"Pronoun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The pronoun referred to Le Maitre. The remark was perhaps prompted by natural pity, but it was so instantly agreed to by all on the vessel that the chorus had the air of propitiating the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... "So strong is the influence of this inclination to concord produced by the repetition of initials, that it controls the distinction of number, and quite subordinates that of gender, and tends to mould the pronoun after the likeness of the initial element of the noun to which it refers; as, Izintombi zake zi ya hamba, 'The daughters of him they do walk.'" These characteristics appear in the formation of the Creole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... of a feeling that it would add to the zest of the romantic acquaintance should the distant "C" be entitled to the use of the masculine pronoun? ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... magazine with a reluctant sigh. "That," she said with decided emphasis on the pronoun, "is a good story. If all orthers wrote like that, 'twould make ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... his body, however. His brain was not his alone. The pronoun, he realized, represented the sum total of those other men, his ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... important discipline of my boyhood. The piercing through the involved and inverted sentences of 'Paradise Lost'; the linking of the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence—all this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and a source of unflagging delight. How I rejoiced when I found a great ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... one from each of them, accepting the invitation. Cheesacre wrote in the singular number, altogether ignoring Captain Bellfield, as he might have ignored his footman had he intended to take one. The captain condescended to use the plural pronoun. "We shall be so happy to come," said he. "Dear old Cheesy is out of his little wits with delight," he added, "and has already begun to polish off ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... And who. These forms are incorrect unless the relative pronoun has been used previously in the sentence. "The colt, spirited and strong, and which was unbroken, escaped from the pasture." "John Smith, one of our leading merchants, and who fell from a window yesterday, died this morning." Omit ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... pronouns are connected with other words, or when they become subjects or objects of verbs, the first syllable only is used, or pronounced. In the third person of verbs the pronoun ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... man of excellent information and is considered among the greatest literary characters here. There is one peculiarity, however, which he has in conversation, that of using the verb in the third person singular with the pronoun in the first person singular and plural, as instead of 'I show' or 'we show,' he says 'I shows,' 'we shows,' etc., upon which peculiarity the famous Mr. Sheridan made the following lines in ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... first person gives a certain realism through the mere use of the pronoun "I," and so excites some measure of the desired personal interest; but the same result may be secured, without the accompanying disadvantages, by making the characters do a good deal of talking. That method escapes the ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... suspect that it may be better for an artist to have a certain part of his property invested in unsolved difficulties. When this is not the case, the question with regard to his future simplifies itself somewhat portentously. "What will he do with it?" we ask, meaning by the pronoun the sharp, completely forged weapon. It becomes more purely a question of responsibility, and we hold him altogether to a higher account. This is the case with Mr. Sargent; he knows so much about the art of painting that he perhaps does not fear emergencies ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... said Longueville, "whenever you make use of the personal pronoun feminine, I am to understand that Miss Vivian ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Divine Presence amongst them, I perceived a Beauty in the Psalm which was entirely new to me, and which I was going to lose; and that is, that the Poet utterly conceals the Presence of God in the Beginning of it, and rather lets a Possessive Pronoun go without a Substantive, than he will so much as mention any thing of Divinity there. Judah was his Sanctuary, and Israel his Dominion or Kingdom. The Reason now seems evident, and this Conduct necessary: For if God had appeared before, there could ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Our demonstrative pronoun is thic, or more properly dhic; "dhic meaed" means "that meadow." Suent means pleasant or proper—really both. It always has a sense of right consequence, of one thing following another as it ought. "Suently" would be "duly." But that now is common to the West, and will be heard from Land's ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... text of the MSS. except the substitution of capital letters for small ones, where capitals would now be used. In this matter Lauder's practice is capricious, and it may safely be said that it was governed by no rule, conscious or unconscious. He spells the pronoun I with a capital, and usually begins a sentence with one. But names of persons and places are very often spelt with small letters. The use of capitals was not yet fixed, as it is now, and the usage of different languages, such as English, French and German, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... loss of our enclitics. The negative not was enclitic after the verb, and this gave us our shan't, don't, won't, &c. Dr. Johnson held the not to be too important a qualification to leave unaccented. Again, where prepositions made a pronoun enclitic, the old accent is perishing. For it, which used to be pronounced forrit as one word, is now generally spoken faw it, as two. The result of such conscious pedantries is not only a great damage to the rhythmic beauty of our older literature, actually teaching the folk ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 1 (Oct 1919) • Society for Pure English
... speak, using the pronoun I as though it were the Matabele king himself who spoke to his vassal, the Makalanga chief: "I sent to you last year, you slave, who dare to call yourself Mambo of the Makalanga, demanding a tribute of cattle and women, and warning you that if they ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... adjectives, and articles are concerned. Their pronouns offer the sole survival of declension by case endings. Here France, the runner-up, is a trifle slow in the possession of a real, live dative case of the pronoun (acc. le, la, les; dat. lui, leur). England wins by a neck with one universal oblique case (him, her, them). This insidious suggestion is not meant to endanger the entente cordiale; even perfidious Albion would not convict the French nation of arrested development on the side-issue ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... down to make a two days' visit. They went up to the Deans' to tea; and the two engaged girls strayed off by themselves, with their arms about each other, and had confidences in which the masculine pronoun played an important part. And poor Polly bewailed the prospect of being left alone. If she had a brother like Jim, she ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... font-il monoie"—"They make money of salt," becomes (p. 168) "ma fannole da loro," sel being taken for a pronoun, whilst in another place sel is transferred ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... curled haughtily. The slight emphasis on the personal pronoun and the fervid squeeze of Mrs. Black's fat hand hurt her sore heart. But ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... other discoveries of equal importance, which he did not think it worth his while to communicate to the world, but chose to die the churl of knowledge? The whole of his reasoning turns upon shewing that the Conjunction That is the pronoun That, which is itself the participle of a verb, and in like manner that all the other mystical and hitherto unintelligible parts of speech are derived from the only two intelligible ones, the Verb and Noun. "I affirm that gold is ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... sterling of the public money as an interest therein?" He thought it would make him look like a "pensioner or dependent" to accept this gratuity, and he recoiled from the idea. There is something entirely frank and human in the way in which he says "George Washington," instead of using the first pronoun singular. He always saw facts as they were; he understood the fact called "George Washington" as perfectly as any other, and although he wanted retirement and privacy, he had no mock modesty in estimating his own place in the world. At the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... by a third of the tribes of Central Africa. Asking my negro master what I was, he replied, "Kerdee," which means kafer ("infidel") in Bornou, the negro mistaking my individual self for the pronoun I, which is oomah. I laughed ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... tneses, for immediate, proximate, and more or less remote times of the performance of the action,[8] it is often found convenient, especially when speaking in the dual or plural, to prefix a complete pronoun from the table of pronouns. Thus, instead of saying, Bumulbenli, a native frequently expresses it, Ngulli bumulben. Again, instead of saying, Bumulgiriniguna, he would use, Ngeaniguna bumulgiri. This leaves the termination of the verb ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews
... ugly words, and ought to be whipped; but you, you never do anything to be whipped for, and she,' proceeded the indignant little fellow, with an emphasis of immeasurable scorn on that personal pronoun, 'she to go to work and pound a little, pale fellow like you! Why, she ought to be ashamed of herself. I get so mad sometimes when she gets to whipping us, and pa comes to take us away, that I think if he would pound her just ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and on meeting Miss Pugsley's cold greenish brown eye, what she did know seemed to evaporate from the top of her head, leaving a total blank. She stumbled and floundered; she did not know what an antecedent was, and she could not remember ever to have heard of a reciprocal pronoun. ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... she echoed; and the inflection of the pronoun might have flattered him had he not reflected that it was impossible she could have understood his allusion. And now she bethought her that she had not thanked him—and the debt was a heavy one. He had come to her aid in an hour when hope seemed dead. He had come ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Boccaccio uses the feminine pronoun, immediately afterward resuming the masculine form ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the forge, and even in the summer his leisure minutes were few and far between. But he carried his Greek grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjective, or part of a verb, without being ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... force of the pronoun, and, as Flora walked out of the room, she went up to Norman, who had been resting ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... aware that they were both designating the unknown visitor by a vague pronoun, instead of the conventional formula which, till then, had kept their allusions within the bounds of custom. And at the same moment her mind caught at the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... whose seed is in it, [Footnote: "It" seems preferable to "itself" here. The same Hebrew word stands for both, but if the "fruit-tree" be taken as the antecedent, which it must be if we translate "itself," there seems no meaning in the statement. If we read "it," the pronoun will refer to the fruit—"the tree whose seed is in its fruit"—which gives an intelligible sense.] upon the earth, and it ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... MAITRES. On may be followed by the plural, if taken in a plural sense, although some later editions give the singular, le maitre. In fact, after this indefinite pronoun, a noun, adjective, or participle may agree in gender and number with the person or persons to whom the ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... 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 ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... doubt from Pseudo-Jonathan (see Note 60), explains the demonstrative pronoun. What follows is taken from the Mekilta (see ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... effects of precision and distinction can be reached in certain cases. Take Ruth, i. VV. 8 to 13, and imagine how those pronouns come in; it is exquisitely elegant, and makes the mouth of the LITTERATEUR to water. I am going to exercitate my pupil over those verses to-day for pronoun practice. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we have been informed, voluntarily conforming to our custom as regards superfluous hair—it shall henceforth be considered as having the same status as an untaught child or a barbarian, insofar as social conventions are concerned, and shall be entitled to the use of the human pronoun, he. ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... which is really the root-idea of "self," stands here for the pronoun of the first person; the last, which is really the root-idea of "not self," "other," stands for the pronoun of the third person; and the middle character for the ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... loud tales of roving, and even the retinue of MacCailen was not averse from an evening's merriment in a company where no restraint of the castle was expected, and his Grace was mentioned but vaguely as a personal pronoun. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... and person. Similar inflections have, to some extent, been observed in certain islands of the Pacific Ocean, but have not hitherto been reported in Australia. I have also discovered two forms of the dual and plural of the first personal pronoun, a specialty which has likewise been found in Polynesian and North American dialects. Traces of a double dual were noticed by Mr. Threlkeld at Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, and traces of a double plural by Mr. Tuckfield in the Geelong tribe; but the prevalence of both forms of the ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... in the severely spoken pronoun Aunt Hortense used. It seemed to Marcia that she wished to remind her that all her old life and relations were passed away, and she had nothing now but David's, especially David's relatives. She shrank from lifting her eyes, expecting to find the third ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... were full of tears, and answered with natural emphasis, "Impossible! it would have been deserting our post," and drew a step closer to him in the twilight with a sense of the sweetness of that plural pronoun which mingled so with the higher sense that it was impossible to disjoin them. And the two went on under the influence of these combined sentiments, taking comfort out of the very hardness of the world around them, in which their ministrations ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... gown, and under the hem in the most natural attitude peeped the little party slippers. A small lace and velvet bonnet with streamers was hung at the apex of the creation, and in her lap (for the time has come to use the feminine pronoun) he spread the gauzy fan. He hung over her tenderly, as an artist over his subject—each fold must be in place—the empty sleeves curved just so—one fancied a rounded chin beneath the velvet streamers, so artfully was it adjusted. Her reflection ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... again in ten minutes," he heard her say, and the masculine pronoun caused in him a flashing twinge of jealousy. Well, he decided, whoever it was, Burning Daylight would give him a run for his money. The marvel to him was that a girl like Dede hadn't been married ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... to the intelligent reader, and that they may delineate Landor in more truthful colors than those in which he has heretofore been painted. In repeating conversations, I have endeavored to stand in the background, where I very properly belong. For the inevitable egotism of the personal pronoun, I hope to be pardoned by all charitable souls. That Landor, the octogenarian, has not been photographed by a more competent person, is certainly not my fault. Having had the good fortune to enjoy opportunities beyond my deserts, I should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... blood rushing to her face and temples as she spoke—for the same reason as her fair townswoman is reported to have borne with stoical fortitude every harsh epithet of the language, until it occurred to her opponent to tell her that "the divil a bit better she was nor a pronoun;" so Mrs. Mulrooney, taking "omne ignotum pro horribili," became perfectly beside herself at the unlucky phrase. "I'm what? repate it av ye dare, and I'll tear yer eyes out? Ye dirty bla—guard, to be lying there at yer ease under the blankets, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... thing, however, do children agree, and that is the rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who have reported them. They do not, for example, say "me is"; their natural reply to "are you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing sweetly and neatly, will have nothing but the nominative pronoun. "Lift I up and let I see it raining," she bids; and told that it does not rain resumes, "Lift I up and let I see it ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... suppose you hold her principles," said Tom, indicating Lois rather awkwardly by the pronoun rather than in any more ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... "There is no such thing as privacy in this country. The newspapers are making us," with a slight accent on the pronoun, "as common and public ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... my own laziness—that I have given you the work I ought to have done myself. My reply would be that it was not my work. If a man happens to be born to a job he is not in the least fitted for, that's the affair of Providence. Providence bungled it when he, she, or it—take which pronoun you like—[Greek: tyche], as you and I know, is feminine—made me a landowner. My proper job was to dig up and decipher what is left of the Greeks. And if any one says that the two jobs are not tanti, and the landowning job is ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... principle is often illustrated in the work of criticising young teachers. Let the critic condemn with authority one feature of a recitation after another, making free use of the pronoun I, and the young teacher criticised is likely to glare at him in rising wrath. But let the critic omit the show of authority entirely, even the use of I, merely offering the reasons for certain objections, particularly some broad principle of method ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... true person springs to what belongs to—their life!" said Kenneth, using that wrong little pronoun that we shall never be able ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... itself in preparing the succeeding chapters, and that is the lack in the English language of a pronoun including both genders. The English impersonal pronoun, being masculine in form, is liable to create the impression that "he" or "his" exclusive of "she" or "her" is the subject of discourse. This is not so. Generally the masculine ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... to take charge and help plan it all out; and Allison is going to hunt up some of the big Christian Endeavor people in the city, and get them to come out one or two at a time to our meetings,"—Julia Cloud noted the pronoun "our" with satisfaction,—"and stir things up on Sundays; and we'll drive in and get them, and bring them to our house to supper, maybe, and put them wise to things so they'll know best how to help; and then we'll drive them ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... words thee and thou, and statements were made that the kind of speech which I put into David Claridge's mouth was not Quaker speech. For instance, they would not have it that a Quaker would say, "Thee will go with me"—as though they were ashamed of the sweet inaccuracy of the objective pronoun being used in the nominative; but hundreds of times I have myself heard Quakers use "thee" in just such a way in England and America. The facts are, however, that Quakers differ extensively in their habits, and there grew up in England among the Quakers in certain districts a sense of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... person in the United States. When his illness was at its height, hourly bulletins were posted in factories and workshops, and people meeting in the streets asked each other, "How is he?" without deeming it necessary to supply an antecedent to the pronoun. It was grammatically as well as spiritually a case ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... scanning line. Setting up correctness, that humble merit of prose, as the central literary excellence, he is really a less correct writer than he may seem, still with an imperfect mastery of the relative pronoun. It might have been foreseen that, in the rotations of mind, the province of poetry in prose would find its assertor; and, a century after Dryden, amid very different intellectual needs, and with the need therefore of great modifications in literary form, the range of the poetic force in literature ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... grammar, as it also did that of the Koreans, by multiplying honorary prefixes and suffixes and building up all sociable and polite speech on perpendicular lines. Personality was next to nothing and individuality was in a certain sense unknown. In European languages, the pronoun shows how clearly the ideas of personality and of individuality have been developed; but in the Japanese language there really are no pronouns, in the sense of the word as used by the Germanic nations, at least, although there are hundreds of impersonal and topographical substitutes for ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... 'suicide' is marked by this passage in Phillips' New World of Words, 1671, 3rd ed.: "Nor less to be exploded is the word 'suicide', which may as well seem to participate of sus a sow, as of the pronoun sui". In the Index to Jackson's Works, published two years later, it is still 'suicidium'—"the horrid suicidium of the Jews at York". 'Suicide' is apparently of much later introduction into French. Genin (Recreations Philol. vol. i, p. 194) places it about the year 1728, and ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... in the use of the word you as a singular pronoun that the popularising of what were once supreme distinctions is most markedly illustrated. This speaking of a single individual in the plural was originally an honour given only to the highest—was the reciprocal of the imperial "we" assumed by such. Yet now, by being ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... never be such a confounded jackass!" said Mr Sidsby, without giving a local habitation or a name to the personal pronoun he. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... venderlas. In Old Spanish the final r of the infinitive frequently assimilates to the initial l of the enclitic pronoun. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... is that modification of a noun or pronoun which denotes the speaker, the person spoken to, or the person or things ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... am afraid I am obliged to tell you that I cannot listen to anything you may have to say. I can guess, of course, why you have come here, and I am sorry for you," he said, leaning on the pronoun. "But I can do nothing," and he spoke slowly and inexorably, "I can do nothing for either you or your husband." But Rachel had now lost all fear, ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... substituting "man" for "the Son of Man" wherever it appears, it will be found that many supposed Messianic claims become general statements of Jesus' conception of the high prerogatives of man, while in other places the name stands simply as an emphatic substitute for the personal pronoun. Thus, for instance, Jesus is found to assert that authority on earth to forgive sins belongs to man (Mark ii. 10), and, toward the end of his course, to have taught simply that he himself must meet with suffering ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... long ago, ages and ages,—when you came to see—" She paused a little, and then spoke the personal pronoun that tells the whole story, for a woman can say "him" in such a way as to betray unspeakable heights of adoration or abysses of loathing. She went on slowly. "You were not one of my friends then; how could you be, ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... that the African, like the Scotch Highlander, will interpose the personal or demonstrative pronoun between noun and verb: "sun he go down," means "the sun sets" and, as genders do not exist, you must be careful to say, "This woman he ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... behind. It was not long before the wild people seized on them and strip's them, and those that had beards they knocked their braines out, and (as I remember) did eat them; but the queen saved T. Stump, and the other boy. Stump threw himself into the river Pronoun to have drowned himself, but could not sinke; he is very full chested. The other youth shortly died. He lived with them till 1636 or 1637. His narrations are very strange and pleasant; but so many ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... writings or the conversation of others. This feeling gives one a freedom in telling his own personal history he could not have enjoyed without it. My story belongs to you as much as to me. De te fabula narratur. Change the personal pronoun,—that is all. It gives many readers a singular pleasure to find a writer telling them something they have long known or felt, but which they have never before found any one to put in words for them. An author does not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Board of Managers of the State Industrial School at Rochester, N. Y. She took considerable satisfaction in pointing out that it referred to her as "him," because she had always contended that, if the masculine pronoun in an official document is sufficient to send a woman to the jail or the gallows, it is sufficient to enable her ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Sage considered it," answered the deacon. "Captain Gar'ner volunteered to go across for the doctor in my boat—" with a heavy emphasis on the possessive pronoun—"and we had him to look at the patient. But, if the salt-water be good for consumptive people, as some pretend, I think there is generally little hope for seamen whose ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... well enough: I am certain that, when we came to rehearse, the thing did not "act" at all, and that its dialogue, whatever its other graces, had the defect of being unspeakable. So at each rehearsal we—by which inclusive pronoun I would embrace the actors and the producing staff at large, and with especial (metaphorical) ardor Miss Louise Burleigh, who directed all—changed here a little, and there a little more; and shifted this bit, and deleted the other, and ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... arrangement is this! Poor citoyenne Maria Saint, even when all human laws have suspended their action, still holds by her grammar, still must annex herself to le sexe noble. She still must follow citizen Anet as the feminine pronoun follows the masculine, or as a verb agrees with its nominative case in number and in person. But with what a lordly freedom from all obligation does citizen Anet, representative of this nobility of sex, accept ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... bitterness of the imprecatory psalms, or the far-reaching consequences attached in other psalms (cf. xxii., xl.) to the deliverance of the singer. Till the exile, the religious unit was the nation, and the collective use of the singular pronoun is one of the commonest phenomena in Hebrew literature. The Decalogue is addressed to Israel in the 2nd pers. sing., in Deuteronomy the 2nd pers. sing, alternates with the pl., in the priestly blessing (Num. vi. 24ff.) Israel is blessed in the singular. In Deutero-Isaiah, the servant ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... form of the second person plural of the personal pronoun; its use in this case was a mark ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... and "to indorse;" or by an actual distinction of meanings, as "naturalist," and "physician;" or by difference of relation, as "I" and "Me" (each of which the rustics of our different provinces still use in all the cases singular of the first personal pronoun). Even the mere difference, or corruption, in the pronunciation of the same word, if it have become general, will produce a new word with a distinct signification; thus "property" and "propriety;" the latter of which, even to the time of Charles II was the written word for all the senses ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... something your sister said; she isn't over fond of him, is she?" Nellie inquired, with a light laugh and a mischievous glance at the averted face on the pillow in the berth, as she emphasized the pronoun. "Come," she added, presently, "let us lay out the things we are likely to need during the voyage, and put our state-room in order, for there is no knowing how soon we may be attacked by the dread enemy ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... as well, I suppose," she assented; and Rowdy turned and rode by her side, grateful for the plurality of the pronoun which tacitly included him in her wanderings, and meditating many things. For one, he wondered if she were as nice a girl as her voice sounded. He could not see much of her face, because it was muffled in a white silk scarf. Only ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... expressions of an eternal tendency in men as wholly indifferent to me. If I understand you aright, you have flung away the sanctions of orthodoxy. There is no other in the way. Treat words as they deserve. You'—and the speaker laid an emphasis on the pronoun which for the life of him he could not help making sarcastic—'you will always have ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him only in symbolic words, designating him by some periphrasis: Pharaoh, "Pirui-Aui," the Double Palace, "Pruiti," the Sublime Porte, His Majesty,* the Sun of the two lands, Horus master of the palace, or, less ceremoniously, by the indeterminate pronoun "One." ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... "We always manage to provide Captain Swendon with a boat when he wants it. We kin obleege him," with a slight stress on the pronoun. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... time in popular use and grammatically correct. These people are clinging to the dialect of their fathers who were Anglo-Saxons. The use of "hit" for "it" is not confined to the mountains, but the Old English grammars give "hit" as the neuter of the pronoun "he." ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... Giles," said Stephen, changing to the familiar singular pronoun. "I have oft since thought what a foolish figure I should have cut had I met thee among the Badgers, after having given leg bail because I might not brook seeing thee wedded to her. For I was sore tempted—only thou wast free, and mine indenture ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... No doubt the premiss of the formula assumes the conclusion, but it likewise includes as well as assumes it. No doubt, since 'I think' is but another way of saying 'I am thinking,' to say that 'I think' is to assume that 'I am;' nay, the same thing is equally assumed by the mere introduction of the pronoun 'I.' But Descartes was fully warranted in taking for granted the truth of his conclusion. For by previously showing incontestably that thought and consciousness are real existences, he had completely ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... introduced to show the grouping of the letters and the words. At first the sentences were separated by spaces, then the long words, and finally all words. In some languages, as in Italian, there are still combinations of long and short words, such as the combination of the pronoun with the verb, as ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... they speak. The first words that children learn are the names of things; these are easily associated with the objects themselves, and there is little danger of mistake or confusion. We will not enter into the grammatical dispute concerning the right of precedency, amongst pronoun substantives and verbs; we do not know which came first into the mind of man; perhaps, in different minds, and in different circumstances, the precedency must have varied; but this seems to be of little consequence; children ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... the key-note of his purpose. But the truth of it would have been infinitely more sure had the pronoun been singular. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a slight emphasis on the pronoun. "We rather pride ourselves on making things comfortable ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from the authority you gain by so doing, you have no right to make any one else say words he did not say. If you leave out part of the passage, show the omission by dots; and in such a case, if you have to supply words of your own, as for example a noun in place of a pronoun, use square brackets, thus []. On the following page are examples of a ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... Haywood's legitimate novels, suggests the possibility that even the reviewers were ignorant of the authorship of "The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy" (1753) and "The Invisible Spy" (1755). Twenty years later, in fact, a writer in the "Critical Review" used the masculine pronoun to refer to the author of "Betsy Thoughtless." It is quite certain that Mrs. Haywood spent the closing years of her life in great obscurity, for no notice of her death appeared in any one of the usual magazines. She continued to publish until the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... writer.... He received me most kindly, and we had a very interesting talk about the ghost, which certainly is one of the most curious and inexplicable stories I ever heard. He showed me her picture (life size), and she must have been very lovely, if it is like her (or like it, which ever is the correct pronoun).... Mr. Heaphy showed me a most interesting collection of drawings he has made abroad; he has been about, hunting up the earliest and most authentic pictures of our Saviour, some merely outlines, some coloured pictures. They agree wonderfully in the character of the face, and one, he says, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... so that the jokes, the songs, the dances, even the spindling little shafts of romance that you shot out into it, could be felt to dig in and take hold. It never occurred to her to think of it with a plural pronoun; it was "it" simply, an inchoate monster, which was, as the show progressed, delightfully loosening up, becoming good-humored, undiscriminating, stupidly infatuate; laughing at things no human being would consider funny, approving with a percussive roar things not in the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... said he softly in Italian, and using the form of address, which, in almost every language but the English, marks a different and more tender relation from that indicated by the more formal plural pronoun. ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... the pronoun was noticed, it was ignored. The mystery was, the Candy Man replied, how with such a face he could be ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... who has had to do with Harvey's Grammar will readily recall the sentence, "Milo began to lift the ox when he was a calf." Aside from the interest which this sentence aroused as to the antecedent of the pronoun, it also enunciated a bit of philosophy which caused the pupils to wonder about the possibility of such a feat. They were led to consider such examples of physical strength as Samson, Hercules, and the more modern Sandow and to wonder, perhaps, just what course of training brought these men to ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... except in the case of a superior dictating to his dependant, in the second person, but always in the third; using his name or title instead of the pronoun; and when these are unknown a general title of respect is substituted, and they say, for instance, apa orang kaya punia suka, what is his honour's pleasure for what is your, or your honour's pleasure? When criminals or other ignominious ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... first person singular of the personal pronoun, and not until comparatively late in life did I learn to use "I" and "me" in the place ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... under his feet. How one little pronoun can destroy a man! In his agony he saw Mrs. Kent and Kathleen sit down on the big couch, and painfully found his ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... presence of no matter whom, taking it off only in time of prayer. In protest against the unmeaning compliments, he addressed no man by any artificial title, calling all his neighbors, without distinction of persons, by their Christian names; and for the plural pronoun "you," the plural of dignity and flattery, he substituted ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... concern that all was lost. In the telegram in which he reported his defeat to Lord Lansdowne and of which the frankness, the candour, and the copious yet not egotistical use of the first personal pronoun were in curious contrast to the formal and sterilized paragraphs of an official account, he confessed that with the force at his disposal he had little hope of relieving Ladysmith and he proposed that ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... knew, Leon," she said, dropping her pretty face to the level of his own, "and I ought to have remembered it. But I don't mind telling you I was dreadfully frightened lest you might misunderstand me and come and ask for another letter—before HIM." As she emphasized the personal pronoun, her whole face seemed to change: the light of her blue eyes became mere glittering points, her nostrils grew white and contracted, and her pretty little mouth seemed to narrow into a straight cruel line, like a cat's. "Not a word ever to HIM, of all men! ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... there is the ascending scale and widening circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit. The very modesty which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some utterly insignificant and unworthy thing; a thing that has no business even to be, except in that utter privacy which is rather a sleep and a rest than living. Well, but in the above ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... for I know that ye seek Jesus who was crucified. That the women as well as the soldiers were present at the descent of this angel, appears not only from there being nobody else, by whom these uncommon circumstances could have been related, but also by the pronoun personal ye, inserted in the original Greek, which in that language is never done, unless it be emphatically to mark such a distinction, or antithesis, as there was on this occasion, between them and the Roman guard. Here, however, the author is inadvertently inconsistent with ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... front where all can see— "Now turn the spot-light right on me," He says, and sings in tones sonorous His own sweet halleluiah chorus. Refrain and verse are both the same— The pronoun I or his own name. He trumpets his worth with such windy tooting That louder it sounds than cowboys shooting. This man's a nuisance wherever he goes, For the world soon tires of the chap who blows. Whether mighty in station ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... have called dogs more than three different names in much less time, but they were not Christian names. One of the bachelor members of the committee, who is known to be a woman-hater, conferred the honorary title of the pronoun "he" on Little Wanderobo Dog, and she has been "he" ever since. But not without a bitter fight by those of the committee who think the pronoun "she" is infinitely more to ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... other spheres than diplomacy the choice of language is important. Words have a history of their own, and often acquire associations independent of their meaning. Rhythm, too, and clearness need attention. An unbalanced sentence goes haltingly and jars; an ambiguous pronoun causes the reader to stumble. An ill-written book, an ill-worded speech fail of their effects; it is not merely by sympathy and character that men persuade. But of course the humanists pushed the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... pronominal prefix to denote the gender, i.e. the third personal pronoun, u (masculine), ka (feminine), i (diminutive). The great majority of inanimate nouns are feminine, and all abstract nouns. The sun (day), ka sngi, is feminine, the moon (month), u b'nai, is masculine. Sometimes the ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... The pronoun "you" has its equivocal aspects. Her expression, while marked enough, threw no clear light. Cope took the entire onus ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... prosaic and now and then showed a slight streak of frivolity. Toward the end of the meal—the ice was being served—the elderly baronial councillor once more arose to his feet to propose in a second speech that from now on they should all address each other by the familiar pronoun "Du." Thereupon he embraced Innstetten and gave him a kiss on the left cheek. But this was not the end of the matter for him. On the contrary, he went on to recommend, in addition to the "Du," a set of more intimate names and titles for use in the home, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... que se pisa y despliega. Loose construction, in which the relative pronoun object of the first verb is understood as subject of ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... the fact that an early phenomenon of child mental development is the emphasis laid on "meum" and "tuum," mine and yours. The child is a thoroughgoing individualist in feelings, conceptions, and language. The first personal pronoun is ever on his lips and in his thought. Only as culture arises and he is trained to see how disagreeable in others is excessive emphasis on the first person, does he learn to moderate his own excessive egoistic tendency. Is it not a fact that the studied evasion of first ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... thee, Orige," returned Philippa, with a slightly contemptuous stress upon the pronoun. "I will talk with thine husband; I trust he will hear reason, though thou mayest not. And I could find good places enow for Clare; I have many friends in the Court. My Lady Dowager of Kent [Susan Bertie, the only daughter of Katherine Duchess of Suffolk] would work, I know, for Isoult Barry's ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... boyhood, the origin and fitness of his nickname were apparent after two minutes' conversation with him. Buzz Werner was called Buzz not only because he talked too much, but because he was a braggart. His conversation bristled with the perpendicular pronoun, and his pet phrase was, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... collected, and of his own proceedings in consequence; (3) A very curious and interesting contemporary account called "An Impartial Narration, &c.," reprinted by Rushworth in five folio pages (VI. 513-517). On reading this paper, one soon finds, from lapses from the third into the first personal pronoun, that the writer is Joyce himself. The narrative, though by a man stiff at the pen and rather elated by the importance of his act, appears perfectly trustworthy, and supplies, many particulars. Clarendon's version ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... every good quality of masculine and feminine character, as also the impersonal life Principle. It is therefore proper to use the masculine, feminine or neuter pronoun when referring to Deity. As different phases of the one Love, we see manifested, the strong, all-protecting, intelligent father-love, the tender, restful, patient mother-love, the innocent, confiding, trustful child-love, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... can see for himself that this pronoun business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. I suppose that in all languages the similarities of look and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner. It is so in our tongue, and it is notably ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have been happy?" A critic whose sex is indicated by her usage of the pronoun she instead of they ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... bannocks with marmalade, finnan-haddie or kippered herrings for breakfast; tea,—of course we never touch coffee in the morning" (here Francesca started with surprise); "porridge, and we like them well boiled, please" (I hope she noted the plural pronoun; Salemina did, and blanched with envy); "minced collops for luncheon, or a nice little black-faced chop; Scotch broth, peas brose or cockyleekie soup, at dinner, and haggis now and then, with a cold shape for ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... several persons on the stage give offence in the pronunciation of the pronoun possessive MY—speaking it in all cases with the full open Y, as it would rhyme to fly, which should only be when it is put in contradistinction to thy or his, or any other pronoun possessive: in all other cases it should be sounded like ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... The pronoun thrilled Bob with pleasure. It meant the sweeping aside of the last film of distrust and the restoration of the old man's former confidence and friendship. For days Willie had slowly been reaching the conviction ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... the perpendicular pronoun too much and in the wrong places. On the hits it's 'we', but on the flops it's 'I'. Quit it. Everything on this job is 'we'. Terra's best brains are on Team One and are going to stay there. You will not—repeat NOT—be interfered with, pushed around or kicked around. You ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... rounds of the treasure room, pointing out and giving the history of each precious family heirloom or art object with an encyclopedic knowledge that should have caused his companion to wonder how he knew so much. Several times he slipped in the pronoun I, hoping that this might have some effect in waking Helen from the obsession that any other than he could be ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... offices and relations of words. Unless the pupil has been systematically trained to discover the functions and relations of words as elements of an organic whole, his knowledge of the parts of speech is of little value. It is not because he cannot conjugate the verb or decline the pronoun that he falls into such errors as "How many sounds have each of the vowels?" "Five years' interest are due." "She is older than me." He probably would not say "each have," "interest are," "me am." One ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Relate the most exciting adventure that has occurred to you. Use the third person. Reporters usually are not allowed to use the pronoun "I." ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... annoy, eh? Also, by the way, in its careless rapture it twice misrelates the relative pronoun; and Froude was a master of style. Or what do you ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... you'uns seed any stray shoats?" asked a passer: "I-uns's uses about here." "Critter" means an animal—"cretur," a fellow-creature. "Longsweet-'nin'" and "short sweet'nin'" are respectively syrup and sugar. The use of the indefinite substantive pronoun un (the French on), modified by the personals, used demonstratively, and of "done" and "gwine" as auxiliaries, is peculiar to the mountains, as well on the Wabash and Alleghany, I am told, as in Tennessee. The practice of dipping—by which is meant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... Italian, and meaning in Venetian, You! Heigh! To talk in Cio ciappa is to assume insolent familiarity or unbounded good fellowship with the person addressed. A Venetian says Cio a thousand times in a day, and hails every one but his superior in that way. I think it is hardly the Italian pronoun, but rather a contraction of Veccio (vecchio), Old fellow! It is common with all classes of the people: parents use it in speaking to their children, and brothers and sisters call one mother Cio. It is a salutation between friends, who cry ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... spoken pronoun came from Mistress Forrester, who seemed checked by the guest's quick look ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... also grew; but it grew, as it were, without attributes. The sun is called the Self of all that moves and rests (Rv. I. 115, 1), and still more frequently self becomes a mere pronoun. But Atman remained always free from mythe and worship, differing in this from the Brahman (neuter), who has his temples in India even now, and is worshipped as Brahman (masculine), together with Vishnu ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... myself in a dilemma. My modesty (?) is at variance with my love of verity. Oh, the inconvenience of that little pronoun, I! Would that I had in the first instance imitated the wily conduct of the bald-pated invader of Britain. How complacently might I not then have vaunted in the beginning, have caracoled through the middle, and glorified myself at the conclusion ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... meaning of the root brimh (from which 'Brahman' is derived). Of this Brahman, thus already known (on the basis of etymology), the origination, sustentation, and reabsorption of the world are collateral marks. Moreover, in the Taitt. text under discussion, the relative pronoun—which appears in three forms, (that) 'from whence,' (that) 'by which,' (that) 'into which'—refers to something which is already known as the cause of the origin, and so on, of the world. This previous knowledge rests on the Ch. passage, 'Being only this was in the beginning,' &c., ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... I, this individual, Mr. Editor, for I would not assume your grand editorial pronoun) should like to know how the Constitution would have the young officer dress. Surely it was entirely proper and becoming that he should appear in full regimental cap, coat, boots, spurs, and all, full fledged, just as he ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... optional with Shakspeare to employ the word either as a singular or plural, but not in the same sentence to do both: here, however, he was tied {121} to the singular, for, wanting a rhyme to contents, the nominative to presents must be singular, and that nominative was the pronoun of contents. Since, therefore, the plural die and the singular it could not both be referable to the same noun contents, by silently substituting die for dies, MR. COLLIER has blinded his reader and wronged ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... word for metrical reasons, and sometimes, in the interests of clearness, ademonstrative or personal pronoun, or even a proper name (cf. ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... request of the publishers this chapter will be very largely the relation of personal experiences in the war on the White Slave Trade. The personal pronoun is used in obedience to instructions. After all, that is the most useful testimony which grows out of what ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... from me, Dora. Please don't," I said in Yiddish, with the least bit of authority. "I love thee. I love thee, Dora," I raved, for the first time addressing her in the familiar pronoun ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan |
