"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found every day. In the past twenty years, perhaps, not more than two can be recalled who have visited the United States as mature, great artists,—Wilhelmj and Ysaye. Many violinists of excellent ability have been heard, and to some of them some day the adjective great may be applied. The fact that they have devoted their energies to concert work, and have been favourably received by the most important musical organisations, makes them celebrated, but the word great ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... ever thinks of either of them if the name is abruptly mentioned in a gossip or a poem. On the other hand, there are tame tigers and tame cobras, but if one says, "I have a cobra in my pocket," or "There is a tiger in the music-room," the adjective "tame" has to be somewhat hastily added. If one speaks of beasts one thinks first of wild beasts; if of flowers one ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... her name, it is easily accounted for. She was born on the twenty-ninth day of February, the year of her birth being bisextile. Unor means February, Unorna, derivative adjective, 'belonging to February.' Some one gave her the name to commemorate ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... to guess why Nash employed this Italian word instead of an English one. Lento means lazy, and though an adjective, it is used here substantively; the meaning, of course, is that the idle fellow who has no ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... coaxingly. "We're going for a nice walk." At the adjective, Hedrick's burdened shoulders were racked with a brief spasm, which recurred as his sister added: "Your darling little boy will let ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... an absolute belief that there exists but one way of expressing one thing, one word to call it by, one adjective to qualify, one verb to animate it, he gave himself to superhuman labour for the discovery, in every phrase, of that word, that verb, that epithet. In this way, he believed in some mysterious harmony of expression, and when a true ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... a judgment of the qualities which such a diet entails. This word is derived, in fact, from the Latin adjective "Vegetus" (strong). The word "Vegetalism," which we oppose to the preceding one, admits only the establishing of a fact, that of the choice—exclusive or preferred—of the nutritious matters in ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... 'tchelo' ([Russian]) is the Russian for forehead, 'tal' is Welsh for the same; 'iasnhy' (neuter 'iasnoe') is the Russian for clear or radiant, 'iesin' the Welsh, so that if it were grammatical in Russian to place the adjective after the noun as is the custom in Welsh, the Welsh compound 'Taliesin' (Radiant forehead) might be rendered in Russian by 'Tchel[o]iasnoe,' which would be wondrously like the Welsh name; unfortunately, however, Russian grammar would compel any one ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... is very singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic et haec et ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... in the fourth group was named by Bancroft the "adjective" group, because they require the aid of a second body, named the mordant, to properly develop and to fix the colour of the dye-stuff on the wool. It is sometimes known as the "mordant dye-stuff" class, and this is perhaps ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... best printed English Essay, 8vo. containing 500 pages, on the Superstitions, Ghosts, Legends, &c. of all parts of the principality, to be delivered before February 3, 1831. Now when the limited period proposed for the collection of 500 pages of matter, and the above little adjective all is considered, it must appear obvious that such an Herculean labour is not capable of being accomplished by one individual alone.—Imagining it, therefore, to be a matter of impossibility to perform what the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... — N. adjunct; addition, additament^; additum [Lat.], affix, appelidage^, annexe^, annex; augment, augmentation; increment, reinforcement, supernumerary, accessory, item; garnish, sauce; accompaniment &c 88; adjective, addendum; complement, supplement; continuation. rider, offshoot, episode, side issue, corollary; piece [Fr.]; flap, lappet, skirt, embroidery, trappings, cortege; tail, suffix &c (sequel) 65; wing. Adj. additional &c 37. alate^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "Oboro" is an adjective meaning calm, and little glaring, and is specially attributed to the moon in spring. The line ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... "There's a [adjective] body here," replies Ogg, with gloomy sarcasm, "flingin' bricks through this yin!" He picks up the red-and-white flag for the fourth time, and unfurls ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Pinkey held up the sweetest of admonitory fingers. Then, taking his head between her two hands, she again looked into his brimming eyes, and said, simply, "GOOD dog," with the gentlest of emphasis on the adjective, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... quarter of the nineteenth century, as Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt had been in the first. The manner of his criticism is not at all judicial. His prose is as lyrical as his verse, and his praise and blame both in excess—dithyrambic laudation or affluent billingsgate. In particular, he works the adjective "divine" so hard that it loses meaning. Yet stripped of its excited superlatives, and reduced to the cool temperature of ordinary speech, his critical work is found to be full of insight, and his judgment in matters of poetical technique ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... complex has been in our dictionary for a long while. This familiar adjective has been made by certain scientific people into a noun, and for brevity and convenience employed to denote something that almost all of us harbor in some form or other. These complexes, these lumps of ideas or impressions that match each other, that are of the same pattern, and that are also ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... oath, sounded very like one, and commanded him to attend to his duty. 'You be d—d for a——,' commenced the gallant cavalier; but, looking up in order to suit the action to the words, and also to enforce the epithet which he meditated with an adjective applicable to the party, he recognised the speaker, made his military salaam, and altered his tone. 'Lord love your handsome face, Madam Nosebag, is it you? Why, if a poor fellow does happen to fire a slug of a morning, I am sure you were ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... cousin, do remember! As to the faults, I do not think of defending them, be very sure. My consolation is, that I may try to do better in time, if I may talk of time. The worst fault of all, as far as expression goes (the adjective-substantives, whether in prose or verse, I cannot make up my mind to consider faulty), is that kind of obscurity which is the same thing with inadequate expression. Be very sure—try to be very sure—that I am not obstinate and self-opiniated ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective [kije, kise], which they applied to the greatest ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... a girl around," declared Ned. "If you had not come, Dorothy, we would never have had that admiration conference, and then we could never have discovered our own beautiful river, for in this case, I don't mind using a correct, and all right adjective, although usually I consider anything adjectivey rather too ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... quite aware that the strength of the demonstration that no universal Deluge ever took place has produced a change of front in the army of apologetic writers. They have imagined that the substitution of the adjective "partial" for "universal," will save the credit of the Pentateuch, and permit them, after all, without too many blushes, to declare that the progress of modern science only strengthens the authority of Moses. Nowhere have I found the case ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... used in the singular, both by Mir Amman and the original author, Amir Khusru according to a well-known rule in Persian syntax, viz., "a substantive accompanied by a numerical adjective dispenses with the plural termination," as "haft roz," "seven days," not "haft rozha. The Persian term darwesh, in a general sense, denotes a person who has adopted what by extreme courtesy is called a religious life, closely ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... a miserable old sinner," rejoined the doctor, warmly. "Often—often I would enjoy a fine round Elizabethan oath—note how that single adjective condones my poor taste. But I hold that good is inflowing and that it possesses whom it may possess. If a man is too busy fighting, it may pass ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... in her marriage. She had never regretted it for one hour, never swerved from the conviction that she and Michael were a perfect match—he, tall, stalwart, black-haired and strong; she "petite"—she loved the French adjective ever since it had been applied to her at Scarborough by a sycophantic governess—petite—she would repeat, blonde, plump, or better still "potelee" (the governess had later suggested, when she came to tea and hoped to be asked to ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... then the adjective French became in Federal mouths an epithet of abhorrence and abuse; up went the flag of dear Old England, the defender of the faith and of social order. The opposition party, on the contrary, saw in the success of the French people, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... ten louis. Owen thought that if he had made an interval between each adjective he ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... A word borrowed from Homer, signifying properly a round stone fit for rolling, or a stone that has been made round by rolling, as a pebble in the sea. It was originally an adjective, with [Greek: petros] understood. Most critics suppose it to be from [Greek: holos] and [Greek: trecho], totus teres atque rotundus. Liddell and Scott derive it from [Greek: eilo], volvo. See Theocr. ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... the 'prologue' to 'She Stoops to Conquer' (p. 109, l. 36) — the only occasion upon which he seems to have employed it in his 'poems' — affords an excuse for bringing together one or two dispersed illustrations of the rise and growth of this once highly-popular adjective, not as yet reached in the N. E. D. Johnson, who must often have heard it, ignores it altogether; and in Todd's edition of his 'Dictionary' (1818) it is expressly marked with a star as one of the modern words which are ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... particular, because he lays aside rhyme, and writes in blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective to the substantive, and the substantive to the verb; and leaves out little particles, a, and the; her, and his; and uses frequent appositions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations of style be conformable ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... June of 1909, made a flight of four kilometres at a height of sixty feet; for those days this was a noteworthy performance. Contemporary with this was Hubert Latham's flight of an hour and seven minutes on an Antoinette monoplane; this won the adjective 'magnificent' ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... "proof,"—a substantive or adjective? If the latter, no edition is rightly stopped; for, of course, there should be a comma after "massy;" and then I somewhat doubt the propriety of "proof" for "proved," unless joined with ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... which pertains to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized by the epithet sylvaticus in Varro, De re rustica, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent silvestris, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... language, the Daisy has had little influence, though some have derived "lackadaisy" and "lackadaisical" from the Daisy, but there is, certainly, no connection between the words. Daisy, however, was (and, perhaps, still is) a provincial adjective in the eastern counties. A writer in "Notes and Queries" (2nd Series, ix. 261) says that Samuel Parkis, in a letter to George Chalmers, dated February 16, 1799, notices the following provincialisms: "Daisy: remarkable, extraordinary excellent, as 'She's a Daisy ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... description of oxygen, however appropriate in Faraday's admirable lectures before the Royal Institution, is out of place in the "Iron-Manufacturer's Guide." We must also enter an earnest protest against the importation, upon any terms, of such words as "ironoxydulcarbonate," "ironoxydhydrate," and the adjective "anhydrate." Some descriptions of considerable imaginative power have found place even in the directory of works. From the description of the Allentown furnaces we learn, with some surprise, that "no finer object of art invites ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... frizzled like a furze-bush about her tiny face, and curled over her forehead. Her white even teeth showed prettily between her lips. She was not without points, but notwithstanding these it could not be said that she deserved the adjective pretty; and he was already convinced that it was not good looks that prejudiced her in Father Peter's eyes. Nor was the excuse that her singing attracted too much attention an honest one. What Father Peter ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... me better than others by the distinctness of their meaning and the resonance of their rhythm; they produced a clearer image in my mind; after their fashion, they gave me a picture of the object described. Colored by its adjective and vivified by its verb, the name became a living reality: what it said I saw. And thus, gradually, was the magic of words revealed to me, when the chances of, my undirected reading placed a few easy standard pages ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... for without mental originality and a distinct sort of creative force her defective voice would have failed to charm, where in fact it did provoke raptures. She was, in the exact sense of a much-abused adjective, a phenomenal singer, and it is the misfortune of the present generation that she died too young ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... one into silence. Even the "Isn't it lovely?" and "oh, how wonderful!" types of people can scarcely say more than "Niagara!" Strange, too, it is that one seldom hears the word "scrumptious." Perhaps the people have chosen the adjective we heard a German use, who on being asked how he enjoyed the view ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... that was from the late premier, I suppose. He merely forgot an adjective—it is cheap bread that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the darkness, "what did that American-heiress- globe-trotter-girl say last season when she was tipped out of her 'rickshaw turning a corner? Some absurd adjective that made the man who picked her ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... The word wap is plain enough; the word wan we cannot satisfy ourselves about. Had it been used with regard to the water, it might have been worth remarking that wan, meaning dark, gloomy, turbid, is a common adjective to a river in the old Scotch ballad. And it might be an adjective here; but that is not likely, seeing it is conjoined with the verb wap. The Anglo-Saxon wanian, to decrease, might be the root-word, perhaps, (in the sense of to ebb,) if this water had been the sea ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... title, usually participial in form, and adapted therefore to receive machines, processes, and tools; (2) with special use, purpose, or object-treated title containing the name of the use, purpose, or object; (3) with "type" title, usually a name or a name with a qualifying adjective; (4) with a title of a part ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... honest and intelligent basis. These men have become specialists in the pecan industry and they know more about it than we do in the North. Consequently they do not need our assistance, even if we were able to give it, and, therefore, without any fear of our being criticised for using the adjective "northern" we can limit our investigations and discussions to nut culture in the northern part of the United States with a full knowledge that our southern brethren can take care of themselves, and, in addition, can render us much ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... bet I am, or I couldn't have landed you," he asserted. "You're chock full of ginger, but it's been all corked up. You're so prim-so Priscilla." He was immensely pleased with the adjective he had coined, repeating it. "It's a great combination. When I think of it, I want to shake you, to squeeze you until ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... more assertive standpoint lately adopted by the charming Mexican poet, Luis G. Urbina, in his recent "La Vida Literaria de Mexico," where, without undue national pride he claims the right to use the adjective Mexican in qualifying the letters of his remarkable country. Urbina shows that different physiological and psychological types have been produced in his part of the New World; why, then, should the changes stop there? Nor have they ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... danged if he will. (Excuse so many DANGEDS. It is the creature's only adjective.) He was engaged to work for this institution by the president of the board of trustees, and he will not move from that house until the president of the board of trustees tells him to go. I don't think poor Sterry realizes that since his ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... to avoid is the use of words in the wrong parts of speech, as a noun for a verb, or an adjective for an adverb. Sometimes newspapers are guilty of such faults; for journalistic English, though pithy, shows here and there traces of its rapid composition. You must look to more leisurely authorities. The speakers and writers on whom you may rely will not say "to burglarize," ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... "The adjective," replied my interlocutor, "should always precede the substantive, for we should never utter the name of God without first giving ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... or adjective beyond what is needed to give the image, is a five-barred gate in the path of the eager mind travelling ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... 20. horribil. Here the adjective is made emphatic by being put before its noun; in 4, 14 the same effect is gained by putting ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... personage is selected, such as Columbus, George Washington, etc. The first pupil called upon must describe the subject with a descriptive adjective beginning with "A". The second, third, and fourth, etc., adding to this description by using adjectives beginning with the letter "A". This continues until the adjectives beginning with the letter "A" have been exhausted. Then the letter "B" is used and the game ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... characteristic of certain periods, like that of the Alexandrian Greeks and their Roman imitators, to whom we shall recur in a later chapter, and the mediaeval Troubadours and Minnesingers. To the present day sentimentality in love is so much more abundant than sentiment that the adjective sentimental is commonly used in an uncomplimentary sense, as in the following passage from one of Krafft-Ebing's ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... her earlier work, is heavy reading, the account given by "Old Age" in her "Four Ages of Man," of what he has seen and known of Puritan affairs, being in somewhat more lively strain. But lively was an adjective to which Mistress Anne had a rooted objection. Her contemporaries indulged in an occasional solemn pun, but the only one in her writings is found in the grim turn on Laud's name, in the "Dialogue" just quoted, in which is also a sombre jest on the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... same she hated going home. She hated 'that putrid boy'—a forbidden adjective; but what else could you call him? She was glad he would be gone the day after to-morrow. She was even more glad his nose was bleeding and his eye bunged up and his important blazer all bloodied. Girl though she was, there ran a fiercer strain in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... regrettable liberality in the use of this popular adjective which he firmly believed lent vitality and refinement to ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... still further, this faithful, steadfast heart and mind, kept by God, is a mind filled with deepest peace. There is something very beautiful in the prophet's abandoning the attempt to find any adjective of quality which adequately characterises the peace of which he has been speaking. He falls back upon the expedient which is the confession of the impotence of human speech worthily to portray its subject ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... in almost every other case, the shortness is appropriate to exercise; while the prose form does not encourage those terrible chevilles—repetitions of stock adjective and substantive and verb and phrase generally—which are so common in verse, and especially in octosyllabic verse. It is therefore in many ways healthy, and the space allotted to these early examples of it will not, it is hoped, seem to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... of Speech This Day wear Mourning Gowns, Declin'd Verbs, Pronouns, Participles, and Nouns. The Substantive seeming the limbed best Would set an hand to bear him to his Rest The Adjective with very grief did say Hold me by Strength or I shall faint away. Great Honour was conferred on Conjugations They were to follow next ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and it is called the ether. The luminiferous ether it used to be called, because the conveyance of light was all it was then known to be capable of; but now that it is known to do a variety of other things also, the qualifying adjective ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... [20] The verbal adjective in [Greek: tos] is almost universally used in a passive sense; [Greek: hypoptos], however, in this place is an exception to the rule, as are also, [Greek: kalyptes], Soph. Antig. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... deal better than I: and Hal went (said he) to seek Father, with whom I found him an hour later in the great chamber, and both right deep in public matter, whereof I do love to hear them talk at times, but Milly and Edith be no wise compatient [the lost adjective of compassion] therewith. Anstace came with me to our chamber, and said she had ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... chatter-box of the Dun Cow described it, was a bitter pill to him. "Who could have foreseen this?" said he. "It's devilish." We did not ourselves intend our readers to feel it so, or we would not have spent so much time over it. But as regards that one adjective, Mr. Monckton is a better authority than we are. He had a document with him that, skillfully used, might make mischief for a time between these lovers. But he foresaw there could be no permanent result without ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... beautiful lines of her figure, she turned her back upon the pawing, restless animal with as little concern as though she had delivered him to a correctly uniformed groom. No she was not pretty; she was—magnificent. The adjective forced itself upon him. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... Wentworth's desk, and came upon an obstacle at the very beginning. He did not know how to address the young woman. Whether to say 'My dear Miss Longworth,' or 'My dear madam,' or whether to use the adjective 'dear' at all, was a puzzle to him; and over this he was meditating when ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... can not talk and eat at once. It was true that he was hungry, that hunger is a piquant sauce, and that artist was an adjective too mild to apply to the cook. But the other reason was his chief one. Yasmini ate daintily, as if only to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... somewhat careless in our discrimination between words in the use of the English language, and yet it is interesting to note that there are some words about which we are very careful. We bestow the adjective "great" somewhat indiscriminately. A man who has made conquest of his fellow-men for his own gain may display such genius in war, such uncommon qualities of organization and leadership that we may call him "great," but there is a word which we reserve ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... it perfectly, beautiful, wonderfully lovely?" cried Jessie, getting more excited with each adjective, and when the others laughed merrily at the extravagance of her description, she added, defiantly, "I don't care; it is! I'll ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... principal noblemen of the Netherlands was a German, William of Nassau, prince of Orange.[Footnote: William (1533-1584), now commonly called "the Silent." There appears to be no contemporaneous justification of the adjective as applied to him, but the misnomer, once adopted by later writers, has insistently clung to him.] He had been governing the provinces of Holland and Zeeland when Alva arrived, but as he was already at the point of accepting ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... end in the nominative singular in *a*. They may be placed either before or after the noun. As in the case of the noun, the plural is formed by adding the termination *-j*, and the accusative is formed by adding *-n* to the nominative. The adjective agrees in number and case with the noun ...
— Esperanto Self-Taught with Phonetic Pronunciation • William W. Mann
... hearthrug, his hands on his hips, "if you had posed the question in the polite language of the precincts of Durdlebury Cathedral, I might have been at a loss to reply. But the manly invocation of hell shows me that your foot is already on the upward path. If you had prefaced it by the adjective that gives colour to all the aspirations of the British Army, it would have been better. But I'm not reproaching you, laddie. Poco a poco. It is enough. It shows me you are not going to run away to a neutral country and present the unedifying ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... 'All things considered, the present tranquillity of this country is to my mind perfectly miraculous. Already our presence has been infinitely beneficial in allaying animosities and in pointing out abuses.' If it had been the case that the country was tranquil, his adjective would have been singularly appropriate, but not precisely in the sense he meant ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... by the word of his power" means "Who created the worlds by his powerful word." "The body of our humiliation" is "our humiliating body." "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" is "from this deadly body," as the context of the passage clearly shows. In each case the second noun is the adjective ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... remarked Thiel, pushing his hand away. He had had "an old coquette" on the tip of his tongue, but suppressed the adjective. "A man can speak of his age without regret, when he is ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... perfunctory questions and answers were passing between Miss Lyster and her companion. Mary's aspect as she talked was extremely amiable; one might have called it indulgent, perhaps even by an adjective that implied a yet further shade of delicate superiority. Kitty met it by the same "grand manner" that Ashe had several times observed in her, a manner caught perhaps from some French model, and caricatured in the taking. Her eyes meanwhile ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... amongst the other peoples. LAKI in Malay means a male. The name is possibly connected with the Kayan word TENANG which means correct, or genuine. The termination AN is used in several instances in Malay (though not in Kayan) to make a substantive of an adjective. The name then possibly means — he who is correct or all-knowing; but this is ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... effulgent as a seed catalogue, with rhetorical pictures about as florid and unconvincing. To him the town was a veritable Troy—full of heroes and demigods, and honourables and persons of nobility and quality. He used no adjective of praise milder than superb, and on the other hand, Lige Bemis once complained that the least offensive epithet he saw in the Banner tacked after his name for two years was miscreant. As for John Barclay, he once told General Ward that a man could take five ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Gerald, with modest pride. "I can 'gleek upon occasion.' I can also sling a syllable with the next man. It is only at monosyllables that I draw the line. When I call him Ape, I have to tack an adjective to it, or things happen. Miss Montfort, you don't know how glad I was to come. It was awfully kind of Mr. Montfort to ask us. I've always wanted to come again, and I didn't know when I should have a chance. There—there isn't any other place like ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... an actual grisette, drawn by perhaps the greatest master of artistic realism (adjective and substantive so seldom found in company!) who ever lived, see that Britannia article of Thackeray's before referred to—an article, for a long time, unreprinted, and therefore, till a comparatively short time ago, practically unknown. This and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... children go to sleep, and now and then Jacky complains of being "skeezed." More room is made for him. Presently Tommy says: "Mother! listen to them (adjective) little possums. I'd like to ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... self, and [Greek: nomos], law), in general, freedom from external restraint, self-government. The term is usually coupled with a qualifying adjective. Thus, political autonomy is self-government in its widest sense, independence of all control from without. Local autonomy is a freedom of self-government within a sphere marked out by some superior authority; e.g. municipal corporations in England have their administrative ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... employ the noun Filipinos to designate collectively the eight civilized, Christianized peoples, called respectively the Cagayans, Ilocanos, Pangasinans, Zambalans, Pampangans, Tagalogs, Bicols and Visayans, or any of them; the adjective Filipino to designate anything pertaining to these peoples, or any of them; the noun Philippines to designate the country, and the adjective Philippine to designate anything pertaining to the country as distinguished from ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... "He is certainly that, and more. Indeed, the English language does not supply us with an adjective that adequately describes ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... already completed thirty-seven years from Waterloo, and my remembrances upon this subject go back to a period lying much behind that great era), I used to be annoyed and irritated by the false interpretation given to the Greek word aion, and given necessarily, therefore, to the adjective aionios as its immediate derivative. It was not so much the falsehood of this interpretation, as the narrowness of that falsehood, which disturbed me. There was a glimmer of truth in it; and precisely that glimmer it was which led the way to a ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... moved to make it read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its male citizens, all of that class shall be counted out of the basis of representation." Male citizens! For the first time in the history of our Government that discriminating adjective was placed in the Constitution, and yet the men on the floor of Congress, from Charles Sumner down, all declared that this amendment would not in any wise ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... good," she said, and then flushed with annoyance at the adjective. Half-dazed by the cold as she was, she could not think of a more suitable one. Winston, ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... manner, when the student in grammar is first presented with the problem of interpreting the grammatical value of the word driving in the sentence, "The boy driving the horse is very noisy," he is compelled to apply to its interpretation the ideas noun, adjectival relation, and adjective, and also the ideas object, objective relation, and verb. In this way the child secures the mental elements which he may organize into the new experience, or knowledge (participle), and thus gain control of the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... 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 ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... sense in it or no. Now, your reading play is of a different stamp, and must have wit and meaning in it. These latter I call your substantive, as being able to support themselves. The former are your adjective, as what require the buffoonery and gestures of an actor to be joined with them to ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... sensible girl,' exclaimed the old gentleman the moment I entered the room.' (You will notice I put no comma after 'plain.' I am taking it he did not intend one. You can employ one adjective to qualify another, can't you?) 'And I will put it to her, What difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church in trousers or ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... a, atl, which signifies water, war, and the top of the head. (Molina, Vocab. en lengua mexicana y castellana, etc.) From this comes a series of words, such as atlan, on the border of or amid the water, from which we have the adjective Atlantic. We have also atlaca, to combat or be in agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart from the water, and in the preterit makes atlaz. A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... in Mexico. She seldom missed her old associates, busy as she was, and content with her simple tasks the whole day long. What a quiet, peaceful life was that at the California missions in the old days! Perhaps, reader, you think humdrum would be the more appropriate adjective to use than peaceful or even quiet. And to one like our Father Uria, thousands of miles from his early home, cut off from all the pleasures and advantages of ordinary social intercourse, it was, as we have seen, more, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... the adjective set Fenwick grinning. The North found and gripped him; these are not the ways of ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... For the same reason, you want to prune out the unnecessary words from your sentences, and even the classes of words which seem put in to fill up. If, for instance, you can express your idea without an adjective, your sentence is stronger and more manly. It is better to say "a saint" than "a saintly man." It is better to say "This is the truth" than "This is the truthful result." Of course an adjective may be absolutely necessary. But you may often detect extempore speakers in piling in adjectives, ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... adjective (formaliter), signifies the complex of the determinations of a thing, connected according to an internal principle of causality. On the other hand, we understand by nature, substantive (materialiter), the sum total ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... important role of Sempronius, which proved in every way a better disposition of affairs, for Mills was a plodder rather than a genius. He belonged to the order of actors to whom, in the present day, we apply the charitable word of painstaking, an adjective which shows very plainly the nature of the man, while it likewise allows the critic to escape the charge of unkindness. We all know the painstaking player, and always cheerfully acknowledge his virtues, but who shall blame us if, after giving him ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... reverend gentleman, and discovering nothing. 'I am a Christian, madam,' was the reply, 'and have nothing to do with economic doctrines.' Mrs. Mewling spread the phrase 'economic doctrines,' shaking her head upon the adjective, which was interpreted by her hearers as condemnatory in significance. The half-dozen shopkeepers were disposed to secret jubilation; it was probable that, in consequence of the doings in the valley, trade would look ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... 354) warns us that "Al-Tai" means belonging to the Tai which is a famous tribe. This relative adjective is of irregular formation; analogy would require it to be Taii; but the formation of relative adjectives admits some variations; thus from dahr (time) is derived duhri (temporal) and from sahl (a plain), suhli (plain, level). The author might also have told us that there is always ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... vexes me." If we attribute something ignominious or abject to the word medley, there is an ellipse in the phrase, because the ignominy is implied rather than expressed. Gesture is then necessary here to express the value of the implied adjective, ignominious. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Some morning the floating opinion suddenly crystallized in the kirkyard, and there is only one historical instance in which judgment was reversed. It was a strong proof of Lachlan Campbell's individuality that he impressed himself twice on the parish, and each time with a marked adjective. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... as the world has ever seen; "La Morte Amoureuse," "Jettatura," "Une Nuit de Cléopâtre," etc., and then the very diamonds of the crown, "Les Emaux et Camées," "La Symphonie en Blanc Majeure," in which the adjective blanc and blanche is repeated with miraculous felicity in each stanza. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... happened that, on the west side of the block, there was only one drygoods dealer, whose shop front and awning posts were festooned with calicoes and other fabrics, ticketed with ingeniously deformed figures, and bearing some attractive adjective, expressing the owners private and conscientious opinion of their excellence. There was one boot-maker, who strung up his products in long branches, like onions; and, although his business was not at all flourishing, solaced himself with the reflection ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... point. If words are heaped up beyond it, the thought becomes more and more obscure again. To find where the point lies is the problem of style, and the business of the critical faculty; for a word too much always defeats its purpose. This is what Voltaire means when he says that the adjective is the enemy of the substantive. But, as we have seen, many people try to conceal their poverty of thought under ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... coarsen, the description of these masses of animated beef, who formed the standing army of the woman-commonwealth. Few would have obeyed this law without violating another; but Mr. Tennyson saw that the verb was admissible, while the adjective ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... comprehensive enough to embrace the legitimate desires of a civilized and enlightened people determined in all their relations to pursue a conscientious and religious life. We can not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases. It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much disturbed by the thought of either isolation or entanglement of pacifists ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... teach, That it hath nine parts of speech;— Article, adjective, and noun, Verb, conjunction, and pronoun, With preposition, and adverb, And interjection, as I've heard. The letters are just twenty-six, These form all words when rightly mix'd. The vowels are a, e, o, i, With u, and sometimes w and y. Without ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... accommodating, self-restrained lad, and every other adjective in Samuel Smiles. You could charm the buttons off a policeman—and you'll see how really ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... Damn is expressive and forceful, because capable of being enunciated at one explosive effort of the breath, but it is monotonous when too freely employed. To be sure, you might with some justice reply that you had qualified said adjective strongly—but the qualification was trite though blasphemous. And you limited it very nicely—but the limitation to myself is unjust, as it overlooks my brother's equitable claims ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... possible that but for the formidable adjective Susannah might have originated, and indeed expressed some idea of her own; but to confront a position described by her sister as "embarrassing" was quite beyond her powers, and she could only repeat feebly, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... read one, I have read twenty letters, addressed to newspapers, denouncing the name of a great quarter in London, Mary-le-bone, as ludicrously ungrammatical. The writers had learned (or were learning) French; and they had thus become aware, that neither the article nor the adjective was right. True, not right for the current age, but perfectly right for the age in which the name arose; but, for want of elder French, they did not know that in our Chaucer's time both were right. Le was then the article feminine as well as masculine, and bone was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... three appear in Macbeth as the Weird Sisters; and it is probably from this connexion that weird has become an adjective for ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... stronghold, was Anderida, that is, the Holy Oak; from dar, oak (Sanskrit, daru, a tree), and da, good. It is worth remarking that this idea survives in the personal name, Holyoak; for who ever heard of "Holyelm," or "Holyash," or a similar form compounded of the adjective and the name of any other tree than the oak. If there is an exception it is in the name of the holly. The Cornish Celtic word for holly was Celyn, from Celli (or Kelli), a grove; literally a grove-one; so that the holly was probably planted as a grove or screen round the sacred ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the old Iliad, that once was our most cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to /amphikipellon/ being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman's fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from us to hold up his translation as what a translation of Homer might be. But we can still dismiss Pope's Iliad to ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... as her father," replied Lady Laura, with whom that favourite adjective served for everything in the way of praise. To her the Pyramids and Niagara, a tropical thunderstorm, a mazourka by Chopin, and a Parisian bonnet, were all alike charming. "I suppose solidity isn't so nice in a girl," she went on, laughing; "but certainly Sophia Granger is not such ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... ticket-window, and, after urgent coaching, eventually took his place at the end instead of at the head of the line that waited there. In his turn he came again to the window, and departed from it after a conversation with the clerk that left the latter in accord with Aunt Fanny Atwater's commiserating adjective, though the clerk's own pity was expressed in argot. "The poor nut!" he explained to his next client. "Wants to buy a ticket on a train that don't pull out until ten thirty-five to-night; and me fillin' ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, or Wallis ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... on him. He grew excited and said it was damnable. He wasn't going to stand by and see people believe a lot of scandalous lies about me. He had no idea people had given me the cold shoulder. He would jolly well (such were his words) take a something (I forget the adjective) megaphone and trumpet about society what a splendid fellow ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... context. Thus, taken singly, the character [Ch] conveys only the general idea "above" as opposed to "below." According to its place in the sentence and the requirements of common sense, it may be a noun meaning "upper person" (that is, a ruler); an adjective meaning "upper," "topmost" or "best"; an adverb meaning "above"; a preposition meaning "upon"; and finally a verb meaning "to mount upon," or "to go to." [Ch] is a character that may usually be translated "to enter" as in [Ch][Ch] "to enter a door"; yet in the locution ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the Doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as to come into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective 'blanche' and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out, "Blanche? Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the whole. While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... other at the end of the smooth stem, which rises from one to two feet high in the woods throughout a southerly and westerly range. As several other skullcaps have distinctly saw-edged leaves, this plant might have been given a more distinctive adjective, thinks one who did not have the naming ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the neck, which she held to be a fit punishment for the vanity of her youthful days, when she was fond of wearing necklaces and jewels. "Saint Audrey's laces" became corrupted into "Tawdry laces"; and so the adjective has been applied to all cheap and showy pieces ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... An adjective is a word used to qualify, limit, or define a noun, or a word or phrase which has the value of a noun. Nouns are ordinarily very general and indefinite in meaning, for example, man conveys only a very general idea. To make that idea definite we need the help of one or more descriptive words such ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... wrote his mind. He was one of the few men of whom you might always know the whole: of whom you might always know the worst, as well as the best. He had no reservations or duplicities. "No, by Heaven!" he would say ("with unimaginable energy"), if any good adjective were coupled with him which he did not deserve: "I am nothing of the kind. I wish I were; but I don't deserve the attribute, and I never did, and I never shall!" His intense consciousness of himself never led to his poorly excusing himself, and seldom to his violently asserting ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... that this adjective "official" can properly be applied to our Capitalist Press to-day, let him ask himself first what the forces are which govern the nation, and next, whether those forces—that Government or regime—could be better served even under a system ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... their definition fails to include. Some Greek sophists could deny that we may say that man is good, for man, they said, means only man, and good means only good, and the word is can't be construed to identify such disparate meanings. Mr. Bradley revels in the same type of argument. No adjective can rationally qualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the substantive, it can't be united with it; and if not distinct, there is only one thing there, and nothing left to unite. Our whole pluralistic procedure in using subjects ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... of The sun is shining, The sun is a body shining. But in these cases the words 'metal' and 'body' are unmistakable tautology, since 'metal' is implied in gold and 'body' in sun. But, as we have seen, any of these kinds of word, substantive, adjective, or participle, may occur syncategorematically in connection with others to form a ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... utterly confounded, stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with a dreadful adjective appended to the fools, and an emphasis in his voice which showed ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... pictures, impregnated with vague romantic melancholy; and I like the white lucidity of classic statuary. I suppose the one taste is the offspring of temperament, the other of thought; for intellectually, I admire the Greek ideas, and was glad to hear you correct Sidney's perversion of the adjective. I wonder," she added, reflectively, "if one can worship the gods of the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... men set Jesus side by side with God. The evangelists do not attempt to describe what He was like; they let us hear Him and watch Him, as He lived in the memories of those who had been with Him; and He makes His own impression. The crowning tribute is that we have no loftier adjective in ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... which is partly of the pike, partly of the trout species, is considered a great dainty. The vegetables are generally spoiled in the cooking, being converted into a puree which might well earn the adjective "eternal." Even the asparagus is spoilt by the native cook, being cut into inch cubes and set afloat in melted butter. Compotes sweet and sour, are served at strange times during the repast, and lastly, as a sort of "old guard," the much-beloved but deadly ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... with pencil and paper. The first thing to write on the paper is an adjective which applies to a man. The paper is then folded over and passed to the right. This time each one writes the name of a man (either present or absent), folds the paper so the next one can't see what is written, and passes it ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... average young amateur; but little skill is needed to manufacture a very fairly efficient substitute for the professionally-built article—to wit, a ladder of the kind to which builders apply the somewhat disparaging adjective "duck." ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... Washington's boyhood. For the former we are indebted to the illustrious Weems, and to that personage a few more words must be devoted. Weems has been held up to the present age in various ways, usually, it must be confessed, of an unflattering nature, and "mendacious" is the adjective most commonly applied to him. There has been in reality a good deal of needless confusion about Weems and his book, for he was not a complex character, and neither he nor his writings are difficult to value or understand. By profession a clergyman or preacher, by nature an adventurer, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of six iambic feet, such as l. 357, written especially to illustrate this form. Why does Pope use the adjective "needless" here? ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... flower, a trembling white chalice upon the virginal bosom of which one small touch of color burned like a flame. And thus, little step after little step, they went from little wonder to little wonder. Dolly liked small things; it was the microscopic aspect of Nature that touched her heart; she had an adjective all her own for such: they were "baby" things—baby flowers, baby brooks, baby stars. This appealed less to Charles-Norton, hungry for big sweeps. And even now, he caught himself yawning once, and casting a look at the ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... because, whenever he was mentioned, the phrase was: "Poor little Mr. Dawson!" Why he was to be pitied Jeremy did not know. He looked spruce and bright enough, and generally whistled to himself as he walked; but "poor" was an exciting adjective, and Jeremy, when he passed him, felt a little shudder of ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole |
