"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rather than on His nature. Here it puts Him in contrast with David, also called 'Thy servant.' The latter was imperfectly what Jesus was perfectly. His complete realisation of the prophetic picture of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah is emphasised by the adjective 'holy,' implying complete devotion or separation to the service of God, and unsullied, unlimited moral purity. The uniqueness of His relation in this aspect is expressed by the definite article in the original. He is the Servant, in a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... substantive to which the adjective agrees; the poet refers it to the person. Of the same kind is that which is said by Dione ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Horse, it was considered quite impossible to convey the wires over sea, but now we are at a loss to comprehend where the difficulty lay! So wags the world. Tempora mutantur—excuse me for quoting the Etruscan. What would we do without the Atalantic telegraph? (Pundit says Atlantic was the ancient adjective.) We lay to a few minutes to ask the cutter some questions, and learned, among other glorious news, that civil war is raging in Africa, while the plague is doing its good work beautifully both in Yurope and Ayesher. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Sellingworth suddenly smiled. The adjective "respectable" certainly did not fit the Bond Street young man. He looked slightly exotic! That, no doubt, had set Sir Seymour against him. He was not of the usual type of club man. He "intrigued" her terribly. As ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... interior. The Normans, as they slowly reveal themselves, disclose most unexpected qualities; one seems to sound subterranean caverns of feeling hidden behind their iron nasals. No other cathedral in France or in Europe has an interior more refined—one is tempted to use even the hard-worn adjective, more tender—or more carefully studied. One test is crucial here and everywhere. The treatment of the apse and choir is the architect's severest standard. This is a subject not to be touched lightly; one to which we shall have to ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... and on occasion, a very trivial and ill-considered word or phrase will cling closer and longer than a serious or thoughtful judgment. When Theodore Roosevelt called Thomas Paine "a filthy little Atheist" (or was the adjective "dirty"? I really forget!) he was very young,—only twenty-eight,—and doubtless had accepted his viewpoint of the great reformer-patriot from that "hearsay upon hearsay" against which Paine himself has so urgently warned us. Of course ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Saxon word for spirit and is still used in the Name of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Ghostly, the adjective form of the word, has been retained in the Prayer Book and means spiritual, e. g., in the Confirmation service one of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Ghost is called "ghostly strength," that is, ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... subject go back to a period lying much behind that great era), I used to be annoyed and irritated by the false interpretation given to the Greek word aion, and given necessarily, therefore, to the adjective aionios as its immediate derivative. It was not so much the falsehood of this interpretation, as the narrowness of that falsehood, which disturbed me. There was a glimmer of truth in it; and precisely that glimmer it was which led the way ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... as her father," replied Lady Laura, with whom that favourite adjective served for everything in the way of praise. To her the Pyramids and Niagara, a tropical thunderstorm, a mazourka by Chopin, and a Parisian bonnet, were all alike charming. "I suppose solidity isn't so nice in a girl," she went on, laughing; "but certainly Sophia Granger is not such ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... be another play on words, for "sinzera" may be the adjective "sincere" or the two words "sin zera," "waxless," and hence in this last meaning, an allusion to the third line of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... his clear sight, did not see that the very word he wanted was the next word before him. It puts one in mind of a man looking for his spectacles who has them already across his nose. "Wanton" is a noun as well as an adjective; and, to prevent it from being mistaken for an epithet applied to Ganymede, it will in future be necessary to place after it a comma, when the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... phrase would be a strange one, but not unlike Shakspere. Compare Cymbeline, act v. sc. 5: 'And your three motives to the battle,' meaning 'the motives of you three.' Perhaps, however, it is only the adjective for the adverb: 'having concealed it hitherto, conceal it trebly now.' But tenible may be the word: 'let it be a thing to be kept ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... simple and a little deserted, as though the heart of the Russian public had not, as yet, quite found its way there. I think "guileless" was the adjective that came to my mind, and certainly Burrows, the head of the place—a large, red-faced, smiling man with glasses—seemed to me altogether too cheerful and pleased with life to penetrate the wicked recesses of ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... gifts to her. The mother's eye dwelt with an habitual pride on the daughter's grace of movement and carriage. "She is always so distinguished," she thought, and then checked herself by the remembrance that she was applying to Elizabeth an adjective that Elizabeth particularly disliked. Nevertheless, Mrs. Gaddesden knew very well what she herself meant by it. She meant something—some quality in Elizabeth, which was always provoking in her mother's mind despairing comparisons between what she might make of her life and ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a tree and eat nuts?" she asked, hoping that the use of the adjective "large" might ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... especially from the waist, and ending in a goat, with the legs and feet of that creature. But Casaubon and his followers, with reason, condemn this derivation, and prove that from Satyrus the word satira, as it signifies a poem, cannot possibly descend. For satira is not properly a substantive, but an adjective; to which the word lanx (in English a "charger" or "large platter") is understood: so that the Greek poem made according to the manners of a Satyr, and expressing his qualities, must properly be called satirical, and not satire. And thus far it is allowed that the Grecians had such poems, but that ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... The adjective 'positive' contains the same fallacy. Apparently Comte meant by the choice of it to convey the sense that he would limit research to phenomena in their orders of resemblance, co-existence and succession. But to call the inquiry ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... squatted about as I read and sung hymns to them; they were very much surprised that I was not afraid to sleep alone in such a big room—said Miss Juliana and Miss Lynch, Mass' Sam and Mass' Willie and their Mamma used to sleep there. These people do not use any feminine adjective, and their "hims" are very confusing sometimes. Harriet walked down to the house behind me from school the other day for some sugar for a sick baby, and I asked her the name of a bird that flew across our path. "Him de Red bird." I thought the ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... was an offence against national pride and justice! He forthwith called the attention of his chief officer to the indignity that had been thrust upon them. "Look," said he, in wrathful humiliation, "there's God Almighty given that adjective Dutchman a leading wind and allowed His own countryman to be jammed on a lee shore!" It was said that Barley never really forgave this unpatriotic act, though he still adhered to the belief that the God of British ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take "ranch" eggs, how pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with "yard" eggs, such an "out in the open—let the rest of the world go by" impression they confer. And so reassuring, too, as though they couldn't ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... a swearer, even in a swearing age. It was 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the Caribbean is a mediterranean sea; but the adjective must be qualified when comparison is made with the Mediterranean of the Old World or with the Gulf of Mexico. The last-named bodies of water communicate with the outer oceans by passages so contracted as to be easily watched from near-by positions, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Age-end Art! I would not give, For all their plotless plays, One round Flagstaffian adjective ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... The adjective is redundant and "proleptic," as the bird must be "enthralled" before ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... glimpses in letters and suchlike documents, were it not that he happened to be the first man of affairs in England to imitate the "Republic" of Plato. By that chance it fell to him to give the world a noun and an adjective of abuse, "Utopian," and to record how under the stimulus of Plato's releasing influence the opening problems of our modern world presented themselves to the English mind of his time. For the most ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... sentences? That is undoubtedly its use, but what is its origin?" Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this question satisfactorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians, "familiar as his garter," when he said, "It is the common pronoun, adjective, or participle, that, with the noun, thing or proposition, implied, and the particular example following it." So he thought, and so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and writers ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Latin, so it is ridiculous to deny that Chinese moral terms, adopted into the Japanese tongue more than a thousand years ago are Japanese to-day. The statement, like a majority of missionary statements on these subjects, is otherwise misleading; for the reader is left to infer the absence of an adjective as well as a noun,—and the purely Japanese adjectives signifying chaste are numerous. The word most commonly used applies to both sexes,—and has the old Japanese sense of firm, strict, resisting, honorable. ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... barrel-organ type of leader— something that flowed like water from a smooth-running pump. This I admit I could never manage to produce. Mr. Curtis's standard of style was solely governed by the question of the repetition of the same word. It was an unforgivable sin to repeat a substantive, adjective, or verb without an intervening space of at least four inches. This, of course, leads to that particular form of "journalese" in which a cricket-ball becomes a "leathern missile" and so forth. Apropos of this I remember a good Fleet Street story. An Editor, enraged with a contributor, tore ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... tint, the dark shaft lines and pale edges of the feathers of the back giving it a striped appearance. The forepart of the top of the head is blackish, and the cap is brown, from which he gets the qualifying adjective of his name. In the best nuptial plumage the rosy coloring is heightened to an intense crimson, especially on the wings, tail coverts, and the under parts. The female's attire is paler and duller of tint, the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... 15. Deussen, Max Muller and Roer have all misinterpreted this passage; asito has been interpreted as an adjective or participle, though no evidence has ever been adduced; it is evidently the ablative ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... bright," he said contemptuously. "The average American is bright. If one prefixes no stronger adjective than that to his name, he accomplishes very little in life. Don't think me a pessimist," he added, smiling. "All over the country the Schools and colleges are instilling the principles of conservatism ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... country is called Denmark," said the professor; "but it has this name in no other language. The Danes call it Danmark, the adjective of which is Danske; and the country is also called the Danske Stat, or Danish States. In German it is Daenemark; in French, Danemark; in Italian, Danimarca. It is bounded on the north by the Skager Rack, or Sleeve; on ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... significance than is found in the original. Let me refer in this connection to his description of death from The Artists—"The gentle bow of necessity"—which so beautifully recalls the gentle darts of Homer, where, however, the transfer of the adjective from darts to bow gives to the thought a more tender and a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... preux. The Old French adjective meant 'valiant.' At the present time the word is only used in the phrase preux chevalier. Preux as a noun is rare, but de Vigny has ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... had thought to pique him with this adjective, she was disarmed by the heartiness of his admission, "As green as grass! But I'd like to help you all the same, if ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... a regular cross-sawed, triple-hammered, mule-kick, beef-fed, rarin'-tearin' John L. Sullivan, ain't you?" said the exponent of the double adjective in rapid admiration. ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... dismal, pokey old cottage!" she returned, with a shrill rendering of each adjective. "You would have us go and live in that damp, musty, ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... torrents of the rainy season, as well as the isolated hillocks, clothed in wood, which look like huge hay-cocks,—those, for instance, which rise in the rear of Cap Haytien. The aspect of the higher hills in the interior might mislead an etymologist to derive the word morne from the French adjective which means gloomy, they are so marked by the ravages of the hurricane and earthquake, so ploughed up into decrepit features by the rains, the pitiless vertical heat, the fires, and the landslides. The soft rock cannot preserve its outlines beneath all these influences; its thin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... your English pure. The use of slang is of course absolutely inexcusable, for it offends against good taste as well as good rhetoric; but the employment of words in a careless or perverted meaning is equally condemnable. It is also a mistake to use too many adjectives, to throw every adjective and adverb into the superlative degree, and in other ways to exaggerate every expression which you use. Much of this misuse of words is due to ignorance, but more to carelessness or laziness; in any case you can detect your faults if you seek for them, and you should take immediate steps to correct ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... give a few examples of the less forceful. If, for instance, Kameel wanted to indicate size, importance, force, or greatness as an attribute of anything whatever from a flash of lightning to a hippopotamus or an attack of fever he would say "Helovabigwaan," using that term as an adjective. To express disapproval or disgust, he would exclaim "Toodamaach," and shake his head emphatically. The first time I heard the latter expression was when, after a long, painful, and really clever stalk against a heavy wind, I missed a splendid koodoo bull at a distance of ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... the name CUKULCAN, or 2021, was associated in these pairs with some adjective or verb, and therefore examined the ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... acting with an aim and intelligent activity is enough to show its value—its function in experience. We are only too given to making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." We forget that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be conscious is to be aware of what we are about; conscious signifies the deliberate, observant, planning traits of activity. Consciousness is nothing which we have which gazes idly on the scene around ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... Roman imitators, to whom we shall recur in a later chapter, and the mediaeval Troubadours and Minnesingers. To the present day sentimentality in love is so much more abundant than sentiment that the adjective sentimental is commonly used in an uncomplimentary sense, as in the following passage from one of Krafft-Ebing's books ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the Adjective—"What beautiful butter!" "What a nice landscape!" They should say, "What a beautiful landscape!" "What nice butter!" Again, errors are frequently occasioned by ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized by the epithet sylvaticus in Varro, De re rustica, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent silvestris, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22. (Occasionally it is used ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Maggie?" answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the tremendousness of scene evoked with stark economy of means, the triumphant vividness of the adjective "wrinkled," transporting the reader at once to a great height above the plain of the sea, the complete absence of any touch of the "poetic" (surely the beautiful word azure may be admitted in modern company), make this poem a masterpiece without date ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... 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 ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... the air with heavy scent, and struck off across a park toward a patch of moss under some trees. He had never lain upon moss, and he wanted to see whether it was really soft enough to justify the use of its name as an adjective. Then he saw a girl coming toward him over the grass. She was the most beautiful person he had ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... curious was he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as to come into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective 'blanche' and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out, "Blanche? Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the whole. While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made to smile, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... form the plural of a noun or adjective, the rule appears to be to add le as a postfix, sometimes previously supplying a terminal vowel if required: Example: geta hand becomes getale in the plural: kuku foot, kukule: kutai yam, kutaile: ipi wife, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... word 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 ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... common name of women. It means one who has no vala or strength or power. The word is also used as an adjective. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... by Professor A. Lasson, entitled Deutsche Art und deutsche Bildung, the adjective "deutsch" occurs 256 times in 42 pages—sometimes 13 times in one page, often 10 or 11 times—and always, of course, with a sort of unctuous implication that human language contains no higher term of eulogy. This enumeration does not include the ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... third place, and most important of all, we have been led to analyze this complex process of habit building,—to find out the factors that operate in learning. We have now a goodly body of principles that may even be characterized by the adjective "scientific." We know that in habit building, it is fundamentally essential to get the pupil started in the right way. A recent writer states that two thirds of the difficulty that the teacher meets fixing habits is due to the neglect of this principle. ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... of us in all. Khokhriakov presided. His neck is like a bull's, but rougher—and red. He started the meeting by a thunderous "Shut up, you over there!" and "Somebody open the window; who in hell is smoking such ... tobacco (I omit the adjective, though correct ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... story of Genevra Lambert to the old man, who, utterly confounded, stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with a dreadful adjective appended to the fools, and an emphasis in his voice which showed he meant ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... clue-word is People's for all that. A People's—-Chaste word, it will bring forth no adjective. The plays of A People's Theatre are People's plays. The plays of A People's Theatre are plays ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... use the word audacity or the adjective audacious to you again, Christy. I see that it nettles you, to say the least," added the captain, pressing his hand with ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Fire," "Unquenchable Fire."—All these expressions are used in describing the fiery judgment upon sin and sinners. The effect of the fire is everlasting and eternal, and by a common usage in language the adjective that describes the effect is applied to the agent by which the effect ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... "London Antiquary." In his Introduction he has reprinted the earliest list of cant words in the language, that made by Thomas Harman in Elizabeth's time. We wish we could only feel sure of the accuracy of the reprint. In this list we find already the adjective rum meaning good, fine,—a word that has crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious. Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the memory, they work slowly upward. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... do well, in some—comfortable kind of business," he said heartily. That adjective "comfortable" was a hasty substitute for the adjective "honest," which had been almost on his lips as he uttered his friendly wish. He was too well disposed to all the world not to feel profound pity for this white-headed ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... 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
... At least, it was probably as near to deserving that adjective as at any time before or since. There was plenty of time for amusement. There were public bowling-greens and archery butts in Stratford, though the corporation was very strict in regard to the hours when these could be used. Every one enjoyed hunting, hawking, cock-fighting, bull-baiting, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... 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, ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... example, Iago is a development of the conventional stage villain." He is certainly correct in saying that to most students these assumptions "seem absurd." Let us examine them briefly, for the purpose of learning whether they deserve any more serious adjective. ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... and the training for his profession. But at the beginning of his career he had won a rich prize in an architectural competition, and afterwards commissions and rewards and honors had flowed in upon him in constantly increasing measure. While he did not yet quite merit the adjective which Isabella Marne had applied to him, there was every promise that he would soon be, in truth, ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... the wife's name is always a little different from that of her husband, owing to the fact that the family name when borne by a male is a substantive and can be used alone, while in a lady's case it is only an adjective which requires completion ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... she said, "how can I ever speak to him again! but, perhaps, he would not speak to me. He must think I am wicked and bold and hardened—and bad," with a fresh sob at every adjective. "Oh, dear! oh, dear!" burying her face in Aimee's lap, "if I had only stayed at home and been good, like you. He could have respected me, at least, couldn't he? And now—oh, what am I ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 as ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Let those 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
... not a new adjective. But it needs a new definition, and the complement of a corresponding noun. I would fain set down on paper some observations and reflections which may serve to make its meaning clear, and render due praise to that most excellent quality in man or woman,—especially ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... be "accosting?" "Accost her, knight, accost!" in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakespearian 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 ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... best he could never have been that, and in the recent past he had managed to acquire a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth half-way across his cheek. Even when his face was in repose he had an odd expression; and when, as he chanced to do now, he smiled, odd became a mild adjective, quite inadequate for purposes of description. It was not an unpleasant face, however. Unquestionably genial, indeed. There was something in it that had a quality of ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... sent this sound advice to his pupil, Guy de Maupassant: "Whatever may be the thing which one wishes to say, there is but one word for expressing it, only one verb to animate it, only one adjective to qualify it. It is essential to search for this word, for this verb, for this adjective, until they are discovered, and to be satisfied ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... he's a very nice, amiable young man"—strong emphasis upon the second adjective. ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... remarks are very unnecessary and irrevelant," said his wife, falling into bad English over a long adjective. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... 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 Don Juan bragging ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... like a flame. And thus, little step after little step, they went from little wonder to little wonder. Dolly liked small things; it was the microscopic aspect of Nature that touched her heart; she had an adjective all her own for such: they were "baby" things—baby flowers, baby brooks, baby stars. This appealed less to Charles-Norton, hungry for big sweeps. And even now, he caught himself yawning once, and casting a look at the ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... they recall what is pleasing, sublime, pathetic, and set our ideas and emotions flowing in one of these channels. But he does not get fairly on the track of either Alison's or any other decisive and marking adjective, with which to qualify his rapports. He wastes some time, moreover, in trying to bring within the four corners of his definition some uses of the terms of beauty, which are really only applied to objects by way of analogy, and are not meant to predicate the beautiful in any literal ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... it perfectly, beautiful, wonderfully lovely?" cried Jessie, getting more excited with each adjective, and when the others laughed merrily at the extravagance of her description, she added, defiantly, "I don't care; it is! I'll ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... 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 ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... not have many words to express the ideas embraced in mental science. In ancient times "pneuma" signified both mind and wind, or air. In later times it lost its physical currency, and no longer signifies, in its general currency, breath or air. The adjective, "pneumatikos," is never used in a physical sense. It ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... by omitting to repeat the article in a sentence. It should always be repeated when a noun or an adjective referring to a distinct thing is introduced; take, for example, the sentence, "He has a black and white horse." If two horses are meant, it is clear that it should be, "He has a black and a white horse." ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... "the upper part of the ridge of some elevated and exposed land." As a prefix, its meaning depends upon the fact whether the word attached to it be an adjective or a substantive. If an adjective be attached, it has the second signification; i.e. it is the upper part of some exposed land, having the particular quality involved in the adjective, such as, "Cefndu," "Cefngwyn," "Cefncoch," the black, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... have no doubt as to its having come from the Gipsy. In Rommany, all the world over, cova means "a thing," but it is almost indefinite in its applicability. "It is," says Pott, "a general helper on all occasions; is used as substantive and adjective, and has a far wider scope than the Latin res." Thus covo may mean "that man;" covi, "that woman;" and covo or cuvvo, as it very often does in English, "that, there." It sometimes appears in the word acovat, or this. There is no expression more frequent in a Gipsy's mouth, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... empty concept of an existent, ens or quod est) and predicate (modus entis), and derives them from two fundamental activities of the mind, a combining function (simulsumtio, totatio) and an abstracting function (one which removes the nota subjecti). Substance and accident, substantive and adjective, are expressions for subjective processes of thought and hence do not hold of things in themselves. With reference to the importance, nay, to the indispensability, of linguistic signs in the use of the understanding, the science of the forms of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... [20] The verbal adjective in [Greek: tos] is almost universally used in a passive sense; [Greek: hypoptos], however, in this place is an exception to the rule, as are also, [Greek: kalyptes], Soph. Antig. 1011, [Greek: ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... English language with artistic effect and finish. His style is direct and energetic, and it shows his determination to say a thing as simply and as effectively as possible. One of the rules in Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar is, "As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out." He followed this rule. Some have complained that the great humorist's mind, like Emerson's, often worked in a disconnected fashion, but this trait has been exaggerated in the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... 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 at this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... a sailor word; it means anything at all; it may be made an adjective or a verb, or almost any part of speech, to serve a purpose or express a thought. Here it meant that there was to be no fooling at the helm, that she was to be steered as by Gunter himself. "Full an' by," was the word. "Full an' by, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... breathing round me. Yes, you were! I felt it in my hair. And YOU too—you're always snoopin' and snoodgin'. Oh, yes, you want to know WHY I've got an extry copy-book and another 'Rithmetic, Miss Curiosity. Well, what would you give to know? Want to see if they're PRETTY" (with infinite scorn at the adjective). "No, they ain't PRETTY. That's all you girls think about—what's PRETTY and what's curious! Quit now! Come! Don't ye see teacher lookin' at you? Ain't ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... Cockney adjective. It is vaguely supposed to be highly obscene, though just why nobody ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... state. Indeed, seeing that the progress towards 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 sound almost ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... nights that succeeded have yet lost for me their novelty. As a consequence, if, in looking back, my days appear to be wholly monopolized by work, my nights seem consecrated as wholly to amusement. The poet's "hideous" is the last adjective I could apply to the night my busy day ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... English Essay, 8vo. containing 500 pages, on the Superstitions, Ghosts, Legends, &c. of all parts of the principality, to be delivered before February 3, 1831. Now when the limited period proposed for the collection of 500 pages of matter, and the above little adjective all is considered, it must appear obvious that such an Herculean labour is not capable of being accomplished by one individual alone.—Imagining it, therefore, to be a matter of impossibility to perform what the very reverend gentleman requires, I cannot consistently with propriety offer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... a type, being either shop-girls or lady clerks, with a sprinkling of maid-servants and board school teachers. They were pale-faced, hard-working, over-dressed young women who read Marie Corelli, and considered her "deep"; who had one adjective with which to express appreciation of things, this "artistic"; anything they condemned was spoken of as "awful"; one and all liked to be considered what they called "up-to-date." Marriage they desired more than anything else in the world, not so ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... and well? From among what class of man, of the society into which he had sunk, would he select one to give his daughter? He had written of "my old friend, Barry Craven." The name conveyed nothing—the adjective admitted of two interpretations. Which? Day and night she was haunted with visions of old men—recollections of faces seen when driving with her friends or visiting their homes; old men who had interested her, old men from whom she had instinctively shrunk. What type ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... depreciate you. It's a flattering adjective, but you've set my own nerves to tingling and I ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... term Hindustani not only survives, but survives in a variety of significations. The word is an adjective, pertaining to Hindustan, and in English it has become the name either of the people of Hindustan or of their language. It is in the latter sense that the name is particularly confusing. The way out of the difficulty lies in first associating ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... The adjective "mystical" is technically applied, most often. to states that are of brief duration. Of course such hours of rapture as the last two persons describe are mystical experiences, of which in a later lecture I shall have much to say. Meanwhile here is the abridged record of another ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... man, indeed, was startling, so that Lanyard for some time sought an adjective to suit it, and was content only when he hit on the word evil. Indeed, evil seemed the inevitable and only word; none other could possibly so well fit that ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Latin dies, and yet nothing is more certain; and the intermediate steps are very clear. From dies, comes diurnus. Diu is, by inaccurate ears, or inaccurate pronunciation, easily confounded with giu; then the Italians form a substantive of the ablative of an adjective, and thence giurno, or, as they make it, giorno; which is readily contracted into giour, or jour' He observed, that the Bohemian language was true Sclavonick. The Swede said, it had some similarity ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... not on watch were taking it easy. Like unto their officers, submarine sailors are an unusual lot. They are real sailors, or machinist sailors—boys for whose quality the navy has a flattering, picturesque, and quite unprintable adjective. A submarine man, mind you, works harder than perhaps any other man of his grade in the navy, because the vessel in which he lives is nothing ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... author's account of the verb. Why it cannot be compared like the adjective. The verb is an adjective or name in the fourth degree. It does not represent an action. TO and DO. Shown how it does not represent an action, and how grammarians have been led ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Johnsonian period has assumed, in spite of the lexicographer's own dislike of that adjective, prodigious dimensions. After the critical labours of Malone, Murphy, Croker, J. B. Nichols, Macaulay, Carlyle, Rogers, Fitzgerald, Dr Hill and others, it may appear hazardous to venture upon such a well-ploughed field where the pitfalls ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... the tribes of American Indians, the word is used with a double 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... man is good, for man, they said, means only man, and good means only good, and the word is can't be construed to identify such disparate meanings. Mr. Bradley revels in the same type of argument. No adjective can rationally qualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the substantive, it can't be united with it; and if not distinct, there is only one thing there, and nothing left to unite. Our whole pluralistic procedure in using subjects and predicates as we do is fundamentally irrational, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... looked upon as an adjective; and the passage has been rendered Talis Tirynthius indefessus, which is scarce sense. Callimachus was very knowing in mythology, and is here speaking of the Cyclopian God Acmon, whom he makes the [Greek: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... Antecedents Person Gender Rules Governing Gender Number Compound Antecedents Relative Interrogative Case Forms Rules Governing Use of Cases Compound Personal Compound Relative Adjective ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... a sad abuse of the adjective little; I am quite aware of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little, finical; affected,—all Japan is contained, both physically and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... upper end of the street a cross road on the right leads to Morton Bavant and to the main route on the north side of the stream. The partly rebuilt church is of little interest, excepting perhaps the arch of chalk that supports the fourteenth-century tower, but the village deserves the adjective "sweet." The stream, although now of small size, and the surrounding hills that rise close by into Scratchbury Camp, make a lovely setting for the mellow old cottages and bright gardens that one may hope are as good to live in as they are to look ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... between the bowed heads of the others, where, by the way, there must have been some blue fire playing: "Comrades, we must not follow the advice of our brother Poivre there. Delay with us is dangerous. Every day makes it more likely that these soldiers,"—there was an adjective prefixed, a favourite one, applied by him to almost everything—"will find out what we are planning. The dark nights, now there is no moon, will favour us when once we get away. Now or never is the word. The men in all the other yards are waiting for the red flag to ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... glowing eyes upon me. I liked his anger. And I liked very much that explosive expletive. How often, during my ministry, did I yearn to be able to utter that emphatic word! Mind, it is not a cuss-word. It is only an innocent adjective—condemned. But what eloquence and emphasis there is in it! How often I could have flung it at the head of a confirmed toper, as he knelt at my feet to take the pledge. How often I could have shot it at the virago, who was disturbing the peace of the village; and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... monochronos hedone. Pater's definition "the pleasure of the ideal now." The adjective monochronos means, literally, "single or unitary time." See also Marius the Epicurean, Vol. 1, Cyrenaicism, and Vol. 2, Second Thoughts, where Pater quotes the same key ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... barefoot, wan. Such a compression of a description into three bare epithets is frequent in Keats's poetry. He shows his marvellous power in the unerring choice of adjective; and their enumeration in this way has, from its very simplicity, an ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... be 'accosting?' 'Accost 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 ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... 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
... fire 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 ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... presented with the problem of interpreting the grammatical value of the word driving in the sentence, "The boy driving the horse is very noisy," he is compelled to apply to its interpretation the ideas noun, adjectival relation, and adjective, and also the ideas object, objective relation, and verb. In this way the child secures the mental elements which he may organize into the new experience, or knowledge (participle), and thus gain control of ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of his 'civil demeanour' and of the reports of 'his uprightness of dealing which argues his honesty.' In 1601—when near the zenith of his fame—he was apostrophised as 'sweet Master Shakespeare' in the play of 'The Return from Parnassus,' and that adjective was long after associated with his name. In 1604 one Anthony Scoloker in a poem called 'Daiphantus' bestowed on him the epithet 'friendly.' After the close of his career Jonson wrote of him: 'I loved the man and do honour his memory, on this side ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Wardour hurried to the kitchen, found the door on the latch, believed everything and much more, went straight to her son's room, and, in a calm rage, woke him up, and poured into his unwilling ears a torrent of mingled fact and fiction, wherein floated side by side with Letty's name every bad adjective she could bring the lips of propriety to utter. Before he quite came to himself the news had well-nigh driven him mad. There stood his mother, dashing her cold hailstorm of contemptuous wrath on the girl he loved, whom he had gone to bed believing the sweetest ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... the usual idiomatic mode of expressing possession of parts of the body, wearing apparel, etc., by the use of the definite article instead of the possessive adjective his, her, etc., the dative pronoun also being often added to indicate the possessor, as: Yo me corte el dedo, I cut ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... couplet gave him employment for the rest of the morning, and lunch-time found him still dissatisfied. An adjective avoided his quest—the right adjective; the one and only word which expressed the precise shade of meaning desired. From the recesses of his brain it peeped at him, now advancing so near that it was almost within grasp, ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... softening adjective, "I have learnt with pain and indignation that you have dishonoured yourself again by breaking the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics. With still greater pain and indignation do I learn that your name has become in a few short days a byword, that you have ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Oxford, 1891.) is somewhat more specialised—all men do not possess mana—but substantially it is the same idea. Mana is not only a force, it is also an action, a quality, a state, at once a substantive, an adjective, and a verb. It is very closely neighboured by the idea of sanctity. Things that have mana are tabu. Like orenda it manifests itself in noises, but specially mysterious ones, it is mana that is rustling in the trees. Mana is highly contagious, it can pass from a holy stone to a man or even to his ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... (Serbian) adjective: Kosovar (Albanian), Kosovski (Serbian) note: Kosovan, a neutral term, is sometimes also used as a noun ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was made that we petition the Public School Society to change the name African to Colored Schools. The gentlemen of that honorable body, perceiving our petition to be a logical one, acquiesced with us. Hence the adjective African (which does not apply to us) was blotted out and Colored substituted in its place. It is 'Public Schools for Colored Children.' We are Americans and ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... of a printed address, and of which we are, most of us, ready to discuss the style, there are at least three separable elements, each contributing after its kind to the effect on our minds. When the general effect is to throw us into a state of pleasure, it is our habit to qualify the style with an adjective of praise, selecting the adjective according to the degree of restraint or of enthusiasm with which we are accustomed to express our emotions; when the general effect is to throw us into a condition of boredom or of distaste, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... with Anne Boleyn. More's philosophy is best reflected in his Utopia, the description of an ideal commonwealth, modeled on Plato's Republic, and printed in 1516. The name signifies "no place" (Outopos), and has furnished an adjective to the language. The Utopia was in Latin, but More's History of Edward V. and Richard III., written in 1513, though not printed till 1557, was in English. It is the first example in the tongue of a history as distinguished from a chronicle; that is, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... who, while strictly mere subjects and citizens of their own state, may have had conferred upon themselves, or inherit, titles of dignity and privilege in a foreign one. We usually (as in the case of the Rothschilds, &c.) acknowledge their highest title in address, but without any adjective or epithets to qualify with honor, such as "honorable;" as is the case, too, with doctors of foreign universities, whose title from courtesy we also admit, though this does not place them on a footing with those of England. The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to amphikupellon being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman's fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from, us to hold up his translation as what a translation of Homer might be. But we can still dismiss Pope's Iliad to ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer |
