Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Vocal   /vˈoʊkəl/   Listen
Vocal

adjective
1.
Relating to or designed for or using the singing voice.  "The vocal repertoire" , "Organized a vocal group to sing his compositions"
2.
Having or using the power to produce speech or sound.  "All vocal beings hymned their praise"
3.
Given to expressing yourself freely or insistently.  Synonym: outspoken.  "A vocal assembly"
4.
Full of the sound of voices.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Vocal" Quotes from Famous Books



... because they were unable to hear the sounds of the voice. His father had worked out a plan for teaching the deaf, that the young man improved. It was based on observation of the position of the lips and other vocal organs, while uttering each sound. One by one the pupil learned the sounds by sight. Then he learned combinations of sounds and at last came to where he could "read the lips" and tell what a person was saying by looking at his ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... instrumental music generally, I would observe, that some of the vocal airs have a very pleasing effect when accompanied by the Patola. This is an instrument made in the fantastic shape of an alligator; the body of it is hollow, with openings at the back, and three strings only are used, which are supported ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... his nature, of which he had spoken to her—which he had married to forget—was, none the less, all ruffled and vocal. For the first time since Letty had consented to marry him he did not think or say to himself, as he looked at her, that he was a lucky man, and had done ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... sat there, felt that if he were only still enough the silence would soon be vocal. The Hill, the Sea, the Sky—these things seemed to have summoned him there that ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... locked; the two markers took their place at a table in front of the birds, with bits of chalk in their hands; mine host stood by as referee in case of disputes; time was called; and silence reigned supreme for a quarter of an hour, broken only by the vocal performances of the Bermondsey and Walworth champions respectively. If a hapless human being did so far forget himself as to cough or tread incontinently upon a nutshell, he was called to silence with ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... taught in all its departments, Instrumental and Vocal, including Pianoforte, Organ, Violin, and all Orchestral and Band Instruments, Voice Culture and Singing, Harmony, Theory and Orchestration, Church Music, Oratorio and Chorus Practice, Art of Conducting; also, Tuning ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... longuer and shorter, but even a different sound, az open or shut by a consonant; dho A braud, open and shut, differ but in quantity. Nor iz it yet a secret, dhat certain mutes, or silent letters, (espescially vocal quiescents,) ar named serviles; rendering essencial az vizzibel service, boath to' vowels and consonants. Hware such gards ar wanted, dhey doutles wil attend; and, hwen dhey proov superfluous, az reddily widhdraw. ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston

... Ross I 'll daily sing, With vocal note and lyric string, And duly, when I 've drank the king, He 'll be my second toss. May Heaven its choicest blessings send On such a man, and such a friend; And still may all that 's good attend The worthy Man ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... No vocal answer came. But an indeterminable space away they could hear a low splash followed by a second and a third. Something coughed weakly in front and to the right. Trendon's hand went to his revolver. The men sat, stiffened. One of them swore, in a whisper, and ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... it is but as fine as your complexion, I do not know a bird that can pretend to stand in competition with you." The Crow foolishly believed all that the Fox said was true; but, thinking the Fox a little dubious as to her vocal powers, and having a mind to set him right in that matter, opened her mouth, and, in the same instant, let the cheese drop out of her mouth. This being what the Fox wanted, he caught it up in a moment, and trotted ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... Smith's flow of speech. Seldom had he failed in the winning art of conversation, especially with women. Ladies were his favorite pursuit, if not his prey. But Elder Smith's wife proved unapproachable by language of tongue or eye. Talking to her was like talking to a lay figure with vocal ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... coney; here there are delightful rivers for fishing, and wide fields hedged around, in which it is pleasant to hunt the hare and fox. All along the street you could see farces being acted, juggling going on, and all kinds of tricks of legerdemain; there was plenty of licentious music, vocal and instrumental, ballad singing, and every species of merriment; there was no lack of male and female beauty, singing and dancing; and there were here many from the street of Pride, who came to receive praise and adoration. In the interior of the houses I could see people on beds of silk and down, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... beds, ye flowers, Again ye'll flourish fresh and fair; Ye birdies dumb, in with'ring bowers, Again ye'll charm the vocal air. But here, alas! for me nae mair Shall birdie charm, or floweret smile; Fareweel the bonie banks of Ayr, Fareweel, fareweel! ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... God. The concluding pieces are in a greater manner. The visionary Hugo lives and moves amid a drama of darkness and of light; gloom is smitten by splendour, splendour collapses into gloom; and darkness and light seem to have become vocal in song. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... after a little pause, "you may feel somewhat musical. There is to be a vocal and instrumental concert to-night. What say you to going there? I think I could ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... Vandeloup had heard Barty's vocal performance, and could not forbear a smile as he thought of the young man's three songs with the same accompaniment to each. Suppressing, however, his inclination to laugh, he asked Barty to have a drink, which invitation was promptly accepted, and they walked in search ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... made vocal answer, and they could soon see him moving athwart the hillsides, zigzagging in the trailer's fashion, dropping down with incredible swiftness. He was alone, and leading his horse, but his celerity of movement and the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... An English traveller, Mr. Wilkinson, has discovered the secret of the vocal Memnon. There was a cavity in which a person was concealed, and struck a stone, which gave a ringing sound like brass. The Arabs, who stood below when Mr. Wilkinson performed the miracle, described sound just as the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... antiquity, for the gold plate of which it was made was literally worn away wherever it had touched the foreheads of the high priests or priestesses who donned it upon festive occasions or days of sacrifice, showing that hundreds and hundreds of them must have used it thus in succession. So was the vocal apparatus within the mouth, and so were the little toad-like feet upon which it was stood up. Also the substance of the gold itself as here and there pitted as though with acid or salts, though what those salts were ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... hounds rally in his rear, and chide till earth and air are vocal and harmonious. Hark! hark! how Archer's cheers ring on the wind! Now he turns once again—he nears the edge—how glorious! with what a beautiful bold bound he leaped from that high bluff into the flashing ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... that anything is wanting, but even in that case, as you have the score, you can easily remedy this. I only yesterday received the Overtures from Hungary, and shall have them copied and forwarded to you as soon as possible. I likewise send a March with a vocal Chorus, also from the "Ruins of Athens." Altogether you will now have sufficient to fill up ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... land, Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love, Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits, Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him, Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him, Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Columbia, Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him, If the Atlantic coast stretch or the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... movable partitions, draught-screens and chairs. There was no drop-curtain, and the scene shifters worked in full view of the audience, removing furniture and knocking down partitions with hammers during the vocal rendering of some of the thrilling passages of the opera. On another platform, behind the stage, the orchestra was making strenuous, and at times, very effective attempts to drown the squeals of the Leading Lady, who did not seem to mind ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... entity it is not given us to know. As for Oscar, he claimed the parliament was crazy, and started to prove it, when it was thought best to shift and modify the discussion; and, therefore, early in September, when the upper currents of the national atmosphere were vocal with discordant allegations, denials, accusations, and maledictions, in Watts McHurdie's shop the question before the house was, "How many people are there in the world?" For ten days, in the desultory debate ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... the following departments: Common English, Normal, College Preparatory, College, Vocal and Instrumental Music, and Industrial, and a department for trained nurses. The faculty of the institution has consisted of the president, the normal principal, the industrial teacher, and ten other teachers. The boarding department is conducted upon the model of a Christian household. The intention ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 3, March, 1895 • Various

... the quivering wire, The throbbing breast was all on fire: And when she raised the vocal lay, The ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... subconscious minds to engulf and enfold them. The real poets have written in words that live because, unknowingly, they have fallen back on and given expression to the accumulated hopes and visions of the mind of man. The prophets have simply been those with the power to make their instincts vocal. Genius, in all its phases, is seemingly but the measure of the extent to which men cooerdinate their two minds, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... facts,—first, sound is caused by rapid motion; second, sound-waves give rise to corresponding motion. Both these facts are involved in the speaking telephone, which performs a twofold office,—that of the ear on the one hand, that of our vocal organs ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... feature of Egyptian sculpture is the frequent representation of their Kings in a colossal form. The two most famous colossi are the seated figures in the plain of Thebes. One is recognized to be the vocal Memnon (Amunoph III.) mentioned by Strabo. They are forty-seven feet high, and measure about eighteen feet three inches across the shoulders. But the grandest and largest colossal statue was the stupendous statue of King Remeses II., a Syenite granite, in ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... Where Sadness, gazing on time's ravage, hung, And Silence to Destruction's trophy clung - Save that as morning songsters swell'd their lays, Awaken'd Echo humm'd repeated praise: The lark on quavering pinion woo'd the day, Less towering linnets fill'd the vocal spray, And song-invited pilgrims rose to pray. Here at a pine-press'd hill's embroider'd base I stood, and hail'd the Genius of the place. Then was it doom'd by fate, my idle heart, Soften'd by Nature, gave access to Art; The Muse approach'd, her syren-song I heard, Her magic felt, and all ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... melodies combined with dramatic connection between action, voice and orchestra, entirely revolutionised the opera. Fortunately, he had a still greater contemporary to carry on his reforms. Gluck has himself explained how he set out to avoid any concession of music to the vocal abilities of the singer; how he had tried to bring music to its proper function, i.e., to go side by side with the poetry of the drama—a clear forecasting of Wagner's ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... the rural kingdom roves Soft Pleasure with her laughing train; Love warbles in the vocal groves, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... the soul to virtue; the soul meditates upon the capital sin and its opposite virtue, moved to abhorrence of the evil and to admiration of the good by examples drawn from sacred and profane history; vocal prayer is addressed to God and it brings forth grace to purify and strengthen the soul. Hard in the beginning is this work of repentance, but it becomes easy as the habit of ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... notice here that the Greeks had such singers of hymns; and that usually children or youths were picked out for that service; as also, that those called singers to the harp, did the same that David did here, i.e. join their own vocal and instrumental ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... motion and upheaved the dry, hard ground on which rests our whole social fabric. There's "virtue" for you if you like! . . . Of course the accent must be attended to. The right accent. That's very important. The capacious lung, the thundering or the tender vocal chords. Don't talk to me ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... woodland figure that played upon a pipe. Its proximity to an hotel afforded occasion for meal after meal en plein air. Its proximity to a University Town encouraged the frequent passage of German students, vivacious and vocal; also the convenient appearance of any foreign resident or visitor at a moment's notice. Its Statue of Venus (fully draped) afforded an authentic incitement to the making of love. Its environs enabled Mr. Jerome to dispose of his puppets whenever their presence became undesirable. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various

... the cake is so thin, as to be carried by the current of the air up into the chimney. As the baking is wholly performed by the hand, a great deal of noise is the consequence. The beats, however, are not irregular, nor destitute of an agreeable harmony, especially when they are accompanied with vocal music, which is frequently the case. Great dexterity is necessary, not only to beat out the cakes with no other instrument than the hand, so that no part of them shall be thicker than another, but especially to cast them from one board to another without ruffling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various

... Russians neither in appearance nor mental acquirements. To the power of song alone this phenomenon is to be attributed. From time immemorial the female Gypsies of Moscow have been much addicted to the vocal art, and bands or quires of them have sung for pay in the halls of the nobility or upon the boards of the theatre. Some first-rate songsters have been produced among them, whose merits have been acknowledged, not only by the Russian public, but by the most fastidious foreign critics. Perhaps ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... forests on the mountains dance: See spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise, And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies! Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers: Prepare the way! a God, a God appears! A God, a God! the vocal hills reply, The rocks proclaim th' approaching Deity. Lo, Earth receives him from the bending skies! Sink down, ye mountains! and ye valleys, rise! With heads declined, ye cedars, homage pay! Be smooth, ye rocks! ye rapid floods, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... was accidentally touched at the moment her husband took a spark from an electrical machine. She gave the hint which led to the discovery of galvanic electricity, now so useful in the arts and in transmitting vocal ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... were so strongly developed that they replaced the functions of the missing organ. Enos of Brooklyn in 1854 reported absence of the epiglottis without interference with deglutition. Manifold speaks of a case of bifurcated epiglottis. Debloisi records an instance of congenital web of the vocal bands. Mackenzie removed a congenital papillomatous web which had united the vocal cords until the age of twenty-three, thus establishing the voice. Poore also recorded a case of congenital web in the larynx. Elsberg and Scheff mention occlusion ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... And with a master's hand and prophet's fire Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre: 'Hark how each giant oak and desert cave Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath! O'er thee, oh king! their hundred arms they wave, Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe, Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day, To high-born Hoel's harp ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... His reasoning is that when we acquire a foreign language we find it very difficult, and often impossible, to master some of the new sounds. Our ears do not catch them exactly, or we unconsciously substitute for the foreign sound some sound from our own language. Our vocal organs, too, do not adapt themselves readily to the reproduction of the strange sounds in another tongue, as we know from the difficulty which we have in pronouncing the French nasal or the German guttural. ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... as sentiment may control the connotation of a word. A word or phrase may have a double or triple connotation, and depend upon vocal inflection, upon gesture, upon the words with which it is linked, upon the experience of speaker or hearer, upon time, place, and external fact, or upon other forces outside it for the sense in which it is to be taken. You may be called "old dog" in an insulting manner, or (especially ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? Sure something holy lodges in that breast, And with these raptures moves the vocal air To testify his hidden residence. How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night, 250 At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled! I have oft heard My mother Circe with the Sirens three, Amidst ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... of the brig were plunged in sleep, except for two watchmen, who at Lingard's appearance retreated noiselessly from the poop. Lingard, leaning on the rail, fell into a sombre reverie of his past. Reproachful spectres crowded the air, animated and vocal, not in the articulate language of mortals but assailing him with faint sobs, deep sighs, and fateful gestures. When he came to himself and turned about they vanished, all but one dark shape without sound or movement. Lingard looked at ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... lying in wait for him. When the column was wending its way through the narrow valley wherein nature held her supreme and silent reign, save that the tiny brook ran with gurgling sounds over its rocks and pebbles, or the nightingale made the thickets vocal with its song, or the bees flitting from flower to flower diffused through the air a pleasing murmur, wherein the oak spread its peaceful branches against the sky, the beech leaning over the path shed a grateful shade, and the vine hanging in festoons from elm to maple ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and leveling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into her Majesty's most Honorable Privy Council's Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... hour of my only evening in these sacred mountains. I seek a vantage-ground and watch the King of Day sink slowly down to his couch of rest behind the western mountains and the farther sea. Oh, how beautiful! The sky is ablaze with a glory indescribable by mortal tongue. All space seems vocal with praise to the ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal

... further back than into the Neolithic or Second Stone Age, when the poetry of the human voice gave a dramatic value to the hitherto primitive sign-language limitation of the Old Drift-men. At this age, the Neolithic, arithmetical questions arising in the course of life would necessarily assume a vocal value instead of a digital one. No longer would fifteen be counted by holding out ten fingers and five toes, but an idiomatic phrase, descriptive of the former sign-language, "of two hands and one foot's worth" would be used, just as to-day an African would express the same problem in a number ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... be admitted, had exerted themselves to make Gardiner's work easy to him. On the 14th of March the wall of a house in Aldgate became suddenly vocal, and seventeen thousand persons were collected to hear a message from Heaven pronounced by an angel. When the people said "God save Queen Mary," the wall was silent; when they said "God save Queen Elizabeth," the wall said "Amen!" When {p.120} they asked, "What is the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... study of families with special abilities reveals a method of inheritance quite like that of nervous defect. If both parents be color artists or have a high grade of vocal ability or are litterateurs of high grade, then all of their children tend to be of high grade also. If one parent has high ability, while the other has low ability but has ancestry with high ability, part of the children will have high ability and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... minds. This is done to make them calm and passive, that they may be in a state to receive the influence of the pure principle. It may be observed again, that in their meetings for worship, whether silent or vocal, they endeavour to avoid all activity of the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... Drapier birth two realms contend; And each asserts her poet, patriot, friend: Her mitre jealous Britain may deny; That loss Ierne's laurel shall supply; Through life's low vale, she, grateful, gave him bread; Her vocal stones ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... gave an account of an automaton speaking-machine which Mr. Franklin Peale and himself had recently inspected. The machine was made to resemble as nearly as possible, in every respect, the human vocal organs; and was susceptible of varied movements by means of keys. Dr. Patterson was much struck by the distinctness with which the figure could enunciate various letters and words. The difficult combination three was well pronounced,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... of pledging me. During supper, which for number and variety of dishes exceeded any thing I had hitherto met with in the country, the girls played on the flute and sung several airs, but there was nothing very captivating either in the vocal or instrumental part of the music. We passed a most convivial evening free from any reserve or restraint, but on going away I was particularly desired by Van not to take any notice of what I had seen, apprehensive, I suppose, that their brother officers might condemn their want of prudence ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... be disappointed," remarked Yellin' Kid and his vocal powers seemed to be on the mend, for ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... proceeded line by line, with all the emotional swells and cadences that had of old characterized the tune: and the body of vocal harmony that it evoked implied a large congregation within, to whom it was plainly as familiar as it had been to church-goers of a past generation. With a whimsical sense of regret at the secession of his once favourite air Somerset moved away, and would have quite ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... almost simultaneously, by Alex. Graham Bell, a native of Scotland, and Professor of Vocal Physiology in the Boston University, and ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... the air grew calm, no zephyr stirr'd, Through all the valley not a sound was heard, That instant hush'd was all the vocal grove, And sounds aerial warbled from above: Around each shepherd cast his wond'ring eye, And down the vale was seen advancing nigh, A mighty Being, whom when near he stood, They knew that Genius who distributes good; The sheaves of plenty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various

... opinion that the more he thought over the mutiny, the angrier he became; a cold, stubborn anger, not vocal at all, as Kurzbold's would be. I think that after fastening the money to my belt he went down the valley to the Rhine. He knows the country, you must remember. He would then either wait there until the barge appeared, or ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... "Your cook's a vocal genius, anyhow, bo'sun," said he. "But don't ye think we'd do more justice to our accomplishments, and keep in tune, if we'd an accompaniment? Have ye such a thing as ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... were so full of "vocal groves and feathered choirs," that George Steevens broke out ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... of much redundant foliage, has brought it largely within the compass of scientific and technical expression; the native element reveals itself, now [Page 164] in plaintive reminiscence and now in a riotous bonhommie, a rollicking love of the sensuous, and in a style of delivery and vocal technique which demands a voluptuous throatiness, and which must be heard to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... it appears that he thinks of symbols as being unable to convey much information. The pattern for his raids, for instance, indicates that his knowledge of the materials he wants and their locations comes from vocal sources—television advertising, eavesdropping on shipping orders, and so on. In other words, he cases the joint by ear. If he could understand written information, his job would be much easier. He could find his materials much more quickly and ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... threasure, it costs handfuls o' money; but sure, while there's room for improvement, every apartment must be attended to, and the vocal apartment is filled by Sir John—fifteen shillin's a ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... Clayton's pardon and retrial. The governor issued the pardon, but the Supreme Court was in duty bound to annul it, and did so, and poor Clayton was hanged yesterday. The city is draped in black, and, indeed, the like may be said of the State. All America is vocal with scorn of 'French justice,' and of the malignant little soldiers who invented it and inflicted it upon the other ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... all things, and of man. Pride then was not; nor arts, that pride to aid; Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade; The same his table, and the same his bed; No murder clothed him, and no murder fed. In the same temple, the resounding wood, All vocal beings hymned their equal God: The shrine with gore unstained, with gold undressed, Unbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest: Heaven's attribute was universal care, And man's prerogative to rule, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... saw the man i' th' moon; As in the hollow bowl of silver spoon A broad reflected face the gazer sees; (Who trifling, dinner done, with bread and cheese, Abstractly lifts the spoon aforesaid up;) Or the same thing beholds in polished cup, Or concave snuff-box, whence the vocal sneeze! Sight of the man suggested HOTSPUR'S boast; But the night froze; and to express such hope Sounded far softer than the softest soap To me, who rather chose my heels to toast In the warm vicinage of glowing ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... can fittingly describe the way Elder Butts delivered his discourse. The sentences were whined, howled or sung, ending always in the vocal expletive—"ah—ah." ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... sing. The strangeness of the experience frightened him at first, but with each experiment he had grown more confident, more skilled, until at length he found that he could throw a singularly articulate voice into the jaws of the old plow-horse, while his brothers, accustomed to his queer vocal tricks, were convulsed with laughter at the bizarre quadrupedal views of life thus elicited. This development of proficiency, however, was recent, and until the incident at the bran dance it had not been exercised beyond the limits of their secluded ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... lies in both provinces. Physiology has studied the action of the vocal organs and the location of the brain centers concerned in speech, while psychology has studied the child's process of learning to speak and the relation of speech to thought, and is more apt to be interested in stuttering, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... the same time, through the competition of composers for pleasing the ear, there was an ever increasing tendency toward symmetry and graceful forms. And so the aria became, after a little, a piece of vocal display, often entirely opposed to the action, and sometimes foreign to the genius of the scene; still, it was heard for the sake of the pleasure which people have in a skilfully managed voice. Toward the end of this century, somebody, whose name I do not at this moment recall, began to introduce ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... have the same language, and they all understand one another, to whatever society, near or remote, they belong. Language there is not learned but is instinctive with everyone, for it flows from their very affection and thought, the tones of their speech corresponding to their affections, and the vocal articulations which are words corresponding to the ideas of thought that spring from the affections; and because of this correspondence the speech itself is spiritual, for it is affection sounding and thought speaking. [2] Any one who gives any ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... day Principal Gillespie of Glasgow and Mr. Warren had the honour of preaching the special sermons before the House in St. Margaret's, Westminster. The day was wound up by a noble dinner in Whitehall, to which the whole House had been invited by the Protector, followed by a concert, vocal and instrumental, in the part of the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... this amazing crowd stood assembled to welcome Sakr-el-Bahr; and welcome him it did, with such vocal thunder that an echo of it from the mole reached the very Kasbah on the hilltop to ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... have much difficulty in producing a race of Wagnerian singers. With the single exception of Handel, no composer has written music so well calculated to make its singers vocal athletes as Wagner. Abominably as the Germans sing, it is astonishing how they thrive physically on his leading parts. His secret is the Handelian secret. Instead of specializing his vocal parts after the manner of Verdi and Gounod for high sopranos, screaming ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... Fred. "He's got mixed up. What they told him to say if any one asked him was that he was studying trigonometry and vocal culture.' He got stuck and called it 'voconometry ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... to admit that the sounds and vocal organs of some males are used only for challenging, but I doubt whether this applies to the musical notes of Hylobates or to the howling (I judge chiefly from Rengger) of the American monkeys. No account that I have seen of the stridulation of male insects shows that it is a challenge. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... meal." He had got his wife; he had got his eldest daughter; he had got your humble servant. A horrid smile of enjoyment overspread the reverend gentleman's face, as he surveyed us from the opposite end of the room, and opened his vocal fire ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... I blame them," said Bill. "She favored me with a vocal selection. And, believe me, she ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... and known, to say of another, that he or she could compete with Ben Younker's wife in talking, was considered the extreme of comparison; and it is not recorded that any individual ever presumed on the credulity of the public sufficient to assert that the vocal powers of the said Mrs. Younker were ever surpassed. Unlike most great talkers, she was rarely heard to speak ill of any, and then only such as were really deserving of censure; while her rough kind of piety—if we may so term it—and her genuine goodness of ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... was of all kinds, both instrumental and vocal. The English trials hardly mention music, possibly because the Sabbath had fallen into a decadent condition; but the Scotch and French trials prove that it was an integral part of the celebration. ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... the room adjoining, a French lesson is going on; in that, German; in this, penmanship. Still higher up we find the "Tech" Glee Club practising, and this large room adjoining is filled with those who are learning vocal music. The building seems a very ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... position she admitted, but every woman is Eve in some hours of her life. The law of truth and wisdom may be in her ears, but the apple of delight hangs within her reach, and, with a full understanding of the consequences of disobedience, she takes the forbidden pleasure. And if the vocal, positive command of Divinity was unheeded by the first woman, mere mortal parents surely ought not to wonder that their commands, though dictated by truest love and clearest wisdom, are often lightly held, or even impotent against the voice of some charmer, pleading personal ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... poets it is found that that (final) E did or did not constitute an additional syllable, just as the stricture of the verse required it." Urry, whose edition of Chaucer was published, not long after his death, in 1721, knows for vocal the termination in ES, of genitive singular and of the plural—also the past tense and participle in ED, which, however, can hardly be thought much of, as it is a power over one mute E that we retain in use to this day. The final ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... black above, therefore, but Katy Dare made the world bright with her own sunshine, that day. All the way to Petersburg, she ran on in the most charming prattle. The winding Boydton road, like the banks of the lower Rowanty, was made vocal with her songs—the "Bird of Beauty" and the whole repertoire. Nor was Tom Herbert backward in encouraging his companion's mirth. Tom was the soul of joy. He sang "Katy! Katy! don't marry any other!" with an unction which spoke in his quick color, and "melting glances" as in the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... unpublished fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand out vocal harmony for ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... several children by themselves; associated play under the guidance of a teacher; gymnastic exercises; several sorts of handiwork suited to little children; going for walks; learning music, both instrumental and vocal; learning the repetition of poetry; story-telling; looking at really good pictures; aiding in domestic ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... nobility of his character, by the stainless purity of his actions, and the splendid motive of all his endeavours. His speeches and writings derive their power and distinction from no tricks of oratory, felicity of diction, or nimbleness of mind. They are the vocal results of the beatings of his ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... old man leaned on me, and we went down the valley along the craggy ridges of the winding creek. The woodland on the opposite bank was vocal with the chirp and croak and chatter of Australian birds,—all mirthful, all songless, save that sweetest of warblers, which some early irreverent emigrant degraded to the name of magpie, but whose note is sweeter than the nightingale's, and trills through ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... point at which children so frequently and readily learn control as in the matter of speech. The family where all speak at once, where a babel of sounds leads to a rivalry of vocal organs, is not only a nuisance to the neighbors, it is a school of uncontrolled action to the children. Just to learn to wait, even after the thought is formed into words, until it shall be my turn or my opportunity to speak is a fine discipline of control. To do that every day, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... creature has already gone round the town on a singing, dancing, and cash-collecting expedition; accompanied by the drum, mouth-organ, and Swivel. We now find her enchanting the flinty-hearted father, Old Fellum. Having been instrumental, by means of her vocal abilities, in drawing from him a declaration of amorous attachment and half-a-crown, she retires, to bury herself in the arms of her husband, and to eradicate the score, recorded in chalk, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various

... everybody is familiar, and which seems capable of expressing everything, from the soft chatter of going to bed in the pine tops to the loud derision with which he detects all ordinary attempts to surprise him. Certain crows, however, have unusual vocal abilities, and at times they seem to use them for the entertainment of the others. Yet I suspect that these vocal gifts are seldom used, or even discovered, until lack of amusement throws them upon their own resources. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... of the vocal systems among the animals form a subject well worthy of the deepest study, not only as another character by which to classify the animal kingdom correctly, but as bearing indirectly also on the question of the origin of animals. Can ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... through these forests; deer went whither they would. The explorers might meet foxes and catamounts, otter, beaver and marten, raccoon and opossum, wolf and Indian dog. Winged Virginians made the forests vocal. The owl hooted at night, and the whippoorwill called in the twilight. The streams were filled with fish. Coming to the mouth of the Rappahannock, the travelers' boat grounded upon sand, with the tide at ebb. Awaiting ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... say this to what I would call the idealist party. Then I would say something to those who talk nonsense about apathy and supineness. We will not be hurried into repression, any more than we will be hurried into the other direction. This party, which is very vocal in this country, say:—Oh! we are astonished, and India is astonished, and amazed at the licence that you extend to newspapers and to speakers; why don't you stop it? Orientals, they say, do not understand it. Yes, but just let us look ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... loyally Baileyite. Quite her best writing up to the present, at any rate, is in those papers, and no doubt Altiora had had not only to read her in those invaded columns, but listen to her praises in the mouths of the tactless influential. Altiora, like so many people who rely on gesture and vocal insistence in conversation, writes a poor and slovenly prose and handles an argument badly; Isabel has her University training behind her and wrote from the first with the stark power of a clear-headed man. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... but that an articulate voice, and such express words, and language so clear and exact and elaborate, should proceed from inanimate things, is, in my judgment, a thing utterly out of possibility. For it was never known that either the soul of man, or the deity himself, uttered vocal sounds and language, alone, without an organized body and members fitted for speech. But where history seems in a manner to force our assent by the concurrence of numerous and credible witnesses, we are to conclude that an impression distinct from sensation affects the imaginative part of our ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Selwoode lies in the angle of the building, the ground plan of which is L-shaped. Its two outer sides are formed by covered cloisters leading to the palm-garden, and by moonlight—the night bland and sweet with the odour of growing things, vocal with plashing fountains, spangled with fire-flies that flicker indolently among a glimmering concourse of nymphs and fauns eternally postured in flight or in pursuit—by moonlight, I say, the court at Selwoode is perhaps as satisfactory a spot ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell

... inventor, and Ned working with him, to fix up the new wires and switch on the current. But at last it was complete, and Ned took his place at one telephone, with the two sensitive plates before him. Tom did the same, and they proceeded to talk over the wire, first making sure that the vocal connection was perfect. ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton

... politic. Men are even uttering slanders against the United States as if to excite her. Men are saying that if we should go to war upon either side there will be a divided America—an abominable libel of ignorance. America is not all of it vocal just now. It ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... like so many blind asses in an olive-mill, where they can neither discourse, distinguish, nor be distinguished; while the other half are drinking hot water, under the denomination of tea, till nine or ten o'clock at night, to keep them awake for the rest of the evening. As for the orchestra, the vocal music especially, it is well for the performers that they cannot be heard distinctly. Vauxhall is a composition of baubles, overcharged with paltry ornaments, ill conceived, and poorly executed; without any unity of design, or propriety of disposition. It is an unnatural assembly ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... me acquainted with myself. I launch eagerly into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb abyss[43] be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its fear;[44] I dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding life. So much only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness have I vanquished and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the proper pitch of the voice. The key upon which one reads may be medium, or low, or high, and what it is depends upon certain physiological conditions. If the vocal chords are tense, the pitch is high. Accordingly, any state of mind that produces tense vocal chords produces high pitch in the voice. A person can forcibly tighten his vocal chords and utter sounds at high pitch, but they are strained, artificial and unnatural. If a certain amount of feeling ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... wish I could see in such places the guitar rather than the piano, and good vocal ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... sooner called to inward silence, than it should cease to utter vocal prayers; saying but little at any time, and when it does say them, if it finds any difficulty, or feels itself drawn to silence, it should remain silent, and make no effort to pray, leaving itself to the guidance of the ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... to climate; "The rain," he says, "here comes down heartily, and is frequently succeeded by clear bright weather, when every brook is vocal, and every torrent sonorous; brooks and torrents which are never muddy even in the heaviest floods. Days of unsettled weather, with partial showers, are very frequent; but the showers, darkening or brightening as they fly from hill to hill, are not less grateful to the eye than finely interwoven ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... parklike expanses and rolls of land, with stately groups of giant oaks—far surpassing all culture of man, set out by the Creator on such a noble forest background, never looked more majestic and beautiful. They were vocal with singing birds, and filled with life; at their foot thronged the grouse or prairie chicken, darting through the high flowering grasses (richer than all garden flowers) in such numbers that but a few feet from our wheels we shot them in ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... the mild sniff to the stentorian snort, which startled the echoes and hoisted the performer erect to accuse his neighbor of the deed, magnanimously forgive him, and wrapping the drapery of his couch about him, lie down to vocal slumber. After listening for a week to this band of wind instruments, I indulged in the belief that I could recognize each by the snore alone, and was tempted to join the chorus by breaking out with ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... long work'd off him, and he gives me little but the hard meat and sinew. I find it refreshing, these hardy, bright, intuitive, American young men, (experienc'd soldiers with all their youth.) The vocal play and significance moves one more than books. Then there hangs something majestic about a man who has borne his part in battles, especially if he is very quiet regarding it when you desire him to unbosom. I am continually lost ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... is simply a loss of command of the vocal organs, and is distinctly nervous in its cause. Especially must we look to the roots of the nerves controlling the vocal organs, if we are to see the real difficulty. There is evidently a state of irritability and undue sensitiveness in these nerves which ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... he responded, with unexpected literalness. "Sometimes I feel as if I were the victim of a sort of possession. I believe I have a demon that inhabits my vocal cords upon occasion. If he does get hold of me, I am merely a machine in his hands. When I become my own manager again, I am never quite sure what ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... my life at this time I remember because I thought my parents were in the wrong. Vocal music was taught in singing school, which was conducted almost as regularly as were the day schools. I was passionately fond of music. Before the change of my voice came I had a fine alto voice and was a leader in my part of the class. This fact coming to the notice of the ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... think of its tempting side and by thinking on such aspects of it as may lead in the right direction. Khantisa@mvara is that by which one can remain unperturbed in heat and cold. By the proper adherence to sila all our bodily, mental and vocal activities (kamma) are duly systematized, organized, stabilized (samadhanam, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... sufficiently satisfactory thrill of mingled emotions at the sound. But the guide will reassure you by saying that that great pack of howling Wolves is nothing more than a harmless little Coyote, perhaps two, singing their customary vesper song, demonstrating their wonderful vocal powers. Their usual music begins with a few growling, gurgling yaps which are rapidly increased in volume and heightened in pitch, until they rise into a long squall or scream, which again, as it dies away, breaks up ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... repeated, blandly, but authoritatively, endeavoring, as zealously as one of Christy's Minstrels, to assimilate my speech to any supposed predilection of the Ethiop vocal organs. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... scrambled up among the hazelled rubbish heaps that surround the caldron of the quarry, and lay flat upon the stones. The wind searched close along the earth, the stones were cutting and icy, the bare hazels wailed about him; and soon the air of the afternoon began to be vocal with those strange and dismal harpings that herald snow. Pain and misery turned in John's limbs to a harrowing impatience and blind desire of change; now he would roll in his harsh lair, and when the flints abraded him, ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... were placed in separate bands, in a meadow on each side of the causeway, raised with turf; and whilst their Majesties and the company were passing through the great salon, they danced. On their passage by water, the barges were followed by other boats, having on board vocal and instrumental musicians, habited like Nereids, singing and playing the whole time. After landing, the shepherdesses I have mentioned before received the company in separate troops, with songs and dances, after the fashion and accompanied by the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... juvenile. On the ice-plain, which was apparently illimitable to the right and left, were hundreds of pools of water in which the icebergs, the golden clouds, the sun, and the blue sky were reflected, and on the surface of which myriads of Arctic wild-fowl were sporting about, making the air vocal with their plaintive cries, and ruffling the glassy surfaces of the lakes with their dipping wings. The heads of seals were also ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... say that May Ingram was overjoyed. She had been fond of music from her childhood, and had given promise of rare talents. She had taken lessons for two years in vocal and instrumental music in the best conservatories in Boston, George paying most of her expenses. For six years May had been the soprano singer in the highest paid quartette in Harrisville. Though she occasionally hoped for a musical education abroad, yet these hopes had all flown away. Her parents ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... national oil companies of China, the Philippines, and Vietnam signed a joint accord on marine seismic activities in the Spratly Islands; China occupies some of the Paracel Islands also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan; China and Taiwan have become more vocal in rejecting both Japan's claims to the uninhabited islands of Senkaku-shoto (Diaoyu Tai) and Japan's unilaterally declared exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea, the site of intensive hydrocarbon prospecting; certain islands in the Yalu and Tumen rivers are in an uncontested ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... night—he was majestic! The fiddle all but spoke, and produced a sensation of dancing in the toes of even those who happened to be seated. Bryan was great as a linguist, too, and exhibited his powers in this respect with singular felicity in the vocal entertainment that followed the dancing. The Esquimau language seemed a mere trifle to him, and he conversed, while playing the violin, with several "purty craytures" in their native tongue, with an amount of volubility ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... so-called agglutinating type. For in these languages the relations of ideas are expressed exclusively by terminations or suffixes—inflections, prefixes and prepositions, as expressive of relations, being completely unknown to them. Other peculiarities characteristic of the Altaic languages are the vocal harmony occurring in many of them, the inability to have more than one consonant in the beginning of a word, and the expression of the plural by a peculiar affix, the case terminations being the same in ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... the world, and Mrs. March is of the same mind about it. We like all the waters, and drink them without regard to their different properties; but we rather prefer the Congress spring, because it is such a pleasant place to listen to the Troy military band in the afternoon, and the more or less vocal concert in the evening. All the Saratoga world comes and goes before us, as we sit there by day and by night, and we find a perpetual interest in it. We go and look at the deer (a herd of two, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... an excellent English trained nurse that she can secure, but she isn't sure but that it would be better to start with a French nurse, so that the child can learn the language before her vocal cords are set. Also, she was extremely interested when she heard that Betsy was a college woman. She couldn't make up her mind whether to send the baby to college or not. What was Betsy's honest opinion? If the child were Betsy's own daughter, would ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... glass of whisky with that yellow, claw-like hand upon which the great diamond gleamed—a spot of flawless purity; with his repulsive features twisted into a grewsome ugliness by his straining effort to force his diseased vocal chords to make his words heard; the wretched creature said: "Here's to our girl musician. The prettiest—lassie that I—have seen for many a day—and I think I know a pretty girl—when I see one too. Who comes bright and fresh—from her mountains, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... was not this at all. The written signs represented not sounds, but ideas themselves; if they were intended to correspond directly with anything, it was with the rude gestures that signified ideas and had nothing to do with their vocal expression. It was not until later that these written symbols came to correspond to vocal sounds and even to-day they do so imperfectly; languages that are largely phonetic are the exception. The result is, as I have ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... to assign any good reason for denying to the higher animals any mental state, or process, in which the employment of the vocal or visual symbols of which language is composed is not involved; and comparative psychology confirms the position in relation to the rest of the animal world assigned to man by comparative anatomy. As comparative anatomy is easily able to show that, physically, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... in which praise may come, whether it be in the form of vocal thanksgiving, or whether it be the glad surrender of the heart, manifested in the conscious discharge of the most trivial duties, whether we 'lift up our hands in the Sanctuary, and bless the Lord' with them, or whether we turn our hands ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... grown more fond of instrumental music," said Mrs. Aylett, half interrogatively. "You used always to prefer vocal." ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... scientific criticisms on vocal and instrumental performers, operas, and new music, on the Continent as well as in England, with ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... beyond belief at this distance of time?" she went on; "and isn't it a curious fact, as Mr. Macdonald told me a moment ago, that though the whole country was vocal with songs for the lost cause and the fallen race, not one in favour of the ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of the third quarter, I wished I had not gone to bed; and when a restless hour passed, I got up and dressed myself. There had been a fire down in the big room. Perhaps it was still burning. I opened the door and groped my way along the passage, vocal with the snores of the Alemanni and the whistling of the night wind; I partly fell down stairs, and at last entering the big room, saw the fire still burning. I drew a chair toward it, poked it with my foot, and ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... Hackett, M. D., writes: "The physical defects which prevent Mr. Brazenthwaite from joining the colours have left his vocal gifts and general ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various

... and mused again, running over in his mind such gulls as he knew, and coming to the conclusion that unless it was some unusual specimen, of great vocal powers, it could not be the black-backed nor the lesser black-backed, nor the black-headed ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... as everyone knows, we mean the relative position of a vocal tone—as, high, medium, low, or any variation between. In public speech we apply it not only to a single utterance, as an exclamation or a monosyllable (Oh! or the) but to any group of syllables, words, and even sentences that may be spoken in a single tone. This ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... ye living Souls: Ye Birds, That singing up to Heaven-gate ascend, Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise. Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep; Witness if I be silent, morn or even, To hill, or valley, fountain, or fresh shade, Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise. Hail, universal Lord, be bounteous still To give us only good; and if the night Have gathered aught of evil, or concealed, Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark! So prayed they innocent, and to their thoughts Firm peace recovered ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... plain of these Colossi. It takes you into its breast, and you lie there in the growing sunshine almost as if you were a child laid in the lap of one of them. That legend of the singing at dawn of the "vocal Memnon," how could it have arisen? How could such calmness sing, such patience ever find a voice? Unlike the Sphinx, which becomes ever more impressive as you draw near to it, and is most impressive when you sit almost at its feet, the Colossi lose ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... attempted speech with the ape-man; but the replies, now vocal, were in a strange tongue, which resembled the chattering of monkeys mingled with the growling of some ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... stifling, an entanglement of trains and a misunderstanding of orders on the part of Hill and Ewell resulting in a confused and retarded march. Night fell, hot and breathless. Twenty-three thousand grey soldiers, moving toward Orange Court House, made the dark road vocal with statements as to the reeking heat, the dust, the condition of their shoes and the impertinence of the cavalry. The latter was more irritating than were the flapping soles, the dust in the throat, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... not agree with him. If one prima donna is good, she argued, why would not two be better? So she never desisted from her importunity until she was permitted to become a pupil of Professor Coccherani, vocal instructor at the Lycee. At this time she had committed to memory more than a dozen grand opera roles, and at the end of six months the professor confessed that he could do nothing more for her voice; that she was ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... from the fair were shouting and singing, evidently having paid frequent visits to the vintners' shops, while the children blew their trumpets and sprung their rattles, as an accompaniment to the vocal music of their elders. ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... left after the looting or failure of the concerns. Those whose savings were invested in the concerns had little coming to them after the failures. The fees of the ring left little of that. All this "grinding of the faces of the poor" is being accomplished by those politicians who were most vocal in proclaiming their allegiance to the Chicago platform as a new "Magna ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... the other day, and some of the good folks told me, with a grave smile peculiar to that region, that when Rab came to them in print he was so good that they wouldn't believe he was the same Rab I had delivered in the school-room,—a testimony to my vocal powers of impressing the ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.

... the mass, is barren and frivolous—a man who imagines he can do a great deal, and does very little. The whole orchestra dislike him. To-day, Sunday, I heard a mass of Holzbauer's, which is now twenty-six years old, but excellent. He writes very well, and has a good church style, arranges the vocal parts as well as the instrumental, and writes good fugues. They have two organists here; it would be worth while to come to Mannheim on purpose to hear them—which I had a famous opportunity of doing, as it is the custom here for the organist to play during the whole of the Benedictus. I heard ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... of the most important parts of the mechanism, must, if the desired result be obtained, make themselves fully efficient for their part in the work. They had been perhaps, as vocal as any section of the community as to the necessity and possibility of extending English trade, but it was much to be regretted that when opportunities were given and facilities provided, more particularly for ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... heard the noise of the domestic animals of the village. Cows, calves, goats, and pigs seemed to make a habit of exercising their vocal organs thoroughly before retiring. Dogs bark at the moon; cats chase rats through openings of the palm-leaf roofs, threatening every moment to fall, pursued and pursuers, down upon the hammocks. Vampires flutter around from room to room, occasionally resting ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... started on a high key, and as the tune climbed up the word "Cameron" was far beyond the range of human voice. He would make a shrieking attempt at it, collapse, and start again, quite cheerfully. But by some strange misunderstanding between his ear and his vocal cords, no matter how deep he might lay the foundations of his song, he would raise upon it such a lofty structure that the pinnacle was sure to be unattainable. He always saw the heights ahead, and made a gasping effort to gain them, his voice strained to its utmost, his face wearing ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... nothing to do with it, though education may facilitate verbal expression. The essential matter is the inward prompting, under God's guidance. The Book of Discipline says, "Our conviction is that the Spirit of God is in all, and that vocal utterance comes when this Spirit works within us. The varying needs of a meeting can be best supplied by different personalities, and a meeting is enriched by the sharing of any ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer

... he accustomed himself to speak with pebbles in his mouth. His lack of vocal strength he overcame by running with open mouth, thus expanding his lungs. To cure his shortness of breath he practised the uttering of long sentences while walking rapidly up-hill. That he might be able to make ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... The larynx is found at various stages of development in the Amphibia, and comparative anatomists are in a position to trace the progressive growth of this important organ from the rudimentary structure of the lower Amphibia up to the elaborate and delicate vocal apparatus that we have in the larynx of man and of ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... into the sacred city of Benares he describes to his wife thus: "I will endeavour to give you an account of the concert, vocal and instrumental, which saluted us as we entered ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... optimists—optimists to the point of belligerence—their motto being "Boost! Don't Knock!" And they were hustlers, believing in hustling and in honesty because both paid. They loved their city and worked for it with a plutonic energy which was always ardently vocal. They were viciously governed, but they sometimes went so far to struggle for better government on account of the helpful effect of good government on the price of real estate and "betterment" generally; the politicians ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... Lem gave it up. He had satisfied himself as to his vocal powers, but he had not the courage even to whistle. The journey to Coniston was faster in the winter, and at the next turn of the road the little village came into view. There it was, among the snows. The pain ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... blessed. So easily can God make a man happy! The past had dropped from him like a wild but weary and sordid dream. He was reborn, a new child, in a new bright world, with a glowing summer to revel in. One of God's lyric prophets, the larks, was within earshot, pouring down a vocal summer of jubilant melody. The lark thought nobody was listening but his wife; but God heard in heaven, and the young prodigal heard on the earth. He would be a good child henceforth, for one bunch of sunrays was enough to be happy upon. His mother entered. She saw the beauty upon her boy's worn ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald



Words linked to "Vocal" :   roundelay, lament, serenade, banquet song, love-song, folk song, partsong, drinking song, scolion, lied, folk ballad, refrain, ballad, lyric, musical composition, loud, music, prothalamium, prothalamion, folksong, words, cradlesong, love song, threnody, instrumental, piece of music, coronach, voice, language, lay, barcarole, religious song, barcarolle, piece, work song, anthem, golden oldie, composition, aria, chorus, oldie, opus, ditty, requiem, torch song, communicative, communicatory, berceuse, dirge, lullaby



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com