"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... translation), shows that a substance far more valuable than glass must have been meant." "Chumbatan," Prof. Wilson supposed to be the Pali equivalent to the Sanskrit chumbakam, "the kisser or attractor of steel;" the question he says is whether wajira is to be considered an adjective or part of a compound substantive, whether the phrase is a diamond-magnet pinnacle, or conductor, or a conductor or attractor of the thunderbolt. In the latter case it would intimate that the Singhalese had a notion of lightning conductors, Mr. DE ALWIS, however, and Mr. GOGERLY ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... mind of the name of a great operator and accumulator of money who is merely that is either that he go on accumulating, so that the magnitude of his wealth has few if any rivals, or that his name become synonymous with some gigantic cleverness, if not rascality, so that it is used as an adjective after he and his wealth have disappeared from the public view. It is different with the reputation of an equally great financier who has used his ability for the service of his country. There is no Valhalla for the mere accumulators of money. They are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... her, knight, accost!' in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakspearian in the phrase—'give a coasting welcome,' ('coasting' being taken as the epithet and adjective of 'welcome,') that had the following words been, 'ere they land,' instead of 'ere it comes,' I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome to a salute ere ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... you could expect to have great and peaceful civilizations like our own. The warfare of Rome is by no means adequately explained by the theory of a deliberate immoral policy of aggression,—"infernal," I believe, is the stronger adjective which Dr. Draper uses. The aggressive wars of Rome were largely dictated by just such considerations as those which a century ago made it necessary for the English to put down the raids of the Scotch Highlanders, and which ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... "H'm, the adjective appears to be an afterthought," grumbled the bachelor; then, when she merely laughed teasingly after the manner of ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... loudly. "He is certainly that, and more. Indeed, the English language does not supply us with an adjective that adequately describes ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... attended the Free Kirk in the morning, and the Established in the evening. The bonnets of the Free Kirk were so much the more elegant that we said to one another, "This is evidently the church of society, though the adjective 'Free' should by rights attract the masses." On the second Sunday we reversed the order of things, and found the Established bonnet much finer than the Free bonnets, which was a source of mystification to us, until we discovered that it was a question of morning or evening service, not of the ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... word vates, if the question were answerable in the absence of an early Roman literature. All we can say about this is that this word had, as a rule, a certain dignity about it, which enabled it eventually to stand for a poet, and that it rarely has a sinister sense, unless accompanied by some adjective specially used in order to give it.[610] The real word for a quack is hariolus, and the fact that it is comparatively rare suggests that the character it expresses was not a common one. It occurs here ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... wooden legs; so it is not surprising if, in Oxford, such an every-day commodity as a dog can be obtained through the medium of "filthy lucre;" for there was a well-known dog-fancier and proprietor, whose surname was that of the rich substantive just mentioned, to which had been prefixed the "filthy" adjective, probably for the sake of euphony. As usual, Filthy Lucre was clumping with his lame leg up and down the pavement just in front of the Brazenface gate, accompanied by his last "new and extensive assortment" of terriers of every variety, which ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... laboriously mastered the adjective, wherever it may be in relation to the noun," ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the men that was plainly town-bred; there was a certain difference in the cut of their clothes and the way they wore them. Then she saw two or three whispering together, and the next moment came a brutal shout. She could not catch the sentence, but she heard the word "Papist" with an adjective, and caught the unmistakable bullying tone of the man. The next instant there broke out a confusion: a man dashed up the step from the crowd beneath, and she caught a glimpse of Dick Sampson's furious face. Then the group bore back, fighting, into the inn door; ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... character of some of the Asiatic explorers who must have visited this part of the Eastern Pacific prior to the Europeans. In Maori the word Karioi means debauched, profligate, good-for-nothing. In Raratonga [an island near Tahiti] the adjective appears as Kariei. These are probably slightly worn down forms of the Persian Khara-bati, which has precisely the same significance as the foregoing. One is forced to the conclusion that the Arabian ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... patient victim of an alleged natural law, by reason of which the present must ever be sacrificed to the future, and he discovers a peculiar miserable delight in the rle. "Miserable" is the right adjective. ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... proper way of sitting upon it. Unfortunately, Desire was not looking. They had come a little way "up trail"—at least Desire had said it was a little way, and her companion was too proud of his recovered powers of locomotion to express unkind doubt of the adjective. There had been no rainy days for a week. The air was sun-soaked, and salt-soaked, and somewhere there was a wind. But not here. Here some high rock angle shut it out and left them to the drowsy calm of wakening Summer. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Clare made of the subject, we found that the name by which the shark is technically known is Squalidae, which includes a large family fitly designated, as your Latin dictionary will prove when you find the adjective squalidus—"filthy, slovenly, loathsome." It is a family of many species, there being some thirty or forty cousins; and the different forms of the teeth, snout, mouth, lips, and tail-fins, the existence or absence of eyelids, spiracles, (those are the apertures ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... perfection of a civilized state, or polity, depends on the obedience of its members to these commands, the Stoics sometimes termed the pure reason the "political" nature. Unfortunately, the sense of the adjective has undergone so much modification, that the application of it to that which commands the sacrifice of self to the common good would now ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the Medway, and with a thoughtfulness too often lacking at sea, stood by and lowered a boat, whereupon the captain, who had been worrying about his paint, invented, in his surprise, a brand-new adjective for the use of senior officers of ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... one might take some fine specimens of the peculiar quality distinguishing the heroic style, in prose that is very near poetry. Nothing can be more simple than the narrative, it is cool and quiet: there are whole chapters without an unnecessary adjective; and yet it is most impressive, both in the drawing of such characters as Saul, David, and Joab, who stand out dramatically, like Homeric heroes, and in the stories of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the uses of plastic imagination as to make something that is still poetry of the highest order after it has suffered the disenchantment inevitable in the most perfect translation. Verses of the kind usually called sacred (reminding one of the adjective's double meaning) had been written before his time in the vulgar tongue,—such verses as remain inviolably sacred in the volumes of specimens, looked at with distant reverence by the pious, and with far other feelings by the profane reader. There were cycles of poems in which ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... is an old game of which there are several slightly different forms. The player says "I love my love with an A because he's—," giving some adjective beginning with A; "I hate him with an A because he's—; I took him to—and fed him on—," all the blanks being filled with words beginning with A. This is carried out through the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... balance or look up. His mind felt almost vacant, for want of something to burden it; but the vacant feeling was, oh, such a relief! Only the weary clerk can understand this thing; he knows so well what it means to carry a burden with him on a pleasure trip. "Pleasure" is not the adjective to qualify such a trip, where trees and flowers are decked with figures and where the mind sees phantoms of accumulated and accumulating work, waiting, waiting like Fate. Stories have been told of criminals carrying the body of a victim around on their backs until ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... in Chaucer signifies to alleviate. It is here used either as an adjective or as an adverb. Chatterton interprets it to mean idly; upon ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... Is there no word of it? Well, these things are beyond arrangement; and the wind bloweth where it listeth - which, I observe, is generally towards the west in Scotland. Here it prefers a south-easterly course, and is called the Mistral - usually with an adjective in front. But if you will remember my yesterday's toothache and this morning's crick, you will be in a position to choose an adjective for yourself. Not that the wind is unhealthy; only when it comes strong, it is both very high and very cold, which makes it the ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his ambition to be considered a swearer. He took to it, as a lad does, who wishes to show that he has arrived at man's estate. Every thing with the judge was "damned bad" or "damned good," damned hot or cold, damned stupid, &c. It was his epithet, his adjective, his participle, his sign of positive and superlative, his argument, his judgment. He could not have got on without it. To deprive Thurlow of his "damn" would have been to shave his eyebrows, or to turn his growl to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... examples will show the likeness and the difference. "The noble queen" would in Anglo-Saxon be seo aeethele cwen; "the noble queen's," ethaere aeethelan cwene. Seo is the nominative feminine singular, ethaere the genitive, of the definite article. The adjective and the noun also change their forms with the varying cases. In its inflections, Anglo-Saxon resembles its sister language, the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... in the adjective applied to her a hint which the wily lady would not have dared to make direct to the high-spirited old soldier, namely, that the continuance of his livelihood might depend on his consent. Betty knew likewise enough of the terrible ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... because a man can not talk and eat at once. It was true that he was hungry, that hunger is a piquant sauce, and that artist was an adjective too mild to apply to the cook. But the other reason was his chief one. Yasmini ate daintily, as if only to keep ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the former we are indebted to the illustrious Weems, and to that personage a few more words must be devoted. Weems has been held up to the present age in various ways, usually, it must be confessed, of an unflattering nature, and "mendacious" is the adjective most commonly applied to him. There has been in reality a good deal of needless confusion about Weems and his book, for he was not a complex character, and neither he nor his writings are difficult to value or understand. By profession a clergyman or preacher, by ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... answer to a query about this alleged derivation of the name of the city, a competent Hebrew scholar writes to me: "The nearest approach to Nauvoo in Hebrew is an adjective which would be transliterated Naveh, meaning pleasant, a rather rare word. The letter correctly represented by v could not possibly do the double duty of uv, nor could a of the Hebrew ever be au in English, nor eh of the Hebrew be oo in English. Students of theology at Middletown, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... sad abuse of the adjective little; I am quite aware of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little, finical; affected,—all Japan is contained, both physically and morally, in these ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... But until now life had chosen to confront him with no problem more pressing than one of cricket or hunting. He was therefore troubled by an unwonted confusion of feelings. For he felt that his ordinary vocabulary—made up of such substantives as lark, cheek, and bounder, and the comprehensive adjective "rum"—fell short of coping with this extraordinary speech. He even felt that he might possibly have answered in a different way, but for that unspeakable offer of money. And the rumble of Magin's bass in the dark stone room somehow threw a light on the melancholy land ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... People's for all that. A People's—-Chaste word, it will bring forth no adjective. The plays of A People's Theatre are People's plays. The plays of A People's ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... grad, grade, ordo. Rather, Mr. Turner says, from Sax. gradlie upright; gradely in Lanc., he observes, is an adjective simplifying everything respectable. The Lancashire people say, our canny is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... her own adjective in regard to herself, was not "slack." To this her friends added another term. Debby was "set." There could be ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... gives the precise formula of the first four notes of the scale as we now have it, but as this occurred only as one among many of a similar character, and is in no way distinguished from any of the others by any adjective implying greater confidence in it, we can only count it as a lucky accident. The eminence that has been awarded to Ptolemy as the original discoverer of the correct ratio of the major scale, therefore, does not ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... to embrace the legitimate desires of a civilized and enlightened people determined in all their relations to pursue a conscientious and religious life. We can not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases. It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much disturbed by the thought of either isolation or entanglement of pacifists and militarists. The physical configuration ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... sincerely glad that sturdy Charles Martel smashed them back from Europe. Their very sincerity made them the more dangerous. In estimating any one's sincerity, it is indispensable to inquire with what other qualities is this sincerity linked,—to what nouns of activity is it a qualifying adjective? ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... containing 500 pages, on the Superstitions, Ghosts, Legends, &c. of all parts of the principality, to be delivered before February 3, 1831. Now when the limited period proposed for the collection of 500 pages of matter, and the above little adjective all is considered, it must appear obvious that such an Herculean labour is not capable of being accomplished by one individual alone.—Imagining it, therefore, to be a matter of impossibility ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... yet in such wise that he did not teach everything about each topic but, in proportion to the capacity of his audience, dispensed to them in due time the full scope of the subject. And because the brilliancy of any speech depends either on Propriety (that is, the correct agreement of adjective or verb with the substantive) or on Metathesis (that is, the transfer of the meaning of an expression for a worthy reason to another signification), these were the things which he took every opportunity to inculcate in the minds of ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... the six of us proved unavailing. We hailed a passing cart and tied the reins around the motor-cycle, but immediately the horse commenced to pull the leather of the reins snapped. Behind the cart walked a peasant. Only one adjective can possibly describe him: he was decidedly "beer-y." He made no attempt to help but passed from one Tommy to the other, patting them on their backs, assuring them "that with a little good-will all would be well." There was a dangerous glint ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... voice, and with an air of anxious simplicity, Doddle began, 'Article, noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, outerjection, beginning with ies in the plural—as, baby, babies; lady, ladies; hady, hadies. Please, sir, isn't that last one a ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... at first sight appeared to be the kind of spot where every prospect pleases and only man is vile; and as we had not had a really comprehensive wash for some considerable time and were very hairy withal, the adjective was aptly descriptive. Apart from this trifling handicap and the fact that we should have to travel fourteen miles a day for water, the place seemed an ideal one for a rest-cure. Considering that we had been incessantly ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... are set opposite each other at the end of the smooth stem, which rises from one to two feet high in the woods throughout a southerly and westerly range. As several other skullcaps have distinctly saw-edged leaves, this plant might have been given a more distinctive adjective, thinks one who did not have the naming of ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... rider sat his saddle well; remarkably well for one obviously from another life. Both the horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance they made a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective "smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the looseness of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with his general youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle here and there, have been ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... of his criticism is not at all judicial. His prose is as lyrical as his verse, and his praise and blame both in excess—dithyrambic laudation or affluent billingsgate. In particular, he works the adjective "divine" so hard that it loses meaning. Yet stripped of its excited superlatives, and reduced to the cool temperature of ordinary speech, his critical work is found to be full of insight, and his judgment in matters of poetical technique almost always right. I may close this chapter with a few ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... adjective which does duty on all occasions in Sussex. A countryman will scarcely speak three sentences without dragging in this word. A friend of mine who had been remonstrating with one of his parishioners for abusing the parish clerk beyond the bounds of neighbourly ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of Speech This Day wear Mourning Gowns, Declin'd Verbs, Pronouns, Participles, and Nouns. The Substantive seeming the limbed best Would set an hand to bear him to his Rest The Adjective with very grief did say Hold me by Strength or I shall faint away. Great Honour was conferred on Conjugations They were to follow next ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... wild dogs; wild roses are very nice. But nobody ever thinks of either of them if the name is abruptly mentioned in a gossip or a poem. On the other hand, there are tame tigers and tame cobras, but if one says, "I have a cobra in my pocket," or "There is a tiger in the music-room," the adjective "tame" has to be somewhat hastily added. If one speaks of beasts one thinks first of wild beasts; if of flowers one thinks ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... speak truth. But who is the god of faith? Dius, say some, is the same as Deus (Plautus has Deus fidius, Asin i. 1, 18); and the god here meant is probably Jupiter (sub dio being equivalent to sub Jove); so that Dius fidius (fidius being an adjective from fides) will be the [Greek: Zeus pistios] of the Greeks. "Me dius fidius" will therefore be, "May Jupiter help me!" This is the mode of explication adopted by Gerlach, Bernouf, and Dietsch. Others, with Festus (sub voce Medius fidius) ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... his testimony worth hearing. Others, who cared not a rap for Personality or Causation, Realism or Nominalism, were attracted by his grace, his eloquence, his literary charm. His style was entirely his own. He played strange tricks with the English language, heaped words upon words, strung adjective to adjective; mingled passages of Ruskinesque description with jerky fragments of modern slang. These mannerisms grew with his growth, but in the seventies they were not sufficiently marked to detract from the pure ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... an adjective except at the beginning of a letter, but always, and very unnecessarily, as an interjection; and this time it was so emphatic as to bring Lady Barbara's ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... de Bohun. While, if he holds that kind hearts are more than coronets, he has an alternative descent from some medieval le bon. This adjective, used as a personal name, gave also Bunn and Bunce; for the spelling of the latter name cf. Dance for Dans, and Pearce for Piers, the nominative of Pierre (Alternative Origins, Chapter I), which also survives ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... shallow, cold, worldly, Limited little brute!' said Bella, bringing out her last adjective with culminating force. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... something ignominious or abject to the word medley, there is an ellipse in the phrase, because the ignominy is implied rather than expressed. Gesture is then necessary here to express the value of the implied adjective, ignominious. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... old Spanish the article was often used before a possessive adjective that preceded its noun. This usage is ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... better. We wish he had stuck to his text, and persisted in his refusal to play; for then the fate that awaited him would but have been poetical justice for his utter and criminal want of taste—an adequate retribution on a wretch patronising an instrument whose demerits transcend every adjective that occurs to us ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... by nature a miserable old sinner," rejoined the doctor, warmly. "Often—often I would enjoy a fine round Elizabethan oath—note how that single adjective condones my poor taste. But I hold that good is inflowing and that it possesses whom it may possess. If a man is too busy fighting, it ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... very close examination of the character of Pepys as a private man. He would begin by admitting that Pepys was a type, perhaps, of what was now called a 'Philistine'. We had no word in England which was equivalent to the French adjective Bourgeois; but, at all events, Samuel Pepys was the most perfect type that ever existed of the class of people whom this word described. He had all its merits as well as many of its defects. With all those defects, however ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... (China Clay): White Gypsum; Baryta: Magnesium Carbonate: Talc, Soapstone.—V., Organic Colours—1. Colours of Vegetable and Animal Origin: (a) Substantive (Direct Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Annatto; Turmeric: Safflower; (b) Adjective (Indirect Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Redwood; Cochineal; Weld: Persian Berries; Fustic Extract; Quercitron: Catechu (Cutch); Logwood Extract—2. Artificial Organic (Coal Tar) Colours: Acid Colours; Basic Colours: Substantive (Direct Dyeing) Colours; Dissolving ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... also the figure of "Nature" on top of the music niche and the capital bulls on the pylons toward the north of the court. These terra cotta bulls are surely worthy of the adjective derived from them. Their relative size is very good, and to see them in the richness of their color against the upper regions of a dark blue ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... silently so; the other, who spoke a little English, encouraged us from time to time to believe that they were "strong mans," afterward correcting himself in conformity to the rules of Portuguese grammar, which make the adjective agree in number with the noun, and declaring that they were "strongs mans." We met many toboggan men who needed to be "strongs mans" in their ascent of our track, with their heavy toboggans on their heads; but some ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... being a most ungrammatical ould man, an' not fit to argue wid any one that knows Murray's English Grammar, an' more espaciously the three concords of Lily's Latin one; that is the cognation between the nominative case and the verb, the consanguinity between the substantive and the adjective, and the blood-relationship that irritates between the relative and ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... abysses, stretching down amid the sunless roots of Being and Consciousness, mock the plummet; scarce one but could speak with condescending approval of that prodigious intelligence so utterly without congener that our baffled language must coin an adjective to qualify it, and none is so audacious as to say Shakspearian of any other. And yet, in the midst of our impatience, we cannot help thinking also of how much healthy mental activity this one man has been the occasion, how much good he has ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... incidents of your plot, consider the value of suggestive words and phrases. Not many words, but words that suggest pictures, call up whole scenes, tell entire stories, are needed. And this is particularly true when you are writing to meet the "synopsis only" demand. Don't over-adjective your synopsis, but such qualifying words as you use should be vivid, clear and precise. One specific word outweighs a score of general statements. Consider the difference between "horse" and "broncho;" "house" and "bungalow;" "woman" ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... company with the Concord philosopher. The latter, as we know, decried the mystical conception of fixed symbolism in any domain. But Freud, although theoretically agreed, falls victim in practice to the fascinations of the dream-book cipher method which he has condemned. The adjective Freudian is now justly a by-word, among psychopathologists, for a stereotyped habit of reducing each item of a dream to some cryptic allusion or roundabout reference to the primitive demands of the infantile ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... he continued: 'All things considered, the present tranquillity of this country is to my mind perfectly miraculous. Already our presence has been infinitely beneficial in allaying animosities and in pointing out abuses.' If it had been the case that the country was tranquil, his adjective would have been singularly appropriate, but not precisely in the sense he ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... as any epithet marshalled to attend its noun in a last-century poet's dictionary. One would not have it away; one can hear the caress with which the master pronounces it, "making his mouth," as Swift did for his "little language." Nor does the customary adjective fail in later literature. It was dear to the Realist, and it is dear to the Symbolist. The only difference is that in the French of the Symbolist it ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... appetite of the mind. But I ask you in all seriousness to look abroad on this colossal universe of concrete facts, on their awful bewilderments, their surprises and cruelties, on the wildness which they show, and then to tell me whether 'refined' is the one inevitable descriptive adjective that springs ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... inns in England are often named after animals with an adjective descriptive of the color of the sign; as, The Golden Lion, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... formula—"always being begotten, and as instantly perishing, in order to be rebegotten perpetually." They showed a real disbelief in our English statement "begotten, not made." I overruled the objection, that in the Greek it was not a participle, but a verbal adjective; for it was manifest to me, that a religion which could not be proclaimed in English could not be true; and the very idea of a Creed announcing that Christ was "not begotten, yet begettive," roused in me an unspeakable loathing. Yet surely ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... signification,—a literal and narrow meaning, and a general and rather undefined application. It signifies not only physical remedies and the art of using them, but second-sight, prophecy, and preternatural power. As an adjective, it embraces the idea of supernatural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... 399. Any further particulars of the person here named are unknown. Some commentators suggest 'Phini,' and that some female of the name of Phinis is alluded to, making the adjective 'justissime' of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the darkness, "what did that American-heiress- globe-trotter-girl say last season when she was tipped out of her 'rickshaw turning a corner? Some absurd adjective that made the man ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... little girl," she said. She was always very angry when anyone else called her a little girl, even if the adjective that went first was not "silly" but "nice" or "good" or "clever." And it was only when she was very angry with herself that she allowed Roberta to use that ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... cutter grinned while the old sea-dog expressed a highly colored opinion of the whole tribe of ship-fitters, machinists, and mechanics generally. After ten minutes of descriptive shouting, during which he never repeated an adjective twice, he wound up by saying that he considered "an engine-room an insult to a seaman's intelligence," and said that "he'd like to pave the bottom of the sea with the skeletons of engineers diving a thousand fathom for his lost propeller!" ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... here at eleven this morning. You know who—Jessica. I thought she came to talk over last night's concert. It was a failure. The room was as empty as the church has been of late. Those—women (my cloth prohibits me from supplying the adjective, Charles. I leave it with satisfaction in your hands) with their gabble have robbed me of my last shred of character. I assure you I am regarded as a libertine in the place—a professional breaker of hearts, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... I nodded, "but 'foolish' is an adjective which in this instance should be an adverb and which we will proceed to make so by the suffix 'ly.' Thus instead of saying, I talk 'foolish,' you ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... with you. But never mind, we can do it now. Judson's havin' one of his M. E. quarterly conferences up at the Whately house and we are free to talk this out. You say I'm a contemptible spy. Lettie, we're a pair of 'em, so we'll lave off the adjective or adverb, which ever it is, that does that for names of 'persons, places, and things that can be known or mentioned.' Some of 'em that can be known, can't aven be mentioned, though. Where were you, Lettie, whin I was spyin' and what were you doin' ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... adjective (formaliter), signifies the complex of the determinations of a thing, connected according to an internal principle of causality. On the other hand, we understand by nature, substantive (materialiter), the sum total ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... and on occasion, a very trivial and ill-considered word or phrase will cling closer and longer than a serious or thoughtful judgment. When Theodore Roosevelt called Thomas Paine "a filthy little Atheist" (or was the adjective "dirty"? I really forget!) he was very young,—only twenty-eight,—and doubtless had accepted his viewpoint of the great reformer-patriot from that "hearsay upon hearsay" against which Paine himself has so urgently warned us. Of ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... she was, and content with her simple tasks the whole day long. What a quiet, peaceful life was that at the California missions in the old days! Perhaps, reader, you think humdrum would be the more appropriate adjective to use than peaceful or even quiet. And to one like our Father Uria, thousands of miles from his early home, cut off from all the pleasures and advantages of ordinary social intercourse, it was, as we have seen, more, much more, than humdrum. But ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... crowded with a gallery of typical Dickensian people. Through Mrs. Gamp, Dickens dealt a death-blow to the drunken nurse of the period. The name Pecksniff has become synonymous with a certain type of hypocrite, and the adjective Pecksniffian is in common use wherever the English language is spoken. Charged with exaggeration regarding Mr. Pecksniff, Dickens wrote in the preface to "Martin Chuzzlewit," "All the Pecksniff family upon earth ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... good-night to my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson,' said Miss Tox, with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective; 'and Louisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warm before you go to bed, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... an old saying about sailors. The children do it for fun when we're becalmed sometimes. Well, there's no signs of it yet. I'll tell you what I'll do, children. While you're whistling up the wind, I'll write an adjective ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... by Faye and Harkness in 1881.[788] The methods employed in its investigation fall (as we have seen) into three separate classes—the trigonometrical, the gravitational, and the "phototachymetrical"—an ungainly adjective used to describe the method by the velocity of light. Each has its special difficulties and sources of error; each has counter-balancing advantages. The only trustworthy result from celestial surveys, was at that ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... "The adjective," replied my interlocutor, "should always precede the substantive, for we should never utter the name of God without first giving ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... visit—but why should I speak of her in these formal terms? To me, when I thought of her, which I did only too often, she was Juliet, with perhaps an adjective thrown in; and as Juliet I shall henceforth speak of her (but without the adjective) in this narrative, wherein nothing has been kept back from the reader—Juliet's visit, then, had been a great success, for my colleague was really pleased by the attention, and displayed a quiet geniality that ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... The adjective did double duty; but the tone was unmistakeably tender and anxious. Hazel had met her with both hands stretched out; now she drew her along gently ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... officious neighbors keep on talking; and when they have talked themselves blind, you may tell them, for me, that what money we have is safe," said Marcy, with a good deal of emphasis on the adjective. "If you want to see what mother brought back from the city, go and look at the servants. Every one of them is dressed in a new suit. Now go on and tell me the bad news. I'm ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... query about "Providence," my answer to which must depend upon what my questioner means by that substantive, whether alone, or qualified by the adjective "moral." ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... was that of a man whose eccentricities and personality are closely associated with the life of the fort.[157] In reporting the casualties of the battle of Molino del Rey, September 8, 1847, the general commanding the American forces applied an adjective to only one of the dead. The report reads, "the service mourns the high-souled Scott, brevet lieutenant colonel 5th infantry".[158] This was Martin Scott, one of the most human, most lovable, and most energetic men who ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... a neuter substantive to which the adjective agrees; the poet refers it to the person. Of the same kind is that which is said by Dione to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... whenever any object or any action, or any arrangement, besides being such as to serve a practical purpose or express an emotion or transfer a thought, is such also as to afford the sui generis satisfaction which we denote by the adjective: beautiful. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... First—If a numeral adjective were joined to Sestertii, and agreed with it in case, it signified just so many Sesterces; as decem Sestertii, 10 ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... which, like ours, is becoming sated with cleverness, it is a delight to read the unvarnished story of Champlain. In saying that the adjective is ever the enemy of the noun, Voltaire could not have levelled the shaft at him, for few writers have been more sparing in their use of adjectives or other glowing words. His love of the sea and of the ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... case, it will be seen that they have imported the idea of unendingness into the word [Greek: aion] and the idea of "eternal" into its adjective, [Greek: aionios]. ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... Maxwell flushed and the others laughed. But, in actual fact, he was not far wrong in his curious choice of an adjective that morning. Dr. Christobal's dismal foreboding had been justified on the second day out. Leaden clouds, a sullen sea, and occasional puffs of a stinging breeze from the southwest, offered a sorry exchange for the sunny ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... word as a verb, though the adjective peakish is common enough in old English writers. By peaked we must understand "stole" or got ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... fluid of Kamchatkan manufacture, which possessed peculiar detersive properties. I could think of no other reason than this for calling a bath "black." Upon entering the "black bath," however, at Kluchei, I saw my mistake, and acknowledged at once the appropriateness of the adjective. Leaving our clothes in a little rude entry, which answered the purposes without affording any of the conveniences of a dressing-room, we stooped to a low fur-clad door and entered the bath-room proper, which was certainly dark enough and black enough to justify the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... left both hyphenated and separate depending on their part of speech, for example: science-fiction science fiction (adjective) (noun) ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... wild. In its earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized by the epithet sylvaticus in Varro, De re rustica, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent silvestris, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22. (Occasionally it is used of men, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... a dangerous subject with my family," broke in Mrs. Levice. "Ruth has actually exhausted every adjective in her admiration vocabulary. The last extravaganza I heard from her on that theme was after she had seen him as Brutus; she wished herself Lucius, that in the tent scene she might ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... or adjective beyond what is needed to give the image, is a five-barred gate in the path of the eager mind travelling to ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... works which a well- brought-up public ought to know by heart. You will do well therefore to reproduce them often. There is no criticism admissible on this subject; and, if you absolutely exact it that I should make one at all, it would only be on the adjective "celebrated," appended to the Schumann Quintet, which would do without it without disadvantage. Pardon me ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... that what you ask is impossible," said the young man, taking his adjective for granted in a manner ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... good," she said, and then flushed with annoyance at the adjective. Half-dazed by the cold as she was, she could not think of a more suitable one. ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... shoulder with his disengaged hand, and looking at the boy's mother with a humorous suggestion of self-depreciation. Now, as formerly, he entertained the very friendliest sentiments towards all good women, yet maintained an expensively extensive acquaintance with women to whom that adjective is not ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the Court before which his Amelia stood her trial, he describes himself as an 'old gentleman.' The adjective seems hardly applicable to a man of forty five; but, to quote again from Mr Austin Dobson, "however it may have chanced, whether from failing health or otherwise, the Fielding of Amelia is suddenly a far older man than the Fielding of Tom Jones. The robust and irrepressible vitality, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... adverb instead of an adjective. Thus on page 332, speaking of a tame frog on the bar ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... ago ("slushy and disgusting"), or to The New York Post ("sterile and malodorous ... worse than immoral—dull"), or to Ainslee's Magazine ("inconsequent and rambling ... rather nauseating at times"). These devotees of the adjective that hunts in pairs are hardly to be discussed, I suppose, in connection with any rewards except such as accrue to the possessors of a certain obtuseness, who always and infallibly reap at least the reward of not being hurt by what they do not know—or, for that matter, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... could possibly have compassed; my mediocre faculties seemed gathered together and perfected—with the result, in time, that my "intuition," as others called it, came to be regarded with a respect that in some cases amounted to half reverence. The adjective "uncanny" was applied to me. The natives, certainly, ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... as the adjective signifies, was the property of his master, as much so as were the horse or the mule with which he worked, and he was cared for in much the same way and for ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... when Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of admonitory fingers. Then, taking his head between her two hands, she again looked into his brimming eyes, and said, simply, "GOOD dog," with the gentlest of emphasis on the adjective, and popped into ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... an eternal interest for Jeremy because, whenever he was mentioned, the phrase was: "Poor little Mr. Dawson!" Why he was to be pitied Jeremy did not know. He looked spruce and bright enough, and generally whistled to himself as he walked; but "poor" was an exciting adjective, and Jeremy, when he passed him, felt a little shudder of drama run down ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... 7. Epithet. An adjective or term placed upon a person or thing and expressing some quality especially appropriate to that ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... the adjective "little" whenever she asked a favor—it made the favor sound less arduous. But Anthony laughed again—whether she wanted a cake of ice or a marble of it, he must go down-stairs to the kitchen.... Her voice followed him through the hall: "And just a little cracker with ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... I saw that my companion was a man of about forty years of age, although he looked much older, his long untrimmed brown beard and un-kept hair being thickly streaked with grey. He was quiet in manner and speech, and the latter was entirely free from the Great Australian Adjective. His story, as far as he told it to me, was a simple one, yet with an element of ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... Genevra Lambert to the old man, who, utterly confounded, stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with a dreadful adjective appended to the fools, and an emphasis in his voice which showed ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... is used in the singular, both by Mir Amman and the original author, Amir Khusru according to a well-known rule in Persian syntax, viz., "a substantive accompanied by a numerical adjective dispenses with the plural termination," as "haft roz," "seven days," not "haft rozha. The Persian term darwesh, in a general sense, denotes a person who has adopted what by extreme courtesy is called a religious life, closely akin to the "mendicant friar" of the middle ages; i.e., ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... teach, That it hath nine parts of speech;— Article, adjective, and noun, Verb, conjunction, and pronoun, With preposition, and adverb, And interjection, as I've heard. The letters are just twenty-six, These form all words when rightly mix'd. The vowels are a, e, o, i, With u, and sometimes ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... were none, except those over which the trains thundered to and from New York, and the adjective, except to old inhabitants who had a curious fierce loyalty for the place, did not seemingly apply. Fairbridge could hardly, by an unbiassed person who did not dwell in the little village and view its features ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he'd hardly call Miss Lethbridge a "little thing," whereupon Kathy defended her adjective by saying Ellaline was only about up ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Lord Coleridge for having, I believe for the first time, coupled the name of the President of the United States with that of her Majesty on an occasion like this. I was struck, both in what he said, and in what our distinguished guest of the evening said, with the frequent recurrence of an adjective which is comparatively new—I mean the word "English-speaking." We continually hear nowadays of the "English-speaking race," of the "English-speaking population." I think this implies, not that we are to forget, not that it ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... we have already completed thirty-seven years from Waterloo, and my remembrances upon this subject go back to a period lying much behind that great era), I used to be annoyed and irritated by the false interpretation given to the Greek word aion, and given necessarily, therefore, to the adjective aionios as its immediate derivative. It was not so much the falsehood of this interpretation, as the narrowness of that falsehood, which disturbed me. There was a glimmer of truth in it; and precisely that glimmer it ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... doomed; only symbolism will endure; for symbolism only is there a future. Signor Marinetti, who coined the hideous word, "Futurism," goes still further. Literature, too, must throw off the yoke of syntax. The adjective must be abolished, the verb of the infinite should be always employed; the adverb must follow the adjective; every substantive should have its double; away with punctuation; you must "orchestrate" your language (this outrivals Rene Ghil); the personal pronoun ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... trust you will find me, madam, an OPEN enemy in the better sense of the adjective. As far as I can, I will answer questions if you wish to ask any. I will tell you honestly all the harm I meditate and outline clearly the extent of my hostility, if you will do the same," and he smiled so genially that she half smiled also ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... or Substantive, The Pronoun, The Adjective, The Verb, The Adverb, The Preposition, The ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... answer the note in person. As he leisurely put his appearance in order, he thought: "Verily one's adventures begin upon leaving home." He was human, consequently his curiosity was pleasantly stimulated to discover what lay before him: but the little adjective in the first sentence of his appellant's letter was fatal to the idea of any ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... was by Wort, "The Last Rose of Summer." If given, no one can say how successful it might have been, but while the subject implied a compliment to Wort and those preceding him, the adjective "last" was ominous. There were several boys struggling to look through the curtain, one through the old rent Wort had used, and the others through new rents that they had ingeniously made with their fingers. ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... at heart, Mackworth laid it on in theatric outward appearance, in true line with the Kansas tradition of a sockless Jerry Simpson, who went without socks, as the adjective implies, and made Congress on that one platform of his sartorial lack ... of William Roscoe Stubbs, who rode into the office of governor partly on the fact that his daughter could make salt-rising bread ... a form of bread-making ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... may be reckon'd the placing the Adjective after the Substantive, the Transposition of Words, the turning the Adjective into a Substantive, with several other Foreign Modes of Speech which this Poet has naturalized to give his Verse the greater Sound, and throw it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... for unaffected Marie Leczinska, I regret being obliged to admit that, even in youth, "comely" was the most effusive adjective that could veraciously be awarded her. And it is only in the lowest of whispers that I will admit that she was seven years older than her handsome husband, whose years did not then number seventeen. Yet is there indubitable charm in the simple grace wherewith Marie accepted her marvellous ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... shown into a neat six-by-eight, just off the carriage-room. There was a cot, running water and a wash- stand, and a boot-blacking apparatus. For the rest, there were a few portraits of fast horses, fighters, and toe-dancers (the adjective qualifying all three!) which the senator's sporting groom had collected and tacked to the walls. For appearance's sake, Mr. James had purchased a cheap trunk. Everything inside was new, too. His silver military brushes, his silver shaving set, and so forth and ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry |
