"Vernacular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as he was commonly called among his tribesmen, had neither the means nor the inclination to deviate much from the traditionary usages of his tribe, and was found kneeling, or, rather, "sitting man-fashion," as the vernacular Micmac hath it, although we call it "tailor-fashion," within a circular, fort-like enclosure, some twelve feet in circumference, and with walls ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... is an iron vessel, of various sizes, capable of holding from 28 lbs. to 3 cwt., heated by a steam jacket, or by a water-bath. The soap is put into the pan by degrees, or what is in the vernacular called "rounds," that is, the thin slabs are placed perpendicularly all round the side of the pan; a few ounces of water are at the same time introduced, the steam of which assists the melting. The pan being covered up, ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... comprehension, he only responded by giving such a smile as a man might be expected to give who had his mouth full of aloes, and as the conversation was wandering off from the main point, addressed himself to Mrs. McG. in the vernacular again. ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... vernacular Mîyân Bhûngâ, which is Pânjabî for Sir Beetle or Sir Bee. The word is clearly connected with the common Aryan roots frem, bhran, bhah, bhin, to buzz as a ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... critical knowledge of ancient languages, and much reading of ancient authors: The greatest critic and most able grammarian of the last age, when he came to apply his learning and criticism to an English author, was frequently at a loss in matters of ordinary use and common construction in his own vernacular idiom."—DR. LOWTH, 1763: Pref. to Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... I think, the popularity of the verse in the vernacular. Clearly, then, the Latin version is a translation of this, and not vice versa. It must have been a rhyming formula in the vernacular, which had a life of its own quite outside its ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... the former that he had a good mind to flog them all round —thought, upon the whole, he would do so —he ought to —justice demanded it; but for the present, considering their timely surrender, he would let them go with a reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the vernacular. "But as for you, ye carrion rogues," turning to the three men in the rigging —"for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;" and, seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads sideways, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... lack of knowledge of French as applied to salesmanship is this: That while the average Frenchman is greatly flattered when you tell him that his English is good, he prefers to talk business in his own vernacular. He thinks and calculates better in French. Frequently when you engage him in conversation in English and the question of business comes up, you find that he instinctively ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... Riv'rence, jumping off his sate,—"you spoke first in the vernacular! I take Misther ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... each of which contained a miniature of an imperial court. It was there that the spirit of chivalry first laid aside its terrors, first took a humane and graceful form, first appeared as the inseparable associate of art and literature, of courtesy and love. The other vernacular dialects which, since the fifth century, had sprung up in the ancient provinces of the Roman empire, were still rude and imperfect. The sweet Tuscan, the rich and energetic English, were abandoned to artisans and shepherds. No clerk had ever condescended to use such barbarous jargon for ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nursing for a while some faint ambitions of statesmanship—even office—but in the end discarding everything that might obstruct my entire freedom, for I came into the world an insurgent, or, as I have sometimes described myself in the Kentucky vernacular, "a free nigger and not a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... idol Duth, the disreputable god that will grant your prayer." And he went on carving again at his idol of jasper for the king who was weary of Wosh; and Pombo thanked him and went singing away, for in his vernacular mind he thought that "he had ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... personality exercised its wits more keenly than had even the true personality of madame. In point of fact, he was a quiet, inoffensive, amiable man, who gave his mind to Sanskrit for work and to entomology for play, and did not trouble himself about his own portrait as drawn in the local vernacular. Nevertheless, for all his reserved habits and quiet ways, he had learnt the whole history of the place and people before he had been at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... admirable people of their race I have ever known, and the elder Tricoupi's history of his country in its later fortunes is recognized as the standard, both in its history and in its use of the modern Greek, purely vernacular, which we have. The son, head of the government or leader of the opposition from an age at which in few countries a man can lead in politics, was, rara avis in those lands, an absolutely devoted patriot and honest ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... invented. Grammar, well understood, enables us to express our thoughts fully and clearly; and, consequently, in a manner which will defy the ingenuity of man to give our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express. To be able to speak and write our vernacular tongue with accuracy and elegance, is, certainly, a ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... composed in 1785, is written partly in the Scottish dialect, partly in English. The livelier passages are in the poet's vernacular; the loftier or more solemn parts in the language of books. This distinction was doubtless made because Burns disliked to treat his higher themes in a merely colloquial manner, fearing to belittle them ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... secure the best orators of the five Orders in Manila, the most famous preachers of the Cathedral, and even the Paulists, [39] to preach on the holy days upon profound theological subjects to the sinners who understood only the vernacular of the mariners. The partizans of Capitan Tiago would observe that she slept during the sermon; but her adherents would answer that the sermon was paid for in advance, and by her, and that in any affair payment was the prime ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Galatianaich, Ephesianaich. Would it not be agreeable to the analogy of Gaelic derivation to write Corintich, Galataich, Ephesich, subjoining the Gaelic termination alone to the Primitive, rather than by introducing the syllable an, to form a Derivative of a mixed and redundant structure, partly vernacular, partly foreign? The word Samaritanaich, John iv. 40, is remarkably redundant, having no fewer than three Gentile Terminations. From [Greek: Samareia] is formed, agreeably to the Greek mode of derivation, [Greek: Samareitai]. ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... His daughter Gaia.] A lady equally admired for her modesty, the beauty of her person, and the excellency of her talents. Gaia, says Tiraboschi, may perhaps lay claim to the praise of having been the first among the Italian ladies, by whom the vernacular poetry was ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... lost one. With roars of derision he refused to believe in the little "corporal's" voluntary desertion, and from the first moment began to agitate. What! punish a hero for his heroism? That, in Four Eyes' vilely profane opinion, expressed with elaborate expletives in the Legion's own choicest vernacular, was what it would amount to if St. George were branded "deserter." Precisely why Max had joined Stanton's caravan instead of returning to Sidi-bel-Abbes, perhaps a few days late, Four Eyes was not certain; but there was no one better instructed ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... and sepulchral, but either the ghostly apparition that uttered the command had slipped up on its vernacular, or it was the spirit of a bandit. Some demand of the kind was, however, urgently necessary, for George did not, as formerly, show a desire to flee; his belligerent attitude suggested fight and he was a husky ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... Giles's Dictionary, for Tibetan the system of Sarat Chandra Das, for Pali that of the Pali Text Society and for Sanskrit that of Monier-Williams's Sanskrit Dictionary, except that I write s instead of s. Indian languages however offer many difficulties: it is often hard to decide whether Sanskrit or vernacular forms are more suitable and in dealing with Buddhist subjects whether Sanskrit or Pali words should be used. I have found it convenient to vary the form of proper names according as my remarks are based on Sanskrit or on Pali literature, but this ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... local colour (coffee) and showed great aptitude in imitating the methods of the aborigines. Naturally there were conventions; the chiefs talked fluent English, while the Zulu supers employed their own vernacular, except in certain formal phrases, as when the "praisers" (my programme's name for a sort of universal claque) punctuated the speeches of their king with cries of "Yes, O Lion!" or "Yes, Great Beast!" No doubt our honoured visitors could perceive ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... "black takas," or copper coins, in opposition to "white" or silver; an expression similar to what we, in the vernacular call "browns." ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... the fact that those glorious languages have not been adequately cultivated in modern India. Bengali is a true daughter of the Sanskrit; it has Italian sweetness and German capacity for expressing abstract ideas. No degree of proficiency in an alien tongue can compensate for the neglect of the vernacular. Moreover, the curriculum introduced in the "thirties" was purely academic. It came to India directly from English universities, which had stuck fast in the ruts of the Renaissance. Undue weight was given to literary training, while science and technical skill ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... Ah, it's a pity the men won't have some one like my father with them! He was in gaol for the Cause. Besides, he's a well-discoursed man, and a reading man, and, moreover, a man with a classical knowledge of English, Latin, and the Hibernian vernacular. ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... destiny, chose for his sign a goose striking the bars of a gridiron with his foot, in ridicule of the 'Swan and Harp,' a common sign for the early music-houses. Such an origin does the Tatler give; but it may also be a vernacular reading of the coat of arms of the Company of Musicians, suspended probably at the door of the 'Mitre' when it was a music-house. These arms are a swan with his wings expanded, within a double tressure, counter, flory, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... under the ruddy brown of his sun-tanned skin. This was no raw "rookie" after all. In his own vernacular, as afterwards expressed to the conductor, "I seen I was up ag'in' the real t'ing dis time," but it was hard to admit it at the moment. Vexation had to have a vent. The bell-cord no longer served. The supposed meddler had proved a help. Something or somebody had to be the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... Mr. Tillott has not his persuasive powers!" she thought; Mr. Tillott's eloquence being, in fact, of a very limited order, chiefly exhibiting itself in little jerky questions about the spiritual and temporal welfare of his humble parishioners—questions which, in the vernacular language of agricultural labourers, "put ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... correspondingly fast. But the bank account, however quickly it increased, failed to give Jonas Miller and his wife full pleasure, unless, as some say, the mere knowledge of possession of wealth can bring pleasure to miserly hearts. For Jonas Miller was, in the vernacular of the Pennsylvania Dutch, "almighty close." Millie, Reists' hired girl, said," That there Jonas is too stingy to buy long enough pants for himself. I bet he gets boys' size because they're cheaper, for the legs o' them always just come ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... changed man instantly. He was all enthusiasm, full of his subject, eager to go on. He proposed to pay Goodman a salary to stay there and keep him company and furnish him with inspiration—the Pacific coast atmosphere and vernacular, which he feared had slipped away from him. Goodman declined the salary, but extended his visit as long as his plans would permit, and the two had a happy time together, recalling old Comstock days. Every morning, for a month or more, they used to tramp over the farm. They fell into the habit of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... sound of that distinctly-cowboy vernacular, Macdonald sprang back to regain the shelter of his walls, sensing too late the trap that the cowboy's unguarded word had betrayed. Chance Dalton at one corner of the rude bungalow, his next best man at the other, had been waiting for the decoy at the gate to draw Macdonald away ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... no matter what you do to me. What do you take me for? How dare you think me capable of such a low-down, mucker trick?" Unconsciously she had lapsed into Athol's vernacular. It was the last touch to Miss Woodhull's wrath. She actually flew up out of her chair and catching Beverly by her shoulders shook her soundly. Then it all happened in a flash. Miss Woodhull was a tall woman and a large woman as well. She weighed at least one-hundred-seventy pounds. But ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... improved. Good roads and good schools and good universities, together with a scrupulously honest administration, made the people feel that whatever services were demanded of them, they (to speak the vernacular) got ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... cleverly, it should be said. He writes good London English, for he, like many of 'the infernally good fellows' of Fleet Street, 'don't you know,' believes that the vernacular is only written in its virgin purity in that city. However, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... said I, "to drop into the vernacular, that Miss Greene should be deprived of the food she desires—a simple thing like kalsomine-pudding. Perhaps," I continued, solicitously, "some pickled walnuts or a fricassee of Hungarian ...
— Options • O. Henry
... profession. While such was his empire over the hearts of his countrymen, he enjoyed among the natives a popularity, such as other governors have perhaps better merited, but such as no other governor has been able to attain. He spoke their vernacular dialects with facility and precision. He was intimately acquainted with their feelings and usages. On one or two occasions, for great ends, he deliberately acted in defiance of their opinion; but on such occasions he gained ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of melodramatic fireworks, really made me so unhappy that I lost my night's rest. So soon as the speech was over the company was invited into the house to 'pour a libation to the holy cause'—in the vernacular, to take a drink and ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... finding the mate of the watch asleep, on the spur of the moment resolved to lay violent hands on the captain, and assume the command of the Bounty. The language attributed to Bligh reads like a translation into the vernacular, but if Christian kept his designs to himself, it is strange that they were immediately understood and acted upon by a body of impromptu conspirators. Testimony, whether written or spoken, with regard to the succession ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... his later vernacular poems, approaches the character of the less-cultured broadside literature. To the critical mind it is somewhat amusing to note the enthusiasm with which the modern Dissenting and Puritan class contemplates the period of which we are writing—an ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... long detained by the subtilty of the schools, nor ready to accept big words for sterling coin; they penetrate, as far as they can, into the principal parts of the subject which engages them, and they expound them in the vernacular tongue. Scientific pursuits then follow a freer and a safer course, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of these inscriptions have been discovered, scattered over nearly the whole of India, and composed in vernacular dialects allied to Pali[581]. Many of them are dated by the year of the King's reign and all announce themselves as the enactments of Piyadassi, the name Asoka being rarely used[582]. They comprise, besides some fourteen single ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the Great ones of the Earth,' and the public utterances of his later years, dating from the time of his banishment, are all directed to emperors, princes, a nd cardinals. In these letters and in his book De Vulgari Eloquentia (About the Vernacular) the feeling, bought with such bitter pains, is constantly recurring that the exile may find elsewhere than in his native place an intellectual home in language and culture, which cannot be taken from him. On this point we shall have more to say ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... relation with himself—though not unmindful that there might still, as time went on, be others, including a more intimate degree of that one, that would seek, possibly with violence, the larger or the finer issue—which was it?—of the vernacular. Miss Verver had told him he spoke English too well—it was his only fault, and he had not been able to speak worse even to oblige her. "When I speak worse, you see, I speak French," he had said; intimating thus that there were discriminations, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... without a distinctly ascertained connotation, and with no more precise notion of their meaning than can be loosely collected from observing what objects they are used to denote. It is in this manner that we all acquire, and inevitably so, our first knowledge of our vernacular language. A child learns the meaning of the words man, or white, by hearing them applied to a variety of individual objects, and finding out, by a process of generalization and analysis which he could not himself describe, what those different objects have in common. In the case of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... life of every philosopher and dreamer when he feels himself the flimsiest of absurdities, when the Thing in Being has its way with him, its triumphant way, when it asks in a roar, unanswerably, with a fine solid use of the current vernacular, "What Good ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... funny and characteristic, though I will not undertake to say that it has its origin with the blacks. One day an Irishman who had heard people talking about "mares' nests" was going along the big road—it is always the big road in contradistinction to neighborhood paths and by-paths, called in the vernacular "nigh-cuts"—when he came to a pumpkin—patch. The Irishman had never seen any of this fruit before, and he at once concluded that he had discovered a veritable mare's nest. Making the most of his opportunity, he gathered one of the pumpkins in his arms and went on his way. A pumpkin is ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... things in his laboratory (he was both analytical chemist and biologist), it was his custom to return for a few weeks to huge, crude synthetic, nature for relief. After endless discussion of "whorls of force" and of "the office of germs in the human organism," he enjoyed the racy vernacular of the plainsman, to whom bacteria were as indifferent as blackberry-seeds. Each year he resolved to go to the forest, to the lake regions, or to the mountains; but as the day of departure drew near the desert and the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... natural, and sufficiently picturesque vocabulary, avoids all verbiage and roundabout writing, and both in the narratives and in the connecting conversation displays a very considerable advance upon nearly all the writers of the time, except Rabelais, Marot, and Desperiers, in easy command of the vernacular. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there has, at different times (rather less of late years, but that is probably an accident), been a disposition if not to take away from Margaret all the credit of the book, at any rate to give a share ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... wonderful, had timed my movements so correctly that they had arrived just in time to meet me at this point. The two raftsmen rubbed the canoe all over with their hands, and expressed delight at its beautiful finish in their own peculiar vernacular. ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... multitudes of others, Christine and Dennis at last received an army biscuit (hardtack in the soldier's vernacular) and a tin-cup of what resembled coffee. To him it was very touching to see how eagerly she received this coarse fare, proving that she was indeed almost famished. Too weak to stand, they sat down near the door on the sidewalk. A kind lady presently came and ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... whole, of this fund to the education in the Japanese language of a number of young men to be under obligations to serve the Government for a specified time as interpreters at the legation and the consulates in Japan. A limited number of Japanese youths might at the same time be educated in our own vernacular, and mutual benefits would result to both Governments. The importance of having our own citizens, competent and familiar with the language of Japan, to act as interpreters and in other capacities connected ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... imitator, he was in his handling of English an apt pupil of Newman. There is the same ease, the same grace, the same lightness of elastic strength. Froude, like Newman, can pass from racy, colloquial vernacular, the talk of educated men who understand each other, to heights of genuine eloquence, where the resources of our grand old English tongue are drawn out to the full. His vocabulary was large and various. He was familiar with every device of rhetoric. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... and swallowed dryly. Ewbert noticed how he had dropped more and more into the vernacular, in these reminiscences; in their controversies he had used the language of books and had spoken like a cultivated man, but now he was simply and ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... history covering a period beginning 1 A.D. and ending in 1154. The work was probably written by the monks in Canterbury, Peterborough, and other monasteries. It may be considered as an annual register of iportant events. Thorpe says of it, "No other nation can produce any history written in its own vernacular, at all approaching the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" either in antiquity, truthfulness, or extent, the historical books of the Bible ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... property") has been the motto of several illustrious amateurs since Grolier and Maioli stamped it on the beautifully decorated morocco of their bindings. Other people have invented book-plates, containing fell curses in doggrel Latin or the vernacular on the careless or ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... it covers and includes. Reason, conscience, understanding, have no impersonality to him. When he uses the words, he uses them as synonymes of his determinations, or as decorative terms into which it pleases him to translate the rough vernacular of his wilfulness and caprices. The "Constitution," also, a word constantly profaned by his lips, is not so much, as he uses it, the Constitution of the United States as the moral and mental constitution of Andrew Johnson, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... affirmed, had gone to church and preached a sermon an hour and a half long. The sheriff, too, was there in a red coat, and had no doubt got his place by interest. 'Pomp and 'umbug I calls it, and we poor chaps pays for it all.' Fitzjames heartily enjoyed good vernacular embodiments of popular imagination. He admitted that he was not quite insensible to the pleasures of pomp and humbug as represented by javelin men and trumpeters. His work, as my quotation indicates, included some duties that were trivial and some that were repulsive. In spite of all, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... at three in the afternoon and before literary clubs and circles bellowed extracts from Goethe and Schiler in the German, shaking his fists, purple with vehemence. The Cherokee, arrayed in fringed buckskin and blue beads, rented from a costumer, intoned folk songs of his people in the vernacular. The elocutionist in cheese-cloth toga and tin bracelets, rendered "The Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung." The Chinaman, in the robes of a mandarin, lectured on Confucius. The Armenian, in fez ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... ingenuity, leading his daughter, whose name was Truth. Truth had an English Bible in her hands, which she presented to Elizabeth as she passed. This had a great deal of meaning; for the Catholic government of Mary had discouraged the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue. When the procession arrived in the middle of the city, some officers of the city government approached the queen's chariot, and delivered to her a present of a very large and heavy purse filled with gold. The queen had to ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the nominal power of the Throne, a last secret Edict to behead Yuan Shih-kai, but that his faltering hand described circle after circle in the air until his followers understood the meaning. In the vernacular the name of the great viceroy and the word for circle have the same sound; the gesture signified that the dying monarch's last wish was revenge on the man who had failed him ten ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... literature, we include a consideration also of those works written in Latin which are products of the times, and bear a part in the progress of the people and their literature. They are exponents of the Saxon mind, frequently of more value than the vernacular writings. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Central America; but it has followed the fate of the idle, proud, combative, and good-for-nothing people who carried it across the Atlantic, and is disappearing like snow before the sun of a genial spring. The sooner it is extinct the better. Already the English is the vernacular from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific, wherever civilised settlements are formed. As large a population now speaks this nervous language in America as in Great Britain; and this is only an indication of its progress. By means of a rapidly-increasing population, the English ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... archiepiscopal; where that university still subsists in which philosophy was formerly taught by Buchanan, whose name has as fair a claim to immortality as can be conferred by modern latinity, and perhaps a fairer than the instability of vernacular ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... with loving care and a knife, in his infancy, by his papa) said only "Ptwack" as he chewed a mouthful of coffee-beans and hide. It may have been a pious ejaculation or a whole speech in his own peculiar vernacular. It was a tremendous smacking of tremendous lips, and the expression which overspread his speaking countenance was of gusto, appreciative, and ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... composing in a foreign language. Every writer, especially every poet, composing in any language, writes in what may be called a strange idiom; that is, he does not write as he talks. Yet it is true that the gap between written language and vernacular was wider in Kalidasa's day than it has often been. The Hindus themselves regard twelve years' study as requisite for the mastery of the "chief of all sciences, the science of grammar." That Kalidasa had mastered this science his ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... Europe was under the complete rule of old Rome until the middle of the seventeenth century. Then came a sudden change for modernity, comparable to the rather abrupt change of languages from the fashionable Latin to the national idioms and vernacular, in England and Germany under the influence of literary giants ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... Massacre of Damascus in 1860, although still moving slowly, shows a distinct advance. The once secluded and self- contained communities are now shaken by the repeated and continuous shocks of progress around them; and new wants and strange objects compel them nilly-willy to provide vernacular equivalents for the nomenclature of modern arts and sciences. Thus the Orientalist, who would produce a contemporary lexicon of Persian, must not only read up all the diaries and journals of Teheran and the vocabularies of Yezd ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... every reading lesson, without which there can be no serious teaching of the vernacular. By their means the teacher enters into communication with his pupils; he gets them to speak, he corrects their errors, trains their reason, and forms their taste. It has been said that a teacher able to explain selections in prose and poetry "holds his ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... claiming no finality, inviting, rather than desiring to exclude, other attempts of the same kind, calling the attention of the Church to the many and anxious questions involved in rendering the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular language, and offering some help towards the ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... the peoples of Western Europe began to show themselves even in their Latin poetry, but it is naturally in the rise of the vernacular literatures, during the Middle Ages, that we trace the signs of thnic differentiation. Teuton and Frank and Norseman, Spaniard or Italian, betray their blood as soon as they begin to sing in their own tongue. The scanty remains of Anglo-Saxon lyrical ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... genuine that it only needs a few words from the reappearing Saint to persuade him to accept Christianity.—Monologue and dialogue are throughout in song. The following is one of the three verses in which the barbarian proclaims his loss; the last two lines in the vernacular ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... makes it necessary for him to subcontract in the lightest dirt work from a slightly better equipped subcontractor, who in turn has taken a subcontract from the main contractors in a big piece of railroad building. In the vernacular of the grade, a gypo man's daughter, if she follows the outfit, is known as ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... only a being to be distrusted and persecuted; and the efforts of the good Bishop of Granada, who had caused the Psalms, Gospels, and large portions of the Breviary to be translated into Arabic, were frustrated by the zeal of those who imagined that heresy lurked in the vernacular, and perhaps that objections to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Aristotle is but slightly removed from that of common life, and was introduced naturally by a series of thinkers: the language of the scholastic logic has become technical to us, but in the Middle Ages was the vernacular Latin of priests and students. The higher spirit of philosophy, the spirit of Plato and Socrates, rebels against the Hegelian use of language ...
— Sophist • Plato
... of this odious term "Usury." Lord Bacon declared, that the suppression of Usury is only fit for an Utopian government; and Audley must have agreed with the learned Cowell, who in his "Interpreter" derives the term ab usu et aere, quasi usu aera, which in our vernacular style was corrupted into Usury. Whatever the sin might be in the eye of some, it had become at least a controversial sin, as Sir Symonds D'Ewes calls it, in his manuscript Diary, who, however, was afraid to commit it.[73] ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... he died, for he was the pattern of the ideal german scholar, as daringly original in his thought as he was homely in his life, a modest, genial, laborious slave to truth and learning, and withal the owner of an admirable literary style of the vernacular sort. The materialistic generation, that in the fifties and sixties called his speculations fantastic, had been replaced by one with greater liberty of imagination, and a Preyer, a Wundt, a Paulsen, and a Lasswitz could now speak of Fechner ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... in music, painting, and several mechanic arts. He frequently amused himself with poetical composition, and was the intimate friend of some of the most eminent bards of his time. But he was above all devoted to the study of philosophy and history. He made a version of Aristotle's Ethics into the vernacular, which was first printed nearly fifty years after his death, at Saragossa, in 1509. He compiled also a Chronicle of Navarre from the earliest period to his own times, which, although suffered to remain in manuscript, has been liberally used and cited by the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... at the court of Frederick II, in Sicily, that the first real school of Italian poetry developed, and from there the custom of composing exclusively in the vernacular spread over the remainder of the country. These early poets chose love as their main topic, and closely imitated the Provencal style. Then the "dolce stil nuovo," or sweet new style, was introduced by Guinicelli, who is rightly considered ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... the babu's explanation had been made in fluent, vernacular Urdu, Amber's surprise at the girl's evident familiarity with that tongue was hardly to be concealed. "You understand Urdu?" ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Napoleon; just as the eagle—Prometheus and the eagle in one shape—was fast fettered by sheer force and strength to his rock in the Atlantic, there arose a man in Central Germany, on the old Thuringian soil, to whom it was given to assert the dignity of vernacular literature, to throw off the yoke of classical tyranny, and to claim for all the dialects of Teutonic speech a right of ancient inheritance and perfect freedom before unsuspected and unknown. It is almost needless to mention this honoured name. For the furtherance of the good ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... he said. "Ze great Kennedy, ze detectif Americain—to put it tersely in our own vernacular, wouldn't it be a fool thing for me to appear at the Vesper Club where I should surely be recognized by someone if I went in my ordinary clothes and features? Un faux pas, at ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... without having recourse to much exterior inquiry: for which reason the progress of this religion has always been marked by that of letters. There were two other circumstances at this time that contributed no less to the revival of learning. The sacred writings had not been translated into any vernacular language, and even the ordinary service of the Church was still continued in the Latin tongue; all, therefore, who formed themselves for the ministry, and hoped to make any figure in it, were in a manner driven to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... made answer, under his nose, having been scurrying forwards while he was speaking, the Irish mate adding in his native vernacular, "Begorrah, we'll rig up the whole, sir, in the ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... vocations, whose appeal more than any other is direct to the feelings, could not induce him to tell a sympathetic lie. Would that the writers and speakers of plain English, and of their mother-tongue in every vernacular, might take example from the conscientious creator, who would not put a particle of cant into the crooked marks and ruled bars which are such a mystery to the uninitiated, blot with one demi-semi-quaver of falsehood his papers, or leave aught but truth of the heavenly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... called the liberal party, the other at Prayaga (Allahabad) by Dayananda Sarasvati, the representative of Indian orthodoxy. The former gives a paraphrase in Sanskrit, and a Marathi and an English translation; the latter a full explanation in Sanskrit, followed by a vernacular commentary. These books are published by subscription, and the list of subscribers among the natives ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... a recent writer on Eastern languages) "for Malay, as for Hindustani, a magnificent future may be anticipated among the great speech-media of Asia and of the world. They manifest that capacity for the absorption and assimilation of foreign elements which we recognise as making English the greatest vernacular that the world has ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... first chapters of my Essay in French, the familiar language of my conversation and studies, in which it was easier for me to write than in my mother tongue. After my return to England I continued the same practice, without any affectation, or design of repudiating (as Dr. Bentley would say) my vernacular idiom. But I should have escaped some Anti-gallican clamour, had I been content with the more natural character of an English author. I should have been more consistent had I rejected Mallet's advice, of prefixing an English ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... that company of Seven, who attempted to reform French verse, by inspiring it with the enthusiasm of the Renaissance. His book L'Illustration de la langue Francaise is a plea for the study of ancient models and for the improvement of the vernacular. In this effort Du Bellay and Ronsard are the predecessors of Malherbe, and of Andre Chenier, more successful through their frank eagerness than the former, less fortunate in the possession of critical learning and appreciative taste than the latter. There ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... errors, but which are in fact established analogies.... In this country it is desirable that inquiries should be free, and opinions unshackled. North America is destined to be the seat of a people more numerous probably than any nation now existing with the same vernacular language, unless one except some Asiatic nations. It would be little honorable to the founders of a great empire to be hurried prematurely into errors and corruptions by ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... in which I am now employing it, means that sort of education which is specially adapted to the needs of men whose business in life it is to pursue some kind of handicraft; it is, in fact, a fine Greco-Latin equivalent for what in good vernacular English would be called "the teaching of handicrafts." And probably, at this stage of our progress, it may occur to many of you to think of the story of the cobbler and his last, and to say to yourselves, though you will be too polite to put the question openly to me, What does ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... into its dialect and is infected with its spirit. It is a lounge for men of pleasure, a study for men of learning, an El Dorado for men of adventure, and a market for men of business. It has a habitat and a manner, a character and a vernacular. It bristles with incongruity and contradiction, yet it is as logical ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... many singular things happen recently. We have been told there is a deep disgrace resting upon the origin of this nation. The nation originated in the sharpest sort of criticism of public policy. We originated, to put it in the vernacular, in a kick, and if it be unpatriotic to kick, why then the grown man is unlike the child. We have forgotten the very principle of our origin if we have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agitate, ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... best authors, have this tendency to arouse some of the worst passions of our nature, and predispose even eminent philologists—men of dainty language, and soft manners, and lofty aims—to assail each other in the rough vernacular of the fish-market and the forecastle? A careless observer will be apt to say that it is an ordinary result of disputation; that when men differ or argue on any subject they are apt to get angry and indulge in "personalities." But this is not ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... day Bivens rose early and declared that he would try the ducks. The day before had been, in the local vernacular, a "weather breeder"—a day of breathless seas, a soft haze hanging from the sky, a lazy, sensuous, dreamy, alluring ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... is that from the first the writers of America have lagged honourably behind their age. The wisest of them have written with a studious care and quiet reverence. As if to mark the difference between the written language and the vernacular, they have assumed a style which belonged to their grandfathers. This half-conscious love of reaction has been ever present with them. Tou may find examples at each stage of their history. Cotton Mather, who armed his hand and tongue against the intolerable sin of witchcraft, ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... she had filed at her emotions in the service of culture and she was now paying the penalty for her ardent confidence. His ideas, vocal with golden meanings, were never meant to be translated into the vernacular of life, never to be transposed from higher to lower levels; this base betrayal of his ideals she felt Keroulan had committed. Had he not said that love should be like "un baiser sur un miroir"? Was he, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... interview. Both of these men were members of the Confraternita de' Neri, who assumed the duty of comforting condemned prisoners with spiritual counsel, prayer, and exhortation. The narrative, dictated in the choicest vernacular Tuscan, by an artist whose charity and beauty of soul transpire in every line in contrast with the fiercer fortitude of Boscoli, is one of the most valuable original documents for this period which we possess.[4] What is most striking is the combination of deeply rooted and almost infantine ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... (official) universal Bantu vernacular, French (official), English (official), Kiswahili ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... ring with his shouts. Wonderful were the miracles Dick's advent wrought. The lame became suddenly active, the blind saw, the dumb spoke; nay, if truth must be told, absolutely gave utterance to "most vernacular execrations." Morts, autem morts, walking morts, dells, doxies, kinching morts, and their coes, with all the shades and grades of the Canting Crew, were assembled. There were, to use ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the forest there is a famous tree gifted with certain properties. It is known in the vernacular of the land, and I translate it literally, "The-tree-that-has-no-echo-and-eats-up-sound." Men believe that all that is uttered beneath its twisted branches may be remembered, but not repeated, and if one shouts in its deadening ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... understand many of these very choice Americanisms; still, he was sufficiently gifted with common sense to see pretty plainly that all the deck hand's "tall talking" of the previous evening had been, to use his own expressive vernacular, nothing but "bunkum," and that, if he wished to get any situation in the place, he must trust more to his own good fortune than to Mr Slater's kind offices as ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... issued a new edition in consequence of the Reformation and he now set it forth as the only edition to be used, and emphasized the importance of learning in the vernacular, the Pater ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... Mr. Caird that indigo grows in cakes (the ale is imported); to his description of the process of manufacture I can only add that the juice is generally expressed in the vernacular. You give a cake of the raw material to a coloured servant, you stand over him to see that he doesn't eat it, and your assistant canes him slowly as he squeezes the juice into a blue bottle. Blue ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... in all the ancient voyages and travels, the names of persons, places, and things, are generally given in an extremely vicious orthography, often almost utterly unintelligible, as taken down orally, according to the vernacular modes of the respective writers, without any intimate knowledge of the native language, or the employment of any fixed general standard. To avoid the multiplication of notes, we have endeavoured to supply this defect, by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... to happy poetic description by Burns during these journeys was that he had now forsaken his native vernacular, and taken to writing in English after the mode of the poets of the day. This with him was to unclothe himself of his true strength. His correspondent, Dr. Moore, and his Edinburgh critics had no doubt counselled ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... forms of it are maintained by the elder authors, whom, in spite of an Age of Progress, men of superior education esteem. No one who has gone through that study; no one, indeed, who has studied the Ten Commandments in the vernacular,—commits the mistake of supposing that 'the old governor' is a synonymous expression for 'father.' In the second place, since you pretend to the superior enlightenment which results from a superior education, learn to know better your own self before you set up as a teacher of mankind. Excuse ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... possible; but always to hold the other's attention, to permit his brain no chance to wander from the subject to any other. But the fellow seemed now to have become as tractable as before he had been sullen, stubborn; gave his version in his own vernacular, always keenly attentive, observant of the other's every motion. His strength had apparently returned; he seemed little the worse for his late encounter. At length came an interval; just for an instant John Steele's eyes shut; the fingers that had ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... his character; that came straight from the Devil, his master. Gulo, however, was not a cross. He was himself, Gulo, the wolverine, alias glutton, alias carcajou, alias quick-hatch, alias fjeldfras in the vernacular, or, officially, Gulo luscus. But, by whatever name you called him, he did not smell sweet; and his character, too, was of a bad odor. A great man once said that he was like a bear cub with a superadded tail; but that great man cannot have seen his face. If he had, he would have ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... interesting of Aelfric's writings is his Colloquium, designed to teach Latin in the monastery at Winchester. The pupils were required to learn the Latin translation of his dialogues in the Anglo-Saxon vernacular. Some of these dialogues are today valuable illustrations of the social and industrial life of the time. The following is part of the conversation between the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... to the accuracy of your arithmetic. You also use it to sweep the ice in front of a friendly stone which appears likely to give up prematurely from exhaustion. Sweeping is carried out under the direction of your captain, and the process is known in the vernacular as "sooping 'er oop." You are not allowed to retard the progress of a stone, friendly or otherwise, by intentionally sweeping obstructions into its path. To discard a portion of your "cow" in front of a rapidly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... country before us. Seeing no familiar objects, I replied in the negative. He put the same question to the other white men of the party, all of whom gave the same answers, whereupon he smiled, and in his quaint vernacular said, "Injun he don't know nothing. Injun big fool. White man mighty smart; he know heap." At the same time he pointed to a tree about two hundred yards from where we were then standing, and informed us that our outward trail ran directly by ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... are translations into vernacular verse of the prose versions of specimens of the literature of the great apes of Africa, collected by Professor GARNER. It is not too much to say that those touching cris de coeur redolent of the ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... birthplace to spend his life in the sacred fields as a missionary. He was thoroughly equipped for roughing it, with a splendid physique and perfect health, imperturbable spirits, and a rare command of classic and vernacular Arabic. He wanted to go to Beirut with as few impedimenta as possible, and, after some talk, we merged our two parties into one. Our preparations for the journey were of the simplest sort. We agreed to dispense with dragomans and cooks and tents and trust to the land for food and shelter. We ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... none! By thee the mystery of life is read; The picture-writing of the world's gray seers, The myths and parables of the primal years, Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted Take healthful meanings fitted to our needs, And in the soul's vernacular express The common law of simple righteousness. Hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds May well be felt: the unpardonable sin Is to deny the Word of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
