"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lord Lisle was about as unpleasant a matter as one could well experience. His language was coarse; his ideas coarser still. There was very little to redeem it. He mistook slang for wit, told stories that made his wife shudder, and misbehaved himself as only such a man ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... When a sufficient number had accumulated he would read them all through, with the greatest care. There upon the table, the whole soul of Gordon lay before him—in its incoherence, its eccentricity, its impulsiveness, its romance; the jokes, the slang, the appeals to the prophet Isaiah, the whirl of contradictory policies—Sir Evelyn Baring did not know which exasperated him most. He would not consider whether, or to what degree, the man was a maniac; no, he would not. A subacid smile was the only comment he allowed himself. His position, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... utterly hateful the use of slang terms. There are surely words enough in the English language to express all the thoughts and ideas of the mind, and it is a sign of pure vulgarity to employ synonyms, the only remarkable part of which is that they derive their existence ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... been lookin' consid'ble like rain, lately, hereabouts," continued the captain, coolly, in a kind of amphibious slang, characteristic of the man, "but in these yer latitudes no man kin set up to be a ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... way, it would be difficult, to say the least of it, to prove that the slang phrase "shut up" and the Americanism "say" were never used in A.D. 1642, in the sense in which they are used in 1890, but they are scarcely characteristic of the modes of expression ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... away over the garden and the orchard like fairy balloons. They had glorious afternoon teas under the beech tree. They made ice cream themselves. Jims even slid down the bannisters when he wanted to. And he could try out a slang word or two occasionally without anybody dying of horror. Miss Avery did not seem to mind ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch the fancy of a slang-loving and thoughtless generation the writer must throw off his works. This is an age of "throwing off," and it is to be presumed that future ages will throw the result away. One must be brilliant, shallow, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... who enter here. Both sides are squeezed by the gate-keeper —a very lucrative post in all yamens—before they are allowed to present their petitions. It then becomes necessary for plaintiff and defendant alike to go through the process of (in Peking slang) "making a slit," i.e., making a present of money to the magistrate and his subordinates proportionate to the interests involved. In many yamens there is a regular scale of charges, answering to our Table of Fees, but this is almost ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... if we go away? There is no such thing as society now. Assemblies of well-dressed mobs meet at each other's houses, tear each other's clothes, tread on each other's toes. If you are particularly lucky, you sit on the staircase, you get a tepid ice, and you hear vapid talk in slang phrases all round you. There is modern society. If we had a good opera, it would be something to stay in London for. Look at the programme for the season on that table—promising as much as possible on paper, and ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... looks, the kind that led you to expect the person enjoying them would dispose of disputations, speculations, aspirations, in a few very neatly and brightly uttered words, so simplified in sense, however, that they sounded, even when guiltless, like rather aggravated slang. It wasn't that Kate hadn't pretended too that she should like to go to America; it was only that with this young woman Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever of late, on the theory of intimate confessions, private frank ironies that made up for their public grimaces ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... however, by the bookmaker, who, having no views, but seeing an opportunity for fun, brought up reinforcements of chaff and slang, easily construable into profanity, and impregnated with terse humour. Many of the ladies had spoken of the bookmaker as one of the best-mannered men on board. So he was to all appearance. None dressed with better taste, nor carried himself with such an air. There was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it also would rule out the highly technical vocabulary of camp and trail, steamship and jungle, with which Mr. Kipling has greatly delighted our generation. No one who admires the splendid vitality of "McAndrew's Hymn" is really troubled by the slang and lingo of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Dryden says, We bring a fancy of those Georgian days, Whose style still breathed a faint and fine perfume Of old-world courtliness and old-world bloom: When speech was elegant and talk was fit For slang had not been canonised as wit; When manners reigned, when breeding had the wall, And Women - yes! - were ladies first of all; When Grace was conscious of its gracefulness, And man - though Man! - was not ashamed to dress. A brave formality, a measured ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... believe in any noble or good thing of any kind, than the stupidest Bosjesman. The thing is but a boy in years, and is addled with drink. To do its company justice, even its company is ashamed of it, as it drawls its slang criticisms on the representation, and inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardour to fling it into the pit. Its remarks are so horrible, that Mr. Goodchild, for the moment, even doubts whether that IS a wholesome Art, which sets women apart on a high floor before such a thing as this, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... despise it, aw can't tell, It's plain to understand; An sure aw am it saands as weel, Tho' happen net soa grand. Tell fowk they're courtin, they're enraged, They call that vulgar slang; But if aw tell 'em they're engaged, That's net mi ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... don't know; some old fellow who wrote the rules of arithmetic, I believe; it's only a bit of slang. But, I repeat, you have a right to be sad, and it's taking an unfair advantage of your relations to look as pleasant ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... awfully nice. He did not forget my birthday, but he says that at that time he was stoney, in student's slang that means that he hadn't any money, and then he could not find anything suitable, but that he will repair the omission as soon as we get back to Vienna. But I don't know what I should like. Oswald is going to stay until we all go back to Vienna, ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... I get you; but that's only slang. You have been here long enough, I should guess from your talk, to get on to our American guff. Well, we're glad ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... behind. I see them all wear the same tie, the same trowsers, the same boots. I hear them all say the same thing, and dance with the same partners in the same way. I see them go to Europe and return—I hear them talk slang to show that they have exhausted human life in foreign parts and observe them demean themselves according to their idea of the English nobleman. I watch them go in strongly for being "manly," and "smashing the spoonies"—asserting intimacies with ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... up this chapter of accidents with an account of the manner in which a party of strangers, to use a slang but expressive phrase, came to grief during a visit to the ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... excited by the example of those about her, Kitty tried to enact the fashionable young lady, and, like most novices, she overdid the part. Quite forgetting her cousin, she tossed her head, twirled her fan, gave affected little shrieks at college jokes, and talked college slang in a way that convulsed Fletcher, who enjoyed ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... conversation. When an occasion arose which seemed to demand a special effort, the talk around the "chuck-wagon" was so riddled with slang from all corners of the earth, so full of startling imagery, that a stranger might stare, bewildered, unable to extract a particle of meaning. And through it blazed such a continual shower of oaths, that were themselves sparks of satanic poetry, that, in the phrase of one contemplative cowpuncher, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... of Virtue and Truth, And the sweet little innocent prattle of Youth! The smallest urchin whose tongue could tang, Shocked the Dame with a volley of slang, Fit for Fagin's juvenile gang; While the charity chap, With his muffin cap, His crimson coat, and his badge so garish, Playing at dumps, or pitch in the hole, Cursed his eyes, limbs, body and soul, As if they did not belong ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... that had swept my memory back to civilization and drawn me from my Golden Bed. O Lalala had all the slang of poker—the poker of the waterfronts of San Francisco and of Shanghai—and evidently he had already taught ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... one talks; this is all very fine; but at the end of the reckoning one is no cleverer than the next man—and no more brave. Brave! This is always to be seen. I have rolled my hump (roule ma bosse)," he said, using the slang expression with imperturbable seriousness, "in all parts of the world; I have known brave men—famous ones! Allez!" . . . He drank carelessly. . . . "Brave—you conceive—in the Service—one has got to be—the trade demands it (le metier veut ca). Is it not so?" he appealed ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... at the double-quick, with occasional rests. The road lay along Deer Creek, passing several plantations; and occasionally, at the bends, it crossed the swamp, where the water came above my hips. The smaller drummer-boys had to carry their drums on their heads, and most of the men slang their cartridge-boxes around their necks. The soldiers generally were glad to have their general and field officers afoot, but we gave them a fair specimen of marching, accomplishing about twenty-one miles by noon. Of course, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... upon A Pair of Spectacles in a volume of French plays. The period to which the very slight and uninteresting story of Haddon Hall belongs is just before the Restoration, but the dialogue of "the book" is spiced with modern slang, both "up to date" (the date being this present year of Grace, not sixteen hundred and sixty) and out of date. The "out-of-date" slang, which is, "I've got 'em on"—alluding to the Scotchman's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... said—Belle is too fresh sometimes!" Violet cried, spiritedly, and relapsing a trifle into slang, in her irritation ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... tryin' to chuck any flowers of oratory. What I aimed to do was to tell 'em about Rowley's schemes as simple and straight away as I could, usin' one-syllable words for the most part, cannin' the slang, and soundin' as many final G's as my tongue would let me. Before I turned in too, I had it almost pat; but I hardly dared to go to sleep for fear it would get away ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... a picture. (Mr. Parham-Carter did not, of course, use such beautiful similes as these; he employed the kind of language customary to men who have received a public school and university education, half slang and half childishness; but he waved his hands at me and distorted his features, and conveyed, on the whole, the kind of impression I have just attempted ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... Can the Foss River help freezing in winter? Can Jacky help talking prairie slang? Can Lablache help grubbing for money? Can you help caring for all of our worthless selves who belong to the Foss River Settlement? Nothing can alter these things. John would play poker on the lid of his own coffin, while the undertakers were winding ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers—strangers for the most part, in all probability, to one another—and in ten minutes' time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the elderly women in the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Now beat it." Although Jerry was earnestly endeavoring to eliminate slang from her vocabulary, she could not resist ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... paused in her thoughts, arrested by the strange expression. Where had it come from? How was it possible for it to come at all? It might have been one of Mrs. Wilkins's, in its levity, its almost slang. Perhaps it was one of hers, and she had heard her say it and ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... he exclaimed, a weak smile on his lips. "I'm no boob!" Obviously, he meant this lapse into the slang of the Tenderloin to convey his intimate knowledge of police methods. "You can't soft-soap me! You don't want explanations! You want me to get myself in bad. But you won't get anything out of me. I know ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... run out to the farmhouse to take his daughter and son-in-law for their first ride. Hugh sat in the seat beside him and after they had started and were clear of the town, Tom turned to him. "Now watch me step on her tail," he said proudly, using for the first time the motor slang he had picked up from the ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... Jonson's comedy is Captain Tucca. "His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... and, without the least appearance of effort, working hard to captivate those who were to be won by bold smiles and arch glances. She displayed her person less freely than her colleagues, being, not more modest, but more skilful in the art of seduction. The slang that served for dialogue in her part was delivered in all sorts of intonations, now demure and mischievous, anon strident and ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... by these creatures was of composite sound—now a word of Spanish, then of German, then of French, then of Gaelic, at times of Basque. It was either a patois or a slang. They appeared to be of all nations, and yet of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... indignant, stoutly defensive. G.J. grew self-conscious. Moreover, her slang disturbed him. It was the first slang he had heard her use, and in using it her voice had roughened. But he remembered that Concepcion also ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... began long ago when they'd first mapped out the big military manoeuvring grounds—we call 'em Areas for short—where the I. G. spend two-thirds of their time and the other regiments get their training. It was slang originally for beef on the hoof, because in the Military Areas two-thirds of your meat-rations at least are handed over to you on the hoof, and you make your own arrangements. The word 'heef' became a parable for camping in the Military Areas and all its miseries. There are ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... you to avoid slang, my dear cousin,—professional slang especially; and to remember that in London there are no professions after six ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... hot weather, discomfort, parting, and death. That smell in our nostrils, and Adam's servant in waiting, we naturally fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay window overlooking the park, where they were carting the last of the hay. When twilight fell we would not have candles, but waited for the ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... disdain of too much law Not only limn the truths no others saw But also, lord not slave of written word, Lend ear to what no other poet heard And, liberal minded on the Mermaid bench With bow for blade and chaff for serving wench Await from overseas slang-slinging Jack Who brought the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... idea that Harlowe House is a headquarters for second-hand clothing. I have labored with them to convince them that such is not the case, but still they yearn for the Brent finery. Judging from what I hear, it must have been 'some' wardrobe. Pardon my lapse into slang, O, Overton. A number of the teachers have commented on the affair. I've been asked ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... Strickland, and these called to him to come back and take up his wanderings and his discoveries. Some day, I will tell you how he broke his promise to help a friend. That was long since, and he has, by this time, been nearly spoilt for what he would call shikar. He is forgetting the slang, and the beggar's cant, and the marks, and the signs, and the drift of the undercurrents, which, if a man would master, he must ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... watch, and kept all hands awake. They were always amusing from their improbability, and, indeed, he never expected to be believed, but spun them merely for amusement; and as he had some humor and a good supply of man-of-war slang and sailor's salt phrases, he always made fun. Next to him in age and experience, and, of course, in standing in the watch, was an Englishman, named Harris, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. Then, came two or three Americans, who had been the common run of European ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... make mock of patriotism in a jargon mixed with slang which greatly disturbed the minds of worthy folk, who became half ashamed at harbouring, in spite of themselves, the ridiculous emotions ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... play, but he took up a string of reasoning like this: "Because I am the only boy mama has set out to make me as good as Mabel, and she doesn't allow me to use slang nor anything of the kind. I know if there were half a dozen boys here, it would be different. I suppose it is all right for girls and women, but, bah! I can't be a goody-goody. I am only a boy. I guess it won't pay to bother about good manners, like a ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... with vain repetitions. She was always "a worm" when asked after her health, and everything that pleased her was "pucka." She knew no language but her own, and that she spoke indifferently, her command of it being limited for the most part to slang expressions, which are the scum of language; and a few stock phrases of polite quality for special occasions. But she used the latter awkwardly, as ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... talked about American writers, and was very severe upon them; some of them were friends of mine, and it was not pleasant. But I was especially hurt by a remark which he made afterwards. Americans are noted in England for their use of slang. The English suppose that the language of Sam Slick or of Nasby is the language used in cultivated society. They do not seem to understand it, and I have no doubt to-day that Lowell's comic poems are taken seriously. So at this table, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... literally this time slang is unknown to him; and re-reads it. That girl has come! There can't be any doubt of it. He had almost forgotten her existence during these past tranquil months, when no word or hint about her reached him, but now, here she is at last, descending ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... Literature, for a new influence has freshened the blood of conventional style that in the decadence of the End of the Century had grown dilute. This adjuvant strain is found in the enthusiasm of Slang. Slowly its rhetorical power has won foothold in the language. It has won many a verb and substantive, it has conquered idiom and diction, and now it is strong enough to assault the very syntax ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | For the interest of the reader, 'the morning hate' is | | WWI slang for the "Stand To Arms". | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... again. Even Sammy Brown was shone upon by the far-flung rays of the renaissance. Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horseshoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending admiration of Ravenel—the broker's clerk made an excellent foil to the new, bright unseen visitor to the poet's ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... abuse by declaring that Scott has encouraged the lowest panders of a venal press, 'deluging and nauseating the public mind with the offal and garbage of Billingsgate abuse and vulgar slang;' and presently he calls Scott—by way, it is true, of lowering Byron—'one of the greatest teachers of morality that ever lived.' He invents a theory, to which he returns more than once, to justify the contrast. Scott, he says, is much ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... soon as I have the time—say during our voyage to Cairo, whence we start inland up the Nile for Ethiopia—I shall make love whenever you like. And, confound it, Selina, I admire you no end—to use a slang phrase. You are a fine woman and a sensible woman, and I am afraid that you are throwing yourself away on a ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... and wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands Shakspeare must have drunk in a portion of that frank artless sense of beauty which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in ennobling those who were born there: yonder dirty, swindling, ragged blackguards, lolling ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... motor-bicycles whose clumsy complexity and extravagant filthiness still astonish the visitors to the museum of machinery at South Kensington. He mentions running over a dog and complains of the ruinous price of 'spatchcocks' in Surrey. 'Spatchcocks,' it seems, was a slang term for ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... bodies of boys or youths organized, armed and trained on volunteer military lines. Derived from "cadet," through the Scots form "cadee," comes "caddie," a messenger-boy, and particularly one who carries clubs at golf, and also the slang word "cad," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... horse was still sound: but it satisfied Cully to be assured, and it satisfied, too, a certain yearning tenderness in his heart toward his old chum. Once in a while he would pat the Gray's neck, smoothing his ragged, half worn mane, addressing him all the while in words of endearment expressed in a slang positively profane and utterly without meaning except ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... you've had enough." Martha reddened and patted his arm, looking pleased. Neither of them had talked that way, even in the old days, but the out-dated slang brought back memories—school parties, dances at the Rocketport Club, the early years of the war when Donegal had jockeyed an R-43 fighter in the close-space assaults against the Soviet satellite project. The memories ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... to come to my house tomorrow morning to see Rebecca Mary. I'm going to say it over again. Tomorrow morning, to see Rebecca Mary!" setting apart the syllables with the pointing finger. "You can play in my back yard," said Aunt Olivia, sublimely unconscious of slang. ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... which the loved fairy tales that have charmed the imaginations of thousands, or subjects of mythology that belong to the religious history of the greatest people on record, are turned into coarse pot-house jests, with slang for wit, but without the playful elegance by which Planche justifies his sport. It is a sign of intellectual barrenness in the writers; for what is easier than parody? what means of raising a laugh so certain and so cheap as to roll a statue from its pedestal ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... with the language. For although two nations use the same words and read the same books, intercourse is not conducted by the dictionary. The business of life is not carried on by words, but in set phrases, each with a special and almost a slang signification. Some international obscurity prevailed between me and the coloured gentleman at Council Bluffs; so that what I was asking, which seemed very natural to me, appeared to him a monstrous exigency. He refused, and that with the plainness of the West. This American manner of conducting ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good example, by adducing wraiths which, in slang phrase, were 'sells'. Those which we have at first hand are marked '(A),' those at second-hand '(B)'. But the world will accept the story of a ghost that failed on very poor ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... as this also came home, of course the poor man was totally wrecked. It turned out that the dictionary he had used (Arnold's, we think,)—a work of a hundred years back, and, from mere ignorance, giving slang translations from Tom Brown, L'Estrange, and other jocular writers—had put down the verb sterben (to die) with the following worshipful series of equivalents—1. To kick the bucket; 2. To cut one's stick; 3. To go to kingdom come; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... is admirable. Yes, I was hard up. But the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I became harder up. My financial state was described by a friend as 'stone broke.' I don't approve of slang, mind you, but such was my condition. But suppose we go in; there might be other people who would like to dine—it's a human ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the Italians, anxious not to be outdone in any respect by their allies, were the most accomplished of depredators. They had come in fact to hold theft meritorious, and designated it by the elegant name of poetry. This slang term had become so general, that it was used even by the officers; and the adjutant of Pepe's regiment, in reporting a marauder to him, calls the man a poet. The prosaic application of a couple of hundred lashes to the shoulders of this culprit, served as a warning to his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... competent judges; but, quite the contrary—a sensible, well-informed, gentlemanly personage. But, then, he had no great friends, no patrician weaknesses; he knew nothing about racing, or betting, or opera-dancers, or slang in general. In short, he seemed flat and insipid to Bab, who had been compared to the beautiful Lady Mary Manvers by the soft and persuasive tongue of Lady Mary Manvers's dear friend. Yet, in her secret heart of hearts, Bab drew ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... are not familiar with the slang of the Rue de Jerusalem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied this word for the first time to this thing, allow us to explain to them what is ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... details of his new craft. As each sandbar showed up beneath the yellow ripples, as each new point of the forest-clad banks opened out, Nilssen gave him courses and cross bearings, dazing enough to the unprofessional ear, but easily stored in a trained seaman's brain. He discoursed in easy slang of the cut-offs, the currents, the sludge-shallows, the floods, and the other vagaries of the great river's course, and punctuated his discourse with draughts of Rabeira's wine, and comments on the tangled mass of black humanity under the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... pleasure; but these are comical. With the child, whose expectations are rigid and few in number because of his lack of discrimination and small experience, almost all pleasures, like almost all events, are of the nature of surprises. The child almost always laughs when he is pleased. The slang phrase "to be highly tickled" expresses with precision this close connection between laughter and pleasure. Moreover, as the complexity of life increases, its strains and repressions are multiplied, with ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... pilot also, who had been with him before to that same island, declared that of the two great mountain peaks which he had noticed at the two ends of the island, east and west, only the Eastern was now standing. The slang name of "Azores" or "Hawks" now began to take the place of the old term of "Western" islands, from the swarms of hawks or kites that were found in the new discovered St. Michael, and in the others which came to light ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... know what these mean because they find them in books, but would no more think of employing them in speaking than of using "inn," "tavern," or "ale," when they can say "hotel," "public-house," or "beer." Their place is taken by slang. Yet if a nation is known by its slang, the New Zealanders must be held disposed to borrow rather than to originate, for theirs is almost wholly a mixture of English, American, and Australian. Most of the mining terms come ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Father Murray laughed. "I know that you wanted to use that particular expressive bit of our particularly expressive slang. What I mean is this: People study religion nowadays—that is, English-speaking people—with the Catholic Church left out. Yet she claims the allegiance of over three hundred million people. Without her, ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... the carpenter's shop, or could not button his robe when he was in a hurry, or whether he laughed over the repartees by which he baffled the priests when they tried to trap him into sedition and blasphemy, or even if you tell any part of his story in the vivid terms of modern colloquial slang, you will produce an extraordinary dismay and horror among the iconolaters. You will have made the picture come out of its frame, the statue descend from its pedestal, the story become real, with all the incalculable consequences ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... said the two together. (They must have been twins.) "This is that way. To put all twenty yoke of us to the big gun as soon as Two Tails trumpets." ("Two Tails" is camp slang for the elephant.) ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... with a cheery smile. He had made mistakes, of course—who didn't? But he intended to come out on top, you bet your life! Western slang flowed freely from his lips. The blazing sun, which already had cracked the unpainted shingles on his roof, had bleached the crude blue of his jumper and overalls. His sombrero might have belonged to a veteran cowboy. Jim wore it with a rakish ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... existence among the gum-trees. The typical Australian is an odd combination of the practical and the ideal. He is a student who learns to read to himself a foreign language, but does not attain to its pronunciation. He has no knowledge of the current jargon or society slang. He has unconsciously rejected vulgarisms and shallow conceits; but all the deeper thoughts, the poetry of life, which appeal to the soul, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... for the purpose of preying upon the patriots, and then retreating behind the shelter of the royal fortifications, were composed of the vilest miscreants that could be gathered from the dregs of any community, and were generally known by the slang name ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... knew just when to let Bud catch a slow, sidelong glance—of the kind that is supposed to set a man's heart to syncopatic behavior. She did not do it too often. She did not powder too much, and she had the latest slang at her pink tongue's tip and was yet moderate in her use ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... speech when he knew the king was within earshot—a little bit of that 'artifice' of his which has left such an impression in the theatre, that the phrase, 'As deep as Garrick,' is still current stage slang."[219] ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... daily visit the policy-shops in this neighborhood to put down the pennies they have begged or received for stolen articles on some favorite numbers—quick-witted, sharp, eager little wretches, who talk the lottery slang as glibly as older customers. What hope is there in the future for these children? Will their education in the shop of a policy-dealer fit them to become ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... Army slang. Your 'striker' is a private soldier, whom you hire at so many a dollars a month to do the rougher work in your quarters. You make whatever bargain you choose with the soldier. At this post the bachelor officers usually pay a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... man in a lonely cabin, practically snowed in, was not the only surprise the girls were to receive that day. The other followed quickly on the heels of the first. It was Mollie who "sprung it," as Will said afterward, and even Grace did not rebuke him for his slang. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... "It isn't slang, Mother! At least it may be; but I want to know, because, really, you know, ma'am, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... of the Daily Press, Chained to their party posts, or fetter-free And running amuck against old party creeds, On-howl their packs and glory in the fight. See mangy curs, whose editorial ears Prick to all winds to catch the popular breeze, Slang-whanging yelp, and froth and snap and snarl, And sniff the gutters for their daily food. And these—are they our prophets and our priests? Hurra!—Hurra!—Hurra!—for "Liberty!" Flaunt the red flag and flutter the petticoat; Ran-tan the drums and let the bugles bray, The eagle ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... side was presented just after the blow, sending his lance quivering home all its length into the most vital part of the leviathan's anatomy. Turning his happy face to me, he shouted exultingly, "How's dat fer high?"—a bit of slang he had picked up, and his use of which never failed to make me smile. "High" it was indeed—a master-stroke. It must have pierced the creature's heart, for he immediately began to spout blood in masses, and without another wound went into ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... that effective style of criticism which consists in the use of such expressions as "dogmatism," "intolerance," "presumptuous," "arrogant." Together with accusations of such various faults a "virtual abandonment of the inductive method," and the use of slang and vulgarisms. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... miles off, but ere they had gone two April knew the painter as well as if they had been twin sisters. Clive Connal hadn't a secret or a shilling she would not share with the whole world. She used the vocabulary of a horse-dealer and the slang of a schoolboy, but her mind was as fragrant as a field that the Lord hath blessed, and her heart was the heart of a child. It was shameful to deceive such a creature, and April's nature revolted from the act. Before they reached the farm she had confessed her identity—explaining how the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... chance comers-in. "The Elf—da," says he, "was too exquisitely pretty; I could make no fun out of that."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 37. I doubt whether Johnson used the word fun, which he describes in his Dictionary as 'a low cant [slang] word.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... in his prose the flatting and sharping he censured in Fenimore Cooper's. His style has none of the cold perfection of an antique statue; it is too modern and too American for that, and too completely the expression of the man himself, sincere and straightforward. It is not free from slang, altho this is far less frequent than one might expect; but it does its work swiftly and cleanly. And it is capable of immense variety. Consider the tale of the Blue Jay in 'A Tramp Abroad,' wherein the humor is sustained by unstated pathos; what ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... keys were put in motion, and he opened the grate to let them pass, eyeing John Ayliffe with considerable attention as he did so. Locking the grate carefully behind him, he lighted them on with his lantern, muttering as he went in the peculiar prison slang of those days, various sentences not very complimentary to the tastes and habits of young John Ayliffe, "Ay, ay," he said, "clerk be damned! One of Tom's pals, for a pint and a boiled bone—droll I don't know him. He must be twenty, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Grammar in the same year, and at the same time his Colloquies, or "dialogues intended to facilitate the acquiring of the Bengali language," which he wrote out of the abundance of his knowledge of native thought, idioms, and even slang, to enable students to converse with all classes of society, as Erasmus had done in another way. His Dictionary of 80,000 words began to appear in 1815. Knowing, however, that in the long run the literature of a nation must be of indigenous ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... 'skedadle' (the demi-savans (I don't mean Napoleon's in Egypt, but the provinvial editors—in some cases it amounts to the same thing) having proved the word to be Greek, I suppose it is slang no longer), the Tenth Illinois regiment (Dick Wolcott, you know) camped a few miles to the northward, near the woods; and hasty but shady structures were soon reared in front of the officers' tents; but one morning there arose a great wind, and the 'arboresque' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I stand on the pier of Beyrout, while my luggage is being embarked for the Austrian steamer lying in the roads, which, in the Levantine slang, has lighted her chibouque, and is polluting yon white promontory, clear cut in the azure horizon, with a thick ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... and punishing the guilty. The English personages are the Countess Sarah McGregor—the lawful wife of the prince—her brother Tom, and Sir Walter Murph, Esquire. These are all jostled, and crowded, and pushed, and flurried—first in flash kens, where the language is slang; then in country farms, and then in halls and palaces—and so intermixed and confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds. How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Parisians arrived in their native province, and found it absorbed in the unremitting toil of the wine-crop of 1836; there could therefore be no public demonstration in their favor. "We have fallen flat," said Lousteau to his companion, in the slang of ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... often and quite truly observed that there are sentences, passages, paragraphs, almost whole letters in Horace Walpole and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in Fanny Burney and in Cowper, which no one would think old-fashioned at the present day in any context where modern slang did not suggest itself as natural. But this was by no means the only predisposing cause, though perhaps most of the others were, in this way or that, connected with it. Both in France and in England literature and social matters generally were in something like what political economists call ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... and she had a sister who was not pretty. It seemed to me that even the sad sea waves were kinder to the Pretty Girl, such is the influence of youth and beauty. There were various men—heavy swells I should call some of them, only that that would be slang; but heavy swells were the order of the day. Then there was a benevolent old lady who believed in everything—in the music, and the Jane Moseley, and the long days, and the summer. There was another old lady of restless mind, who evidently believed in nothing, hoped for nothing, expected nothing. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Fred, "if you desire the continuance of my friendship, and if you wish to respect the dignity of morality and the English language, you must refrain from using such insinuating balderdash and bar-room-slang." ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... them will tickle an audience into good humour. "Tousjours vieil synge est desplaisant." It is not the old jester who receives most recognition at a tavern party, but the young fellow, fresh and handsome, who knows the new slang, and carries off his vice with a certain air. Of this, as a tavern jester himself, he would be pointedly conscious. As for the women with whom he was best acquainted, his reflections on their old age, in all their harrowing ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were limited, and the fortunate could do little more than drink, and tempt others to drink. But to-day the fortunate farmer in the dog-cart, dressed like a gentleman, drove his thorough-bred, and carried his groom behind. Frank D——, Esq., in the slang of the time, 'did the thing grand!' The dog-cart was a first-rate article. The horse was a high-stepper, such as are not to be bought for a song; the turn-out was at the first glance perfect. But if you looked keenly at the groom, there was a suspicion of the plough in his face and attitude. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... camp slang into intelligible English, "that he gets the newly enlisted men to play with him before they have a chance to learn his reputation, and of course gets all their money, ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... a smirch to the reputation,—transferring thus to financial matters the loose principles of love in the eighteenth century. Diard now became a sort of business man, and concerned himself in several of those affairs which are called shady in the slang of the law-courts. He practised the decent thievery by which so many men, cleverly masked, or hidden in the recesses of the political world, make their fortunes,—thievery which, if done in the streets by ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... and public spirit were highly spoken of by those who knew him best. That a journal does not always reflect the editor is as much the fault of society as of the man. So long as the public will pay for gross personalities, obscenity, and slang, decent journals will be outbidden in the market. The fact that the La Crosse Democrat found a ready sale in all parts of the country showed that Mr. Pomeroy fairly reflected the popular taste. While multitudes turned up the whites ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... courtesy shown to the weaker sex either. I have heard young men and young women—young ladies, I suppose I ought to say—who address each other in a 'hail-fellow-well-met' sort of manner, but what can you expect," in a disgusted tone, "when the girls talk slang, and ape their young brothers? I think the 'sweet madame' of our great-grandmothers' times preferable to these slipshod manners. I would rather see our girls live and die in single blessedness than marry one of ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... already given to the language words that show promise of attaining eventual legitimacy. An increasingly large source of enrichment of the native tongue comes from the "spontaneous generation" of slang, which, starting in the linguistic whimsicality of one individual, gets caught up in conversation, and finds its ultimate way into the language. Important instruments, certainly in the United States, in spreading such neologisms ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... you with any information on slang," admonished her friend. "I don't suppose he is really king of anything except of a country of his ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... her quaint terms of endearment, slang, and epithets, but as she grew into a beautiful and refined and dignified girl, it was still more piquant to be addressed in the highly unladylike (or un-Smelliean) terms that ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... evidently for the expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the gallery responded—how heartily, those who were present have never forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more. The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... slang, Bulls are speculators for a rise, Bears for a fall. A lame duck is a man who cannot pay his dififerences, and is said to waddle off. The patriotism of the money-market is well touched by Ponsard, in his comedy La Bourse: ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... I presume that means. The Consolidated Pacific is wise to the situation. 'Wise' is slang, isn't it? It ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the air. That was the way of it in old times. And the boys whooped him up and stood by him." It was the diffident young man who had half spoken, half recited, with an odd enthusiasm that even the culminating slang could not ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sprightliness and gay spirits and unconventionality, but the moment a woman steps over the border land that separates delicacy of feeling, womanliness and lovableness, from rudeness, loud-voiced slang and the unblushing desire for notoriety, she becomes, in the eyes of all whose opinion is worth having, a miserable caricature upon her sex. It is not quite so bad to see a young girl making a fool of herself as to see an elderly woman comporting herself in ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... on the handle of the fan. Short curls upon the temples were designated cavaliers; ringlets were garcons; while a hundred other inanities of the same description compelled the great ladies of the period to adopt a slang which was perfectly unintelligible to all save the initiated; and when we add to these details the well-authenticated fact that the royal apartments were fumigated with powdered tobacco (then a recent and costly importation into France), in lieu of the perfumes which had ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... picked up his knowledge of English at Alexandria, and his conversation abounded with slang phrases which ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... loud easiness was obviously less disturbing to them than to their hostess. Undine felt only his crudeness, and the tacit criticism passed on it by the mere presence of such men as her husband and Bowen; but Mrs. Fairford' seemed to enjoy provoking him to fresh excesses of slang and hyperbole. Gradually she drew him into talking of the Driscoll campaign, and he became recklessly explicit. He seemed to have nothing to hold back: all the details of the prodigious exploit poured ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... investigated it, and thought about it, what you have to say cannot fail to command their respect and approval, for you will have shown them that you possess a grasp of your subject and—to adopt an exceedingly expressive bit of slang—then some. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... ideas to each other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy to observe these precise and beautiful forms of expression; it clips its words; throws its sentences together without regard to grammar; falls into slang; draws its figures from the coarse and low and sensual side of life, instead of from its pure ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... changed instantly, and Selby listened in surprise to names which were new to him, and eulogies on the latest Prix de Rome winner. He was delighted to hear opinions boldly expressed and points honestly debated, although the vehicle was mostly slang, both English and French. He longed for the time when he too should be plunged into the strife ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... most important personages of the realm, and their entertaining this high opinion of themselves can scarcely be wondered at; they were low fellows, but masters of driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed as his unquestionable right; and then these sprigs would smoke ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... sacrifice;— 60 And bard still less:—what claim had he, Who swore it vex'd his soul to see So grand a cause, so proud a realm, With Goose and Goody at the helm; Who long ago had fall'n asunder 65 But for their rivals' baser blunder, The coward whine and Frenchified Slaver and slang of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ladies are not the only greenbacks that are accepted at sight; and acceptable to it. The bank on which I should like to dwell—do you not guess it?—is the auriferous National. Those musical neighbors-how they do play, though! But, to borrow from Mr. SLANG, my queer neighbor opposite, they have about played out. Our gentlemanly landlord—all landlords are so very gentlemanly, kind, good, and considerate—Mr. GRABB, says it don't pay ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... procuresses will write to men of means of their acquaintance, informing them in some cipher or slang phrase that they have a new importation in their house awaiting eligible disposition. Large sums are often paid under such circumstances, and the fresh importation is usually sold in this way five or six times. In other words, she is represented as a maid and imposed upon men as a virgin; which ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... had ever before passed the lips of the judge: for slang might indeed be unintelligible to a judge who knew not what a race-course was, and would ask in court, "What is the 'Stock ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... this taste in our time. There is almost a mania for frivolity and excitement, which exhibits itself in many forms in our popular literature. To meet the public taste, our books and periodicals must now be highly spiced, amusing, and comic, not disdaining slang, and illustrative of breaches of all laws, human and divine. Douglas Jerrold once observed of this tendency, "I am convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw about all things. After all, life has something serious in it. It cannot be ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... were sparkling, for Wallie's tone implied that the expression was slang and also ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... are extremely averse to superfluous effort and supremely indifferent to the purity of their native language—the formula is still further curtailed by the use of "to feel" in a technical sense, meaning, "to recommend-for-the-purposes-of-feeling-and-being-felt"; and at this moment the "slang" of polite or fast society in the upper classes sanctions such a barbarism as "Mr. Smith, permit me to feel ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... the all-pervading eye of authority, she is so drilled, and lectured, and ruled and regulated, that, when the eye of authority is off her, she seems naturally to degenerate into licence. No speech so interwoven with slang as the speech of a schoolgirl—except ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... father!' and ejaculates 'hi-hi-hi!' in tones of piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told; oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the growling and commotion on the bank, that my bullet has indeed told, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... poppy-plant material, other than the seeds. Opium is extracted from poppy straw in commercial operations that produce the drug for medical use. Qat (kat, khat) is a stimulant from the buds or leaves of Catha edulis that is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... weak minority gave signs of hardihood, I usually adopted their side in argument; and, as I was fully au fait to all the slang of party at least, it became my business in promotion of fun, to fan the flame, which in one instance had nearly ended in getting myself and my allies turned out of an honest Jacksonian's house, who swore no such libellous Whigs should drink ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... he actually asked me to dine with him at his club, and I actually did; and actually he with me, at mine! And we spoke French all through dinner, and I taught him a lot of French school-boy slang, with which he was delighted. Then he came to see me in Barge Yard, and I even introduced him to my mother and sister, who couldn't help being charmed with him. He was fond of the best music only (he had no ear whatever, and didn't know a note), and only cared for old pictures—the National Gallery, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... In the slang of the newspaper shop a "story" means non-fiction. It may be an interview. It may be an account of a fire. It may be a page of descriptive writing for the Sunday magazine section. It may be merely a piece ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... pinchbeck. It may be, however, for I have not the honor to belong to any of your clubs, that you no longer insult the word by using it at all. It may be you have deposed it, and enthroned another word of less significance to you still. But what the recognized slang of the day may be is nothing—therefore unnecessary to what I have to say—which is, that the man is a wretched ape who will utter a word about a woman's virtue, when in himself, soul and body, there ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... purred the smaller man in the Western slang that phrased incredulity. Then, suddenly, he foamed at the mouth. "Keep out of this if you're squeamish. Let me play out the hand. I'll ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... approximate meaning in English, saying it was as difficult to translate these intimate and slang phrases as it would be to put "Yankee Doodle" into French or German. His translation, as he wrote it on a scrap ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Indian fight; it takes lots of grit to stand up in front of an oncoming troop of horsemen, and snap them until they get so close you can see the whites of their eyes. Then if they turn at the right time—well and good. But if there's a slip, and they ride into you—good-night! Excuse my slang," he added, hastily. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... Lord Durham, son-in-law of the premier, assuming that he was the party pointed at, attacked what he called "the bishop's gross and virulent invective—his malignant, calumnious, and false insinuations—his well-known powers of pamphleteering slang." Here the noble lord was called to order, and the Earl of Winchelsea moved that the words "false insinuations" and "pamphleteering slang" should be taken down. After some observations from Earl Grey, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Durham went ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the kingdom of Argot (cant, slang), the code or the formula of which prescribed theft ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... seventeen words incorrectly spelt in one letter. But she deftly excused herself by saying that she used archaic forms. "Never mind St. George," she writes good-humouredly, to Mrs. E. G. Burton, "I like old spelling." She did not excuse her slang by calling it old, or refer her friends to ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... not by a jugful, but anger's all fiddle-de-dee; They may copy my style till all's blue, but they won't discombobulate me. Names and metres is anyone's props; but of one thing they don't get the 'ang; They ain't fly to good patter, old pal, they ain't copped the straight griffin on slang. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... The boys in your family know of it—if you could get them to tell you. My two sons studied at a State university, and they would bring me home what they heard—the gossip, the slang, the horrible obscenity. Fourteen fellows in one dormitory using the same bathroom—and on the wall you saw a row of fourteen syringes! And they told that on themselves, it was the joke of the campus. They call the disease a 'dose'; and a man's not supposed to be worthy the respect ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... scion of one of the oldest Spanish-California families, and in addition to his friendship for the editor it pleased him also to affect an intense admiration of American ways and habits, and even to combine the current California slang with his native precision of speech—and a certain ironical levity still ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... Usher! Step across to Booksellers' Row, and buy me a Slang Dictionary! I cannot—I really cannot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... contrive to improve its flavor and precision by exercise in these unexpected juxtapositions. Thus, as with our Pundit's famous countryman Mr. Jaberjee, though they use the purest language, they can instantly express every shade of thought with grace and completeness without resorting to slang:—that ready cloak wherewith puny minds strive to cover their vulgarity and ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... Coxeter—to use a phrase which he himself would not have used, for he avoided the use of slang—"given himself away." Over his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... make gay what circle fits ye, Bandy Venetian slang with the Benzon, Or play at company with the Albrizzi, The self-pleased pedant, and patrician crone, Grimanis, Mocenigos, Balbis, Rizzi, Compassionate our cruel case,—alone, Our pleasure an academy of frogs, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Lingo, Boston, 1936. A dictionary of cowboy words, figures of speech, picturesque phraseology, slang, etc., with explanations of many factors peculiar to range life. OP. Western Words, University of Oklahoma Press, 1944. A companion book. Come an' Get It, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. Informal exposition of ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... the same time free of the nursery, where, it appeared, that 'Phoebe was the jolliest little fellow in the world,' and Lieschen was the only 'good-natured body going,' and knew no end of Mahrchen. The boy spoke a very odd mixture of Lieschen's German and of English, pervaded by stable slang, and was altogether a curious study of the effects of absentee parents; nevertheless Honora and Lucilla both took a considerable fancy to him, the latter patronizing him to such a degree that she hardly allowed him to eat the much-needed breakfast, which recalled colour ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge |
