"Diminutive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... relation it bore to the great scheme which we call existence. One day I got to wondering what would happen if my heart should take a notion to stop and rest for a few seconds. The thought of such a catastrophe made me so nervous that all my organs apparently got out of gear and I had a diminutive fit. From that day I began to have all sorts of nervous symptoms, most of which were, to say the least, vague and indefinite. Frequently I complained that I was afraid "something was going to happen." Since then, whenever I hear that phrase I invariably associate it with a person ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... was used during the last century as a diminutive for Amelia. There is really no etymological connection ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... finest and largest ichthyological collection in the world. In the glass tanks curious sea fish darted through the water, grotesque sea monsters crawled over the pebbles, and transparent jelly fish floated slowly; pink and white sea anemones, like a bed of flowers, opened and closed, and diminutive sea animals, almost invisible, spread thread-like tentacles; sponges and coral grew upon the rocks, and mollusks showed by their movements ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... was evident in his flashing eyes and vehement gestures. The passion was contagious; they all sprang to their feet with a low but fierce cry, and in a few moments they had caught and saddled their diminutive palfreys, while one of the band, who seemed singled out by Meredydd, sallied forth alone from the orchard, and took his way, on foot, to the bridge. He did not tarry there long; at the sight of a single horseman, whom a shout of welcome, on that ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a diminutive wisp of humanity, a starved, slender elf with a freckled face, wizened and peaked, which at times looked a thousand years old. It reminded you of the face of one of those preternaturally aged monkeys that sit motionless in a dark corner of the cage, oppressed with the sins and sorrows of ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the more ordinary terms of fortification. While, therefore, I lay in this dreary and silent solitude, I fell upon the resource of illustrating the {p.040} battles I read of by the childish expedient of arranging shells, and seeds, and pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies. Diminutive cross-bows were contrived to mimic artillery, and with the assistance of a friendly carpenter I contrived to model a fortress, which, like that of Uncle Toby, represented whatever place happened to be uppermost in my imagination. I fought my ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of some 10 or 11 shillings; but as he felt that by refusing to pay the sum he would be striking a blow for the liberty of the subject, he manfully held out against what he considered an unjust punishment for such diminutive frivolities as he had indulged in." . . . At times incidents of a disturbing and playful nature have roused the wrath of the Chairman and Secretary to a pitch awful to behold. At one time Mr. H. (a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... to Mr. and Mrs. Applegate and their very diminutive daughter—whom somebody had fondly nicknamed "Puss"—and turned to follow the crowd. A short time later they set foot for the first time on the soil of the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... lives in one of the great mountains of the Blue Ridge and owns all the game. Others are the Little Men, probably the two Thunder boys; the Little People, the fairies who live in the rock cliffs; and even the Detsata, a diminutive sprite who holds the place of our Puck. One unwritten formula, which could not be obtained correctly by dictation, was addressed to the "Red-Headed Woman, whose hair ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... Englished form of hypochondriacal, its suffix carrying its usual diminutive value, so that its meaning is 'somewhat hypochondriacal'. Berkeley, Gray, and Swift used hyps or the hyp for hypochondriasis, and the adjective was apparently common. It would seem that hypochondria was then ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... liking for his nephew Willard, and on many a hunting excursion in the Great North Woods, the boy was his only companion. This affection, however, was not unmingled with some contempt for the lad's diminutive stature. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... a portico or court; also a small room near the hall in monasteries, where particular persons dined. (Blount's Glossog.) Du Cange says, "Oriolum, porticus, atrium;" and quotes Matthew Paris for it. Supposed by some to be a diminutive from area or areola. "In modern writings," says Nares, "we meet with mention of Oriel windows. I doubt the propriety of the expression; but, if right, they must mean those windows that project like a porch, or small room. At St. Albans was an oriel, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... in which to gather force under the piping wind, the waves were of considerable height, considering that the three boats were of diminutive size. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... a pale pock-marked man, of diminutive height, with high retreating forehead, and long thin hair, rose, and at once proceeded to make his way through the crowd: he would sing from the stage, of course! Hester and Vavasor looked at each other, and one whisper passed between ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... took his boot in his hands and gave a slight twist to the heel. There was a little click, and a sort of double drawer shot out of the front of the sole. It contained two sheafs of bank notes and a number of diminutive articles, such as a gimlet, a watch spring, and ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... interfere with the statement, for they are complete words; the letters "m", "l", and "v" are not roots. The word "do" is not a noun, because "d" is not a root. The word "plej" is not a plural, because "ple" is not a root. The word "meti", to put, has nothing to do with the diminutive suffix "et", because "m" is ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... curtains within, is truly enchanting. We were not happy in the weather. The morning was sunny and promising, but at noon clouds obscured the heavens; therefore we wanted that glow and splendour sunshine never fails to give the landscape. The height is so great that everything looks quite diminutive. The road running in a straight line across the Down reminds one of a Roman work, and the whole expanse of country surrounding recalls the Campagna. Two more flights of stairs, most ingeniously contrived and to all appearance hanging on nothing, lead ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... stock of honey the Caraway may be termed, like Uriah Heep, and in a double sense, "truly umbel." The diminutive florets on its flat disk are so shallow that lepidopterous and hymenopterous insects, with their long proboses, stand no chance of getting a meal. They fare as poorly as the stork did in the fable, whom the fox invited to dinner served on ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the middle class—the small trades-people, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... thoughts, unattended. And it pleased destiny, that the pearl beyond price, the neglected Chaoukeun also was induced, by the beauty and stillness of the night, to press the shell sand which covered the terrace-walk, with her diminutive feet, so diminutive, that she almost tottered in her gait. The tear trembled in her eye as she thought of her own happy home, and bitterly did she bewail that beauty, which, instead of raising her to a throne, had by malice and avarice condemned her to perpetual solitude. She ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... spring of 1910 that we could afford to engage any officers or men for the ship, so that most of the work of rigging her was done by dock-side workers under a good old master rigger named Malley. Landsmen would have stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Malley's men with their diminutive dolly-winch had they watched our new masts and yards being got ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... looking up to us with plaintive whines. The next instant I swung out of my saddle, and, bending down, raised the unfortunate creature in my arms, when I saw, to my amazement, that she was evidently a full-grown woman, but of very diminutive stature, being only about four feet six inches in height. Moreover she was in a most shockingly emaciated condition, and on her back was a close network of scarcely healed scars, which looked as though they might have resulted from ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the little Sikkim rhododendron, I shall give here the description of a still more diminutive specimen, met with by Dr Hooker during his journey, and which he has figured and described in his beautiful work, The Rhododendron of Sikkim-Himalaya. It is called R. nivale, or snow-rhododendron. 'The hard, woody branches of this curious little species, as thick ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... progress in the sixteenth century, I do not propose to enter. The enthusiasm of a Francis Xavier is not an everyday event, and the Japanese of the sixteenth century was, mayhap, more impressed by the missionaries of those days, arriving in flimsy and diminutive vessels after undergoing the perils and hardships of long voyages, having neither purse nor scrip nor wearing apparel except what they stood up in, than he is by the modern missionary arriving as a first-class passenger in a magnificent steamer ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... vary in size and importance from powerful principalities like the Nizam's State of Hyderabad, with an area of 82,000 miles—nearly equal to that of England and Wales and Scotland—- and a population of over 11 millions, down to diminutive chiefships, smaller than the holdings of a great English landlord. Distributed throughout the whole length and breadth of the peninsula, they display the same extraordinary variety of races and creeds and castes and languages ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... vibrant with hoarse reverence. He saw the sunlight of a cliff-surrounded diminutive Garden of Eden. He saw a vale of flowering grass, of palms and live oaks, saw patches of lilies so huge as to transcend belief, and dizzying clumps of tree cactus almost as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... about to occur, and which I shall not particularise further than by saying, that she was cautioned against too much singing by Mr. Squills, her medical attendant; and that widow Crump was busy making up a vast number of little caps and diminutive cambric shirts, such as delighted GRANDMOTHERS are in the habit of fashioning. I hope this is as genteel a way of signifying the circumstance which was about to take place in the Walker family as Miss ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... came for them. And that skin-boat? What would happen when it came to Whaling? Would the Chukches tell them in which direction they had gone? And if they did, would the Eskimo boatmen set their sail and go directly to East Cape? If they did, would they miss this diminutive cabin standing back as it did from the shore, and seeming but a part of ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... of these diminutive creatures, is the egg, or embryo state; this the anxious parent attaches firmly to some leaf or bough, capable of affording sufficient sustenance to the future grub, who, in due course, eats his way through the vegetable kingdom upon which he is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... guards, one of the most honorable commissions that could have been conferred on him. The comte de Crussel and the prince d'Henin were named captains of the guard to M. d'Artois. This prince d'Henin was of such diminutive stature that he was sometimes styled, by way of jest, the "prince of dwarfs," "the dwarf of princes." He was the beloved nephew of the marechale de Mirepoix, whose fondness could not supply him with the sense he so greatly needed; he was ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... there is a very large breed of fowls, called ayam jago; of these I have seen a cock peck from off of a common dining table; when inclined to rest they sit on the first joint of the leg and are then taller than the ordinary fowls. It is singular if the same country produces likewise the diminutive breed that goes by the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of the Perkinses, large or small. They were excessively reticent. When Mrs. Perkins, kneeling before Master Harry, asked him the wholly unnecessary question, "Why, is this Harry?" he refused wholly to reply; nor could the diminutive Jennie be induced to say anything but "Yumps" in response to a similar question put to her, "Yumps" being, it is to be presumed, a juvenilism for "Yes, ma'am." Hence it was that the object-lesson did not begin to develop until breakfast on ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... Vasiladhi alone (the gunboat having been detached), with little effect, the weather being unfavourable; nor could I recommence until to-day, when, considering the distance we were off (about one and three-quarter mile), and the diminutive size of the object fired at, better practice has rarely been displayed: four shells out of seven from this ship and gunboat exploded in, and one blew up, their magazine. I immediately ordered an assault, in which all the boats took part. The Turks, intimidated by the explosion, and ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... been the loftiest period of his life. The old feeling, smothered as it was under resentment and a new passion, stirred in him. He strained her to his breast and called her the pet names he used to call her. The diminutive being upon his knee heard them without response. When she could ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... that no stranger would have ever taken them for brothers,—Mark being, as we have before described him, a good-sized, and, in the main, a good-looking man; while the other, whom we have introduced as Arthur Elwood, was of a diminutive size, with commonplace features, and a severe, forbidding countenance, made so, perhaps, by intense application to business, together with the unfavorable effect caused by a ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... beheld a city of logs and canvas sprawled between the stream and a curving mountain-side. The day was still and clear, hence vertical pencil-markings of blue smoke hung over the roofs; against the white background squat dwellings stood out distinctly, like diminutive dolls' houses. Upon closer approach the river shore was seen to be lined with scows and rowboats; a stern- wheeled river steamer lay moored abreast of the town. Above it a valley broke through from the north, out of which poured a flood of clear, dark ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... name of spaniel reminds me of you. How well do I now see your long pendent ears, your black expressive eyes, your short, well-rounded mouth, your diminutive but strong legs, almost hidden by the long, silky hair from your stomach, and hear you sing as you lie on the rug before a good fire in the winter, after a hard day's cock or snipe-shooting, wet ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Frigga, were frightful idols, as represented in the Upsala temple, and the small statues carried by the Scandinavian sailors on their expeditions and set in the place of honor on board their ships, were but diminutive copies of the hideous originals. It is known, moreover, that Odin had existed as a leader of some of their migrations, so that their idolatry resolved itself ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... which I have been invited to read a paper, and which is taken as the title of the latter, would require for anything like full discussion a much longer time than you can be expected to allot to it. To discuss it adequately, a volume of no diminutive size would be necessary. It may, however, be possible to indicate with the brevity appropriate to the occasion the main outlines of the subject, and to suggest for your consideration certain points which, over and above their historical ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... and grew angrier every moment as she found herself still loftily ignored. A warm fracas was in prospect, when a passing American fortunately cleared up the complication; the woman would have called in a gendarme unhesitatingly, to enforce her diminutive claim. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft was none of the largest, it was subject to him; and ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... and plump in the younger individuals; skin smooth; complexion not very dark, except that of the old man; teeth very white; eyes small; nose broad, but not very flat; hair black, straight, and glossy; and their hands and feet extremely diminutive. The old man had a gray beard, in which the black hairs predominated, and wore the hair rather long upon his upper lip, which was also the case with the eldest of the ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... word appears to have been used in the sense of Medicaster, a diminutive of the Latin Medicus, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... during the whole course of my incumbency." Joachim and St. Anne seem very much distressed, and Joachim appears to be saying, "It is not our fault; I assure you, sir, we have done everything in our power. She has had plenty of nourishment." There must be some explanation of the diminutive size of the figure that is ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... of the Tongouses, and the Samoides: the want of horses and oxen is imperfectly supplied by the use of reindeer, and of large dogs; and the conquerors of the earth insensibly degenerate into a race of deformed and diminutive savages, who tremble at ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the diminutive figure, and he thought with satisfaction that with his bare hands he could crush it like an eggshell. But it has been said that the invention of the pistol made all men equal. Certainly at this moment the automatic in the small man's steady hand more ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... their "house" on Sheepstor—a cavern formed by overhanging blocks of granite. Deep river pools and deceitful morasses, over which the cotton grass flutters its white tassels, are thought to be the "gates" of their country, where they possess diminutive flocks and herds of their own. Malicious, yet hardly demoniacal, they are precisely Dryden's ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the Masters were out, having compiled the diminutive score of 99. Not once had they been asked to face my bowling. Honion and White shared the ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the parents the child was never addressed as "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practical opinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not been baptized after his father, or after any male member ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... quarter of the distance to the island in midstream was accomplished. That diminutive patch of soil was a mutually acknowledged boundary between Russia and Austria. A fierce yell of triumph caused the swimmer to pause in his efforts. He looked back over his shoulder to see the first pair of pursuers push their wiry ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... for such portraits; butchers and fishmongers were haled before courts-martial for like indications of ill-will; and—matter for laughter and matter for tears are inseparable in modern Greek history (perhaps in all history)—one met a cabman beaten again and again for calling his horse "Cotso" (diminutive of "Constantine"), or a woman dragged to the police-station because her parrot was heard whistling the Constantine March. Volumes would be needed to record the petty persecutions which arose from {212} the use of that popular name: suffice it to say that prudent parents refrained from giving ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... Keekie Joe, trusted nobody. But since he had no intention of arresting Pee-wee and since the diminutive captive seemed rather angered than frightened, he released his hold. By a series of wriggles and contortions, Pee-wee adjusted his clothing and settled his neck in his stretched neckband. "Why don't—why—why don't you take a—a—a feller your size?" ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... offering from the grave, that might have closed over her;—as the Ranger approached the Buccaneer, in a frame of mind which it is utterly impossible to define, Dalton threw upon him a look so full of contempt, as he glanced over his diminutive and disproportioned form, that Robin never could have forgotten it, had it not passed unnoticed in the deep feeling of joy and thankfulness that possessed his whole soul. He seized the Skipper's hand with a warmth and energy of feeling that moved ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... off, he gave me a small bundle, in which was a pair of linen drawers, sent to me by Nickola, and also the Rev. Mr. Brooks' "Family Prayer Book." This gave me great satisfaction. Soon after, he returned with his captain, who had one arm slung up, yet with as many implements of war, as his diminutive wicked self could conveniently carry; he told me (through an interpreter who was his prisoner.) "that on his cruize he had fallen in with two Spanish privateers, and beat them off; but had three of his men killed, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... from the warrior's shoulder, was stuck a large eagle feather, the insignia of a chief. At his feet, where he had crumpled down under the enemy's bullets, lay the Indian lad in a huddled heap. It did not need the tiny eagle feather in the diminutive turban to convince Charley's observant eye that it was a case of father and son, a chief and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... little white frock, with a very long body, and very short sleeves, which looked (from a certain fullness about the hips,) as if it was intended to be worn with a hoop. Her slender throat was encircled by a black riband, with a small locket attached to it; and upon the top of her head rested a diminutive lace cap. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of that time were diminutive when compared with the sheep and oxen which are now driven to our markets. [69] Our native horses, though serviceable, were held in small esteem, and fetched low prices. They were valued, one with another, by the ablest of those who computed the national wealth, at not more than fifty ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the streets I saw many a familiar face. Mosher I saw. He had grown very fat, and was talking to a diminutive woman with heavy blond hair (she must have weighed about ninety-five pounds, I think). They went ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... but varying shape and colour—diminutive bodies ovate and round—brown, grey, glossy black with brown edgings, pink with grey quarterings and grey fringe, whence radiate five sprawling slender "legs," a foot or so long. Though doubtful in ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... would be snorting flame and its eyes smouldering fires, but instead its eyes were neat little windows with tidy curtains, for the monster turned out to be three diminutive houses on wheels drawn by a huge motor. What their end and purpose might be, is imaginable. If it is for the comfort of the High Command en campagne, the great clumsy procession rivaling the speed of a snail is a heap of trouble ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... shining surfaces, where emerald green mingled with the golden hues of the rising sun where floated a glimmer of ever-varying colours, like those on a pigeon's neck, were miniature mirrors or enormous beryls. Everywhere was magnificence, at once refined and stupendous; if it was not the most diminutive of palaces, it was the most gigantic of jewel-cases. A house for Mab or ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... be equally easy to set out a curved course, as, for instance, the curved stylobate of the Parthenon which rises about three inches in its length of one hundred feet. By a simple calculation any desired curve could be laid out in this way. The word scamillus is a diminutive of scamnum, a mounting-block ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... presented this peculiarity, that the warehouses on its left side became more and more solid and vast and tall as they neared the river, while the shops and dwellings on its right became poorer, meaner, and more diminutive in the same direction, as if there were some mysterious connection between them, which involved the adversity of the one in exact proportion to the prosperity of the other. Children and cats appeared to be the chief ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Now I am telling you of the couvre pieds because I know all women love exquisite things, and surely nothing could be more delicious than my couvre-pieds. Literally, it is a "cover for the feet," a sort of glorified and diminutive coverlet, made of the palest of pink silk, lined with the soft long-haired white fur known as mountain tibet, and interlined with down. The coverlet is bordered with a puffing of French lace, and the top ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... general dimensions, notwithstanding some loose assertions to the contrary, seem to be much the same as they were in the time of the Saracens. European critics, however, condemn its most elaborate beauties as "heavy and barbarous." Its celebrated portals are pronounced "diminutive, and in very bad taste." Its throng of pillars gives it the air of "a park rather than a temple," and the whole is made still more incongruous by the unequal length of their shafts, being grotesquely compensated by a proportionate variation of ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the more admirable. The attitude is that of a man flinging himself forth in the abandon of a violent leap, with legs and arms extended. His straining muscles are indicated with perfect faithfulness, and even the veins in the diminutive hand and the nails of the tiny fingers are clearly marked. The hair had been formed by curling strands of thin gold wire inserted in the skull. There can be no doubt that these figures formed part of ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... assistant with the Parisian accent has a little more bone than Miss Pupford, but is of the same trim orderly diminutive cast, and, from long contemplation, admiration, and imitation of Miss Pupford, has grown like her. Being entirely devoted to Miss Pupford, and having a pretty talent for pencil-drawing, she once made a ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... congregation—there is no village at Pitsoonda. Imagine a gigantic and noble building fit to be the living heart of a great metropolis, and inside of it but a few little pictures, brightly painted, and a diminutive rood-screen, scarcely higher than a five-barred gate. On the ceiling of the great dome was painted a lively and striking picture of Christ, probably done of old time, but in countenance resembling, strangely enough, the accepted portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson—a Christ with a certain amount ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... the ground there seemed to be neither doors nor windows. She had no doubt (though really I cannot think why) that the moment had come in which to use the nut which had been given her. She opened it, and out came a diminutive hall porter at whose belt hung a tiny chain, at the end of which was a golden key half as long as the smallest ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... just how do you suppose we are going to get this in the pie?" replied Alice, lifting from its position behind the bed a box so huge that the pie itself seemed almost diminutive in comparison. ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... the first day she followed me about at a wistful distance, watching me as if I might at any moment turn into the well-known and beloved relative I ought to have been. Even by undressing time I had not progressed far enough to be allowed intimate approach to small sacred nightgowns and diminutive shirts. The next morning, when I opened the door of the nursery where her maid was brushing her hair, the same dignity radiated from the little round figure perched on its high chair, the same almost hostile shyness gazed at me from ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... said of this form of clairvoyant perception: "The view of a distant scene obtained in this way is in many ways not unlike that seen through a telescope. Human figures usually appear very small, like those upon a distant stage, but in spite of their diminutive size they are clear as though they were close by. Sometimes it is possible by this means to hear what is said as well as to see what is done; but as in the majority of cases this does not happen, we must consider it rather as the manifestation of an additional power than as ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... thrown up a hurried earthwork and placed rails along the top of the parapet. In this position they were suddenly attacked by a force of apparently 500 Boers—so it was supposed—with one or two field guns. The small garrison lined their diminutive trenches and succeeded in keeping the enemy off for several hours; but had not some artillery reinforcements come up the line most opportunely to their assistance it might have fared badly with the plucky Northamptons. As it was, the Boers finally withdrew with some loss. On ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... rock-rabbit, but the savour of what the rock-rabbit had stored under the stone that had attracted Thor. And this booty still remained—a half-pint of ground-nuts piled carefully in a little hollow lined with moss. They were not really nuts. They were more like diminutive potatoes, about the size of cherries, and very much like potatoes in appearance. They were starchy and sweet, and fattening. Thor enjoyed them immensely, rumbling in that curious satisfied way deep down in his chest as ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... in the Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left him in legacy her two-year-old son. The old man could ill contrive to support himself, but he took up the additional burden uncomplainingly, and it soon became welcome and precious to him. Little Nello—which was but a pet diminutive for Nicolas—throve with him, and the old man and the little child lived in the poor little ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... Maury, for whom I brought a letter of introduction from General Johnston. He is a very gentlemanlike and intelligent but diminutive Virginian, and had only just assumed ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... which could not be knocked down by cannon balls, and which couldn't make history because they were few in number, and nearly all English. Mine were of every European power, and many Asiatic ones. They were diminutive and numerous, could take shelter in a forest of pine cones and were admirably suited to be mown down at the cannon's mouth. The King of England was a person with a fine figure. He had one leg and one arm, and the plume of his dragoon's helmet ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... acres of slippery seaweed, looked very far away. She has everything that a properly appointed station de bains should have, but everything is on a Lilliputian scale. The whole place looked like a huge Nueremburg toy. There is a diminutive hotel, in which, properly, the head waiter should be a pigmy and the chambermaid a sprite, and beside it there is a Casino on the smallest possible scale. Everything about the Casino is so harmoniously undersized that it seems a matter of course that the newspapers in the reading-room ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Mediterranean, several species of Oliva, Ancillaria, Mitra, Terebra, Pyrula, Fasciolaria, and Conus. Of the cones there are no less than eight species, some very large, whereas the only European cone now living is of diminutive size. The genus Nerita, and many others, are also represented by individuals of a type now characteristic of equatorial seas, and wholly unlike any Mediterranean forms. These proofs of a more elevated temperature seem to imply the higher antiquity of the faluns as ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... fell, a murmur most gratifying to the ear, and, seen from a distance, shewed as a spray of finest, powdered quick-silver, and no sooner reached the little plain, than 'twas gathered into a tiny channel, by which it sped with great velocity to the middle of the plain, where it formed a diminutive lake, like the fishponds that townsfolk sometimes make in their gardens, when they have occasion for them. The lake was not so deep but that a man might stand therein with his breast above the water; and so clear, so pellucid was the water that ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... or carved, and the same was retained in France during the medieval period; but in England,in Early English work, a circular deeply moulded abacus was introduced, which in the 14th and 15th centuries was transformed into an octagonal one. The diminutive of Abacus, ABACISCUS, is applied in architecture to the chequers or squares of a tessellated pavement . "Abacus'' is also the name of an instrument employed by the ancients for arithmetical calculations; pebbles, hits of bone or coins being used as counters. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the van; and a little sliding window opened onto the driver's seat in front. Altogether it was a very neat affair. The windows in front and back were curtained and a pot of geraniums stood on a diminutive shelf. I was amused to see a sandy Irish terrier curled up on a bright Mexican blanket ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... diminutive city of the Italian Marches, was the birth-place of Rafael Sabatini, and here he spent his early youth. The city is glamorous with those centuries the author makes live again in his novels with ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... its awkward and extravagant actions, until recently attributed to the gods, the demons or the dead, am only now asking for our serious attention. It has been likened to an immense block of which our personality is but a diminutive facet; to an iceberg of which we see a few glistening prisms that represent our life, while nine-tenths of the enormous mass remain buried in the shadows of the sea. According to Sir Oliver Lodge, it is that part of our being that has not become carnate; according ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... every-day plodding life with vacant brains and unexpanded souls, while Archibald Mackie, in his non-suggestive hovel, gathered big thoughts and exalted ideas, and grew majestic in intellect, even as he was diminutive in his outward frame. Not a stone upon the waste before him but could tell him its thrilling tale of weary heads pillowed thereon, when all other resting-places failed; of scanty meals spread out upon them for lack of a social board; and of forlorn and forsaken ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... of the savages pass across in the same direction as the first, and now he noticed, what had escaped him before, that they were diminutive creatures, certainly not more than four feet high. He had clearly stumbled upon a settlement of forest pigmies. From what he had read of pigmy races he knew that it required extreme patience and a great expenditure of time to win their ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... it been possible, was now useless, as there was neither hill nor rising ground of any kind within the compass of our view, which was only bounded by the horizon in every quarter, entirely devoid of timber except a few diminutive gums on the very edge of the stream, might be so termed. The water in the bed of the lagoon, as it might now be properly denominated, was stagnant; its breadth about twenty feet, and the heads of grass growing in it, shewed it to ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... themselves vast, wonderful, frequently awful, in many instances solemn, in many exquisitely beautiful, and in a great number eminently sublime. All these attributes, however, they possess, if considered only in the abstract, in degrees very humble and diminutive, compared with the appearance which they make, when beheld as the works of Jehovah. Mountains, the ocean, and the heavens, are majestic and sublime. Hills and valleys, soft landscapes, trees, fruits, and flowers, and many objects in the animal ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... not the true account. The full history of the name is too long to give here, but the short account is this—"The old name was Prime Rolles—or primerole. Primerole is an abbreviation of Fr., primeverole: It., primaverola, diminutive of prima vera from flor di prima vera, the first spring flower. Primerole, as an outlandish unintelligible word, was soon familiarized into primerolles, and this into primrose."—DR. PRIOR. The name Primrose was not ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... before ten o'clock, and when the Boulevard Beaumarchais is still full of life, activity, and noise, every thing begins to close. One by one the lights go out, and the great windows with diminutive panes become dark. And if, after midnight, some belated citizen passes on his way home, he quickens his step, feeling lonely and uneasy, and apprehensive of the reproaches of his concierge, who is likely to ask him whence he may be coming ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... azo, acho, onazo, achon, ote, astro, aco, and a few others (augmentative, suggesting (generally) disparagement); ete, in, ino, itito, itico, itillo, and a few others (diminutive). If a noun ends in a vowel, this is elided[178] before ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... our eyes to the Place of the Constitution; and, indeed, I had forgotten to say, that that majestic square was filled with military, with exceedingly small firelocks, the men ludicrously young and diminutive for the most part, in a uniform at once cheap and tawdry,—like those supplied to the warriors at Astley's, or from still humbler theatrical wardrobes: indeed, the whole scene was just like that of a little theatre; the houses ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... over it with a heavy stone on the top to keep it close to the surface. When Barney entered this cabin he found the vanithee, or woman of the house, engaged in the act of grinding oats into meal for their dinner with a quern, consisting of two diminutive millstones turned by the hand; this was placed upon a praskeen, or coarse apron, spread under it on the floor to receive the meal. An old woman, her mother, sat spinning flax with the distaff—for as yet flax wheels were scarcely known—and a lubberly young fellow about ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... loose end a little shake, and casts it skilfully over his shoulder, so that it falls across his back, and, hanging there, displays the bright lining. He pauses to watch the result of an infantile accident. The baby picks itself up and brushes the dust from its diminutive frock with all the earnestness of early youth. And the cavalier ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... of a diminutive scuffle outside, then the door opened and a smartly-dressed young man, regardless of the fair form of Miss Chiffers, which was coiled round his leg, ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... Quasimodo of Hugo's "Notre-Dame." Decrepit, misshapen, deaf, diminutive, he lived in Paris about 1839, and was organ-blower and bell-ringer in the church of Saint-Louis en l'Ile. He also acted as messenger in the confidential financial correspondence between Bricheteau and ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... "lella," or Arab lady, who tempted the Scorpions to charge ten times its value for everything she bought by telling them to send them to a personage whose title was exalted. Gib is a very small place, and, like most diminutive communities, is a veritable school for scandal. I took my last walk over the Rock, past the "Esmeralda Confectionery," which still had up the notice that hot-cross buns were to be had from seven to ten a.m. on Good Friday, and paced to the light-house on the nose of the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... you pack him up so! Yes, yes, you poor little thing," said the grandmother soothingly, taking the diminutive Sami out of one wrapping and then ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri
... an omnivorous reader of novels and every other form of book, which he carries to and from his home in a favorite brown-leather handbag of diminutive size, he never had an ambition to create novels, though to his everlasting credit wrote two for a particular purpose which he accomplished by injecting the right tone or "color" into tales depicting the inner life on daily newspapers. We of the old Press Club used to grow choleric as we would ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... little fellow, with a snub nose and eyes so diminutive and deeply sunken, that but for the sparks of light they emitted, they would have been undiscernible. The expression of his face was like that of a wiry terrier, being derived partly from his occupation, which, in his opinion, required him to be as vigilant in spying out offenders ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... FESCUE-GRASS.—This is very highly spoken of in all dissertations that have hitherto been written on the merits of our grasses; but its value must be confined to alpine situations, for its diminutive size added to its slow growth renders it in my opinion very inferior to the duriuscula. In fact, I am of opinion that these are often confounded together, and the merits of the former applied to this, although they are different in many respects. Those who wish to obtain more of its ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... than for access. We have seen in the illustrations in Chapters III and IV, openings of considerable size so located in the face of the outer wall as to unfit them for use as doorways, and others whose size is wholly inadequate, but which are still provided with the typical though diminutive single-paneled door. Many of these small openings, occurring most frequently in the back walls of house rows, have the jambs, lintels, etc., characteristic of the typical modern door. However, as the drawings above referred to indicate, there are many openings concerning the use of which ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... ninety-four are by Strato himself and sixty by Meleager. It has either been carelessly formed, or suffered from interpolation afterwards. Some of the epigrams are foreign to the subject of the collection. Six are on women;[20] and four of these are on women whose names end in the diminutive form, Phanion, Callistion, etc., which suggests the inference that they were inserted at a late date and by an ignorant transcriber who confused these with masculine forms. For all the epigrams of Strato's collection the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... and her footman goes twice, Ay, and each time returning he brings her an ice. The patient Miss Humble receives, when he comes, A diminutive bun; let us hope ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... A diminutive gas-jet's sickly, yellow flame illuminated the room with poverty-stricken inadequacy; high up on the wall, bordering the ceiling, the moonlight, as though contemptuous of its artificial competitor, streamed in through a small, square window, and laid a white, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... is impossible not to credit rather the explanation given by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, moreover, affords the practically definite proof that the boy was at first, as a term of endearment, called "Pennini," which was later abbreviated to "Pen." The cognomen, Hawthorne states, was a diminutive of "Apennino," which was bestowed upon the boy in babyhood because he was very small, there being a statue in Florence of ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... nature had given House an unerring instinct for getting where, with his small figure, he could see. The ego of the passionate spectator is as peculiar as that of the book collector or the curiosity hunter. Given a shoulder tall enough the diminutive House perches upon it, like a small boy watching a circus parade from his father's broad back, whether the shoulder be Morton's in his youth, or Wilson's ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... the poker in the fire and made it red hot, then bored a hole with it through the head, and tightened the shaft with wedges until the club was complete. With this primitive driver we could get what was for our diminutive limbs a really long ball, or a long taw as one should say. In these later days a patent has been taken out for drivers with the shaft let into the head, which are to all intents and purposes the same in principle as those which we used to make ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... had been aimed a trifle too high. It went directly over the lads on the diminutive deck. Instinctively they all ducked their heads as the missile screamed wickedly in ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Lapps is largely salmon catching in summer. These fish are very abundant in the rivers. Many, during the codfish season, engage themselves as sailors on the Arctic Sea. Almost every family has a small farm, stocked with diminutive cows; besides they have sheep and goats. During the summer their reindeer are taken care of by the nomadic Lapps. These reindeer have to go to the mountains near the Arctic Sea, on account of ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... described Allophryne ruthveni as a new genus and species of diminutive bufonid from British Guiana. Noble (1931) considered A. ruthveni to be a toothless relative of Centrolenella and placed the genus in the Hylidae. Gallardo (1965) suggested that Allophryne is a leptodactylid of uncertain ...
— Systematic Status of a South American Frog, Allophryne ruthveni Gaige • John D. Lynch
... combination of crossopterygian and amphibian characters, Hesperoherpeton is specialized in certain features of the skull. The orbits are much enlarged, probably in correlation with the diminutive size of the animal, and this has been accompanied by loss of several bones. The frontal and squamosal nearly meet each other, and both form part of the rim of the orbit. The bones of the posterior part of the ...
— A New Order of Fishlike Amphibia From the Pennsylvanian of Kansas • Theodore H. Eaton
... roaming.' We are great in obsolete seals, and in faded pin- cushions, and in rickety camp-stools, and in exploded cutlery, and in miniature vessels, and in stunted little telescopes, and in objects made of shells that pretend not to be shells. Diminutive spades, barrows, and baskets, are our principal articles of commerce; but even they don't look quite new somehow. They always seem to have been offered and refused somewhere else, before they came down to ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Perigord, the chef? Well, if Monsieur Boulederouloue weighed twice as much as M. Jasmin, the latter certainly weighed twice as much as Monsieur Perigord. Diminutive and meagre to a degree, the master of the kitchen possessed a mighty soul, and was endowed with an energy of purpose that must have made him first and foremost in any sphere of life; but fate had ordained that he should only be the ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... promises to go with me to that iridescent music-hall up the street. Chubby's appearance is deceptive. She is diminutive, with a Kenwigs tail of plaited hair down her straight little back. But she is almost twenty; she is amazingly swift behind the bar, and no man has yet bilked her of a penny. There is a Spartan courage about the small maiden, too, which I cannot but admire. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the Camp Fire girls were by this time calling Mary Gilchrist by her diminutive title, as she seemed to prefer it, standing up on the seat of her motor, ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook |
