tuolumne County) and to the striker; and that the verb "to swot" and the noun substantive "snoot" were likewise indefensible, and not to be tolerated. Thus admonished Jimmy Snyder, albeit unshaken in his faith in his own ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... modernism puts it, for such a function, whether there is any universal reason why a reluctant man should go to an afternoon tea. There are, of course, many individual reasons, more or less important to the individual tea-goer; but for us the impulsion comes inevitably from without. The verb 'drag,' often applied to the process by which a man is brought to a tea, indicates how valuable would be the discovery of a Universal Reason wherefore any man might hope to derive some personal ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... the tent a glorified man, leaving his loaf on the gatepost behind him. Few realize that it is quite as pleasant to be loved as to love. The verb "to love" has many conjugations. The earth he trod was like no other ground he had ever walked upon. The magic of the June night was never so enchanting before. He strode along with his head and his thoughts in the clouds, ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... of the dispute was this. Perizonius had published AElian's variae historiae, with his own notes and those of others; where taking occasion from what AElian says of Poliager,[141] he diligently examines the signification of the verb [Greek: apagchesthai], which saint Matthew[142] employs in relating the death of Judas; and insists that that word does not only mean strangling with a halter, but also sometimes excessive grief, by which a person is brought ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead

... translates it 'traitress,' and so does Ranke. Knobel characterizes her as 'die Zarte,' which means tender, delicate, but also subtle. Lange is sure that she was a weaver woman, if not an out-and-out 'zonah.' There are other Germans who think the word is akin to the verb 'einlullen,' to lull asleep. Some liken it to the Arabic dalilah, a woman who misguides, a bawd. See in 'The Thousand Nights and a Night' the speech of the damsel to Aziz: 'If thou marry me thou wilt at least be safe from the daughter of Dalilah, the Wily One.' Also 'The Rogueries ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... shall any man or matter escape some touch of these smiling railers. But for Erasmus and Agrippa, they had another foundation than the superficial part would promise. Marry, these other pleasant fault-finders, who will correct the verb, before they understand the noun, and confute others' knowledge before they confirm their own: I would have them only remember, that scoffing cometh not of wisdom. So as the best title in true English they get with their merriments ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... reshaping until it fully satisfied his sense of unity and rhythm. Something of formality and ponderousness quickly becomes evident in his style, together with a rather mannered use of potential instead of direct indicative verb forms; how his style compares with Johnson's and how far it should be called pseudo-classical, are interesting questions to consider. One appreciative description of it may be quoted: 'The language of Gibbon never flags; he walks forever ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... and these monosyllables seem always to have been incapable of inflection, agglutination, or change of any kind. They are in reality root-ideas, and are capable of adapting themselves to their surroundings, and of playing each one such varied parts as noun, verb (transitive, neuter, or ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... said, with a rueful attempt at a smile, "what's the past participle, passive, plural, of the Latin verb, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... could n't, and that's the reason I told you to take your seat, and left him in the corner. Remember that you are a stranger in the place, and they take more notice of what you do, so you must be careful. Now let's have our conjugations. Give me the verb 'to be,' ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... purse out of a sow's ear, you will be stupider than I dare suppose anyone here to be, if you cannot invent for yourselves all the intermediate stages of the transformation, however startling. And, indeed, if modern philosophers had stuck more closely to this old proverb, and its defining verb "make," and tried to show how some person or persons—let them be who they may—men, angels, or gods—made the sow's ear into the silk purse, and the savage into the sage—they might have pleaded ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... he was doing the literature for the Barnum show, Tody Hamilton would have made the best nominee I can think of. Remember, don't you, how when Tody started in to write about the elephant quadrille you had to turn over to the next page to find the verb? And almost any one of those young fellows who write advertising folders for the railroads would gladly tackle the assignment; in fact, some of them already have—but not with ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... affords the advantage of more general means of communication. I heard a Poinave Indian conversing in Spanish with a Guahibo, though both had come from their forests within three months. They uttered a phrase every quarter of an hour, prepared with difficulty, and in which the gerund of the verb, no doubt according to the grammatical turn of their own languages, was constantly employed. "When I seeing Padre, Padre to me saying;"* (* "Quando io mirando Padre, Padre me diciendo.") instead of, "when I saw the missionary, he ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... pun in the French on the two meanings of the verb hausser,—"to raise" and to "augment" ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... ungrammatical ould man, an' not fit to argue wid any one that knows Murray's English Grammar, an' more espaciously the three concords of Lily's Latin one; that is the cognation between the nominative case and the verb, the consanguinity between the substantive and the adjective, and the blood-relationship that irritates between the relative and ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... have picked it up and employ it in their dealings with the Coast tribes and travelling traders. It is by no means an easy language to pick up—it is not a farrago of bad words and broken phrases, but is a definite structure, has a great peculiarity in its verb forms, and employs no genders. There is no grammar of it out yet; and one of the best ways of learning it is to listen to a seasoned second mate regulating the unloading or loading, of cargo, over the hatch of the hold. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... state descends that profound expression of the soul in Milton, (GOD make us thankful for him!) when he intends the verb that he escapes in the passage that adorns my Essay, should be supplied by a pulsation in ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... offer money to the synagogue. (An extraordinary instance of Jewish jargon,—a compound Hebrew word meaning "who vows,"—being turned into an English verb, and conjugated accordingly, in ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... college student announce as the text of his oration Lindley Murray's well-known definition of the verb,—a word which signifies "to be, to do, or to suffer"; and he followed up his announcement by a most beautiful and conclusive argument to show that this definition describes with equal accuracy three classes of men into which the whole world may be divided: a class who have no purpose in ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Reardon. She heard him saying it more than once as if entirely to himself and no smaller word would do. "You don't—" he said to her then, "you don't—care about me? It ain't possible." Reardon had reverted to oldest associations and forgotten his verb. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... possessing large capital, and pecuniarily responsible for the acts of the individual members." The word "artel," despite its apparent similarity, has, Mr Aylmer Maude assures me, no connection with "ars" or "arte." Its root is that of the verb "rotisya," to bind oneself by an oath; and it is generally admitted to be only another form of "rota," which now signifies a "regimental company." In both words the underlying idea is that of a body of men united by an oath. "Tribu" were possibly gentile ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... fort}. The infinitive of a verb of motion, as {gehen} or {reisen}, being implied, an idiom often met with after the modal auxiliaries {mssen, knnen, sollen, wollen, drfen}, and ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel

... is the designation technically applied to the several books or cantos of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' So the word fytte has gained a technical appropriation to our narrative poetry when it takes the ballad form. Now, the Greek word rhapsody is derived from a tense of the verb rhapto, to sew as with a needle, to connect, and ode, a song, chant, or course of singing. If, therefore, you conceive of a rhapsodia, not as the opera, but as the opus of a singer, not as the form, but as the result of his official ministration, viz., as that ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... muscularity of the male: the variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past participle with complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice: the continued product of seminators ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... time, undertook to instruct him as to the best method of "approaching." To borrow an illustration from an opposite side of life, an Eton boy might as well have sought to enlighten Porson on the formation of a Greek verb, or a Fleet Street shopkeeper to instruct Chesterfield concerning a point of etiquette. Henry always seemed to think that he had a sort of prescriptive right to the buffalo, and to look upon them as something belonging peculiarly ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... extend the controlled association tests by preparing lists that show different kinds of logical relations with one another, from genus to species, from species to genus, from verb to object, from subject to verb, etc. Do the students maintain the same rank in the various types of experiments? Do the ranks in these tests correspond to the students' ranks in ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle

... dinner-parties in general, tea-parties without exposition of Scripture, races, and operas, cards, charades, and whatever else amuses society without perceptibly sanctifying it. All these, by Julia's account, Miss Hardie had renounced, and was now denouncing (with the young the latter verb treads on the very heels of the former). "And, you know, she is ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... her knee was an edition (without notes) of the Anabasis of Xenophon, and by her side was Liddell and Scott's Lexicon, in which she had just been 21 tracking an exceptionally difficult—but, let me hasten to add, a perfectly regular—Greek verb to its lair. There were a considerable number of roseate specimens of English womanhood in the library of Girnham College, where, with some natural diffidence, I had ventured to put the rather delicate question to which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various

... receiving,' and it ought to correspond to the Roman Peculatus. But [Greek: dorodokia] also means corruption by bribes. Bribery is [Greek: dekasmos] in Plutarch, which is expressed generally by the Roman Ambitus, and specially by the verb 'decuriare.' (See Cicero's Oration Pro Cn. Plancio, Ed. Wunder.) The offence of Scipio was Ambitus. (Dion Cassius, 40. c. 51, &c.; Appianus, Civil Wars, ii. 24.) As to Roman Bribery, see the article BRIBERY, 'Political Dictionary,' by the author of this note, whose ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... for it is good to know that our town produced the founder of the latter's fortunes. Does the thought-contracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of local Beauty inquire whose fortunes? We believe that Quintin Matsys was the BLACKSMITH of Antwerp. VERB. SAP. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... Paul defined, pistis in Greek, is better translated as trust, confidence. The word pistis is derived from the verb peitho, which in its active voice means to persuade and in its middle voice to trust in someone, to esteem him as worthy of trust, to place confidence in him, to obey. And fidare se, to trust, is derived from the root ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... retained by Poppo, Bornemann, Dindorf, and Kuehner. But Schneider and Weiske read [Greek: eile], "took possession of," on the suggestion of Muretus, Var. Lect. xv. 10, who thought it superfluous for Xenophon to say that Cyrus merely saw the tents. Lion, however, not unreasonably supposes this verb to be intended to mark the distance at which Cyrus passed from the tents, that is, that he passed within sight of them, the Cilicians having retired only a short ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... language was rudimentary in a way, yet most complete—extremely laconic, with innumerable contractions. The construction of sentences and the position of the verb were not unlike ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... was undertaken at the same time that Johnson was revising his Dictionary; both revisions appeared in the same year. And so one is not surprised to find that these two labors are of reciprocal assistance. One illustration will have to do duty for several: in a note Johnson observes of the verb "to roam" that it is "supposed to be derived from the cant of vagabonds, who often pretended a pilgrimage to Rome;" this etymology is absent from the 1755 Dictionary; in the revised Dictionary the verb "is imagined to come from the pretenses of vagrants, who ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... are the product of the war, though probably they always existed, but the war has been their glorious chance. There is a new verb in America, Maurice says—"To war work"—It means to get to Paris, and have ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... dark by rubbing two sticks of lime wood against each other. Before the healing virtue of the fire was applied to the inhabitants of the village, two old women performed the following ceremony. Both bore the name of Stana, from the verb stati, "to remain standing"; for the ceremony could not be successfully performed by persons of any other name. One of them carried a copper kettle full of water, the other an old house-lock with the key. Thus equipped they repaired to a spot outside of ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... the Master. He had already noted, with a thrill of admiration, the wondrous purity of the old man's Arabic. His use of final vowels after the noun, and his rejection of the pronoun, which apocope in the Arabic verb renders necessary in the everyday speech of the people, told the Master he was listening to some archaic, uncorrupted form of the language. Here indeed was nobility of blood, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... on Hexameter, knowing Latin and Greek are alone its languages. We have a measure Fashion'd by Milton's own hand, a fuller, a deeper, a louder. Germans may flounder at will over consonant, vowel, and liquid, Liquid and vowel but one to a dozen of consonants, ending Each with a verb at the tail, tail heavy as African ram's tail, Spenser and Shakspeare had each his own harmony; each an enchanter Wanting no aid from without. Chevy Chase had delighted their fathers, Though of a different strain ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent, Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. The lightning has run masterless too long; He must to school and learn his verb and noun And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, Spelling with guided tongue man's messages Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea. And yet I marked, even in the manly joy Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat (Perchance I erred), a shade of discontent; Or ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... in bed! The Fairy Tales in school-time read, By stealth, 'twixt verb and noun! The angel form that always walk'd In all my dreams, and look'd and talk'd Exactly ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... properly speaking, is the Past. Skuld is the Future, or "That Which shall Be." Verdandi, usually translated as the Present, has an even deeper meaning. Her name is not to be derived from vera (to be), but from verda (Ger. werden). This verb, which has a mixed meaning of "to be," "to become," or to "grow," has been lost in English. Verdandi is, therefore, not merely a representative of present Being, but of the process of Growing, or of Evolution—which gives ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... the sermon. These rites being terminated, a collection was made among believers for the relief of their poor; and the portion of these alms which was sent to such of them as could not attend the place of worship was called missa, or sent, from the participle of the Latin verb mittere, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... Elizabeth, "that the young ladies must never be allowed to learn their lessons at meals; for I am persuaded they will think more of the present participle loving than of declining the verb to love. And I trust likewise, my dear mother, that you will never let them read their own themes at public examinations: for the voice I am certain will tremble ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown

... instance, 'Oh! nymph, who—' After 'who' I should place a verb in the second person singular of the present indicative; and should go on thus: 'this ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... people avoid. Whence is derived the verb to flee, Where have you been by it most annoyed? In ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... Eochaid. Strachan thinks it much more likely that this is "Eochaid feared him," the verb coming from atagur. It is, however, just possible that the word might be a deponent form from atregaim, "I arise." Eochaid does not elsewhere show any fear of Mider, the meaning given agrees better with the tone of the ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... curate-like in mine attire, Though inwardly licentious enough, And apt for any kind of villany. I am none of these common pedants, I, That cannot speak without propterea quod. Y. Spen. But one of those that saith quando-quidem, And hath a special gift to form a verb. Bald. Leave off this jesting; here my ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... have only the Latin version here, and that the present tense is obviously due to the translator. The original would naturally be [Greek: ton sun auto], which the translator, being obliged to supply a substantive verb, has carelessly rendered 'his qui cum eo sunt.' If any one will consider what has been just said about the general character of the Epistle, he will see that this is the only reasonable explanation of the fact, whether we regard the work as genuine or ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... been more quoted than this. It occasionally falls even from those who are scrupulous even to pedantry in their Latinity, and will not admit a word into their compositions, which has not the sanction of the first age. The word demento is of no authority, either as a verb active or neuter.—After a long search for the purpose of deciding a bet, some gentlemen of Cambridge found it among the fragments of Euripides, in what edition I do not recollect, where it is given as a translation of a Greek Iambick: [Greek: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... relative of "refuses" is omitted, and the verb followed by an infinitive without the prepositive: "many a flower {that} refuses obstinately ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... voice, and with an air of anxious simplicity, Doddle began, 'Article, noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, outerjection, beginning with ies in the plural—as, baby, babies; lady, ladies; hady, hadies. Please, sir, isn't that last one ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... drunk while at work, or immediately after work, does harm. But it has long been, and still is, the habit of the mechanics in a number of trades, to make a holiday of Monday; it has even a local name—it is called Shackling day, "Shackling" being a term which can be perfectly translated by the French verb, flaner. A Shackler must ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... English differed from modern English in having a much larger number of inflexions. The noun had five cases, and there were several declensions, just as in Latin; adjectives were declined, and had three genders; some pronouns had a dual as well as a plural number; and the verb had a much larger number of inflexions than it has now. The vocabulary of the language contained very few foreign elements. The poetry of the language employed head-rhyme or alliteration, and not end-rhyme, as we do now. The works ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... "fellows," "mates," "wives," and "women-persons," for your Fleming rarely talks of "men" or "women." It is also a very beautiful dialect, having many words that possess a charm all their own. Thus monkelen, the West-Flemish for the verb "to smile," is prettier and has an archer sound than its Dutch equivalent, glimlachen. And it is a dialect of sufficient importance to boast a special dictionary (Westvlaamsch Idiotikon, by the Rev. L. L. De Bo: Bruges, 1873) of 1,488 small-quarto ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... brothers returned with one mind to the house. Here, as after their ablutions they sat down to the evening meal, the archbishop remembered poor Marmaduke, and despatched to him one of his thirty household chaplains. Marmaduke was found fast asleep over the second tense of the verb amo. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... growing out of his cap. But Jim was long and thin and bent at the waist from stooping over pool-tables, and he was what might have been known in the indiscriminating North as a corner loafer. "Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular—I am idling, I ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... butchers were his father. And the week after, they will SAY it. Why, it is just like being the past tense of the compound reflexive adverbial incandescent hypodermic irregular accusative Noun of Multitude; which is father to the expression which the grammarians call Verb. It is like a whole ancestry, with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... question remains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when they say that this or that ought to be done. What is this flying and evanescent authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it? Who is the man who is the lost subject that governs the Eugenist's verb? In a large number of cases I think we can simply say that the individual Eugenist means himself, and nobody else. Indeed one Eugenist, Mr. A.H. Huth, actually had a sense of humour, and admitted this. He thinks a great deal of ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... human habitations in this way, as the redbreast does, Mr. Masson replies that the subject of the verb "to come" is, not the skylark, but L'Allegro, the joyous student. I cannot construe the lines as Mr. Masson does, even though the consequence were to convict Milton, a city-bred youth, of not knowing a skylark ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... to see how quickly his mind grasped the association of a verb with some name, and the simplest and most common verbs of action were taught. In this way it became apparent that all should be cautious about talking of the proposed expedition in his presence. Nevertheless all were anxious to enlist him in ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... procreative act on the part of the young males. Another tradition attributes its origin to the castor. Bergmann here traces out the etymological relation existing between the name of the operation and that of the animal with that of a Greek verb that forms the root of castrum, or camp; casa, or house; castigare, to arrange; from whence also is traced cosmos, the world; kastorio, the Greek for wishing to build, and the Latin kasturio having the same relative but a more imperative ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... door the following: "What do I care about your theories of nouns and verbs? Whether the one be derived from the other, concerns not me. But this I know, after stumbling once or twice in your labyrinths, one comes out parsing the verb, to run. Indeed, verbs are more essential than nouns and adjectives. A noun can be represented pictorially; but how, pictorially, can you represent a noun in motion,—Khalid, for instance, running out of your labyrinths? Even an abstract state can be represented in a picture, but ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... relation of [Greek word] (for [Greek word]) with the Sanscrit root 'sud', whence is also derived [Greek word]. Another Indian term for the world is 'gagat' (pronounced 'dschagat'), which is, properly speaking the present participle of the verb 'gagami' (I go), the root of which is 'ga.' In restricting ourselves to the circle of Hellenic etymologies, we find ('Etymol. M.', p. 532, 12) that [Greek word] is intimately associated with [Greek word] or rather with [Greek word], whence we have [Greek word] or [Greek word] Welcker ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... they spoil the pitch for the others, for, because of the swotters, the professors expect so much more of the others and sit upon them. This may be so in the Gymnasium, but certainly not at the High School. For though Verb. is always sucking up to the staff, they can't stand her; they give her good reports, but none of them really like her. Mother says the 13th is an unlucky day, and it makes her anxious about Oswald. Because of that she went to High Mass yesterday instead of the 9 o'clock Mass as usual. ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl

... as ever I was, and to "monkey" with a type-writing apparatus has always brought great joy into my heart—though for composing give me the pen. Perhaps I should apologize for the use here of the verb monkey, which savors of what a friend of mine calls the "English slanguage," to differentiate it from what he also calls the "Andrew Language." But I shall not do so, because, to whatever branch of our tongue the word may belong, ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... fair spirit the voluminous quotations in my work. The 'higher criticism,' in which Dr. Lightfoot seems to have indulged in this article, scarcely rises above the correction of an exercise or the conjugation of a verb. [13:1] ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... e divina di Maria S.S. Madre di Dio" (Castellamare, 1863). It is a diatribe against modernism by a champion of lost causes, an exacerbated lover of the "Singular Virgin and fecund Mother of the Verb." His argument, as I understand it, is the consensus gentium theory applied to the Virgin Mary. In defence of this thesis, the book has been made to bristle with quotations; they stand out like quills upon the porcupine, ready to impale the adventurous ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... is. There has to be. Nothing else in the world acts like a porpoise; therefore there must be a word meaning to act like a porpoise; and that word is the verb 'to porp.'" ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Archbishop of Canterbury, Tillotson, stood alone in wishing the church were well rid of it. In fact, it has happened to the present writer to hear the Thirty-nine Articles summarily disposed of by one of the most zealous members of the American branch of that communion, in a verb of one syllable, more familiar to the ears of the forecastle than ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... A little verb used every day, Whose letters spell the same each way; My next, which means to lengthen out, Spells just the same if turned about; At close of day you'll find my third,— Reversed, you have the self-same word; My fourth, implying "held supreme," ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... mention of the Word of God, or of Man, it doth not signifie a part of Speech, such as Grammarians call a Nown, or a Verb, or any simple voice, without a contexture with other words to make it significative; but a perfect Speech or Discourse, whereby the speaker Affirmeth, Denieth, Commandeth, Promiseth, Threateneth, Wisheth, or Interrogateth. In which sense it is not Vocabulum, that signifies a Word; but Sermo, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... accomplishment for their daughters, is by no means small. This results from a want of true culture and common sense. There is no just reason why a young lady should not knead her dough and conjugate a Greek verb at the same time with equal skill. True culture will dignify domestic labor among women of all classes, and this will result in more domestic prosperity, and more domestic happiness. The rich and the poor will be brought into closer sympathy, unnecessary distinctions will be broken ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... happening to cast his eyes on me, he perceived I smiled without daring to say anything; he immediately ordered me to speak my opinion. I then said, I did not think the 't' superfluous, 'fiert' being an old French word, not derived from the noun 'ferus', proud, threatening; but from the verb 'ferit', he strikes, he wounds; the motto, therefore, did not appear to mean, some threat, but, 'Some strike who do not kill'. The whole company fixed their eyes on me, then on each other, without speaking a word; never was a greater degree of astonishment; ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... rendered by shades of pronunciation or by combination with other words. Thus the word "mamook," signifying to do, to make, to perform, or anything denoting action, begins some two hundred phrases, for each of which there is one equivalent English word. Its nearest parallel is the French verb "faire," and its use is much the same. It is impossible in this space to attempt a vocabulary. "Halo" is the general negative. Throughout I have endeavoured to supply the ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... as though to say, "No! this is too much!" Then she turned short round and began a series of peculiar bounds and plunges, accompanied by an ominous uplifting of her hind quarters, which had plainly but one object in view—the correct conjugation of the verb active ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... the homage of a friend and admirer, but the proof that his philosophy is scientifically true. A rigorous proof is necessary, because the word 'service' belongs to that category of words, the meaning of which can be completely reversed by the verb, be it 'give' or 'take.' Gantt took 'rendering service' as an axiom; my observation, shared with many others, is that our civilization had quite another axiom, 'we preach give, we practice take.' The problem which interested ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... another of the Fathers or a heathen poet or a chapter from the Bible read, translated and commented upon; but never from first to last did Tommassino learn to conjugate a verb or form a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... get this atmosphere. It spreads practically everywhere—the very bankruptcies and the sordid details of town and country life are overshadowed and in a certain sense dis-realised by it. Indeed that verb which, like most new words, has been condemned by some precisians, but which was much wanted, applies to no prose writer quite so universally as to Balzac. He is a dis-realiser, not by style as some are, but in thought—at the very ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... two from Douglas's Virgil. It might almost appear to be upbraiding the reader with stupidity to mention that speareth signifieth "bolteth, shutteth;" and that "speaketh" is a misprint for speareth. This verb was a favourite with Bale. One word more closes my budget for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... shouldn't I try to make a pleasant evening? And besides, ain't I going to do those things? What difference does it make about the mood and tense of a mere verb? Didn't uncle tell me only last Saturday, that I might as well go down to Arizona and hunt for diamonds? A fellow might as well make a good impression ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... What is here said respecting the succession of the adjective and substantive is obviously applicable, by change of terms, to the adverb and verb. And without further explanation, it will be manifest, that in the use of prepositions and other particles, most languages spontaneously conform with more or ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer

... can at the price—when so much is done by contract, and there is, in consequence, strong temptation to daub with untempered mortar, to use green timber, to put in bad material where it will not be seen, the verb to botch is only too appropriate to ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... spare moments making crude experiments with an air-pump, or gazing at planets through a cheap astronomical telescope; he might fail dismally to grasp the rudiments of the Latin grammar, and be incapable of conjugating an irregular verb; but his nose would be kept down to the grindstone of the school curriculum all the same, and not the smallest attention paid to his ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... led one writer on surnames, who apparently confuses bells with beans, to derive the rare surname Billiter, whence Billiter's Lane in the City, from "Belzetter, i.e., the Bell-setter." The Mid. Eng. "bellezeter, campanarius" (Prompt. Parv.), was a bell-founder, from a verb related to geysir, ingot, and Ger. giessen, to pour. Robert le bellegeter was a freeman of York ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... not only from the birds mentioned above as the son-in-law of Singalang Burong, but also from some other animals. And it is interesting to note that they have made a verb from the substantive BURONG (a bird), namely, BEBURONG (to bird), I.E. to take omens of any kind, whether from bird or beast. An excellent account of the part played by omens in the life of the Ibans has been given by Archdeacon Perham in the paper referred to above, and we have nothing ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... represents an overgrown baby, but was a tumbler, and mimicked the barking of a dog. The word Bavian is derived from bavon, a "bib for a slabbering child" (see Cotgrave, French Dictionary). In modern French bave means "drivel," "slabbering," and the verb baver "to slabber," but the bib is now called bavette. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... intermission of pain" and "to have no cessation, as in the arrival of visitors"; and soua, used of epidemics, bears the sense of being overcome as with "fire, flood, or visitors." But the gem of the dictionary is the verb alovao, which illustrates its pages like a humorous woodcut. It is used in the sense of "to avoid visitors," but it means literally "hide in the wood." So, by the sure hand of popular speech, we have the picture of the house deserted, the malanga disappointed, and the host that should have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Off in three flea skips. Hactenus, so far, So good, tam bene. Bene, satis, male,— Where was I with my trope 'bout one in a quag? I did once hitch the Syntax into verse Verbum personale, a verb personal, Concordat—"ay", agrees old Fatchops—cum Nominativo, with its nominative, Genere, i' point of gender, numero, O' number, et persona, and person. Ut, Instance: Sol ruit, down flops sun, et and, Montes umbrantur, out flounce mountains. Pah! Excuse me, sir, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... the French Word "savez."—About fifty years ago the use of the French word savez, from the verb savoir, to know, was in general use (and probably is so at the present time) among the negroes in the island of Barbadoes,—"Me no savez, Massa," for, "I do not know, Master (or Sir)." It occurred to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various

... is a gesture used by the Latin race for expressing a multitude of things, both objectively and subjectively. It is a language of itself. It is, as circumstances require, a noun, adverb, pronoun, verb, adjective, preposition, interjection, conjunction. Yet it does not supersede the spoken language. It comes in rather when spoken words are useless, to convey intensity of meaning or delicacy. It is not ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille



Words linked to "Verb" :   intransitive verb, content word, linking verb, open-class word, participle, frequentative, phrasal verb, transitive verb form, modal verb, participial, intransitive verb form, reflexive verb, transitive, transitive verb, copula, infinitive, doubly transitive verb, object of the verb, verb phrase, copulative, conjugation, verbify, intransitive, verbal, auxiliary verb, modal auxiliary verb



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