"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 Greeks ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... may be reckon'd the placing the Adjective after the Substantive, the Transposition of Words, the turning the Adjective into a Substantive, with several other Foreign Modes of Speech which this Poet has naturalized to give his Verse the greater Sound, and throw it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Saxon word for spirit and is still used in the Name of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Ghostly, the adjective form of the word, has been retained in the Prayer Book and means spiritual, e. g., in the Confirmation service one of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Ghost is called "ghostly strength," that ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... have been!" said 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 this in the world, I believe. ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... as a ship out of soundings, Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings, Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle, Deaf to even the definite article— No verbal message was worth a pin, Though you hired an earwig to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... my eye. "It is a handsome machine, a full dress concern with all its plating and brown leather, and in use it is as willing and quiet as any tricycle could be, a most urbane and gentlemanly affair—if you will pardon the adjective. I am glad these things have not come too late for me. Frankly, the bicycle is altogether too flippant for a man of my age, and the tricycle hitherto, with its two larger wheels behind and a smaller ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... linnet. The adjective is redundant and "proleptic," as the bird must be "enthralled" before it ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... carry so large a bird on a gloved hand); and criticism melted into admiration. He could see them riding out with the eagles tied to the pummels of their saddles, looking into the yellow desert; the adjective seemed to him vulgar—afterwards he discovered the desert to be tawny. "It must be a wonderful sight... the gazelle pursued by the eagle!" So he spoke at once to his dragoman, telling him that he must prepare for a long march ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... some time he wrote beneath his own standard and with considerable success. Following the example of several successful New York authors, he plunged into a hectic portrayal of 'high' society, a set of people that makes one wonder as to the exact meaning of the adjective. For a short space he came under the influence of the studied Bohemianism of 'Greenwich Village,' and wrote deucedly clever things for the applause of the villagers, then sneered at American taste because people in Arkansas did not like his ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... At least, it was probably as near to deserving that adjective as at any time before or since. There was plenty of time for amusement. There were public bowling-greens and archery butts in Stratford, though the corporation was very strict in regard to the hours when these could be used. Every one enjoyed hunting, hawking, cock-fighting, bull-baiting, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... "the upper part of the ridge of some elevated and exposed land." As a prefix, its meaning depends upon the fact whether the word attached to it be an adjective or a substantive. If an adjective be attached, it has the second signification; i.e. it is the upper part of some exposed land, having the particular quality involved in the adjective, such as, "Cefndu," ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... another person than the penitent woman mentioned by St. Luke. It has also the official sanction of the governments of Great Britain and the United States. In England the word is pronounced Maudlin, whence maudlin, adjective, unpleasantly sentimental. With their Maudlin for Magdalene, and their Bedlam for Bethlehem, the English may justly boast ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... our kindly associations with 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 amphikupellon 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 ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... The adjective 'positive' contains the same fallacy. Apparently Comte meant by the choice of it to convey the sense that he would limit research to phenomena in their orders of resemblance, co-existence and succession. But ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... This adjective "blamed" is the virtuous oath by which simple people, who are improving their habits, cure themselves of a stronger epithet, as men take to flagroot who ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... into a howling wilderness; and she observed, as is often done so astutely, that "when you do find a neat, capable, colored help, it's as good help as you can have." Which you may notice is just as true without the third adjective as with. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... first verse, we have this sentence, "To them that are sanctified by God the Father." The word "sanctified" is here used as a predicate adjective, and describes the people addressed. It would not alter the meaning of the text were we to translate it thus: "To them that are made holy by God the Father." The word holy is here used as a predicate adjective, and ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... clue-word is People's for all that. A People's—-Chaste word, it will bring forth no adjective. The plays of A People's Theatre are People's plays. The plays of A People's Theatre are plays ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and conflicts ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... sorry to say he was haunted by that abominable bugbear which often takes possession of the minds of young men when they find themselves in the presence of those who are adepts in the arts of vice—a fear of being thought "green," "verdant," or being measured by some other adjective used in fast circles to caricature the innocence of a soul unsullied by contact with the vices and follies of the city. He half expected that some of the dissolute young wretches who were drinking, swearing, and pouring the filth of a poisoned ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... locked. On the second there was also only one door, but when I turned the handle it opened. There came forth to meet me the chill musty air that is characteristic of a long unoccupied room. With it there came an indescribable odour. I use the adjective advisedly. Though very faint, diluted as it were, it was nevertheless an odour that made my gorge rise. I had never smelt anything like it before, and I ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... contributed also the figure of "Nature" on top of the music niche and the capital bulls on the pylons toward the north of the court. These terra cotta bulls are surely worthy of the adjective derived from them. Their relative size is very good, and to see them in the richness of their color against the upper regions of a dark blue sky ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... its comparative giants, with the present and its heroes, ordinary folk, and pygmies, we shall scarcely find more than one great master, Fielding, and one little masterpiece, Vathek, deserving the adjective "consummate." No doubt the obvious explanation—that the hour was not because the man had not come except in this single case—is a good one: but it need not be left in the bare isolation of its fatalism. There are at least several subsidiary considerations which it is ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... interview, crisp as autumn ice and bitter as gallberries. Colonel Clark had no respect whatever for Hamilton, to whom he had applied the imperishable adjective "hair-buyer General." On the other hand Governor Hamilton, who felt keenly the disgrace of having to equalize himself officially and discuss terms of surrender with a rough backwoodsman, could not conceal his ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... grammars and school-books? For instance, is it indispensably necessary that a boy of seven years old should learn by rote, that "relative sentences are independent, i. e. no word in a relative sentence is governed either of verb, or adjective, that stands in another sentence, or depends upon any appurtenances of the relative; and that the English word 'That' is always a relative when it may be turned into which in good sense, which must be tried by reading over the English sentence warily, and judging how the ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... Uncle Felix calmly. The Policeman accentuated the word "evening," but Uncle Felix emphasised the adjective "good." From the very beginning the two men disagreed. "This is private property, very private indeed. We are having tea, in fact, privately, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... various interpretations of the Chinese adjective for this type of ground. Ts'ao Kung says it means "ground covered with a network of roads," like a chessboard. Ho Shih suggested: "ground on which intercommunication ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... indifferentiable is this "I am that I am" and the manifold modes of manifestation can only exist in reference to it. The eternal ignorance consists in this, that as there is but one substantive, but numberless adjectives, each adjective is capable of designating the All. Viewed in time the most permanent object or mood of the great knower at any moment represents the knower, and in a sense binds it with limitations. In fact, time itself is one of these infinite ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the soliloquy last night?" "Oh, against all rule, my lord, most ungrammatically! Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus—stopping as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice a dozen times, three seconds, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... Pixies that the young man "heaves the gentle misery of a sigh," and the sympathetic interest of the reader of today is chilled by the too frequent intrusion of certain abstract ladies, each preceded by her capital letter and attended by her "adjective-in-waiting;" but, after all deductions for the conventionalisms of "white-robed Purity," "meek-eyed Pity," "graceful Ease," etc., one cannot but feel that the Songs of the Pixies was the offspring not of a mere abundant and picturesque vocabulary but of a true poetic ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... adjective robust as applied to myself is, I think, a trifle misplaced. I suggest the word ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... manuscripts. The celebrated author was a little surprised, because in the books the young struggler had needed but one lift, apparently. However, he plowed through these papers, removing unnecessary flowers and digging up some acres of adjective stumps, and then succeeded in getting two of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... this would be "newes," thus spelt and probably pronounced the same as in England. That the word is not derived from the English adjective "new"—that it is not of English manufacture at all—I feel well assured: in that case the "s" would be the sign of the plural: and we should have, as the Germans have, either extant or obsolete, also "the new." The English language, however, has never dealt in these abstractions, except ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... self-delusion, for he continued: '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 ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... form of distribution among that species of functionaries which Adam Smith has designated by the word UNPRODUCTIVE, although he admits as much as any one the utility and even the necessity of their labor in society. By this adjective, UNPRODUCTIVE, Adam Smith, whose genius dimly foresaw everything and left us to do everything, meant that the product of these laborers is NEGATIVE, which is a very different thing from null, and that consequently distribution so far as they are concerned follows a method other ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... in like manner. What did I say last In my late canto? Something, I believe Of gratitude. Now this same gratitude Is a fine word to play on. Many a niche It fills in letters, and in billet-doux,— Its adjective a graceful prefix makes To a well-written signature. It gleams A happy mirage in a sunny brain; But as a principle, is oft, I fear, Inoperative. Some satirist hath said That gratitude is only a keen sense Of future favors. As regards myself, Tis my ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... These lank figures carry no charm of womanhood,—nothing that can draw from sweater or general employer more than a sneer at the quality of the labor of those waiting always in numbers far beyond any real demand, until for both the adjective comes to be "superfluous," and employer and employed alike wonder why the earth holds them, and what good there is in an existence made up simply of ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... he should say Gold is a heavy metal; instead 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 ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... T. and Ram.) is in the Crusca Italian transformed into an adjective, "vaselle vernicate d'oro," and both Marsden and Pauthier have substantially adopted the same interpretation, which seems to me in contradiction with the text. In Pauthier's text the word is vernigal, pl. vernigaux, which he explains, I know not on what authority, as "coupes sans anses ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... artillery from the Confederate left indicated that a heavy conflict had begun in that quarter. The Federal troops were charging Marye's Hill, which was to prove the Cemetery Hill of Fredericksburg. This frightful charge—for no other adjective can describe it—was made by General French's division, supported by General Hancock. The Federal troops rushed forward over the broken ground in the suburbs of the city, and, "as soon as the masses became dense enough,"[1] were received with a concentrated artillery fire ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... confess that if he has not quite done that, he seems to me to have very thoroughly discredited Pirkheimer's ungallant abuse. Sir Martin Conway bids us notice that Duerer speaks of his "dear father" and his "dear mother" and even of his "dear father-in-law," but that he never couples that adjective with his wife's name. It is very dangerous to draw conclusions from such a fact, which may be merely an accident: or may, if it represents a habit of Duerer's, bear precisely the opposite significance. For some men are proud to drop such outward marks of affection, in cases where ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... 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
... must group the words together in the way intended by the writer; and in doing this he can receive assistance in various ways. Partly by the inflection of the words; partly by their arrangement; partly also by punctuation. As to inflection, we see in Latin an adjective and a substantive standing together, yet differing in gender, in number, or in case; and we know that the adjective does not qualify the substantive. But English has not the numerous inflections of Latin. More scrupulous ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... so charming 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 ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Fire," "Unquenchable Fire."—All these expressions are used in describing the fiery judgment upon sin and sinners. The effect of the fire is everlasting and eternal, and by a common usage in language the adjective that describes the effect is applied to the agent by ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... inadequate; and what he wanted to express belonged to the emotional, not the intellectual, side of the human character, so that any perfectly clear expression of it in words was entirely impossible. It must be borne in mind that the Chinese language lacks definite word categories like substantive, adjective, adverb, or verb; any word can be used now in one category and now in another, with a few exceptions; thus the understanding of a combination like "white horse" formed a difficult logical problem for the thinker of the fourth century B.C.: did it mean "white" plus "horse"? Or was ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... thrown back by a picturesque action of the hand. The features were large and regular, the complexion dark, the eyes a pale blue, under bushy brows. The whole aspect of the man, indeed, was not unworthy of the adjective "Olympian," already freely applied to it by some of the enthusiastic women students attending his now famous lectures. One girl artist learned in classical archaeology, and a haunter of the British Museum, had made a charcoal study of a well-known archaistic "Diespiter" of the Augustan ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... were very much surprised that I was not afraid to sleep alone in such a big room—said Miss Juliana and Miss Lynch, Mass' Sam and Mass' Willie and their Mamma used to sleep there. These people do not use any feminine adjective, and their "hims" are very confusing sometimes. Harriet walked down to the house behind me from school the other day for some sugar for a sick baby, and I asked her the name of a bird that flew ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... 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 ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... sting dangerously; and on occasion, a very trivial and ill-considered word or phrase will cling closer and longer than a serious or thoughtful judgment. When Theodore Roosevelt called Thomas Paine "a filthy little Atheist" (or was the adjective "dirty"? I really forget!) he was very young,—only twenty-eight,—and doubtless had accepted his viewpoint of the great reformer-patriot from that "hearsay upon hearsay" against which Paine himself has so urgently warned us. Of course Mr. Roosevelt, who is both ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... us. Now Prince had proved himself an excellent wheeler, yet he had to go into the lead and let the Outlaw retain his old place. There is an axiom that a good wheeler is a poor leader. I object to the last adjective. A good wheeler makes an infinitely worse kind of a leader than that. I know . . . now. I ought to know. Since that day I have driven Prince a few hundred miles in the lead. He is neither any better ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... Lidderdale, but I have not completed my question. Is it right? Is it right when you have an opportunity to consolidate your great work . . . I use the adjective advisedly and with no intention to flatter you, for when I had the privilege this morning of accompanying you round the beautiful edifice that has been by your efforts, by your self-sacrifice, by your eloquence, and by your devotion ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... own valor and exploits, and who takes the most fulsome and ridiculous flattery as the due recognition of his transcendent merit. The verse here quoted is from Terence's Eunuchus. Thraso, a miles gloriosus (from whom is derived our adjective thrasonical), asks this question of Gnatho, the parasite, one of whose speeches is quoted in S 25. Magnus is the word in the question; ingentes, in the answer.] to ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... here to refer the fastidious and cultivated reader to the only adjective I have dared transcribe of this actual oath which I once had the honor of hearing. He will I trust not fail to recognize the old classic daemon in ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... 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 when he simply says, 'Thou shalt keep in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Nature, possesses an innate attraction for the inquisitive element of which few intelligent minds are devoid. Unfortunately, technical men are prone to delight in their technicalities, and to depreciate, with the adjective "popular," attempts to bring their specialties within the comprehension of the general public, or to make them pleasing and attractive to it. However it may be with other specialties, the utility of which is more willingly admitted, the navy and army in our country cannot afford to take such an ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to reality and the presence of reality among its appearances in different degrees and with different values—this double truth we have found to be the centre of philosophy." But still this is the gist ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... 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 on to the right. This is ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... interests; and, finally, of course, with colour photography and process printing. This last Deane Elmer always spoke of as his hobby, but we may doubt whether all his interests were not hobbies in the same sense. He is the natural descendant of those earlier amateur scientists—the adjective conveys no reproach—of the nineteenth century, among whom we remember such striking figures as those of Lord Avebury and ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... not call them false friends—this noun should never follow that adjective. To what shall I liken them—to the young gorilla, that even while its master is feeding it, looks trustingly in his face and thrusts forth its paw to tear him? Who blames the gorilla? Torn from ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... answered by the assertion that it "ought to be regarded as settled by M. Renan's practical surrender of the adverse case." I thought I knew M. Renan's works pretty well, but I have contrived to miss this "practical" (I wish Dr. Wace had defined the scope of that useful adjective) surrender. However, as Dr. Wace can find no difficulty in pointing out the passage of M. Renan's writings, by which he feels justified in making his statement, I shall wait for further enlightenment, contenting myself, for the present, with remarking that if M. Renan were to retract and do ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... descending glass, it has an ominous appairance," the Scotchman answered, with much stress on the first syllable of the adjective. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hedone. Pater's definition "the pleasure of the ideal now." The adjective monochronos means, literally, "single or unitary time." See also Marius the Epicurean, Vol. 1, Cyrenaicism, and Vol. 2, Second Thoughts, where Pater quotes the same key ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... which, like ours, is becoming sated with cleverness, it is a delight to read the unvarnished story of Champlain. In saying that the adjective is ever the enemy of the noun, Voltaire could not have levelled the shaft at him, for few writers have been more sparing in their use of adjectives or other glowing words. His love of the sea and of ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... 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 ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... An adjective is like an infant in leading strings— it cannot go alone. It always requires to be joined to a substantive, of which it shows the nature or quality— as lectio longa, a long lesson; magnus aper, a great boar; pinguis puer, a fat boy; macer puer, ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... haunted above all with the sense that he must be proper. He remembers that when, in reply to the lady-principal's inquiry how he liked his class, he answered, with the strictest intellectual reference, that they were "charming," the stern matron suggested that another adjective would perhaps be more appropriate. He felt his whole moral sense as a teacher ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... to hear, and grasped Mrs Smith's shoulder with a closer pressure. "What did she tell you?" said the doctor. "Let me have it word for word. Did she say she was going away?—did she speak of this—this—fellow?" exclaimed the doctor, with an adjective over which charity drops a tear. "Can't you tell me without any supposes, ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... 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
... history of the term is hard to trace. The first technical use of the adjective rational seems to have been about the seventeenth century, to express a school of philosophy. It had probably passed out of the old sense of dialectical (cfr. Brucker's Hist. Phil. iii. 60.), into the use just named; which we find in Bacon, to express rational philosophy, as opposed to empirical, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... women would have the courage to remain unmarried were there so euphonious a title awaiting them as that of "bachelor," which, when shorn of its accompanying adjective "old," ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... The adjective was hardly accurate about a young lady who measured five feet six, but Maulevrier had not yet grown out of the ideas belonging to that period when Mary was really his little sister, a girl of twelve, with long hair ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... adjective also was peculiar to the peerage and the Royal Family. It was given to every relation except between husband and wife: and the French beau-pirt for father-in-law is doubtless derived from it. Nay, it was conferred on the Deity; and ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... the Nahuatl language we find immediately the radical 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 by Columbus, at the entrance of the Gulf of Uraba, in ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... two vulgar females, whom he came to conceive as her oppressors, sitting in gauds and finery, and taking lessons which had better befitted their Cinderella—the figure of Mary Ann definitely reassumed some of its antediluvian poetry, if we may apply the adjective to that catastrophic washing of the steps. And Mary Ann herself had grown gloomier—once or twice he thought she had been crying, though he was too numbed and apathetic to ask, and was incapable ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... translated here, quite correctly, 'transgression,' and intensified by that strong adjective attached, 'a great transgression,' literally means rebellion, revolt, or some such idea; and expresses, as the ultimate issue of conscious transgression prolonged and perpetuated into habit, an entire casting off of allegiance to God. 'No man ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... any statement unaccompanied by proof. The agreement of an adjective with its noun displeased him, because an arbitrary rule merely said ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... very 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 a ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds and the rest." Before long Browning amused himself in picking up for a few pauls this or that picture, on seeing which an accomplished connoisseur, like Kirkup, would even hazard the name of Cimabue or Ghirlandaio, or if not that of Giotto, then the safer adjective Giottesque. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... than fifty, but English-speaking acquaintances often called him "old Stewart," and others "ce vieux Stewart." Indeed, at a first glance he might have passed for anything up to sixty, for his face was a good deal more lined and wrinkled than it should have been at his age. Ste. Marie's adjective had been rather apt. The man had a desiccated appearance. Upon examination, however, one saw that the blood was still red in his cheeks and lips, and, although his neck was thin and withered like an old man's, his brown eyes still held ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... appeal to The Cleveland Plain Dealer of eleven years ago ("slushy and disgusting"), or to The New York Post ("sterile and malodorous ... worse than immoral—dull"), or to Ainslee's Magazine ("inconsequent and rambling ... rather nauseating at times"). These devotees of the adjective that hunts in pairs are hardly to be discussed, I suppose, in connection with any rewards except such as accrue to the possessors of a certain obtuseness, who always and infallibly reap at least the reward of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... more than one God or Principle? Answer. - There is not. Principle and its idea is one, 465:18 and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni- 466:1 present Being, and His reflection is man and the universe. Omni is adopted from the Latin adjective signifying all. 466:3 Hence God combines all-power or potency, all-science or true knowledge, all-presence. The varied manifesta- tions of Christian Science indicate Mind, never matter, 466:6 and have ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... with a soul too large for its body, cannoned a first-class battleship off the Medway, and with a thoughtfulness too often lacking at sea, stood by and lowered a boat, whereupon the captain, who had been worrying about his paint, invented, in his surprise, a brand-new adjective for the use of senior officers of ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... found in her former home 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
... authorities whose destiny it was to direct the affairs of the universe. With unfailing comic seriousness, intermixed with occasional explosions of bitter violence, he placed the French low down in the scale of the human family. There was scarcely a sailor adjective that was not applied to them. Carlyle, in later years, designated the voice of France as "a confused babblement from the gutters" and "scarcely human"; "A country indeed with its head cut off"; but this ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... you don't—of course. Used as a noun—you know what a noun is, don't you? It means the name of anything. Wight means a person—any creature. Originally it meant a fairy, a supernatural being. As an adjective it means brave, valiant, strong or powerful. Or, it ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... adjective which she repeated oftenest, in an almost awestruck whisper, as her eyes travelled over immense spaces; for she thought that the desert might have dropped out of the sun. The colour of sand and sky was colour on fire, blazing. The whole Sahara throbbed with the unimaginable ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take "ranch" eggs, how pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with "yard" eggs, such an "out in the open—let the rest of the world go by" impression they confer. ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... period has assumed, in spite of the lexicographer's own dislike of that adjective, prodigious dimensions. After the critical labours of Malone, Murphy, Croker, J. B. Nichols, Macaulay, Carlyle, Rogers, Fitzgerald, Dr Hill and others, it may appear hazardous to venture upon such a well-ploughed field where the pitfalls are so numerous and the materials so scattered. ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... with a certain intonation, means a hat; but with another intonation, it means "hairy one," and the latter, referring to the big beards of foreigners, was the meaning intended to be conveyed. This epithet is still to be heard, and is often preceded by the adjective "red." ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... refer below, is not our only use of Dutch as a contemptuous adjective. We say "Dutch Gold" for pinchbeck, "Dutch Myrtle" for a weed. "I shall talk to you like a Dutch uncle" is another saying, not in this case contemptuous but rather complimentary—signifying "I'll dress you down to some purpose". One piece of slang we share ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... contemplated qualifying the word "missus" with some such adjective as "bonny," but a glance at Margaret's face nipped this poetical flower in the bud. After a moment she sat upright, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... attention to the necessity of changing some ordinary words in certain books because in some localities the boys applied the words to sexual organs. Even the little words "nuts," "stones," "balls" accompanied by the adjective "two" mean testicles in the widespread vulgar language; and a physician told me that a college graduate used one of these words the other day when seeking medical advice concerning her baby. Here is an intolerable situation that must be improved by establishing in popular usage the dignified ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... former standards of comparison. You stand there gazing down the raw, red gullet of that great gosh-awful gorge, and you feel your self-importance shriveling up to nothing inside of you. You haven't an adjective left to your back. It makes you realize what the sensations would be of one little microbe lost inside ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... point to each of the three, with distinct yet rapid motion. The phrase would be a strange one, but not unlike Shakspere. Compare Cymbeline, act v. sc. 5: 'And your three motives to the battle,' meaning 'the motives of you three.' Perhaps, however, it is only the adjective for the adverb: 'having concealed it hitherto, conceal it trebly now.' But tenible may be the word: 'let it be a thing to be kept in your ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... told the story of Genevra Lambert to the old man, who, 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 he meant ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... that the attempts of the uninitiated can compass nothing but caricature and burlesque. We cordially give them the advantage of this supposed stricture, and as cordially refer all earnest inquirers to this first instalment of the heroic work. We say heroic, and would abate the adjective of no jot of meaning. It requires the stuff of which heroes are made to promulgate a religious idea so unadapted to the conscious demands of any order or condition of men. A few persons of redundant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... station is waking up it would be well to consider the proprieties a little more than we have done so far; or the 'Button Quail' will be forbidding Elsie the house. She is volubly disapproving already, denounces him as a 'dangerous man' . . . delectable adjective! But the cackle of Quails is nothing to me. So long as the man behaves himself, and amuses me, I shall continue to see just as much of him as I ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... That's quite original. I told my cousin, Thayer, that if she could hail you with a new adjective, I should present you as a candidate for a dish of ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... a sad abuse of the adjective little; I am quite aware of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little, finical; affected,—all Japan is contained, both physically and morally, in ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti |
