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noun
Vernacular  n.  The vernacular language; one's mother tongue; often, the common forms of expression in a particular locality, opposed to literary or learned forms.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vernacular" Quotes from Famous Books



... purpose in calling on Lindy; he actually wished to see her, for they had not met since the concert, but his principal wish was to meet a real old-fashioned country couple. To be sure, Deacon Mason and his wife often dropped into the vernacular, but the Deacon was a very dignified old gentleman and his wife was not a great talker. What he desired was to find one of the old-fashioned style of country women, with a tongue hung in the middle and running at both ends. His ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... survey and illustrate the development of the vernacular literatures of mediaeval and Europe; and for that purpose it is unnecessary to busy ourselves with more than a part of the Latin writing which, in a steadily decreasing but—until the end of the last century—an always considerable proportion, served ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... makes a man king among blind men—to translate to the vernacular Verbena's elegant reasoning—an income, however trifling, if it have no taint of toil, no stench of sweat upon it, makes its possessor entitled to royal consideration in a family of paupers and dead beats, degraded by harboring a ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... during which Rudolph Musgrave smiled down upon her, irresolutely; for he abhorred "a scene," as his vernacular phrased it, and to him Clarice's present manner bordered upon both ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... Government has made itself directly or indirectly responsible for the education of the province. At the headquarters of each district there is a high school for boys controlled by the Education Department. In each district there are Government middle schools, Anglo-vernacular or Vernacular, and primary schools, managed by the Municipal Committees and District Boards. Each middle school has a primary, and each high school a primary and a middle, department. For the convenience of pupils who cannot attend school while living at home hostels are attached to many ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... fear that a sentence like this exhibits the writer's entire want of acquaintance with the grammatical system employed by the great poet and the writers of his age. We must not judge Shakspeare's grammar by Cobbett or Murray, but by the vernacular language of his own times. It is perfectly well known that Shakspeare constantly uses the passive for the active participle, in the same manner that he uses the present tense for the passive participle, and commits numerous ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various

... exclaimed, and then, in the vernacular of the great apes which constant association with the anthropoids had rendered the common language of the Oparians: "You have come back to me! La has ignored the mandates of her religion, waiting, always waiting for Tarzan—for her Tarzan. She has taken no mate, for in ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... after admission, a new cadet. After the candidates are examined and the proficient ones admitted, these latter are known officially as "new cadets," but in the cant vernacular of the corps they are dubbed "plebes," and they retain this designation till the candidates of the next year report. They are then called "yearlings," a title applied usually to them in camp only. After the encampment they become "furloughmen" until ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... strikes Lady Ogram as self-assertion—beware the lash! From time to time she will permit herself a phrase or an exclamation which reminds one that her birth was not precisely aristocratic; but don't imagine that anyone else is allowed to use a too racy vernacular; you must guard your expressions, and the choicer they are ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... Chinese language later assumed a monosyllabic, isolating, uninflected form, grammatical relations being indicated by position. From the earliest forms of speech several subordinate vernacular languages arose in various districts, and from these sprang local dialects, etc. Tone-distinctions arose—i.e. the same words pronounced with a different intonation came to mean different things. Development of these distinctions led to carelessness of articulation, and multiplication ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... the application of an already established system to concrete problems. In the second case we endeavour, using the elementary systems as means, to establish other systems of knowledge as means to the attainment of still further ends. We may, e.g., on the basis of the vernacular language build up a foreign language system as a means either to commercial intercourse or to literary culture. In short, the aim of the Secondary School is, using the elementary systems as the basal means, to organise and establish other systems of means ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch

... the shop; he was not quite ready to do a "rushin' business" and to advertise for it from the corner drug store. As he retreated the clerk looked at him with a cynical smile. In the clerk's vernacular, he wasn't "in the push," not "the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... little incident happened here to my own children. There was but one bathing-machine. This, the two - a schoolboy and his sister - used in the early morning. Being rather late one day, they found it engaged; and growing impatient the boy banged at the door of the machine, with a shout in schoolboy's vernacular: 'Come, hurry up; we want to dip.' Much to the surprise of the guilty pair, an answer, also in the best of English, came from the inside: 'Go away, you naughty boy.' The occupant was the Imperial Princess. Needless to say the children bolted with a mingled ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... they groped along a checkered surface of brick-work. The flare of Heywood's match revealed a heavy wooden door, which he hammered with his fist. After a time, a disgruntled voice within snarled something in the vernacular. Heywood laughed. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... Ireland and among all its Subject Races. It had given these subject races cigarettes, boots, bowler hats, cricket, race meetings, cheap revolvers, petroleum, the factory system of industry, halfpenny newspapers in both English and the vernacular, inexpensive university degrees, motor-bicycles and electric trams; it had produced a considerable literature expressing contempt for the Subject Races, and rendered it freely accessible to them, and it ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... my publisher that he did not approve of novels (as he injuriously called these real histories) extending beyond four volumes, and if I did not agree to the first four being published separately, he threatened to decline the article. (Oh, ignorance! as if the vernacular article of our mother English were capable of declension.) Whereupon, somewhat moved by his remonstrances, and more by heavy charges for print and paper, which he stated to have been already incurred, I have resolved that these four volumes shall be the heralds or avant-couriers ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... 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 ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... apart from these friends of her youth had rendered it impossible for her ever to meet them again upon the plane of common interests and common thoughts. It was much as though one, having acquired the vernacular of his native country, had lived in a foreign land long enough to lose the language of his childhood without acquiring fully that of his adopted country. Miss Rowena Warwick could never again become quite the Rena Walden who had left the house behind the cedars no more than a year ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... from anger (Greek), this latter term having no accessory notion of righteous indignation. Although Aristotle has retained the word, yet we may observe that 'passion' (Greek) has with him lost its affinity to the rational and has become indistinguishable from 'anger' (Greek). And to this vernacular use Plato himself in the Laws seems to revert, though not always. By modern philosophy too, as well as in our ordinary conversation, the words anger or passion are employed almost exclusively in a bad sense; ...
— The Republic • Plato

... of controversy. Secondly, a student's duty to English society, and to the church of which he is a member—as also, I humbly venture to think, to his own soul—requires that he shall first listen thoughtfully to the vernacular theology of England. Let him learn the chief affirmative verities of the Christian faith before meddling with the negative side. Let him master the grand thoughts or solid erudition of Hooker and Pearson; of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... the range and the omnipresent cowboy. Old-timers had told him stories of Abilene and Dodge, when they were in their heyday. He had gambled in the hells of Juarez, across the Texas border where there was no law. Some of the Montana cattle towns were far from slow, in cowboy vernacular. But here he sensed a new element. And soon he grasped it as the fever of the rush for gold. The excitement of it took hold of him, so that he had to reason with himself ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... sincere reverence, and the dread of profaning the sacred mysteries by transferring them into the vulgar tongue, than in any systematic design of keeping the people in the dark; for, from the gradual extinction of the Latin, as the vernacular idiom, and the gradual growth of the modern languages, there was no marked period in which the change might appear to be called for, until the question became involved with weightier matters of controversy. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various

... continues: —'The Apian land certainly meant the watery land, Meer-Umschlungon, among the pre-Hellenic Greeks, just as the same land is called Morea by the modern post- Hellenic or Romaic Greeks from more, the name for the sea in the Slavonic vernacular of its inhabitants during the heart of the middle ages. But it is only connected by a remote and secondary affinity, if connected at all, with the avia of Scandinavia, assuming that to be the true German word for water, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... summoned by neither before the partial tribunal of a sentiment, or the intricate scheme of some Machiavelli subjected to the imperfect analysis of a headstrong imagination. But Gibbon, though he writes in the vernacular, has lost all the honest nationality that should give an air of sincerity to his work; his brilliant antithesis belongs to the ornate school of the French literature of the day; and, fascinating as is the pomp and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... legation of Greece. The elder Tricoupi and his wife were two of the most sympathetic and 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 ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... the early Margaret's Bridal Eve, and the later Arch-duchess Anne and The Young Princess. There are also the humorous and pathetic studies in Roadside Philosophers and the like, in which, forty years ago, Meredith anticipated, with the dignity of a poet, the vernacular studies of others. And, finally, there is a section containing poems of impassioned meditation, beginning with the lofty and sustained ode to France, December 1870, and ending with the volcanic volume of Odes in Contribution to the Song of French ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... Baiocas mittens Botoni militiae suae principi nutriendum tradidit, ut, ibi lingua eruditus Danica, suis exterisque hominibus sciret aperte dare responsa, (Wilhelm. Gemeticensis de Ducibus Normannis, l. iii. c. 8, p. 623, edit. Camden.) Of the vernacular and favorite idiom of William the Conqueror, (A.D. 1035,) Selden (Opera, tom. ii. p. 1640-1656) has given a specimen, obsolete and obscure even ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... his ghosts—he has published half a workshopful of them—with levity. He makes his ghost-seers talk familiarly, and, in some cases, flirt outrageously, with the phantoms. You may treat anything, from a Viceroy to a Vernacular Paper, with levity; but you must behave reverently toward a ghost, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... reputation for being, to use their borrowed phraseology, "Knowing 'coons, with their eye-teeth well cut." It would be well if they borrowed from their neighbours, the Yankees, something more useful than their slang, which renders the vernacular of the province rather repulsive. The spirit of enterprise, which has done so much for the adjacent state of Maine, has not yet displayed itself in New Brunswick in the completion of any works of practical utility; and though the soil in many places has ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... frame-up," declared Jane, glad to recall the vernacular. "There are three witnesses here who saw the trouble and we'll find others if you want them. The fact is Officer Jamison is always cross with us students" (she put it mildly), "and he was, perhaps, too willing to ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... sudden the client he has by the ear swells into a tremendous beast—a combination of lion and elephant—bellows and shakes the room, stops and stamps before him, discharging an unintelligible flood of racy vernacular punctuated in thunder. You hear him and see him! Alvan lost his head—some of his hair too. The girl is not worth a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... worship of the sun, of light, of fire, has left its impress upon the language and in vernacular art and customs. Among scores of derivations of Japanese words (often more pleasing than scientific), in which the general term hi enters, is that which finds in the word for man, hito, the meaning of "light-bearer." On ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... compositions giving the history of these works by which they are prefaced and the latter work is closed. No more characteristic examples of Bunyan's muse can be found. They show his excellent command of his native tongue in racy vernacular, homely but never vulgar, and his power of expressing his meaning "with sharp defined outlines and without the waste ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... for maintaining and extending the old scheme of encouraging Oriental learning by stipends paid to students in Sanscrit, Persian, and Arabic; and by liberal grants for the publication of works in those languages. The other half were in favour of teaching the elements of knowledge in the vernacular tongues, and the higher branches in English. On his arrival, Macaulay was appointed President of the Committee; but he declined to take any active part in its proceedings until the Government had finally pronounced on the question at issue. Later in January ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... 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

... account of Paris;' of which he knows nothing: whereby however he shall get home to bed, and only his gilt coach be left. Scarcely less delicate is Syndic Roederer's task; who must wait whether he will lament or not, till he see the issue. Janus Bifrons, or Mr. Facing-both-ways, as vernacular Bunyan has it! They walk there, in the meanwhile, these two Januses, with others of the like double conformation; and 'talk of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... what a fool I was; and I told my friend to bet him another dram that he could pick it up. But I said, "Don't touch the one that has the corner turned up;" and he did as I said. That made the cow-boy laugh, who broke out in his peculiar vernacular: "Oh, you old fools with store clothes on can't tell it no how." Then I observed to my friend, "I am going to have some of that money; for that fool will never get back, for some one will win it sure." I began jesting and playing the fellow, till at last I dared him to bet me $100 on it, ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... detained us till near ten o'clock, so we had time to walk on the Boulevards, and to see the fortifications, which must be very strong, all the country round being flat and marshy. Lost, as all know, by the bloody papist bitch (one must be vernacular when on French ground) Queen Mary, of red-hot memory. I would rather she had burned a score more of bishops. If she had kept it, her sister Bess would sooner have parted with her virginity. Charles I. had no temptation to part ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... the Rio de las Plumas must have made her very familiar with their tongue. In reading these Letters one cannot fail to perceive how fittingly Spanish words and phrases are interwoven with her own English. At the time these Letters were written, many Spanish words were a part of the California vernacular, but to Shirley belongs the honor of introducing them into the literature of California; hence, in printing the Letters, such words are not italicized, as they usually are, by printers who ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... would be in entire agreement with the Syriac translation. (5) This Syriac translation (if it be a translation, which is very doubtful, for we know neither the time of its appearance, nor the translators and Syriac was the vernacular of the Apostles) renders the text before us in a way well explained by ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza

... modified the vernacular dialects of not a few of its subjugated provinces, and greatly promoted the diffusion of Latin. That language, which had gradually spread throughout Italy and the west of Europe, was at length understood by persons of rank and education in most parts ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... upon the Almighty in the vernacular of Seven Dials, sought gropingly for the members of her progeny who clutched her skirt, and fortunately kept ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... deadly breach, falling back into the arms of his comrades and going off generally in a blaze 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

... answered Bud in the vernacular of the west, "and he's beginning to wonder if anything is going to ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker

... the old folks with the "rheumatiz," and good counsel to all; and kept the coal and clothes' clubs going, for yule-tide, when the bands of mummers came round, dressed out in ribbons and coloured paper caps, and stamped round the Squire's kitchen, repeating in true sing-song vernacular the legend of St. George and his fight, and the ten-pound doctor, who plays his part at healing the Saint—a relic, I believe, of the old Middle-age mysteries. It was the first dramatic representation which greeted the eyes of ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... In what vernacular tongue, for instance, does Mr. Hunt find a lady's waist called clipsome (p. 10)—or the shout of a mob "enormous" (p. 9)—or a fit, lightsome;—or that a hero's nose is "lightsomely brought ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... singers. Du Bellay is perhaps the most interesting of the Pleiad, 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 ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... always shaved for nothing, in consideration of the fact that his wife supported him with board money, and the barber had an undefined conviction that it was mean to take it back after he had just paid it. Amidon was a notorious talker, and was called a very "dry sort of man," which, in the village vernacular, signified that he ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the forest, they met Athelstane the Thane powdering along the road in the direction of Rotherwood on his great dray-horse of a charger. "Good-by, good luck to you, old brick," cried the Prince, using the vernacular Saxon. "Pitch into those Frenchmen; give it 'em over the face and eyes; and I'll stop at home and take care ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all over her head; who answered indifferently to the name of William or Bill; whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the vernacular; who could act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight servants and two horses, their accounts and their diseases, and look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes—even after they had proposed to her and ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... mutilation. My wife gave much assistance in my hospital duties, often reaching and influencing those beyond me. I recall one poor fellow who was actually six months in dying from a very painful wound. Profanity appeared to be his vernacular, and in bitter protest at his fate, he would curse nearly every one and everything. Mrs. Roe's sympathy and attentions changed him very much, and he would listen quietly as long as she would read to him. Some of the hospital attendants, men and women, had good voices, and we organized ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... tracks the countless shadings of human thought, and their incarnation in the growths of speech, and seizes, in Comparative Philology, the universal affinities of the race: it passes in incessant review the stores of the mother tongue; it furnishes the constant clew to the meaning of the vernacular, a basis for the easy study of modern European languages, and a key to the terminology of science and art; it familiarizes intimately with many of the most remarkable monuments of genius and culture; and it imbues with the history, life, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... the thunderstorm and the finding of Rawdon's remains; and, now that all sympathy in the latter was forfeited, many a one would gladly have gone to the sinking man who fired the shot to tell him, in his own vernacular, that Grinstuns had ceased from troubling. But few dared intrude upon the stillness of his chamber, from the door of which Marjorie had to be carried bodily away. The villain dead, the treasure and papers recovered, Matilda Nagle in her right mind, confidence ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... in his own unassisted weakness, at such a distance from us all, I should not be surprised to hear that he had constituted himself the lord and master of some blue-eyed fraeulein with whom he could not exchange a dozen words in her own vernacular, and had become a dis-respectable pater familias at nineteen. In the midst of all the worry and anxiety which these considerations occasion, we are living here a most unsettled, flurried life of divided work and pleasure. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... been accustomed to regard with affectionate veneration the life-work of the Reformers, and the theology of the Reformation. Of a later date, and in our own vernacular, we have inherited from the Puritans an indigenous theology, great in quantity and precious in kind,—a legacy that has enriched our age more, perhaps, than the age is altogether willing to acknowledge. At various periods from the time of the Puritans to the present, our ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... regular use limited to literate minority), Mende (principal vernacular in the south), Temne (principal vernacular in the north), Krio (the language of the re-settled ex-slave population of the Freetown area ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... proposed his system of natural families, founded on a scientific basis, but naturally more difficult for the use of beginners. To obviate the matter Lamarck conceived and proposed the dichotomic method for the easy determination of species. No new species were described, and the work, written in the vernacular, was simply a guide to the indigenous plants of France, beginning with the cryptogams and ending with the flowering plants. A second edition appeared in 1780, and a third, edited and remodelled by A. P. De Candolle, and forming six volumes, appeared in 1805-1815. This was until within a ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... weight with them; they are never 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

... readers the most 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

... he exclaims, terms in the gaucho vernacular synonymous with "ostrich, be hanged!" adding, as he continues to gaze hopelessly around, "I wish I'd let the long-legged brute go its way. Like as not, it'll hinder me going mine, till too late. And if so, there'll be a pretty tale to tell! ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... her being grown up she became more prudent than other children of the same age, she paid every affectionate attention to her affectionate and esteemed father in every thing where her ability allowed; she was well educated in the vernacular Siamese literature which she commenced to study when she was 3 years old, and in last year she commenced to study in the English School where the schoolmistress, Lady L—— has observed that she was more skillful than the other royal Children, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... research unequalled in mediaeval literature. His other principal works were the "Konunga-bok," or chronicle of the kings of Norway, and the "Islendinga-bok," or description of Iceland.[247] Ari's books, written not in monkish Latin, but in a good vigorous vernacular, were a mine of information from which all subsequent Icelandic historians were accustomed to draw such treasures as they needed. To his diligence and acumen they were all, from Snorro Sturlason down, very ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... you cut in the politics of this state?" inquired the colonel, dropping into the vernacular of the politician, too angry to deal ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... broadest vernacular dialect, as, indeed, was everything that dropped from the fishermen's lips. We take the liberty of modifying it a little, believing that strict fidelity here would entail inevitable loss of sense to many ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... part of their daily lives. And so, naturally, the older noel writers without any thought of anachronism, and the modern writers by poetic instinct made complete their translation of the story of the Nativity into their vernacular by transferring its ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... contained in the several books of the Old Testament, there is no other work extant, ancient or modern, which exhibits at one view a regular and chronological panorama of a PEOPLE, described in rapid succession by different writers, through so many ages, in their own vernacular LANGUAGE. Hence it may safely be considered, nor only as the primaeval source from which all subsequent historians of English affairs have principally derived their materials, and consequently the criterion by which they are to be judged, but also ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... boys, in which we are told that "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the commentator, called his boy, etc. Cortina," (vernacular for Cortona, probably,) "a renowned painter, was nicknamed, etc., etc. When the mother of Sheridan once, etc., etc. One teacher sent Chatterton home, etc. Napoleon and Wellington, etc., etc. And Sir Walter Scott was named," etc., etc., etc. All of which makes very pleasantly diversified reading. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... flaring antagonism had burnt itself out. And when Hogarty spoke it was once more in his smoothly perfect, delightfully measured, best professor-of-English style, for all that his opening remark was couched in the vernacular. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... this time over seventy years of age his mind was notably clear, orderly and active, and his talk (usually a carefully constructed monologue) was stately, formal and precise. He used no slang, and retained scarcely a word of his boyhood's vernacular. The only emotional expression he permitted himself was a chuckle of glee over an intellectual misstatement or a historical bungle. Novels, theaters, music ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... that of the later Empire, and also in virtue of the intense and eager care with which mediaeval scholars studied all that they possessed of ancient literature. The relation of the art of the Middle Ages to the ancient world was quite different. There was no continuity between the vernacular poetry of the Middle Ages and that of the ancient world, and while there was a certain continuity in architecture and in mosaic painting, this amounted to little more than that the mediaeval artists took the formal structure ...
— Progress and History • Various

... small, hilly farm. He had inherited his rugged acres from his father, had always lived upon them, and the feeling had grown strong with the lapse of time that he could live nowhere else. Yet he knew that he was, in the vernacular of the region, "going down-hill." The small savings of years were slowly melting away, and the depressing feature of this truth was that he did not see how he could help himself. He was not a sanguine man, but rather one endowed with a hard, practical ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... 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

... imprisoned, and narrowly escaped the persecuting violence of his Superior, Patrick Hepburn, Prior of St. Andrews, in the year 1529. Alesse has the merit of being among the first who contended for the translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular tongue. He died at Leipzig on the 17th of ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... attach herself to another sect, he had only a jocular word of surprise to say concerning her odd fancy for "those noisy Methodists." He had a true German fondness for old ways and settled customs, and to the end of his days spoke only his own vernacular. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... total lack of tall trunks, frills, and curling-kids. Driven by the oestrum of a Yo-Semite pilgrimage, the San-Francisco belle forsakes (the Western vernacular is "goes back on") her back-hair, abandons her capillary "waterfalls" for those of the Sierra, and, like John Phoenix's old lady who had her whole osseous system removed by the patent tooth-puller, departs, leaving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... gave the freest vent to his emotions. Some of the heart-glow which makes the exhilaration of Burns's poems infectious is found in his songs, but they are generally so entirely French that its scope is limited in a way that the Scotch poet's, despite his vernacular, was not. The Frenchman's sympathy is always with the harder side of life. In the 'Songs of the Soldier' he plays on chords of steel. These verses resound with the blast of the bugle, the roll of the drum, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... most of the European languages; viz. all that are in Hutter's Bible, which he made use of. The Latin and Greek he understood critically; the oriental languages, which never were vernacular in this part of the world, he thought the use of them would not answer the time and pains of learning them; yet had so great a veneration for the matrix of them, viz. the Hebrew, consecrated to the oracles of God, that he was not content to be totally ignorant of it; though very little ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... Next to them come Bibles, of which an enormous issue took place before the middle of the fourteenth century. These are followed by an endless series of books of Hours, which, as the sixteenth century is reached, appear in several vernacular languages. Those in English, being both very rare and of great importance in liturgical history, are of a value altogether out of proportion to the beauty of their illuminations. Side by side with this succession are the Evangelistina, which, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... missionary's) only in time to see through the open door an Igorot boy, stark naked save gee-string and a little open coat, passing the plate. Father Clapp has been here seven years, has compiled a Bontok-English Dictionary, and translated the Gospel of Saint Mark into the vernacular. As already said, he has a school, a sort of hospital; is building a stone church; is full of his work, and deserves the warmest support. It must be very hard to get at what is going on behind the eyes of his native parishioners. ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... awa', speak on; perge, puer, as a body may say," interrupted the major, who seemed resolved to show what command of language he had, for he uniformly began his speeches in his vernacular, and translated them, though with an effort, into English, or any other tongue he chanced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... letters of T. E. Brown. Do you know anything about him? He was a Manxman by birth, a fellow of Oriel, a Clifton Master for many years, and at the end of his life a Manxman again—he held a living there. He wrote some spirited tales in verse, in the Manx vernacular, and he was certainly a poet at heart. He was fond of music, and a true lover of nature. He had a genius for friendship, and evidently had the gift of inspiring other people; high-minded and intelligent men speak of him, in the little memoir that precedes the letters, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... subject of proverbs generally; but we are compelled to agree with Motherwell, when he says that this writer's rendering of the Scottish dialect is "most barbarous;" nor do we wonder that it excited the profound contempt of Allan Ramsay, who, from his thorough knowledge of the Scottish vernacular, was openly indignant at the reputation gained by Kelly's work, and made a collection himself, which was published at Edinburgh in 1763. In a sensible but pedantic preface, which he addressed to the "Tenantry ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... she has displayed less of her infinite wisdom than is usual. Could rotary levers be substituted for two of the limbs, agreeably to the improvement in my new order of phalangacrura, which might be rendered into the vernacular as lever-legged, there would be a delightful perfection and harmony in the construction. But, as the quadruped is now formed, I call it a mere vagary of nature; no other ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Paul and Charles Purdy. They had not been asked to dance the German since they had made no special friends among the first classmen. Peggy and Polly were to dance it, one with Dick Allyn, the other with his room-mate, Calhoun Byrd, who, in Bancroft's vernacular "spooned on Ralph" and had always considered Polly "a clipper." Juno was to go with Guy Bennett, Nelly, Rosalie, Marjorie and Natalie had, alack! to look on from the ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... long regretted the want of a system to explain the grammar of our vernacular tongue, on plain, rational, and consistent principles, in accordance with philosophy and truth, and in a way to be understood and practised by ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... some." A large majority of the new men of the fleet come from farms, especially from the Middle West. More than 90 per cent of the seamen are native-born, and on any ship may be heard the Southern drawl, the picturesque vernacular of the lower East or West side of New York City, the twang of New England, the rising intonation of the Western Pennsylvanian, and that indescribable vocal cadence that comes only from ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... 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

... the disappearance of the slave and the mere labourer from the modern conception of what is necessary in the state, there has now come about an extension of this initiation to the whole of our English-speaking population. And in addition to reading and writing the vernacular, there is also almost universally in schools instruction in counting, and wherever there is a coinage, in the values and simpler computation ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... translation he would not in the least recognize it. The fact is, Mr. Tippengray, I do not believe that your method of Greek pickling will answer to preserve our fiction for the future. It may do for histories and scientific work, but when you come to dialect and vernacular, if you once get it into Greek you can never get it back again ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... already taken the liberty of putting the thoughts of his betters into words, we must now do so for him; and, if he had expressed his thoughts in his own vernacular as he rubbed the hack's ears in the stable, his speech would have been ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... Christian life must be infused into his character. To the Christian public, all other questions subordinate themselves to this, and this needs, not speculation, but hard work; legislation cannot do it, the church must; time will not do it, Christian teaching and example alone can. The vernacular question, so much agitated recently, is important only as it may hinder ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various

... humorous writer interlarding his picture of a French incident with the occasional interjection of Parlez-vous Francais? Yet the comic writers of Paris imagine that they show wit when they pepper their comments with disjointed, irrelevant, and misspelt ejaculations in our vernacular. We have a friend here (we have made dozens) who has a cat she calls To-be—the godfather being 'To-be or not to be! 'All right' appears daily as a witticism; 'Oh, yes!' serves for the thousandth time ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... curious similarity in the vernacular ideology of districts so remote? Are all the versions from one original, distributed by the wandering minstrels, and in course of time adapted to new localities and dialects? and, if so, whence came the original, from England or Scotland? Here is a nut for DR. RIMBAULT, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... utterance. Many sang, regardless of time or melody, the tilbiye they had hideously vocalized in their advance toward the city. For the most part, however, the effort at expression spent itself in a long cry, literally rendered—"Thou hast called me—I am here! I am here!" The deliverance was in the vernacular of the devotee, and low or loud, shrill or hoarse, according to the intensity of the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... Artemus Ward and Bret Harte, he first found free play for his comic intransigeance in the broad freedom of the journal for the masses. Brilliant as he was, Artemus Ward seemed most effective only when he spoke in weird vernacular through the grotesque mouthpiece of his own invention. Bret Harte sacrificed more and more of the native flavour of his genius in his progressive preoccupation with the more sophisticated refinements of the purely ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... palace were having a good time, and were gaily engaged in sowing the whirlwind, with a sublime disregard for the storm, which it would be theirs to reap, when the King returned to punish. As the vernacular proverb has it, the cat and the roast, the tinder and the spark, and a boy and a girl are ill to keep asunder; and consequently my friends about the palace were often in trouble, by reason of their love affairs, even when ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... Speech in any vernacular—and Wee Willie Winkie had a colloquial acquaintance with three—was easy to the boy who could not yet manage his ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... Testaments, and in it we find an account of his labors in Biblical Literature. He did more in laying open the holy mysteries of the gospel to the perusal of the laity, by translating them into the Saxon tongue, than any other before him. He gave them, in a vernacular version, the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Esther, Job, Judith, two Books of Maccabees, and a portion of the Book of Kings, and it is for these labors, above all others, that the bible student will venerate his name, but he will look, perhaps, anxiously, hopefully, to these early attempts ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... 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

... less universal language, because the best company in any nation will usually have some knowledge of French, and this tempts one to remain on neutral ground and be lazy. But the best company in Fayal was so much less interesting than the peasantry, that some of us persevered in studying the vernacular. To be sure, one finds English spoken by more of the peasants than of the small aristocracy of the island, so many of the former have spent some years in American whale-ships, and come back to settle down with their savings in their native village. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... mother tongue, they necessarily acquired an artificial and formal style, which, not so much through the merit of a few as owing to the perseverance of others, who for half a century seated themselves on the bench of criticism, has almost superseded the vernacular English of Addison and Swift. Our journals, indeed, have been the great corrupters of our style, and continue to be so, and not for this reason only. Men who write in newspapers, and magazines, and ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular: - "Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten." (" No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... hardly repress a smile at this torrent of eloquence gushing from such a bit of a fellow, which sounded specially out of place here, where the ryots are given to stating their profoundly vital wants in plain and direct vernacular, of which even the more unusual words get sadly twisted out of shape. The clerks and ryots, however, seemed duly impressed, and likewise envious, as though deploring their parents' omission to endow them with so splendid a means of appealing ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... have learnt from 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 pills are made of the refuse; your female servants use aniline dyes; ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... 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 adoption ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... the lapidary style of ancient Rome, I confess it is often hard to improve on the brevity of the vernacular, though the admonition "to keep your end up" can be condensed from four words to two in "sursum cauda." Again the familiar eulogy, "Stout fellow," can be rendered in a single word by the Virgilian epithet "bellipotens." A distinguished Latinist recalls in this context the sentiment ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various

... had long been outgrown, but its vernacular continued to be the speech and to express the thought "of the world and among the vulgar," as the quaint, old novelist puts it, just as to-day the novel intended for the consumption of the unenlightened ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... 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 cultivated. Ibid. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... exhorted the clergy and nobles to employ care and diligence thereon, a fact corroborated by Mary of Guise herself, in a paper, soon to be quoted, of July 1559. {88c} They ask, as they have the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular, for common prayers in the same. They wish for freedom to interpret and discuss the Bible "in our conventions," and that Baptism and the Communion may be done in Scots, and they demand the reform of the detestable lives of the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... change hands, and the proceeds were to have been applied so that Frenchmen should not be deprived of the satisfaction of exploring the treasures of the Mecanique Celeste through the medium of the vernacular tongue. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... enough glad to see you, Mr. Champeen-of-the-World," Kirby answered, falling into the easy vernacular of the outdoor country. "Come to the big town to spend that thousand dollars you won ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... they were or why they interested her. And now—he had almost seen her do it—she had shifted her position, come over to Connie Edward's side, and was gazing over her shoulder, with her own brown head tilted a little on one ear, and was saying in Connie's vernacular: ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... Thomson and Beattie, had written in Southern English, and, as Carlyle said, in vacuo, that is, with nothing specially national in their work. Burns's sweet though rugged Doric first secured the vernacular poetry of his country a hearing beyond the border. He had, to be sure, a whole literature of popular songs and ballads behind him, and his immediate models were Allan Ramsay and Robert Ferguson; but these remained ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... which these stories are presented is the language in which they were collected and written down,—English. Perhaps no apology is required for not printing the vernacular herewith; nevertheless an explanation might be made. In the first place, the object in recording these tales has been a literary one, not a linguistic one. In the second place, the number of distinctly different languages represented by the originals ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... away his time he is safe enough; but Wayne is Wayne, colonel, and I've known him to go poking off on side scouts and losing time 'topogging' over pretty country when he ought to have been making tracks for home." (Stannard would use the vernacular of the frontier when at all excited.) "Now it would be just like Wayne to have lost a day in just such a manner. I ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... his love of children. His right elbow rests upon a table, and the slender bejewelled fingers are listlessly pressing open a lettered scroll of parchment on which can be deciphered the words "A CHI T'HA FIGLIATO" (to her who bare thee)—a legend which the bibliographer, whose acquaintance with the vernacular was not on a level with his classical attainments, conjectured to be some fashionable courtly toast ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... of 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

... shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:—'Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten' ('No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... fact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, it is no matter—probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the landmark in my memory which tells me where I first encountered the vigorous new vernacular of the occidental plains ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... are thoroughly unprogressive and unpractical. Plato is to him the 'exhaustive generalizer,' beyond whom it is folly to aspire, and by whose stature he measures the nations. Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, Bruno, are only brisk young men translating into the vernacular wittily his good things. St. Augustine, Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg also 'say after him.' Emerson either addresses men whose ignorance he greatly exaggerates, or else the ideal men of some centuries hence. His mission ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... 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 verse are colored with the love of battle and ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... the use of field preachers. But worse, by a great deal, and not even intelligible in England, is the word thereafter, used as an adverb of time, i.e., as the correlative of hereafter. Thereafter, in pure vernacular English, bears a totally different sense. In 'Paradise Lost,' for instance, having heard the character of a particular angel, you are told that he spoke thereafter, i.e., spoke agreeably to that character. 'How a score of sheep, Master Shallow?' ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... approaching very near to the word "heifer" (from the Saxon) in these, but especially in the last of the above terms? They seem to me to be identical. The introduction of the sound of y between the sounds of v and ur, is not uncommon in the vernacular or corrupted pronunciation of many words; nay, it is sanctioned by general usage, in "behaviour" from "behave," "Saviour" from "save," &c. If the words are identical, still the history of the appropriation of the one to ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various

... her big baby face, already quite definitely marked with her sex, came in so funnily atop that she got clear away from all my power of similes and resembled nothing in the world but Nellie in masquerade. Then there was Robinet in a white night gown, old woman's cap (mutch, in my vernacular), snuff-box and crutch doubled up and yet leaping and gyrating about the floor with incredible agility; and lastly, Mademoiselle in a sort of elderly walking-dress and with blue spectacles. And all this incongruous impossible world went tumbling and dancing and going ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 obliges ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... propriety would fall off, like many-colored sumach-leaves after the first hard frost. I began to feel myself slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently chilly. I tried to tell a story, but had to mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air around me that parts of it were too vernacular and emphatic; and then, as a man who is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw off the spell, and finds his brain beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be slightly insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly improper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... was low 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 specimen ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... while centuries necessarily intervened between Homer and the "Father of History," a generation sufficed between Dante and Boccaccio, for Italian literature had only to throw off the leaden garb of Latin form to find its new dress in the vernacular. Dante certainly wrote Italian prose, but he was more at ease in verse; and while the latter provoked in him an abundance of those happy phrases which seem to have been born with the thought they express, and which pass into the familiar stock of imagery of all later time, the prose of the 'Convito' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... of all this—though he would have worded it very differently in the vernacular of passing fashion—Ormiston perceived. She was unbroken by that which had occurred, and for this he was thankful. But she was another woman to her who had greeted him in pretty apology an hour ago. Yet, even recognising this, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... the main subject. Oriental books we do not even touch upon, and vernacular books in English or French have to take a secondary place; and we may treat first of the Greek, for it is by far the most compact division. In the case of both Greek and Latin books we shall ask where and when they were chiefly made, when and ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... Philip, laughing. "Oh, go on, my friend. Don't say 'sir' to me; it's a badge of servitude pasted onto the vernacular. Say ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... describe the blue-magpie in detail. It is impossible to mistake it. Even a blind man cannot fail to notice it because of its loud ringing call. East of Simla the red-billed species is by far the commoner, while to the west the yellow-billed form rules the roost. The vernacular names for the blue-magpie are Nilkhant at ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... 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

... out!" cried Anka, rejoicing in her command of the vernacular. "Sure, Paulina is no good, you bet; but see, look at her house—dere is no Rutenian house like dat, so beeg. Ah!" she continued rapturously, "you come an' see me and Jacob dance de 'czardas,' wit Arnud on de cymbal. Dat Arnud he's come from de old country, an' ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... 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 study of the writers of polite antiquity, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... dead one ought!—Surely detestable enough.—To all which Margaret listened with much good nature; though of course with sad reflections not a few.*—She is coming back to us, she promises. Her dialect is very vernacular,—extremely exotic in the London climate. If she do not gravitate too irresistibly towards that class of New-Era people (which includes whatsoever we have of prurient, esurient, morbid, flimsy, and in fact pitiable and unprofitable, and is at a sad discount among men of sense), she may ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... around and break his face?" he demanded angrily, lapsing into graphic vernacular. The suggestion was obviously too absurd to need reply. "I 'd like to get my hands on the young whelp," he went on, squaring his shoulders. "I would n't leave a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... there's any game on, she'd better take care," he cried, relapsing, in his excitement, into the convict vernacular. "She knows me. Tell her that I've got my eyes on her. Let her remember her bargain. If she runs any rigs on me, let her take care." In his suspicious wrath he so savagely and unwarily struck downwards with the open pen-knife that it shut upon his fingers, and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... he opened the hall door, "I am going around to the Supreme Court rooms. In five minutes you may step into the inner office, and inform the lady who is waiting there that"— here Lawyer Gooch made use of the vernacular—"that there's ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... old lady needed but little incentive. Her thoughts flowed freely in a quaint, sweet vernacular that savored of the meeting- house. I was both interested and charmed, and as we rode at a quiet jog through the June sunlight felt that I was in the hands of a kindly fate that, in accordance with the old fairy tales, was bent on giving one poor ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... of the season they had prospected up along the river, finding gold all the way, but not in quantities sufficiently large to warrant working. At the place, however, which they subsequently named Chihuahua (pronounced in the vernacular Chee-waw-waw) the perspicacious Jones had given it as his opinion, formed after mature deliberation and a sapient examination of some two or three shovelsful of dirt, that there was a satisfactory "color in that ar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... the polls to register his vote. He has not done much more than this since his inception. His work alone has sufficed, for him, at least, though the time is past when he can bury himself in his professional work and, in the vernacular, get away with it. Men of the stamp of Herbert Hoover have demonstrated the very great need for men of scientific training in public affairs. Such places heretofore have been filled with business men and lawyers. These men served and served ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton

... interpretation 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] Audley, no doubt, considered that interest was nothing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... than myself of the language, set me to committing to memory the whole of Andrews' Latin Grammar. I gained the important information that "sto, fido, confido, assuesco, and preditus" govern the ablative, and other valuable lore; but when I asked the teacher where the Latin vernacular came in, she replied that that would come to me later—that I must "open my mouth and shut my eyes while she gave me something to make me wise." A solemn awe not unmixed with envy pervaded the schoolroom as I, parrot-like, rattled off this valueless jargon ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss



Words linked to "Vernacular" :   smashed, jacking off, nookie, slam-bang, swiz, power trip, screwing, wog, cock sucking, chink, baby, runty, nick, white trash, 'hood, soused, drool, Injun, loaded, babe, big money, hoof, can-do, good egg, hooey, tosh, greaseball, rip-off, deck, ass, nooky, poor white trash, bad egg, blotto, Black Vernacular English, non-standard speech, tripe, Jerry, wet, corporation, kike, sawn-off, rhyming slang, besotted, burnup, heebie-jeebies, tripper, tight, jargon, play hooky, boffin, pile, honkie, stuff and nonsense, spik, the shits, dekko, wank, shlockmeister, clean, screw, bundle, slant-eye, caff, bunghole, sloshed, square, street name, asshole, skin flick, butch, paleface, shag, hymie, cert, tommyrot, stroppy, bosh, boloney, honky, out-and-outer, pong, niff, informal, Black Vernacular, sawed-off, plastered, honkey, vulgar, shlock, heist, poppycock, stuff, arsehole, nosh-up, rubbish, crocked, plumb, fuddled, pip out, whitey, soaked, gat, mean, bilgewater, squiffy, Kraut, uncool, freaky, gook, plum, African American Vernacular English, some, cockeyed, juice, spic, pissed, Mickey Finn



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