"Vernacular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could not think he had changed sufficiently to make him an outsider, he meditated. Aside from his teasing of Belle, he had dropped deliberately into the range vernacular, refraining only from certain crudities of speech which grated on his ears. He had put on his old clothes, he had tried to take his old place in the ranch work. He had driven a four-horse team up the Ridge trail with lumber for the schoolhouse, ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... the office, and, finding Murren was not in, he left the item on his table. Then he wandered into the local editor's room. The newspaper boys all liked Hammerly, and many a good item they got from him. They never gave him away, and he saw that they never got left, as the vernacular is. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... at least, the merit of stimulating thought, and has given an impulse to a reform which will not cease until something has been actually accomplished in this direction. The object being to substitute for many of the polynomial terms, technical and vernacular, now in use, technical names which are brief and consist of a single word. This has already been adopted by several neurologists, of whom we may mention Spitzka, Ramsey, Wright, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... 177. In both the vernacular versions the second line of 130 has been rendered wrongly. The two lines are quite unconnected with each other. Nilakantha rightly supposes that Karyam is understood after Mahikshitah. Karana, however, is not kriya as explained by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Esope the Phrygian, The Testament of Cresseide, a sequel to the Troilus and Cressida of Chaucer, to whom it was, until 1721, attributed, Robene and Makyne, the first pastoral, not only in Scottish vernacular, but in the English tongue, The Uplandis Mous and The Burges Mous (Country and Town Mouse), and the Garmond of Gude Ladeis. H., who was versed in the learning and general culture of his day, had a true poetic gift. His verse is strong and swift, full of descriptive ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... pause, during which Rudolph Musgrave smiled down upon her, irresolutely; for he abhorred "a scene," as his vernacular phrased it, and to him Clarice's present manner bordered upon both the scenic and ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... are writing the scenario of a dramatic plot, it is evident that, within reasonable limits, the more dramatic situations—the more "punches," in the vernacular—you can put into it, the more likely it is to find favor in the eyes of the editor and the producer. But too many writers, conscious of this fact, make the mistake of forcing the pace. The solid photoplay of today should not be made to resemble a cheap melodrama, in which something highly sensational ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... language of my conversation and studies, in which it was easier for me to write than in my mother tongue. After my return to England I continued the same practice, without any affectation, or design of repudiating (as Dr. Bentley would say) my vernacular idiom. But I should have escaped some Anti-gallican clamour, had I been content with the more natural character of an English author. I should have been more consistent had I rejected Mallet's advice, of prefixing an English dedication to a French book; ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... languages, will throw much light on this subject, the derivation of our modern English; nor is it a weak argument in favour of studying these, that our acquaintance with them, whether deep or slight, tends to a better understanding of what is borrowed, and what is vernacular, in our own tongue. But etymological analysis may extensively teach the origin of English words, their composition, and the import of their parts, without demanding of the student the power of reading foreign or ancient languages, or of discoursing at all on General Grammar. And, since many ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... edited by himself, in eight small volumes (Boston, 1857-1858). Thenceforward the leisure of his life—much increased by his transfer, in 1876, to the new professorship of English—was devoted to the comparative study of British vernacular ballads. He accumulated, in the university library, one of the largest folklore collections in existence, studied manuscript rather than printed sources, and carried his investigations into the ballads of all other tongues, meanwhile giving a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... But he will insist upon treating his ghosts—he has published half a workshopful of them—with levity. He makes his ghost-seers talk familiarly, and, in some cases, flirt outrageously, with the phantoms. You may treat anything, from a Viceroy to a Vernacular Paper, with levity; but you must behave reverently toward a ghost, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... out in the street watching the service. So I too stopped and watched. It was most interesting, but as the service was conducted in French (apparently the Gallican Church differs from the Roman Catholic Church in England in that the service is conducted in the vernacular), I do not know what the service was. Although most of it was in French, bits were in Latin. It was exceptionally spectacular. There were about a hundred little boys in surplices and little girls in white veils (as if ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... the shade of the lilac-coloured bungor trees. Therefore the youths and maidens in the palace were having a good time, and were gaily engaged in sowing the whirlwind, with a sublime disregard for the storm, which it would be theirs to reap, when the King returned to punish. As the vernacular proverb has it, the cat and the roast, the tinder and the spark, and a boy and a girl are ill to keep asunder; and consequently my friends about the palace were often in trouble, by reason of their love affairs, even when the King ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... raised his eyes boldly. "Monsieur my brother, doth it please you that I shall explain in good French vernacular that Greek word which is ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... whirling words were a proof of possession, and approached to exorcise the demon; but Sister Claire resisted, and pretending to spit in the face of the exorcist, put out her tongue at him, making indecent gestures, using a word in harmony with her actions. This word being in the vernacular was understood by everyone and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... like the rest of yore wolf tribe. You come out here because the country got too hot to hold you after what you did to 'Lindy Clanton. I might 'a' knowed I'd find you with the 'Paches. You allus was low-mixed Injun." The boy had fallen into the hill vernacular to which he had been born. He was once more a tribal feudist of ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... languages which are little known; (3) Heretical, licentious, and libellous books; (4) First editions of a classic author from MS.; (5) First productions of the printing press in a particular town; (6) The productions of the celebrated printers of the sixteenth century; (7) Books in the vernacular language of an author who printed them in a foreign country; (8) Books privately printed; (9) Works, the various parts of which have been published under different titles, in different sizes, or in ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... globe, and distracted now by insurrectionary movements in Ireland and among all its Subject Races. It had given these subject races cigarettes, boots, bowler hats, cricket, race meetings, cheap revolvers, petroleum, the factory system of industry, halfpenny newspapers in both English and the vernacular, inexpensive university degrees, motor-bicycles and electric trams; it had produced a considerable literature expressing contempt for the Subject Races, and rendered it freely accessible to them, and it had been content to believe that nothing would result from these stimulants ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Bibles, of which an enormous issue took place before the middle of the fourteenth century. These are followed by an endless series of books of Hours, which, as the sixteenth century is reached, appear in several vernacular languages. Those in English, being both very rare and of great importance in liturgical history, are of a value altogether out of proportion to the beauty of their illuminations. Side by side with this succession are the Evangelistina, which, like the example mentioned above, are ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... a break with French classicism and with that part of the native literature which had followed academic traditions. Here the insurrection was far more violent in Germany than in England,[13] partly because Gallic influence had tyrannized there more completely and almost to the supplanting of the vernacular by the foreign idiom, for literary uses; and partly because Germany had nothing to compare with the shining and solid achievements of the Queen Anne classics in England. It was easy for the new school of German poets and critics to ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... being used to the school vernacular, did not fairly apprehend all this, and least of all that it was directed towards herself. She cast a startled look around, then turned to her book. She leaned back in her seat and held her book before her face with both hands, and ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tremble for such boldness, such rawness. In "this odd-kind chiel" such points hardly mar the rest. Not only are they in consonance with the underlying spirit of the pieces, but complete the full abandon and veracity of the farm-fields and the home-brew'd flavor of the Scotch vernacular. (Is there not often something in the very neglect, unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not "put on," that secretly pleases the soul more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... vernacular he thus rambled on all the time Kearney was at work, his rude speech being an appropriate symphony to the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... showed itself—if not to our apprehension as articulately, yet as indubitably, as among the race which considers them to have been all created for its amusement and advantage. It does not take long, superficial as is our acquaintance with their vernacular and the workings of their little brains, to single out particular specimens, and perceive that no two "birds of a feather" are exactly alike. A particular robin will rule the roost, and assert successfully for his mate the choice of resting-places ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... over seventy years of age his mind was notably clear, orderly and active, and his talk (usually a carefully constructed monologue) was stately, formal and precise. He used no slang, and retained scarcely a word of his boyhood's vernacular. The only emotional expression he permitted himself was a chuckle of glee over an intellectual misstatement or a historical bungle. Novels, theaters, music possessed no ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... elements are at strife. He was immensely satisfied with his diggings, he said, liked the natives, and considered this a splendid chance for improving his Spanish. He was reading "Don Quixote" in the vernacular. In a sense, I looked upon his presence as a perfect godsend to us, as he came in most appropriately as a Deus ex machina to create the character of Barbarossa's invented friend. O'Donovan was in good standing with the Republicans of the town, as he was a staunch Republican ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... result was that within six weeks of that terrible Easter, arrangements had been made for Leonetta to spend at least a year in a large and expensive school at Versailles, where she could not only acquire the vernacular, but also become infected with the polish of ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... beautiful and dramatic, so exalted and exulting, so perfect in its very incompleteness, that not a lifetime of suffering and disappointment could blur it. And he felt exactly like the flat tyre of Janet's distinguished vernacular. Even his body was worn out, for he had had but nine hours' sleep in two nights. What a dead cinch the playwrights had. A man might as well try to breathe without oxygen on Mount Everest as attempt to give his own life the proper ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... then, in the vernacular of the great apes which constant association with the anthropoids had rendered the common language of the Oparians: "You have come back to me! La has ignored the mandates of her religion, waiting, always waiting for Tarzan—for her Tarzan. She has taken no mate, for in all the world there was but ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no proof whatever that the words themselves were of late date. Christian scholars have examined them one by one as carefully, and certainly at least as conscientiously, as their opponents; and show us, in result, that the words, although not familiar in the Hebrew vernacular, were in widely-current use either in the neighboring Persian or in that family of languages—Syriac and Chaldaic—of which Hebrew was but ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... is explained by Nilakantha as 'unable to bear the sight of others of their species,' i.e., walking by themselves, or solitarily or singly. Some of the vernacular translators are for taking this word as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... (Life, p. 243) wrote on Jan. 5, 1778:—'We who live in Scotland are obliged to study English from books, like a dead language, which we understand, but cannot speak.' He adds:—'I have spent some years in labouring to acquire the art of giving a vernacular cast to the English we write.' Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto, p. 222) says:—'Since we began to affect speaking a foreign language, which the English dialect is to us, humour, it must be confessed, is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... remarks. There was a shot-gun hanging in the room where he was; so, slipping off the bed, he reached for the weapon, walked out quietly, and, thrusting the muzzle of the gun under the tramp's ear, he roared in a fierce voice "Get!" And, to use the vernacular, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... work of thorough and painstaking research unequalled in mediaeval literature. His other principal works were the "Konunga-bok," or chronicle of the kings of Norway, and the "Islendinga-bok," or description of Iceland.[247] Ari's books, written not in monkish Latin, but in a good vigorous vernacular, were a mine of information from which all subsequent Icelandic historians were accustomed to draw such treasures as they needed. To his diligence and acumen they were all, from Snorro Sturlason down, very much indebted. He may be said to have given the tone to history-writing in Iceland, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Allport, the first mate of the Susan Jane, that when he spoke on medical topics and subjects, which formed the only real education he had received, his mode of speech was refined and almost polished; whereas, his usual language when engaged in seafaring matters—his present vocation—was vernacular in the extreme, smacking more of Vermont than it did of Harvard and ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Manila in 1730; compiled an explanation of the Christian Doctrine, which was printed in 1730; and composed a vocabulary in the Cebuan tongue, and another in the dialects spoken in Cagayan and Tagaloan. In addition he left two volumes of sermons in the vernacular of the country. He served as prior for six years in the convent of Billig, Mindanao; six years in Cagayan, and various times at the island of Romblon, and finally in Siargao. In 1680 he was elected provincial, and served his term ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... bilious look; a third, Micaul More, or big Michael, from his uncommon size; and a fourth, Sheemus Ruah, or red James, from the color of his hair. These epithets, to be sure, still occur in Ireland, but far less frequently now than in the times of which we write, when Irish was almost the vernacular language of the country. It was for a reason similar to those just alleged, that John O'Rorke was known as Lamh Laudher O'Rorke; he, as well as his forefathers for two or three generations, having been remarkable for prodigious bodily ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... earliest topographical survey with which we are acquainted was Icelandic; the cosmogony of the Odin religion was formulated, and its doctrinal traditions and ritual reduced to a system, by Icelandic archaeologists; and the first historical composition ever written by any European in the vernacular, was the product of Icelandic genius. The title of this important work is "The Heimskringla," or world-circle, [Footnote: So called because Heimskringla (world-circle) is the first word in the opening sentence of the manuscript which catches the eye.] and its author was—Snorro ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... than a yearly visit to the polls to register his vote. He has not done much more than this since his inception. His work alone has sufficed, for him, at least, though the time is past when he can bury himself in his professional work and, in the vernacular, get away with it. Men of the stamp of Herbert Hoover have demonstrated the very great need for men of scientific training in public affairs. Such places heretofore have been filled with business men and lawyers. These men served and served well. But since administration ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... even while he adhered to a crude vernacular, there was, in the cadence of his voice, a forceful sort of eloquence. In the latent intensity of his personality dwelt a sheer wizardry which few women ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... reading lesson, without which there can be no serious teaching of the vernacular. By their means the teacher enters into communication with his pupils; he gets them to speak, he corrects their errors, trains their reason, and forms their taste. It has been said that a teacher able to explain selections in prose and poetry "holds his class in the hollow of his hand." The teacher ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... leather apron and red cap, with his blue shirt sleeves rolled up—a typical old cobbler. He pushed up to the table, and, after "eyeing" the "exhibit" somewhat critically through his spectacles, he held forth as follows:—"Nah, dus ta call thet a war pig?" in the vernacular peculiar to the natives. I said, "Did ta ivver see a war pig i' thi life?" "Noa," said he blankly "it's t' warst pig I ivver set mi een on." And then the audience saw where the "war" pig came in, and they laughed heartily over the joke. It was a relief to me ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... even that. And yet, though helping much the cause of the Reformation by the freedom of his social and clerical criticism, by his unsparing exposure of every form of corruption and injustice, and, not least, by his use of the vernacular for political and religious purposes, he can scarcely be classed in the great army of the Protestant Reformers. He was a reformer from within, a biting, unsparing exposer of every priestly abuse, but a loyal ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... ruins, and suffered the other to be got through anyhow, or not at all - just as it happened. Clergymen were engaged to perform the service (there was but one each day) at the lowest price of the clerical market. Occasionally it was announced, in the vernacular of the district, that there would be no church, "because the priest had gone for the sea-bathing," or because the waters were out, and ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Thoburn College does not deal exclusively with the dusty records of dead languages and bygone civilizations. It is linked up with present questions, and is alive to the changing India of to-day. Among the matters discussed during my visit were such as: the substitution of a vernacular for English in the university course; the possibility of a national language for all India; the advisability of co-education; and the place of the unmarried woman in New India. To report all that the girls said and wrote would require a book for itself, but so far as space allows we will let the ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... see already I have adopted the Hillerton vernacular.) But I fear Miss Maggie is indeed "poor" now. She has had several letters that I don't like the looks of, and a call from a villainous-looking man from Boston—one of your craft, I believe (begging your pardon). I think she's lost some money, and I don't believe she had any extra ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... to embarrass him; but combined with the necessity of choosing the right knife and fork, of breaking his bread properly, and of removing his spoon from his coffee-cup, they were quite overpowering. During his two years in the army he had drifted into the easy habits and easier vernacular of the enlisted man. Whatever knowledge he had of the amenities of life had almost been forgotten. But, though his social virtues were few, he passionately identified himself with them rather than with his faults, which were many. To prove his politeness, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... internal strife and revolution which robbed Czar Nicholas of his throne, traces its history back for more than ten centuries, when the Norse invaded the territory and founded Veliki Novgorod, for many years one of the chief Russian cities. The Norse, to use the modern vernacular, "put Russia on the map" when the Russian army fought its way to the very walls of Constantinople. Much of the early history of the country is legendary, and one of the famous stories is that after Igor, who commanded the great armies, was put to death ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... sixteenth century saw it slowly {150} gain the mastery; the seventeenth century saw it finally conquer the system that for two thousand years had dominated the arithmetic of business. Not a little of the success of the new plan was due to Luther's demand that all learning should go into the vernacular.[606] ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... mile away, approaching him, leading the mustangs. Cleaving the horizon on four sides was a vast plain. On it was not a tree, nor even a hut. Here and there were clumps of palms and cacti, as stark as if cut from pale green stone. At vast intervals were short, isolated mountains, known in the vernacular as "buttes." On the ground was not the withered remnant of a blade of grass; but there were many fissures, and some of them were deep and wide. Of the things that crawl and scamper and fly there was no sign, not even a hole in the ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... entire agreement with the Syriac translation. (5) This Syriac translation (if it be a translation, which is very doubtful, for we know neither the time of its appearance, nor the translators and Syriac was the vernacular of the Apostles) renders the text before us in a way well explained by ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... possible; but it was not her natural attitude toward the world, and by the time the veal had arrived (it was Wednesday night) she was laughing whole-heartedly at Kid's ingenuous conversation. Miss McCoy's vocabulary was rich in the vernacular of the plains, and in vacation she let herself go. During term time she was forced to curb her discourse, owing to the penny tax on slang. Otherwise, her entire allowance would have gone to swell ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... England Jerome of Prague, bringing with him copies of the writings of Wickliff, which he was not backward in getting translated into the vernacular language, and circulated far and near. By-and-by came two Englishmen, bachelors of divinity, from Oxford, who disputing boldly against the Pope's supremacy, drew great crowds after them. Though silenced by public authority, they did not, therefore, cease ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to overcome his bashfulness; was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told in his slangy New-York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim,—"Oh, I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as I went by the window!" Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to her,—because it was too big to shove in a lamp-post, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... introduced by Channing,[7] Leclerc,[8] Gurlt,[9] Sudhoff,[10] and others. Nevertheless, a good number of the reproduced drawings are greatly modified, most likely having been influenced by earlier illustrations in several Latin and vernacular versions of the treatise.[11] This becomes clearer on comparison with seven Arabic manuscripts that have not been fully examined by Western scholars before and that—in several instances—show more authentic drawings of al-Zahr[a]w[i]aEuro(TM)s ...
— Drawings and Pharmacy in Al-Zahrawi's 10th-Century Surgical Treatise • Sami Hamarneh
... the name magus to them.[1095] In Irish ecclesiastical literature, drui is used as the translation of magus, e.g. in the case of the Egyptian magicians, while magi is used in Latin lives of saints as the equivalent of the vernacular druides.[1096] In the sagas and in popular tales Druidecht, "Druidism," stands for "magic," and slat an draoichta, "rod of Druidism," is a magic wand.[1097] The Tuatha De Danann were said to have learned "Druidism" from the four great master Druids ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Conquest, seems to be that given in a Latin Charter of the eighth century as Weogorna civitas. (Here it is difficult to disentangle the English from its Latin dress.) A little later it appears in a vernacular shape (also in a charter) as Wigran ceaster. In the later part of the English Chronicle it becomes Wigera ceaster, and Wigra ceaster; but by the twelfth century it has grown into Wigor ceaster, from which the change to Wire ceaster and Worcester (fully pronounced) is not ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of the language, set me to committing to memory the whole of Andrews' Latin Grammar. I gained the important information that "sto, fido, confido, assuesco, and preditus" govern the ablative, and other valuable lore; but when I asked the teacher where the Latin vernacular came in, she replied that that would come to me later—that I must "open my mouth and shut my eyes while she gave me something to make me wise." A solemn awe not unmixed with envy pervaded the schoolroom as I, parrot-like, rattled ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... nous avons change tout cela, in these days, and the vernacular tongue is used instead, but now it is the judge who doesn't always know accurately what is going on, for he cannot always understand what the witnesses are saying! As Newman says very shrewdly: "If self- confident, he trusts his own impressions; if timid, he leans on the judgment ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... saw her weeping," Khazib was intoning, and now Ryder attended, his scanty knowledge of the vernacular straining and overleaping the blanks, "Prince Azib said to himself, 'By Allah, I will never open that fortieth door, ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Icelandic, probably dating as far back as the eleventh century, while the oldest preserved texts were composed early in the twelfth century. This was the beginning of the so-called saga- writing. The important thing was that most of what was written down was in the vernacular, Latin being used but sparingly. Thus a literary style was evolved which soon reached a high standard. This style, so forceful in its perspicuity, was effectively simple, yet rich in the variety of ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... ordinary readers than that which pervades a large portion of the so-called elegant literature of the past and present age. It is the language of Shakspeare and Bacon, without the measure of the one, or the involution of the other—that language which has ever been the vernacular of the people of this country, and to which our best writers are coming back—clear, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... sirrah," cried Potts. "You are quite sure the hut is behind the clough; and the rindle, which, being interpreted from your base vernacular, I believe means a gutter, in front ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... an outrage—a frame-up," declared Jane, glad to recall the vernacular. "There are three witnesses here who saw the trouble and we'll find others if you want them. The fact is Officer Jamison is always cross with us students" (she put it mildly), "and he was, perhaps, too willing to listen ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... disdained to try and read a single word of it, but from various sources he had picked up words which he fitted into his speech as best it suited him, with a result which was sometimes effective but more often startling. Maryllia was well accustomed to it, and understood what she called 'Gigue's vernacular'—but the ladies and gentlemen of her house- party were not so well instructed, and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay, whose knowledge of the French language was really quite extraordinary, immediately essayed the famous ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... as in all the ancient voyages and travels, the names of persons, places, and things, are generally given in an extremely vicious orthography, often almost utterly unintelligible, as taken down orally, according to the vernacular modes of the respective writers, without any intimate knowledge of the native language, or the employment of any fixed general standard. To avoid the multiplication of notes, we have endeavoured to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Forks in some open ground along the crest of a gentle ridge. Custer got Capehart into place just in time to lend a hand to Smith, who, severely pressed, came back on us here from his retreat along Chamberlain's "bed"—the vernacular for a woody swamp such as that through which Smith retired. A little later the brigades of Gregg and Gibbs, falling to the rear slowly and steadily, took up in the woods a line which covered the Boydton Road some distance to the right of Capehart, the intervening gap to be filled with Pennington's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Tillott has not his persuasive powers!" she thought; Mr. Tillott's eloquence being, in fact, of a very limited order, chiefly exhibiting itself in little jerky questions about the spiritual and temporal welfare of his humble parishioners—questions which, in the vernacular language of agricultural labourers, "put ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the University of Cambridge, Eng., was formerly known. At present it is sometimes designated by this title in poetry, and in addresses written in other tongues than the vernacular. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... this! A total lack of tall trunks, frills, and curling-kids. Driven by the oestrum of a Yo-Semite pilgrimage, the San-Francisco belle forsakes (the Western vernacular is "goes back on") her back-hair, abandons her capillary "waterfalls" for those of the Sierra, and, like John Phoenix's old lady who had her whole osseous system removed by the patent tooth-puller, departs, leaving her "skeleton" behind her. The bachelor who cares ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... away, Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:— ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... majority a harder fight than that for life—a fight with inveterate habit, an effort to change vernacular, almost as difficult as the learning of a new language. For some time Miss Lou did not know nor understand. Word had been passed to other and smaller groups of the Union wounded in other buildings. The pledge was soon known as "A Northern Tribute to a Southern Girl." It was entered ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Bill's descent to the vernacular of common men that his ire was roused, abjectly and ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Volkes"—and he seemed to be a prophet, divinely called to voice their dumb aspirations. He possessed, {5} like all great prophets, a straightforward moral honesty and sincerity, an absolute fearlessness, a magnetic and commanding personality, an unusual mastery of the vernacular speech, and an abundant power of pathos, humour, and satire. All the world loves a hero who can say in the face of real danger, "I would go forward to Worms if there were as many devils there as there are tiles on the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... (official) universal Bantu vernacular, French (official), English (official), Kiswahili (Swahili) used ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... chair with her eyes fast on the wall, Cassidy relapsed into silence, during which he stared rather perplexedly at his chief, who seemed to be in the throes of unusual emotion. As the detective expressed it in his own vernacular: For the first time in his experience, the Inspector appeared to be ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... left alone at Heidelberg, in his own unassisted weakness, at such a distance from us all, I should not be surprised to hear that he had constituted himself the lord and master of some blue-eyed fraeulein with whom he could not exchange a dozen words in her own vernacular, and had become a dis-respectable pater familias at nineteen. In the midst of all the worry and anxiety which these considerations occasion, we are living here a most unsettled, flurried life of divided ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... more immediate object of the present note: we shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or vernacular Russian literature; confining our attention, as we have proposed, to the Prose Fiction, and contenting ourselves with noting, cursorily, the principal authors in this kind, living ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... girl who never set foot on the ground if a horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all over her head; who answered indifferently to the name of William or Bill; whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the vernacular; who could act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight servants and two horses, their accounts and their diseases, and look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes—even after they had proposed to her ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... have long regretted the want of a system to explain the grammar of our vernacular tongue, on plain, rational, and consistent principles, in accordance with philosophy and truth, and in a way to be understood and practised ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... on the night of his execution, and wrote a minute account of their interview. Both of these men were members of the Confraternita de' Neri, who assumed the duty of comforting condemned prisoners with spiritual counsel, prayer, and exhortation. The narrative, dictated in the choicest vernacular Tuscan, by an artist whose charity and beauty of soul transpire in every line in contrast with the fiercer fortitude of Boscoli, is one of the most valuable original documents for this period which we possess.[4] What is most striking is the combination of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... sergeant became, the more refractory was his neighbour, until, at last, the affair ended in a summons as formal as that which would be made to a place besieged. The answer was truly heroic, being rendered into the vernacular, "I won't." An old woman advanced from the crowd to reason with the sergeant, but she could get no farther than "Ecoutez, Mons. le Sergeant"—for, like all in authority, he was unreasonable and impatient when his power was called in question. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fact established analogies.... In this country it is desirable that inquiries should be free, and opinions unshackled. North America is destined to be the seat of a people more numerous probably than any nation now existing with the same vernacular language, unless one except some Asiatic nations. It would be little honorable to the founders of a great empire to be hurried prematurely into errors and corruptions by the mere force ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... was a changed man instantly. He was all enthusiasm, full of his subject, eager to go on. He proposed to pay Goodman a salary to stay there and keep him company and furnish him with inspiration—the Pacific coast atmosphere and vernacular, which he feared had slipped away from him. Goodman declined the salary, but extended his visit as long as his plans would permit, and the two had a happy time together, recalling old Comstock days. Every morning, for a month or more, they used to tramp over the farm. They fell into the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mountaineer. This was partly the result of the conditions under which her girlhood had been spent. She was the only child of a dalesman, who had so far accumulated estate in land as to be known in the vernacular as a statesman. Her mother had died at her birth, and before she had attained to young womanhood her father, who had married late in life, was feeble and unfit for labor. His hand was too nervous, his eye too uncertain, his breath too short ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... sort, such as were sung between the acts of the "mystery plays," were subsidized by Luther, who wrote compositions and translations to their measure. Part-song was simplified, and Johan Walther compiled a hymnal of religious songs in the vernacular for from four to six voices. The reign of rhythmic hymn music soon extended ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... gusto and wealth, might have meant to Dutch literature. Just imagine the Colloquia written in the racy Dutch of the sixteenth century! What could he not have produced if, instead of gleaning and commenting upon classic Adagia, he had, for his themes, availed himself of the proverbs of the vernacular? To us such a proverb is perhaps even more sapid than the sometimes slightly ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... mixture. We have had to put them all together, and they get on capitally, exchanging stories and gossip and sympathy like men of the same company. One of them, a Boer,—" she hesitated for the right word; then she adopted the vernacular of the service—"went out, the other day; and, among his mourners, the sincerest ones were the two London Tommies in the two next beds. War isn't all hatred, by any means. Turn nurse for a month ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... exhibit the deplorable corruption of the vernacular English. You cannot open a novel or book of travels printed within the present year without stumbling on French or Italian words, and so frequent is their occurrence, that they are often printed in the same type as the rest of the page, not in italic, as of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... Zanitonella in macaronic verse. It consists of eclogues and poems in hexameter and elegiac metre ridiculing polite pastoralism through contrast with the crudities of actual rusticity. In the same manner Berni travestied the courtly pastoral of vernacular writers in his realistic pictures of village love. But though the satirist might find ample scope for his wit in anatomizing the foible of the day, fashionable society continued none the less to encourage the exquisite inanity, and to be ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Shadonake fell into the market, and Mrs. Miller perceived that the time had now come for her husband's wealth to be recognized and appreciated; or, as he himself expressed it, in vernacular that was strictly to the point if inelegant in diction, the time was come for him "to cut ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... of Martin Luther were those by which he gave to the common people a vernacular Bible and vernacular worship, that through the one, God might speak directly to the people; and in the other, the people might speak directly to God. Luther's Bible and Luther's Hymns gave life not only to the churches of the Reformation, but to ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... Jimmie Dale's tones, and his English lapsed into ungrammatical, reassuring vernacular—"ain't that queer! Say, I'm no detective. Gee, kid, did you think I was? Say, listen to this! I cracked old Isaac's safe half an hour ago—and I guess there won't be any idea going around that you got the money and I pulled a lemon. Say, I ain't ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... will and favor toward us. For the same reason "divine form" cannot properly mean "divine essence"; for divine essence is not visible, while the divine form was truly seen. Very well; then let us use the vernacular, and thus make the ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... tough," said I, "to drop into the vernacular, that Miss Greene should be deprived of the food she desires—a simple thing like kalsomine-pudding. Perhaps," I continued, solicitously, "some pickled walnuts or a fricassee of Hungarian butternuts would do ...
— Options • O. Henry
... His daughter Gaia.] A lady equally admired for her modesty, the beauty of her person, and the excellency of her talents. Gaia, says Tiraboschi, may perhaps lay claim to the praise of having been the first among the Italian ladies, by whom the vernacular poetry was ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... recent writer on Eastern languages) "for Malay, as for Hindustani, a magnificent future may be anticipated among the great speech-media of Asia and of the world. They manifest that capacity for the absorption and assimilation of foreign elements which we recognise as making English the greatest vernacular that the ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... change his visible form, and returns au galop. Sometimes he's an ugly little cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid money-lender, or an aproned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always—if you don't mind the vernacular—'on the snatch.'" ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... in swimming. On the sand-bar above the railroad bridge we fell in with a bunch of boys likewise in swimming. Between swims we lay on the bank and talked. They talked differently from the fellows I had been used to herding with. It was a new vernacular. They were road-kids, and with every word they uttered the lure of The Road laid hold ...
— The Road • Jack London
... which he launched in after years against the slayers of the Vaudois. The Italian language is named by him among three which, about the time of his migration to the University, he had added to the classical and the vernacular, the other two being French and Hebrew. It has been remarked, however, that his use of "Penseroso," incorrect both in orthography and signification, shows that prior to his visit to Italy he was unacquainted with the niceties of the language. He entered as "a lesser pensioner" at Christ's ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... in a sedate, rather commonplace realism. One of the most national of authors, he loses much in translation.[1] His style is racy, smacking of the street or the counting-house; he is one of the greatest masters of the Russian vernacular. To translate his Moscow slang into the equivalent dialect of New York would be merely to transfer Broadway associations to the Ilyinka. A translator can only strive to be colloquial and familiar, giving up the effort to render the varying atmosphere of the different ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... in 1913 informed the International Historical Congress that the word son had ceased to be vernacular in the dialects of many parts of England. 'I would not venture to assert (he adds) that the identity of sound with sun is the only cause that has led to the widespread disuse of son in dialect speech, but I think it has certainly contributed to ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... Dutch, zelfstandigheid, literally, self-existence; without an equivalent, as far as I know, in vernacular English.—Tr.] ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... Japanese language of a number of young men to be under obligations to serve the Government for a specified time as interpreters at the legation and the consulates in Japan. A limited number of Japanese youths might at the same time be educated in our own vernacular, and mutual benefits would result to both Governments. The importance of having our own citizens, competent and familiar with the language of Japan, to act as interpreters and in other capacities connected with the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... whom Wordsworth lived. 'The strangers,' he says, 'with their gifts of gold, their vulgarity, and their requirements, have much to answer for.' As for their impressions of Wordsworth, to understand them one must understand the vernacular of the Lake District. 'What was Mr. Wordsworth like in personal appearance?' said Mr. Rawnsley once to an old retainer, who still lives not far from Rydal Mount. 'He was a ugly-faaced man, and a mean liver,' was the answer; but all that was really meant was that he was a man of marked ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... inscription in the three civilized languages of the ancient world—the three languages of which one at least was certain to be known by every single man in that assembled multitude—in the official Latin, in the current Greek, in the vernacular Aramaic—informing all that this Man who was thus enduring a shameful, servile death—this Man thus crucified between two sicarii in the sight of the world, was "THE KING OF ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... to regard with affectionate veneration the life-work of the Reformers, and the theology of the Reformation. Of a later date, and in our own vernacular, we have inherited from the Puritans an indigenous theology, great in quantity and precious in kind,—a legacy that has enriched our age more, perhaps, than the age is altogether willing to acknowledge. At various ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... on; perge, puer, as a body may say," interrupted the major, who seemed resolved to show what command of language he had, for he uniformly began his speeches in his vernacular, and translated them, though with an effort, into English, or any other tongue he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the whole range of my vernacular, to find an epithet sufficiently expressive to enunciate the aggravated contempt which all feel for that pseudonymous class of philanthropists, who flauntingly parade a pompous sympathy with popular and distant distresses, but studiously ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... peoples and the provinces which cultivate a national speech, will long find a great facility in expressing themselves in verse. I observe that it has recently been stated that Wales, which has always teemed with vernacular poets, has never possessed so many as she does at this time. I am debarred by what Keats called "giant ignorance" from expressing an opinion on the subject, but I presume that in Welsh the resources of language are far from being so seriously exhausted ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... inspiring aim of the author has here been to furnish enlightened readers, versed only in the English language, the means of acquiring, through the medium of their vernacular, some proportioned, trustworthy, and effective knowledge and appreciation, in its chief classics, of the great literature which has been written in French. This object has been sought, not through narrative and description, making books and authors ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... marsh in their rear. "There are here," he reports, "about twenty-five hundred men, five hundred of them sick, the greatest part of them what they call poorly; they bury from five to eight daily, and officers in proportion; extremely indolent, and dirty to a degree." Then, in vernacular English, he describes the infectious condition of the fort, which was full of the sick. "Their camp," he proceeds, "is nastier than anything I could conceive; their——, kitchens, graves, and places for slaughtering cattle all mixed through ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... is no more religious than the American or the Britisher. He drinks as much whisky as they do light wines and beer. He "cusses" in the same unholy vernacular, only more vigorously. He strikes back as quickly. He hits as hard. He gives his enemy one cheek and then the other, and then both feet and fists; but the Canadian goes to church. One of the most amazing sights of the new frontier cities is to ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... covered the whole of his person from head to foot, and hung stiffly in folds all round him. Then, holding out a metal tube which was attached to the front of the costume, he presented it to his esquire, saying in the vernacular of those stout times— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... hardly repress a smile at this torrent of eloquence gushing from such a bit of a fellow, which sounded specially out of place here, where the ryots are given to stating their profoundly vital wants in plain and direct vernacular, of which even the more unusual words get sadly twisted out of shape. The clerks and ryots, however, seemed duly impressed, and likewise envious, as though deploring their parents' omission to endow them with so splendid a means of ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... any extent as guarantor of the scientific value and importance of your undertaking and refer any one to whom you may apply to me. It may be, in fact, that this is all you want, but as you have taken to the caprice of writing in my tongue instead of in that vernacular, idiomatic and characteristically Dohrnian German in which I delight, I am not so sure about your meaning. There is a rub for you. If you write to me in English again I will send the letter back without ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... hearing, he would never have let his mother forget this speech. For had not she, the immaculate, the reprover, fallen herself into the slough of the vernacular? The fact is, it is easier to speak the truth in a patois, for it lies nearer to the simple realities than a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... under the ruddy brown of his sun-tanned skin. This was no raw "rookie" after all. In his own vernacular, as afterwards expressed to the conductor, "I seen I was up ag'in' the real t'ing dis time," but it was hard to admit it at the moment. Vexation had to have a vent. The bell-cord no longer served. The ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... whatever tender and playful fancy the dramatist possessed. It should be said that during the fifteenth century the popularity of these plays increased enormously, records of their performance being found in all parts of England, including Cornwall and Wales, where they were acted in the vernacular. ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... the law!" impatiently exclaimed the Reverend Doctor, in his most strident vernacular, when the question of Barnabas Bidwell's expulsion from the Assembly was under discussion in his hearing—"Never mind the law; toorn him oot, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... position. I remember how on an occasion when the shelling was very heavy one man engaged himself in making soup as coolly as if nothing was happening until the earth knocked up by the shells began to drop into the mess-tin, when he gave us his opinion of the Boches in his own forcible vernacular. We often laid for hours at the bottom of the trench—flat on the ground in the water and mud to ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... easily seen that his was the keener mind. In natural endowments there had never been equality, although there was great similarity of tastes. Jim, despite his education, often lapsed into the homely vernacular of which he heard so much. An involuntarily imitative man in externals was Jim, but essentially ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... eyes and nose and mouth to show where Judy's features were marked with ink, and then Amy laughed, and as if the mention of Judy took her back to the vernacular of her childhood, she said, "Oh, yes, I done 'members ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... louder than usual to our bearers and they set down our cages in front of a card-house of the same description as that at Tientsin where we had been so nicely "taken in and done for," as Macan would have expressed it in his Irish vernacular. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... eager care with which mediaeval scholars studied all that they possessed of ancient literature. The relation of the art of the Middle Ages to the ancient world was quite different. There was no continuity between the vernacular poetry of the Middle Ages and that of the ancient world, and while there was a certain continuity in architecture and in mosaic painting, this amounted to little more than that the mediaeval artists ...
— Progress and History • Various |
