Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Noun   /naʊn/   Listen
Noun

noun
1.
A content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action.
2.
The word class that can serve as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or in apposition.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Noun" Quotes from Famous Books



... termed the doctrine of the Trinity. This word is not found in Scripture, but the truth which it expresses is set forth there, dimly in the Old Testament, distinctly in the New. In the first chapter of Genesis the word "God" is in the Hebrew a plural noun, and yet it is used with a singular verb, thus early seeming to intimate what afterwards is clearly made known, that there is a plurality of Persons, who yet constitute the one living and true God. The ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... 'Quarterly'), the 'Westminster Review,' promises an early paper with passing words of high praise. What vexed me a little in one or two of the journals was an attempt made to fix me in a school, and the calling me a follower of Tennyson for my habit of using compound words, noun-substantives, which I used to do before I knew a page of Tennyson, and adopted from a study of our old English writers, and Greeks and even Germans. The custom is so far from being peculiar to Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and Leigh Hunt ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... Indiana, with her terrible husband, whose crimes against her and nature even reach the abominable pitch of declaring himself ready to shoot expected poachers and possible burglars; her creole maid and foster-sister "Noun," who disguises herself in Indiana's garments and occupies her room, receives there a lover who is afterwards her mistress's, but soon commits suicide; the lover himself, a most appalling "tiger," as his own time ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... is an instrument of production," they say. That is true. But when, changing the noun into an adjective, they alter the phrase, thus, "The land is a productive instrument," they ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... Originally a phrase meaning "the cloud-omen hangs," has come to be used as the proper name of a place. It is an instance of a form of personification often employed by the Hawaiians, in which words having a specific meaning—such, for instance, as our "jack-in-the-box"—have come to be used as a noun for the sake of the meaning wrapped up in the etymology. This figure of speech is, no doubt, common to all languages, markedly so in the Hawaiian. It may be further illustrated by the Hebrew ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... in a philosophical language. Suppose the word is brabo. The final o shows it to be a noun. The monosyllabic root shows it to be concrete. The initial b shows it to be in the animal category. The subsequent letters give subdivisions of the animal kingdom, till the word is narrowed down by its form to membership of one small class of animals. The other members of the class will ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... sentences in my diary seemed even more wanting in connection. Conjunctions would not join, nor any therefores and wherefores tie the sentences. It was merely chance that I landed a verb in the right place, and did not altogether lose the noun. I seemed to know what I wanted to say but it would not form itself on the pen, and what I wrote one day I had an infinite disrelish for the next. I have heard something in my time about rising upon our dead selves. I know of nothing ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

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

... A NOUN or name that means but one, Is called in the singular number; But when it stands for more than ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... modern writers regard kind as singular. Shakespeare treated it as a plural noun, as "These kind of knaves ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... read pretty well, so my tooter says. I've been studyin' geography and grammar also. I've made such astonishin' progress that I can tell a noun from a conjunction as far away as I can see 'em. Tell Mr. Munroe that if he wants an accomplished teacher in his school, he can send for me, and I'll come on by the very next train. Or, if he wants to sell out for a hundred dollars, I'll buy the whole concern, and agree ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger

... we had a Tupper epidemic, and everyone grew busy writing blank verse—very blank. Then came an epidemic of Carlyle, and everyone wrote turgid, involved, twisted and breakneck sentences, each noun with as many verbs as Brigham Young had wives. Then followed a romantic craze, and everyone struggled to combine religion and romance, with frequent punches at religion, and we prided ourselves on being sceptical and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... earlier days were wont to refer me to an earlier source of the idea; which does not, however, appear to have occurred to your Lordship's mind—else the reference to the authority of Liddell and Scott, for the significance of the noun [Greek: pleonektes], ought to have been made also for that of the verb [Greek: epithumeo] And your Lordship's frankness in referring me to the instances of your own practice in the disposal of your income, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... pro'noun u'ni ty syn'the sis sub scribe' pro pel' u'ni form syl'la ble suf'fix pro duce' u'ni corn sym'pa thy sup press' pro vide' u'ni val ve syn tac'tic ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... tra, which is translated by deliver (or preserve, WILSON, in voce) is a common ending of many words, without the peculiar signification of delivering: as with this final syllable on the word Pu, to be pure, is formed the noun Puwitra, pure. WILKINS, Grammar, p. 454; KOSEGARTEN. The affix with which this last is formed however, is not tra, but itra, and it affords therefore no ground of objection to the usual etymology ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman

... said. "—Do you give it up?—When she's a north wind. When she's a Roman emperor. When she's an iceberg. When she's a brass tiger.—There! that'll do. Good-bye, mother, for the present! I mayn't know much, as she's always telling me, but I do know that a noun is not a thing, nor ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... use the adverb because an adverb enhances the verb and is active, whereas the adjective simply loads down the noun. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... ideas, and my father is not agriculturist, nor working class; he is of the Kayeth caste; but he had not the advantage of a collegiate education, and he does not know much of the Congress. It is a movement for the educated young-man" -connecting adjective and noun in ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling

... F, l, and s at the end of a monosyllable after a single vowel are commonly doubled. The exceptions are the cases in which s forms the plural or possessive case of a noun, or third person singular of the verb, and the following words: clef, if, of, pal, sol, as, gas, has, was, yes, gris, his, is, thus, us. L is not doubled at the end of words of more than one syllable, as ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... from Barber's statements seemed at all familiar to their ears; but Mr. White obtained a vocabulary which showed that their language was nearly the same as that of the aborigines at Wallamoul; the only difference being the addition of na to each noun, as namil for mil, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... know the young man?" asked the Judge, on whom the compound noun for some cause produced ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... is [Hebrew]. It was probably pronounced Ya-kayan, and meant, as a verbal noun, He that strengthens; and thence, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... a sound that consists from the loungs." "A participle is a form of a verb partaking of the nature of an adjective or a noun and expressing action or human ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various

... of a noun may be partly due to frequent association with disparaging adjectives. Thus hussy, i.e. housewife, quean,[59] woman, wench, child, have absorbed such adjectives as impudent, idle, light, saucy, etc. Shakespeare ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... are taken line by line from the works of various popular writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The people who do the work merely substitute adjectives and adverbs. Occasionally, I'm told, a more daring hack will substitute a verb, or even a noun. But that is rare. The editors of such periodicals frown ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... causes to sprout, or him who has sprouted forth from the Lord, i.e., the Son of God. Against the latter interpretation it is objected by Hoffmann (Weissagung und Erfuellung. Th. 1, S. 214): "[Hebrew: cmH] is an intransitive verb, so that [Hebrew: cmH] may be as well connected with a noun which says, who causes to sprout forth, as with one which says, whence the thing sprouts forth. Now it is quite obvious that, in the passage before us, the former case applies, and not the latter, inasmuch as one cannot say that something, or even some one, sprouts forth from ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost always do mean something, and this helps to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Hanover, some of the brown, that is, the German or Norway rats, were first brought over to this country in some timber, as is said; and being much stronger than the black, or till then, the common rats, they in many places quite extirpated the latter. The word, both the noun and the verb "to rat," was first levelled at the converts to the government of George the First, but has by degrees obtained a wider meaning, and come to be applied to any sudden and mercenary change in politics. The ravages of rats might form the subject of a curious volume. ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... exists. Truth—with a small T is a description, a relationship. A way to describe a statement. A semantic tool. But capital T Truth is an imaginary word, a noise with no meaning. It pretends to be a noun but it has no referent. It stands for nothing. It means nothing. When you say 'I believe in Truth' you are really ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... but we would humbly suggest to her that one does not hear anything bend, unless it be of a creaking nature, like an old tree, and that is rather opposed to one's idea of "silences," vague as our notions of that plural noun are. Why one "silence" could not serve her turn is one of those Dundrearyan conundrums that no fellow can find out. And, while we are about it, we should like to know whether it is the silences or the loneliness or "we" that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... placed before a noun, is the possessive pronoun, as the second person, thy or thine, and xul, means end, termination. It is also the name of the sixth month of the Maya calendar. Axul would therefore be thy end. Among all ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... with which he selected the active participle of the verb to flow, as the name for the undulations of this fluid; for the primary meaning of the Hebrew verb ar is, to flow, or, when used as a noun, a flood. "It shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt."[257] And of the like import are the nouns, iar and aur, formed from it. "Who is this that covereth up like a flood, whose waters are moved like the rivers?"[258] The philosopher, even though ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... syllable of the first line of the poem, does duty for hi, signifying "ebb," and for hikata, "dry beach." S['e][:i]zoro[:e] is a noun signifying "battle-array"—in the sense of the Roman term acies;—and s['e][:i]zoro['e] shit['e] means "drawn ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

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

... the same form as the simple verb. The verb, by altering its function, is used as a noun; as in the expressions, "a long run" "a ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... 7, 8 and the first line of 9. I have followed the exact order of the original. The peculiarity of the Sanskrit construction is that the Nominative Pronoun is made to stand in apposition with a noun in the objective case. The whole of this Section contains ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... its head 'podesta' or 'power' should be the standard-bearer of justice; and its council or parliament composed of charitable men, or good men: "boni viri," in the sense from which the French formed their noun 'bonte.' ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... know it. I saw him. And I refused to stand up and be a man. I let the Swede fight it out alone. And you—you were simply puffing around the place and wanting to fight. And then old Scully himself! We are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even a noun. He is kind of an adverb. Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually there are from a dozen to forty women really involved in every murder, but in this case it seems ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... look at a king; and upon this or that out-of-the-way point a writer may presume to be more knowing than his reader—the serf may undertake to convert his lord. The reader is a great being—a great noun-substantive; but still, like a mere adjective, he is liable to the three degrees of comparison. He may rise above himself—he may transcend the ordinary level of readers, however exalted that level be. Being great, he may become greater. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... 'em; She proved it somehow out of sacred song, But I must leave the proofs to those who've seen 'em; But this I heard her say, and can't be wrong, And all may think which way their judgments lean 'em, "'T is strange—the Hebrew noun which means 'I am,' The English always use ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... blessed to think of the recognising of lost and loved ones. But all these blessednesses, heaped together, as it seems to me, would become sickeningly the same if prolonged through eternity, unless we had God for our very own. Eternal is an awful word, even when the noun that goes with it is blessedness. And I know not how even the redeemed could be saved, as the long ages rolled on, from the oppression of monotony, and the feeling, 'I would not live always,' unless God was 'the strength of their hearts, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... not white and pink as milk and roses. Victor Hugo, who discovered the child of modern poetry, never omits the touch of description; the word blond is as inevitable as any epithet marshalled to attend its noun in a last-century poet's dictionary. One would not have it away; one can hear the caress with which the master pronounces it, "making his mouth," as Swift did for his "little language." Nor does the customary adjective fail in later literature. It was dear to the Realist, and it ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell

... primitive conceptions and ideas. Some traces of the earliest form of language can still be discerned. Thus of Santali Sir G. Grierson states: "Every word can perform the function of a verb, and every verbal form can, according to circumstances, be considered as a noun, an adjective or a verb. It is often simply a matter of convenience which word is considered as a noun and which as an adjective ... Strictly speaking, in Santali there is no real verb as distinct from the other classes ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... which your English has no word or phrasing. It is a quality of the utmost ... anyway, it is a quality of which Doctor Cummings has very much. When working together, we will ... scan? No. Perceive? No. Sense? No, not exactly. You will have to learn our word 'peyondire'—that is the verb, the noun being 'peyondix'—and come to know its meaning by doing it. The Larry also instructed me to explain, if you ask, how I got ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... existing to this day as a monument of their former existence; for the Ottawas and Chippewas named this little island "Mi-shi-ne-macki-nong" for memorial sake of those their former confederates, which word is the locative case of the Indian noun "Michinemackinawgo." Therefore, we contend, this is properly where the name ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... is as nearly as possible perfect. You think of Horace as you read; and you think of those among our own eighteenth century poets to whom Horace was an inspiration and an example. The epithet is usually so just that it seems to have come into being with the noun it qualifies; the metaphor is mostly so appropriate that it leaves you in doubt as to whether it suggested the poem or the poem suggested it; the verb is never in excess of the idea it would convey; the effect of it all is that 'something has here got itself uttered,' and for ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... race fast decaying,—specimen of the true fine gentleman, ere the word "dandy" was known, and before "exquisite" became a noun substantive,—let me here pause to describe thee! Sir Sedley Beaudesert was the contemporary of Trevanion and my father; but without affecting to be young, he still seemed so. Dress, tone, look, manner,—all ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... said there was analogy between 'em; She proved it somehow out of sacred song, But I must leave the proofs to those who 've seen 'em; But this I heard her say, and can't be wrong And all may think which way their judgments lean 'em, ''T is strange—the Hebrew noun which means "I am," The English ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... a pressure or oppression (priemere, hod. premere, to press or oppress, indicative used as a noun). The monk of course refers to the posture in which he had seen the abbot have to do with the girl, pretending to believe that he placed her on his own breast (instead of mounting on hers) out of a sentiment of humility ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... unfashionable at present, but has perhaps more to say for itself than modern critics are willing to allow. But Luke (xxi. 19) has a remarkable variation of the saying, for his version of it is, 'In your patience, ye shall win your souls.' His word 'patience' is a noun cognate with the verb rendered in Matthew and Mark 'endureth,' and to 'win one's soul' is obviously synonymous with being 'saved.' The saying cannot be limited, in any of its forms, to a mere securing of earthly life, for in this context it plainly includes those who have been delivered to death ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... bolnande priyde, swelling pride. 180 roly in-to e deuele[gh] rote man rynge[gh] bylyue, Roughly into the devil's throat man is thrust soon. 181 colwarde, deceitful, treacherous. I have not been able to meet with the word colle used as noun or verb in any writer of the 14th or 15th century. Col occurs, however, as a prefix, in Col-prophet (false prophet), Col-fox (crafty fox), used by Chaucer; Col-knyfe (treacherous knife), which ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... Indeed, it has but one conjugation, but with seven or eight variations, having the effect of as many different conjugations, and giving great variety of expression. The predominance of these modifications over the noun, the idea of time contained in the roots of almost all its verbs, so expressive and so picturesque, and even the scarcity of its prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs, make this language in its organic structure breathe life, vigor, and emotion. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Bantring and Shamming. Banter to chaff or make fun of, at this time a new slang word. It is almost certain that the verb, which came into use about 1670, was a full decade earlier than the noun. In 1688 the substantive 'Banter' was up-to-date slang. For the verb vide D'Urfey's Madam Fickle (1676), Act v, I, where Zechiel cries to his brother: 'Banter him, banter him, Toby. 'Tis a conceited old Scarab, and will yield us excellent sport—go ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... (Epist. lviii.) complains that even the of the Platonists (the ens of the bolder schoolmen) could not be expressed by a Latin noun.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... that I have stopped living haphazard. One can't go through a great deal of"—she missed out the noun—"without planning one's actions in advance. I am going to have a child in June, and in the first place conversations, discussions, excitement, are not good for me. I will go through them if necessary, but only then. In the second place I have no right to trouble ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... time, I came to e per se e, and com per se, and tittle; then I got to a, e, i, o, u; after, to Our Father; and, in the sixteenth year of my age, and the fifteenth of my going to school, I am in good time gotten to a noun, By the same token there my hose went down; Then I got to a verb, There I began first to have a beard; Then I came to iste, ista, istud, There my master whipped me till he fetched the blood, And so forth: so that now I am become the greatest scholar in the school, for I am ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

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

... be amiss to observe that the original term is gwyddfa but gwyddfa; being a feminine noun or compound commencing with g, which is a mutable consonant, loses the initial letter before y the definite article—you say Gwyddfa a tumulus, but not y ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... and Maya dialects, is ahau. Probably this is a compound of ah, a common prefix in these tongues, originally signifying person, and hence, when attached to a verb, conveying the notion of one accustomed to exercise the action indicated; to a noun of place, a resident there; and to a common noun, a worker in or owner of the article; and u, a collar, especially an ornamental collar, here intended as a badge of authority. Ahau is, therefore, "the wearer of the collar;" and by this distinction equivalent to chief, ruler, captain, ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton

... noun of course had referred merely to that small, high-bred, cosmopolitan class which presents types like Eleanor Burgoyne. And here came this girl, walking through his dream, to remind him of what 'woman,' average virtuous woman of the New or the Old World, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... very popular English word just making its place in America. The word is "swank." It is both noun and verb. One swanks when one swaggers. One puts on swank when one puts on side. And because I hold a brief for the English, and because I was fortunate enough to meet all sorts of English people, I want to say that there is very little swank among them. The example ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... by literalism," he says, 1st October 1883, "is literally translating each noun (in the long lists which so often occur) in its turn, so that the student ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... expressive the simple word can become in the hands of a master. Dante's verb and noun are now proverbial. As for Mr. Davidson, Gray's clear-cut lines in the Elegy can supply no more instances of perfect aptness than those which I quoted some time ago of the lark. Notice the ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... the time. Their use of verbs is different from ours, particularly in the subjunctive mood, and in conjugation generally. They did not follow our rule in reference to number. When the nominative was a plural noun, or several nouns, they often employ the connected verb in the singular number, and vice versa. They were inclined to make construction conform to the sense, rather than to the letter. It is not certain that their usage, in this particular, is wholly indefensible. Cicero, in his fifth oration ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... Turquet, 'by suppressing the budget of worship. We shall do this to satisfy the blockheads who are a noun ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... only two syllables of the title were visible; these two syllables were ALAND. What a sudden light flashed on my mind. ALAND was one of the words in the English document, one that hitherto we had translated a terre, and which must have been the termination of the proper noun, ZEALAND." ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... Kosovac (Serbian) adjective: Kosovar (Albanian), Kosovski (Serbian) note: Kosovan, a neutral term, is sometimes also used as a noun ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... curious philosophical traits of the Indian language. It is refreshing to find a person who, in reference to this language, knows the difference between the conjugation of a verb and the declension of a noun. There is a prospect, at least, of getting at the grammatical principles, by which they conjoin and build up words. It has been intolerable to me to converse with Indian traders and interpreters here, who have, for half their lives, been using a language without being able ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... The noun brosier, as Mr. Wilbraham indicates, seems to be derived from the old word brose, or, as we now say, bruise. A brosier would therefore mean a broken-down man, and therefore a bankrupt. The verb to brosier, as used at Eton, would easily be formed from the substantive. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various

... authority for being considered idiomatic, for does not "Pilgrim's Progress" tell us of the "Palace Beautiful?" And doubtless many other instances might be cited of the substitution of an adjective for a noun. At all events, the worthy owner, who built his house in the most approved style of former New England architecture, spacious, square, and with projecting windows in the roof, made some pretensions ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... in the ancient religions who were not initiated in the sacred rites or Mysteries of any deity were not permitted to enter the temple, but were compelled to remain outside, or in front of it. They were kept on the outside. The expression a profane is not recognized as a noun substantive in the general usage of the language; but it has been adopted as a technical term in the dialect of Freemasonry, in the same relative sense in which the word layman is used in the professions ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... school, but I looked at the master, and saw that he was a smooth, round ferule—or an improper noun—or a vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars. He gave me all my schooling. With him ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... "Ya Aba Sabir." There are five vocative particles in Arabic; "Ya," common to the near and far; "Aya" (ho!) and "Haya" (holla!) addressed to the far, and "Ay" and "A" (A-'Abda-llahi, O Abdullah), to those near. All govern the accusative of a noun in construction in the literary language only; and the vulgar use none but the first named. The English-speaking races neglect the vocative particle, and I never heard it except in the Southern States of the AngloAmerican UnionOh, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... 11. fantasmas: this noun is usually masculine, but is often feminine in popular speech. The distinction between the masculine and feminine meanings given in most dictionaries does not apply in Espronceda. He ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... Does it not seem strange to apply the dear old English noun, so redolent of peace, and quiet, and privacy, to the feverish life of a mummer? We go, night after night, to see our favourite players shining 'mid the fierce glare of the footlights, watch them approvingly as they pass from role to role, and finally begin to believe, like the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... lecture or sermon: we have, in common parlance, missed the hang of some detail or passage. What we have missed, in that lapse of attention, is a relation, the length and direction of a line, or the span of a musical interval, or, in the case of words, the references of noun and verb, the co-ordination of tenses of a verb. And it is such relations, more or less intricate and hierarchic, which transform what would otherwise be meaningless juxtapositions or sequences of sensations ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... must object to in your little book, and it recurs more than once—FADELESS is no genuine compound; loveless is, because love is a noun as well as verb, but what is a fade?—and I do not quite like whipping the Greek drama upon the back of "Genesis," page 8. I do not like praise handed in by disparagement: as I objected to a side censure on Byron, etc., in the lines on Bloomfield: with these ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... process may be explained to the whole at once, so that half an hour spent in that exercise, would enable a very large proportion of them to understand the subject. So, if a teacher is explaining to a class in Grammar, the difference between a noun and verb, the explanation would do as well for several hundred, as for the dozen who constitute the class, if arrangements could only be made to have the hundreds hear it. But there are, perhaps, only a hundred in the school, and of ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... the Virginian is a noun personal. It is the Virginian himself and something over. He loves Virginia per se and propter se: he loves her for herself and for himself—because she is Virginia, and—everything else beside. He loves to ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... is doubtful. The Micmac word Quoddy, Kady, or Cadie means simply a place or region and is properly used in conjunction with some other noun; as, for example, Pestum-oquoddy (Passamaquoddy), the place of pollocks." (Dawson and Hand, in ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich

... he, is Rome. Many a day have I been kept in school without my dinner because I was not able to parse thee idly by, Roma—Rome—noun of the first declension, feminine gender, that a quarter of a century ago caused me punishment, I have thee now literally under foot, and (knocking his cigar) throw ashes ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... figure which Shakspeare sometimes uses, delighted may mean delightful in the former sense; perhaps, rather, filled with delight. The word then would be formed directly from the noun, and must not be regarded as a participle at all, but rather an ellipsis, from which the verb (which may be represented by give, fill, endow, &c.) is omitted. Take, as an instance, this passage in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various

... less pure. So that when I speak of pure or empty space, it is not to be supposed that the word "space" stands for an idea distinct from or conceivable without body and motion—though indeed we are apt to think every noun substantive stands for a distinct idea that may be separated from all others; which has occasioned infinite mistakes. When, therefore, supposing all the world to be annihilated besides my own body, I say there still remains pure Space, thereby nothing else is meant but only that I conceive ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... word is an adjective, formed with the proper termination from the noun, batture, which means a bank upon which the sea beats, reef or sand-bank. Cap Batturier may therefore be rendered sand-bank cape, or the cape of the sand-banks. Batturier does not appear in the dictionaries, and was doubtless coined by Champlain ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... classical (canonical) writings. According to a third opinion, the term included from the first the idea of a regulating principle. This is the more probable, because the same idea lies in the New Testament use of the noun, and pervades its applications in the language of the early Fathers down to the time of Constantine, as Credner has shown.(2) The "canon of the church" in the Clementine homilies;(3) the "ecclesiastical canon,"(4) and "the canon of the truth," in Clement and Irenaeus;(5) ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... two l's when they spell it correctly; for that would make another word of it,—a common noun instead of a proper, and meaning quite another ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... effect can be well summed up in that decorous abbreviation by which our rustics speak of "Lady's Bedstraw," where they once spoke of "Our Lady's Bedstraw." We have dropped the comparatively democratic adjective, and kept the aristocratic noun. South England is still, as it was called in the Middle Ages, a garden; but it is the kind where grow the plants called "lords ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... ejaculations, and whispered: 'A lady's way of telling the story!—and excuseable to her:—she had to Jonah the adjective. What the poor fellow said was—' He murmured the sixty-pounder adjective, as in the belly of the whale, to rightly emphasize his noun. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... my castle-building, I suffered a sense of revulsion. I had been brought up to believe that the only adjective that could be coupled with the noun "journalism" was "precarious." Was I not, as Gresham would have said, solving an addition sum in infantile poultry before their mother, the feathered denizen of the farmyard, had lured them from their shell? Was I not mistaking ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... theai andrasin argois, haiper gnmn kai dialexin kai noun hmin parechousi kai terateian kai perilexin kai krousin ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the phrase "arrogantius dictum" places quidem after accipient. The text is quite right, ne quidem, as Halm remarks, implies no more than the Germ. auch nicht, cf. also Gk. [Greek: oude]. Suscipiatur labor: MSS. om. the noun, but it is added by a later hand ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... end in A and agree with the noun in number and case. Mi havas belajn birdojn, I have ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various

... have been so successful in sticking the epithet "wanton" to Ganymede, that even Mr. Dyce, with his clear sight, did not see that the very word he wanted was the next word before him. It puts one in mind of a man looking for his spectacles who has them already across his nose. "Wanton" is a noun as well as an adjective; and, to prevent it from being mistaken for an epithet applied to Ganymede, it will in future be necessary to place after it a comma, when the passage ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various

... for "eat." Even Jerry knew that. "Eat" did not obtain in his vocabulary; but kai-kai did, and it meant all and more than "eat," for it served for both noun and verb. ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... been indicated wherever these seemed likely to prove helpful. Principal parts and genitives have been given in such a way as to prevent misunderstanding, and at the same time emphasize the composition of the verb or the suffix of the noun: for example, abscido, -cidere, -cidi, ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.

... interesting, as a piece of language study, to consider the different power on our minds,—nay, the different sweetness to the ear,—which, from association, these same two syllables receive, when we read them as a noun, or as a verb. Also, the word is a curious instance of the traps which are continually open for rash etymologists. At first, nothing would appear more natural than that the name should have been given to the bird from its reckless function of devouring. But if you look ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... word as antique. The association between what is old or old-fashioned and what is odd, fantastic, or grotesque is obvious enough. Cf. Milton, Il Pens. 158: "With antick pillars massy-proof." In S. A. 1325 he uses the word as a noun: "Jugglers and dancers, anticks, mummers, mimicks." Shakes. makes it a verb in A. and C. ii. 7: "the wild disguise hath almost Antick'd ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... the same images as Gray's Ode on a Prospect of Eton College. In the word "cedrinae," which occurs in the verses on Trinity College Chapel, he has, we believe, erroneously made the penultimate long. Dr. Mant has observed another mistake in his use of the word "Tempe" as a feminine noun, in the lines translated from Akenside. When in his sports with his brother's scholars at Winchester he made their exercises for them, he used to ask the boy how many faults he would have:—one such would have been sufficient for a lad ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... still used in its natural and dignified sense. For example: "At Giles's ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up." And then in the East it has become the victim of extravagant metaphor. As a verb, it means to hold firm, to put a screw on; as a noun, it means a grip or screw, an advantage fair or unfair. In the hand of the sporting reporter it can achieve wonders. "The bettor of whom the pool-room bookmaker stands in dread"—this flower of speech is culled from the 'New York World'—"is the race-horse owner, ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... "got on" after a manner in our Romany talk, I was often obliged to have recourse to my friend the general to translate long sentences into Russian, especially when some sand-bar of a verb or some log of a noun impeded the current of our conversation. Finally, a formal request was made by the captain that I would, as one deep beyond all their experience in Romany matters, kindly tell them what kind of people they ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... by myself can noun substantive stand, Impose on my Owners, and save my own land; You call me masculine, feminine, neuter, or block, Be what will the gender, sirs, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... Did the primitive Occidental man produce them outright from the moment that he discovered himself? Far from it. There are abundant reasons for believing that every personal pronoun is a degenerate or, if you prefer, a developed noun. Pronouns are among the latest products of language, and, in the sphere of language, are akin to algebraic symbols in the sphere of mathematics or to a machine in the sphere of labor. A pronoun, whether personal, demonstrative, or relative, is a wonderful linguistic invention, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... to tell Godfrey what I thought of him; but words were not easy to find. I was still searching for a noun to go along with "damnable" when Clithering came back. He seemed ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... is, I think, a peculiar force in the word fabulosae, standing as it does at the very opening of the stanza, in close connection with me, and thus bearing the weight of all the intervening words till the very end, where its noun, palumbes, is introduced at last. Horace says in effect, "I, too, like other poets, have a legend of my infancy." Accordingly I have thrown the gossip of the country-side into the form of an actual speech. Whether ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... in describing a really beautiful girl. Each man has his own ideas of what it takes for a girl to be "pretty" or "fascinating" or "lovely" or almost any other adjective that can be applied to the noun "girl." But "beautiful" is a cultural concept, at least as far as females are concerned, and there is no point in describing a cultural concept. It's one of those things that everybody knows, and descriptions ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... been obtained. For instance, the verb means only the word, or the principal word in a sentence; a child can easily learn this after he has learnt what is meant by a sentence; but it would be extremely difficult to make him comprehend it before he could distinguish a verb from a noun, and before he had any idea of the structure of a common sentence. From easy, we should proceed to more complicated, sentences. The grammatical construction of the following lines, for example, may not be ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... and bounty[FN76] at once dust unite. Full-moonlike of aspect, O thou whose fair face O'er all the creation sheds glory and light, Thou'rt peerless midst mortals, the sovran of grace, And many a witness to this I can cite. Thy brows are a Noun[FN77] and shine eyes are a Sad,[FN78] That the hand of the loving Creator did write; Thy shape is the soft, tender sapling, that gives Of its bounties to all that its favours invite. Yea, indeed, thou excellest the world's cavaliers ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... and Negro have been used interchangeably in the book, with Negro generally as a noun and black as an adjective. Aware of differing preferences in the black community for usage of these words, the author was interested in comments from early readers of the manuscript. Some of the participants in the story strongly objected to one word or the other. "Do me one favor in return for ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... the grammatical interpretation of this line, I am indebted to Mr. Richard Morris. Shall is here used, as it often is, in the sense of must, and rede is a noun; the paraphrase of the whole being, "Son, what must be to me for counsel?" "What counsel ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

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

... regard to the Hamzah: at the beginning of a word it is either conjunctive, Hamzat al-Wasl, or disjunctive, Hamzat al-Kat'. The difference is best illustrated by reference to the French so-called aspirated h, as compared with the above-mentioned silent h. If the latter, as initial of a noun, is preceded by the article, the article loses its vowel, and, ignoring the silent h altogether, is read with the following noun almost as one word: le homme becomes l'homme (pronounced lomme) as le ami becomes l'ami. This resembles very closely the Arabic Hamzah Wasl. If, on the other hand, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... peculiar distinction among the many other contemporaries of whom we have chance glimpses in letters and suchlike documents, were it not that he happened to be the first man of affairs in England to imitate the "Republic" of Plato. By that chance it fell to him to give the world a noun and an adjective of abuse, "Utopian," and to record how under the stimulus of Plato's releasing influence the opening problems of our modern world presented themselves to the English mind of his time. For the most part the problems ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... in the room was successively pointed out to Newton, and he was obliged to repeat the name; and afterwards the articles of their dress were resorted to, much to his amusement. Then there was a dead stand:—the fact is, that there is no talking with noun ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... translated to vow, in its literal acceptation means to beat out grain from the sheaf on the thrashing-floor: hence, as the corn is thus scattered, it came to signify to scatter, or to be liberal; and thence, finally, to offer willingly and freely. The noun ([Hebrew: neder]) accordingly is put to denote the act of offering, or of making a promise, to God, and also what in this is spontaneously offered or promised. Moreover, in a passage formerly quoted, it is described as a free-will-offering. The vow is sometimes ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... the noun-verb, or verb-substantive, I am, which is the previous form, and implies identity of being ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... were left both hyphenated and separate depending on their part of speech, for example: science-fiction science fiction (adjective) (noun) ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... resounding passages of his eloquence owe to it their strange power to suggest a certain vastness in his intellect and sensibility, which the quaint, idiomatic, homely prose of his friend, Mason, would have been utterly incompetent to convey. Still, he preferred a plain, plump, simple verb or noun to any learned phrase, whenever he could employ it without limiting his opulent nature to a meagre vocabulary, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... certain kings hyku-Shausu; other passages, or, the same passages wrongly interpreted, were applied to the race, and were rendered hyku-Shausu "the prisoners taken from the Shausu," a substantive derived from the root haka "to take" being substituted for the noun hyqu "prince." Josephus declares, on the authority of Manetho, that some manuscripts actually suggested this derivation—a fact which is easily explained by the custom of the Egyptian record offices. I may mention, in passing, that Mariette recognised in the element "Sos" an Egyptian word shos ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the family name ought to be grander to go with it. But Adams is a fine old name, too—the first name that was ever given. There was only one man then, and when there came to be such hosts of them they tacked the 's' on to make it a noun of multitude." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... King's justice; and though everyone looked at him as they would at the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury, they could have said nothing of his part in it but that it was that of a private gentleman, with an accent on the noun. He was also refreshingly lucid, as he was on the committees. He had been calling on Miss Rome at the theatre; he had met Captain Cutler there; they had been joined for a short time by the accused, who had then ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... though different in words, these languages have the same grammatical construction. In more than one respect the polyglot American is antipodal to the Chinese. The language of the former is richest in words, that of the latter the poorest. The preposition follows the noun, and the verb ends the sentence. Ancient Tupi is the basis of the Lingoa Geral, the inter-tribal tongue on the Middle Amazon. The semi-civilized Ticunas, Mundurucus, etc., have one costume—the men in trowsers and white ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... any more ideas of grammar than a broomstick. You know I called 'cat' a conjunction the other day. Now, you shall help me in grammar, for I'm blessed if I know whether I'm a noun or an adjective, and I'll pay a ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Wallis and Futuna noun: Wallisian(s), Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... may justly be called describing words are adjectives and nouns; and of these the adjective is the first descriptive word. The rule that a writer should never use two adjectives where one will do, and that he should not use one if a noun can be found that completely expresses the thought, is a good one to follow. One certain stroke of the crayon is worth a hundred lines, each approaching the right one. One word, the only one, will tell the truth more vividly than ten that approach its expression. For it must ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... in this sense, has something of the meaning of conspiracy, but there is no justification for it as a noun, in any sense. ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce

... in habit, and probably did not make progress enough to compensate for the outlay for board and tuition. At all events both winters were spent in going over the same old arithmetic which I knew every word of before, and repeating: "A noun is the name of a thing," which I had also heard my Georgetown teachers repeat, until I had come to believe it—but I cast no reflections upon my old teacher, Richardson. He turned out bright scholars from his school, many of whom have filled ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... except A^{13-16}, which, on account of the greater difficulty of three-figure numbers, contained five. Each couplet was composed of a number and a noun, object, verb, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... island of Great Britain, or that he had reached a heaven on earth where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal,—or if they do, never think of denying that they have done it. But this was a generation ago, when the noun "shoddy," and the verb "to scamp," had not grown such familiar terms to English ears as they are to-day. Emerson saw the country on its best side. Each traveller makes his own England. A Quaker sees chiefly broad brims, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... notions that, as compared with the Humber, the rivers of the Wash, and the river Tees were unimportant. The oldest and most thoroughly Danish town was Grimsby. The settlements were generally small. I infer this from the extent to which the names are compounded of -by and a noun in the genitive case singular (Candel-s-by, Grim-s-by, &c.). Danish names such as Thorold, Thurkill, Orme, &c., are eminently common in Lincolnshire; and, at Grimsby, a vestige of the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... found the inner harmony and kinship of words. Where lived another man who could blend the beautiful and the horrible, the gorgeous and the grotesque in such intricate and inexplicable fashion? Who could delight you with his noun and disgust you with his verb, thrill you with his adjective and chill you with his adverb, make you run the whole gamut of human emotions in a single sentence? Sitting in that miserable cottage at Fordham he wrote of the splendor of dream ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... correspondents C.B. and A.E.B. (Vol. ii., p. 23.) seem to me strangely to misconceive the real point at issue between us. To a question by the latter, why I should attempt to derive "News" indirectly from a German adjective, I answer, because in its transformation into a German noun declined as an adjective, it gives the form which I contend no English process will give. The rule your correspondents deduce from this, neither of them, it appears, can understand. As I am not certain that their deduction is a correct one, I beg to express it in my own words as ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various

... believe, not yet set at rest by the learned in these sort of matters, whether the word devil be singular or plural, that is to say, whether it be the name of a personage so called, standing by himself, or a noun of multitude. If it be singular, and used only personal as a proper name, it consequently implies one imperial devil, monarch or king of the whole clan of hell, justly distinguished by the term DEVIL, or as our northern neighbours ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... ideas respecting the Asiatic origin of the nations of the New World. The tedious compilation of Father Garcia, Tratado del Origen de los Indios,* (* Treatise on the Origin of the Indians.) is a proof of this. The position of the possessive and personal pronouns at the end of the noun and the verb, as well as the numerous tenses of the latter, characterize the Hebrew and the other Semitic languages. Some of the missionaries were struck at finding the same peculiarities in the American tongues: they did not reflect, that the analogy of a few scattered ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... how many they are; in fact, a very large volume might be easily collected of such cases as are of ordinary occurrence. Casuistry, the very word casuistry expresses the science which deals with such cases: for as a case, in the declension of a noun, means a falling away, or a deflection from the upright nominative (rectus), so a case in ethics implies some falling off, or deflection from the high road of catholic morality. Now, of all such cases, one, perhaps the most difficult to manage, the most intractable, whether for consistency ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... of the noun to express case, but the equivalents of cases are shown by suffixes. The vocative alone often takes a final a as in the ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... digression. It seems often as if an almost unaccountable caprice presided over the fortunes of words, and determined which should live and which die. Thus in instances out of number a word lives on as a verb, but has ceased to be employed as a noun; we say 'to embarrass', but no longer an 'embarrass'; 'to revile', but not, with Chapman and Milton, a 'revile'; 'to dispose', but not a 'dispose'{150}; 'to retire' but not a 'retire'; 'to wed', but not a 'wed'; we ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... English language requires that the translation should be more intelligible than the Greek. The want of more distinctions between the demonstrative pronouns is also greatly felt. Two genitives dependent on one another, unless familiarised by idiom, have an awkward effect in English. Frequently the noun has to take the place of the pronoun. 'This' and 'that' are found repeating themselves to weariness in the rough draft of a translation. As in the previous case, while the feeling of the modern language is more opposed to tautology, there ...
— Charmides • Plato

... given in some French-Latin grammars to the Latin form which expresses by the infinitive verb and the accusative noun what in French is expressed by "que" between ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... is passing along a path. Again you cannot logically say that the passer is passing, for the sentence is redundant: the verb adds nothing to the noun and vice versa: but on the other hand you clearly cannot say that the non-passer is passing. Again if you say that the passer and the passing are identical, you overlook the distinction between the agent and the act and both become unreal. But you cannot maintain that the passer ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... with an a. Mr. Jefferson was a very exact man, and yet, like most men of that day, he used capitals and omitted them with an apparent carelessness. In the above note, for example, the following words occur, "Great charter." Here he furnishes the adjective with a capital, and reduces his noun to the insignificance ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton

... the Arawack rarely uses a noun in the abstract. An object in his mind is always connected with some person or thing, and this connection is signified by an affix, a suffix, or some change in the original form of the word. To this ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton

... to any word forms the plural, which is never formed in any other way. The first three vowels (a, e, i) added to any noun, form respectively its genitive, dative, and accusative; s added to these forms makes the plurals of the same cases. Man is therefore declined ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... school of the majority, of course—I admit it amply. I, on the other hand, am with the benighted minority who believe that the world, so far as it has lived to any purpose, has lived by the head,' and he flung the noun at Robert scornfully. 'But I am quite aware that in a world of claptrap the philosopher gets all the kicks, and the philanthropists, to give them their own label, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of Dr. H. C. Mueller.[6-1] In its higher forms Incorporation subordinates the nominal concepts of the phrase to those of time and relation, which are essentially verbal, and this often where the true verbal concept, that of abstract action, is lacking, and the verb itself is in reality a noun in ...
— A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages • Daniel G. Brinton

... development do they belong: do they prove a primitive or an advanced stage of religious thought? It has been observed that these names of gods are all epithets, or adjectives; and it has been supposed that there was originally a noun belonging to them, that they were all epithets of one great deity, or, as some are masculine and some feminine, of a great male and a great female deity. The noun fell out of use, it is supposed, but was still present to the mind of the Roman, and thus ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... or [Greek: Kmephis]. [Greek: Kamephin ton helion einai phesin auton ton depou ton noun ton noetoun]. Apud Damascium in ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... spalpeeny frog of a bog-throtting son of a bloody noun!"—and jist thin what d'ye think it was that her leddyship did? Troth she jumped up from the sofy as if she was bit, and made off through the door, while I turned my head round afther her, in a complate bewilderment ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe



Words linked to "Noun" :   content word, proper name, major form class, declension, open-class word, substantive



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com