"Idiomatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Mr. Simlins. "I would if I was you—if I wanted to. Mr. Linden, it was a providential thing, that you should come along at this idiomatical moment. There aint another man in Pattaquasset would ha' done this ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... principal endeavour to avoid all harshness and severity of diction; he is, therefore, sometimes verbose in his transitions and connexions, and sometimes descends too much to the language of conversation; yet if his language had been less idiomatical, it might have lost somewhat of its genuine Anglicism. What he attempted, he performed; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetick[204]; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... grammatical function of any of the words in the following sentence, with the exception of [Ch] (an interrogative, by the way, which here happens to mean "why" but in other contexts is equivalent to "how," "which" or "what"): [Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch] "Affair why must ancient," or in more idiomatic English, "Why necessarily stick to the ways of the ancients in such matters?" Or take a proverbial saying like [Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch], which may be correctly rendered "The less a man has seen, the more he has to wonder at." It is one thing, however, to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... among his rivals was esteemed as the most perfect model of political writing. He was a strong party-writer on the government side, for Charles the Second, and the compositions of the author seem to us coarse, yet they contain much idiomatic expression. His AEsop's Fables are a curious specimen of familiar style. Queen Mary showed a due contempt of him, after the Revolution, by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Homeric blows and knocks, Argonautic voyaging, or Theban family woe that inflamed their imaginations and spurred them onward. They were plodding away at the Greek Testament, immersed in a chapter of the idiomatic and difficult Epistle ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... memory sundry technicalities; but in vain have I submitted these terms of a strange dialect to the strictest etymological research. In vain have I conversed upon this subject with the most intelligent dry-goods dealers. In learning the few idiomatic phrases they employ, I have experienced only the satisfaction which young students in Greek literature feel, when they have, with infinite labor, mastered the alphabet of that ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... in its idiomatic structure definite articles and indefinite, as in Latin? Some think that it has, others that it has not. They ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... The idiomatic expressions in this dialect are numerous, many will be found in the Glossary; the following may be mentioned. I'd 'sley do it, for I would as lief do it. I have occasionally in the Glossary suggested ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... home in Scotland, between the novels, or the passages in the novels, that are idiomatic, native, homegrown, intended for his own people, and the novels not so limited, the romances of English or foreign history—Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, Quentin Durward. But as a matter of fact these latter, though ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... fate less perverse ? Partly in wretched French to the officer and partly in idiomatic English to the dragoman, he proclaimed his fiery desire to accompany the expedition. The officer immediately beamed upon him. In fact, he was delighted. The dragoman had naturally told him many falsehoods concerning Coleman, incidentally referring to himself ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... been that of George Borrow, published in London in 1860, and written in that charming and racy style which characterises his other and better known works. He has, however, fallen into many errors, which were only natural, seeing that the Visions abound in colloquial words and phrases, and in idiomatic forms of expression which it would be most difficult for one foreign to ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... that the student derives from the dictionary is not sufficient. When one hears an educated foreigner speak, he detects little errors in his use of words,—errors which are not the fault of definition, but errors in the idiomatic use of words. This use cannot be learned from a dictionary, where words are studied individually, but only by studying them in combination with other words where the influence of one word upon another may be noted. There is little difference in the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... more stilted and less terse and idiomatic than the colloquial dialect; and even where pure Malay is employed, the influence of Arabic compositions is very marked. Whole sentences, sometimes, though clothed in excellent Malay, are unacknowledged translations of Arabic phrases. This may be verified by any one ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... Percy, D.C.L.—An English-Arabic Lexicon. In which the equivalent for English Words and Idiomatic Sentences are rendered into literary and colloquial ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... her pronunciation of Spanish was faultless, and I always took particular pleasure in hearing her read the idiomatic Castilian of Cervantes. Nevertheless, my mind wandered; and, try as I might, I could not help thinking more of the theft of the diamonds than the doughty deeds of the Don and the shrewd sayings of Sancho Panza. ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... represents the high-water mark of classical translation, has given us the following reminders: "An English translation ought to be idiomatic and interesting, not only to the scholar, but also to the unlearned reader. It should read as an original work, and should also be the most faithful transcript which can be made of the language from which the translation is taken, consistently with the ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... that constant dwelling upon such models of simple, pure, idiomatic English is the easiest and on all accounts the best way for children to acquire ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... are none the less pleased with it, and suspicious though you be that the voice is Lavengro's and the hands are the hands of some one else, you are glad to surrender to the illusion, and you regret when it is dispelled. Moreover, that all of it should be set down in racy, nervous, idiomatic English, with a kind of eloquence at once primitive and scholarly, precious but homely—the speech of an artist in sods and turfs—if at first it surprise and charm yet ends by seeming so natural and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... week following, and circulated all over the land and beyond it till they filled volumes; no preacher of the time had such an audience, and none such a wide popularity; he preached the old Puritan gospel, but it was presented in such a form and in such simple, idiomatic phrase, as to commend it as no less a gospel to his own generation: besides his sermons as published, other works were also widely circulated; special mention may be made ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that occasion (when surrounded by all his splendor, and assisted by the seductive arts of Terpsichore and Bacchus), to whisper to Mrs. M'Catchley those soft words which—but why not here let Mr. Richard Avenel use his own idiomatic and unsophisticated expression? "Please the pigs, then," said Mr. Avenel to himself, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... to the revision and editing, and not to the translators, for every good translation must be fluent and idiomatic, to secure which is the most difficult task. Pastor Gohdes also rendered valuable help in the final revision of parts. The translation of the analyses is by ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... his good-breeding. The patience, gentleness, and kind feeling, with which he contrived at once to excuse and to remedy certain blunders made by the workmen in the execution of his orders, and the clearness with which, in perfectly correct and idiomatic English, slightly tinged with a foreign accent, he explained the mechanical and scientific reasons for the construction he had suggested, gave evidence at once of no common talent, and of a considerate-ness ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... and written composition. The correct use of written language is best taught by selecting for compositions subject-matter that deeply interests the children. If persevered in, this will secure a good, strong, idiomatic use of English. If the words of a selection that has been studied appear now and then in the children's conversation or writing, it should be a matter for praise; for this means that new words have been added to their vocabulary, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... thus indicated the nature of the great contest in language between the conventional and the idiomatic. Idioms are just what their name implies. They are the commonalty of language,—private, proletarian words, who do the work, "dum alteri tulerunt honores." They come to us from all handiworks and callings, where you will always find them at their posts. Sharp, energetic, incisive, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... down mechanically, but for a moment saw no one. Then, deep in the shadow of the wall, he descried two figures walking slowly side by side. One was a man and the other a woman. They were talking in a French so rapid and idiomatic that Rushford could distinguish no word of it, except that the man addressed his ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... "And you think me incapable of keeping your secret, ah, gimmick, I believe is the idiomatic ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... or school. Let us close with the words of a most [16] versatile master of English—happily not yet included in Mr. Saintsbury's book—a writer who has dealt with all the perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as idiomatic, as easy and elegant, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... upholding the independence of the national thought, whilst he enriched it with the best treasure of other lands, he realised the ideal of the historian. He became more German in extreme old age, and less impressive in his idiomatic French and English than in his own language. The lamentations of men he thought good judges, Mazade and Taine, and the first of literary critics, Montegut, diluted somewhat his admiration for the country of St. Bernard and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... men, and for them it is now specially issued in its present form. For the general public it may be as well to add that, where translations are appended to the French phrases, those translations usually follow the idiomatic and particular meaning attached to these expressions in the argot of the Army of Algeria, and not the correct or literal one given to such words or ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... writing the above, I was thinking rather of the mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as brahman, atman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that brahman, neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in that sense in the Atharva-veda, and in several of the Brahmanas. There ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... commercialists, occasional dandies of the Guard regiments, and the rest. Old Lord Colchicum was there in attendance upon Mademoiselle Caracoline, who had been riding in the ring; and who talked her native French very loud, and used idiomatic expressions of exceeding strength as she walked about, leaning on the arm ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... notice was taken of them, but on 3rd March we were asked if we would withdraw from the college for three months in order that we might "reconsider our opinions", so that possibly we might "be led by Divine guidance to such views as would be compatible with the retention of our present position". Idiomatic English was clearly not a strong point with the council. Of course we refused. If we had consented it might have been reasonably concluded that we had taken very little trouble with our "views". Again we asked for compliance with our requests, but the only answer we got was that ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... sentence is treated in the same way, the pupils translating the words previously given and the instructor giving the meaning of the new words only. Then making use of the first idiomatic expression "il y avait," an explanation is given, showing how it can be changed into the interrogative form "y avait-il?" and the pupils are questioned rapidly as follows, using only the words ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber
... je crois bien: on l'entendait d'une lieue, 'I should rather think it was talking, you could hear it a mile off.' The sentence is elliptical, vous demandez being understood before s'il. Note the idiomatic use of bien, and cf. je le veux bien, 'I am perfectly willing'; voulez-vous bien vous en aller, 'won't you go away!' je donnerais bien un franc, 'I shouldn't mind ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... He was highly intelligent, and he interpreted my statements with a fluency and accuracy which were astonishing. Only now and again did he stumble and hesitate. This was when he was presented with an unfamiliar expression or idiomatic sentence. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... of Journals, memoirs for the Geographical Society, articles on African Missions, letters for the Missionary Society, and private letters without end, each usually as long as a pamphlet. He was master of a clear, simple, idiomatic style, well fitted to record the incidents of a journey—sometimes poetical in its vivid pictures, often brightening into humor, and sometimes deepening into pathos. Viewing it page by page, the style of the Missionary ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... an example. The combinations and permutations are infinite; they give a healthy knowledge of word-building, and can be used in putting whole pages of carefully prepared idiomatic English into Esperanto. Practical experience shows that, given the necessary crude roots, the necessary suffixes, and a one-page grammar of the Esperanto language, an intelligent person can produce in Esperanto a translation of a page of idiomatic English, not Ollendorfian phrases, ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... death have been illustrated by copious translations, together with discussions of the specimens chosen. The translations, I may add, have been made direct from the original texts, and aim to be as literal as is consonant with presentation in idiomatic English. ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... was about Paris. The King spoke of pleasant adventures there, of the life he and Madame had lived, of the delight of having money to spend, really enough of it, in a city like Paris. He told his stories well, his vehemently idiomatic English emphasizing his points. He became lyrical in his appreciation of the joys of life. When dessert was on the table and port took the place of champagne he lapsed into ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... young Malay, showing his white teeth, and speaking fair idiomatic English, though with a peculiar accent. "I've been a great deal at Penang and Singapore. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... to an inanimate object (here a window) is highly idiomatic and must be cultivated by the practical Arabist. In the H. V. the unfinished part is the four-and-twentieth door ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... created, the qualities which rendered it popular a generation ago remain, in a shrewdness of observation, a fund of anecdote and racy adventure, a quaintness of expression, and keen mother wit. In no other work of literature is there preserved so large a collection of idiomatic phrases, words, and similes,—whole stories in themselves and pictures of society at the time, which grow more interesting, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... I turned in, he walked a step or two farther on, as if not noticing to what place I had brought him. Then he drew himself up short, and gazed around him for a moment. "Ha, the Anglais," he said—and I may mention in passing that his English, in spite of a slight southern accent, was idiomatic and excellent. "It is here, then; it is here!" He was addressing once more ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... poets of the school curriculum, Shakespeare in his writings openly acknowledged his acquaintance. In 'Henry V' the dialogue in many scenes is carried on in French, which is grammatically accurate if not idiomatic. In the mouth of his schoolmasters, Holofernes in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and Sir Hugh Evans in 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' Shakespeare placed Latin phrases drawn directly from Lily's grammar, from the 'Sententiae Pueriles,' and from 'the good old Mantuan.' The influence of Ovid, especially the 'Metamorphoses,' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... which almost stuns the ears of their seniors. Why, then, should they find such difficulty in writing it? When you listen to the animated talk of a bright school-boy or college student, full of a subject which really interests him, you say at once that such command of racy and idiomatic English words must of course be exhibited in his "compositions" or his "themes"; but when the latter are examined, they are commonly found to be feeble and lifeless, with hardly a thought or a word which bears any stamp of freshness or originality, and which are so inferior to his ordinary ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... met him, a few days later, he must have been struck by the sudden warmth of my friendship—the quick idiomatic cordiality of my French to him. This mutual friendship of ours lasted till his death in '88. And so did ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... the regicide government. Salmasius was a man of enormous reading and no judgment. He says of himself that he wrote Latin more easily than his mother-tongue (French). And his Latin was all the more readable because it was not classical or idiomatic. With all his reading—and Isaac Casaubon had said of him when in his teens that he had incredible erudition—he was still, at sixty, quite unacquainted with public affairs, and had neither the politician's ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... and relishing? Finally, is not in many cases that which is spoken of as something extraneous, dragged in aforethought, for the purpose of singularity, the result more truly of a most earnest and single-minded labor after the utmost rendering of idiomatic conversational truth; the rejection of all stop-gap words; about the most literal transcript of fact compatible with the ends of poetry and true feeling for Art? This a point worthy note, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... image! I have retained the idiomatic expression of the original, raised himself, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to me to give the more grand ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... watchfulness, which inspired Morton with great distrust and aversion. Mr. Birnie not only spoke French like a native, but all his habits, his gestures, his tricks of manner, were, French; not the French of good society, but more idiomatic, as it were, and popular. He was not exactly a vulgar person, he was too silent for that, but he was evidently of low extraction and coarse breeding; his accomplishments were of a mechanical nature; he was an extraordinary arithmetician, he was a very skilful chemist, and kept a ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... blank verse as highly characteristic and original: but yet Milton has contributed to its formation, and occasionally there is a striking resemblance in turn and diction, while Mr. Tennyson is the more idiomatic of the two. The chastity and moral elevation of this volume, its essential and profound though not didactic Christianity, are such as perhaps cannot be matched throughout the circle of English literature in conjunction with an equal power: and such as to recall a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Athenaeum both brothers give splendid testimony to their astonishing and epoch-making gift in transferring classical and Romance metrical forms into elegant, idiomatic German; they give affectionate attention to the insinuating beauty of elegiac verse, and secure charming effects in some of the most alien Greek forms, not to mention terza rima, ottava rima, the Spanish gloss, and not a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... business, means the agreement as to their mutual transactions. The completion of that was reached when they took the profits and divided them. It might include the mutual reckoning of profit and loss. The phrase "from mouth to interest" is very idiomatic. The "mouth," or verbal relationships, included all they said, the terms they agreed upon. The word "interest" here replaces the more usual "gold;" both mean the "profit," or the balance due to each. Usually we have the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... thing fixed and settled. That his father and his brother Laurence should accompany him was also to be expected. But the other and more richly attired was somewhat less easy to be certified. The Lord James of Douglas it was, who spoke French with the idiomatic use and easy accentuation of a native, albeit of those central provinces which had longest owned the sway of the King of France. The brothers MacKim also spoke the language of the country after a fashion. For many Frenchmen had come over to Galloway ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... War, an allegory, which describes the contest between Immanuel and Diabolus for the conquest of the city of Mansoul. This does not by any means share the popularity of The Pilgrim's Progress. The language of all his works is common and idiomatic, but precise and strong: it is the vigorous English of an unpretending man, without the graces of the schools, but expressing his meaning with remarkable clearness. Like Milton's Paradise Lost, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... form of greeting to say "How do you do?" It is an idiomatic phrase, and does not exact an answer as to the state of your health any more than the salutation "Good day." If anxious for information as to how you are, more direct inquiries will follow the salutation. Only ignorant persons reply to "How do you do?" "Very well, thank you; ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... sympathetic, humorous writing about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales. Mr. Lawson shows us what living in the bush really means. The result is a real book—a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic." ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... of Madame Grambeau was barely detectable, and her phraseology was that of a well-translated book—correct, but not idiomatic, and bearing about it the idiosyncrasy of the language from which it was derived. She was evidently a person of culture and native power of intellect combined, and her finely-moulded face, as well as every gesture and tone, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... we must have him form the letter to see that he really knows the outline, the ultimate aim is to enable him to form these practically without conscious direction. In language work, also, the child must acquire many idiomatic expressions as habitual modes ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... emotions which inhabit the twilight of the mind; of those dim half-seen forms which exercise the strongest influence upon the imagination, and are the most tempting subjects for the poet's art. De Foe, in truth, was little enough of a poet. Sometimes by mere force of terse idiomatic language he rises into real poetry, as it was understood in the days when Pope and Dryden were our lawgivers. It is often really vigorous. The ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... are very decided differences. I'm from Massachusetts myself. Perhaps the points of difference show more in the women,—the ones who stay at home, I mean, and become more local and idiomatic than the men. You are not one of the daughters ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... noblest and most perfect specimen of our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner of the Orientalist who "commences" and "concludes"—never begins and ends, who never uses a short word if he can find a long word, who systematically rejects terse and idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism is to be employed and whose pompous stilted periods are the very triumph of the "Deadly-lively"! By arts precisely similar the learned George Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... thoroughly estimable woman, cordially regarded by the considerate members of the theatrical profession with whom she had dealings. While recording her eccentricities, and conceding that occasionally her language was more forcible and idiomatic than tasteful or refined, Dibdin hastens to add that "she owned an excellent heart, with much of the appearance and manners of a gentlewoman." Grimaldi was not less prompt in expressing his complete satisfaction in regard ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Froissart, and extracted enough from him in rapid French spasms—his idiomatic staccato French is often beyond my understanding—to give me a general idea of what Dawson had done. Thereafter I pursued my inquiries, pumping Dawson himself—who, for some reason, did not greatly value the affair—tackling others who knew more ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... objections were now removed. The educated Arab finds a book printed in characters modeled after the most approved specimens of Arab caligraphy. He soon perceives the style to be that of a man who is master of this wonderful language in all its grammatical and idiomatic niceties and rich resources. As a literary work it secures his respect, and thus invites a candid perusal. If he reads it, he finds the truths of Christianity clearly and correctly stated. Its beneficial influence will yet be ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... and men from the angle of another individual, to install oneself within his mentality and make it one's habitation? To sit in his bones—what glimpses of unexplored regions! Were a man to know what his fellow truly thinks; could he feel in his own body those impulses which drive the other to his idiomatic acts and words—what an insight he would gain! Morally, it might well amount to "tout comprendre, c'est ne rien pardonner"; but who troubles about pardoning or condemning? Intellectually, it would be a feast. Thus immersed into an alien personality, a man ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... individual, specific, proper, personal, original, private, respective, definite, determinate, especial, certain, esoteric, endemic, partial, party, peculiar, appropriate, several, characteristic, diagnostic, exclusive; singular &c. (exceptional) 83; idiomatic; idiotypical; typical. this, that; yon, yonder. Adv. specially, especially, particularly &c. adj.; in particular, in propria persona[Lat]; ad hominem[Lat]; for my part. each, apiece, one by one, one at a time; severally, respectively, each to each; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "The most important peculiarity of American English is a laxity, irregularity, and confusion in the use of particles. The same thing is, indeed, observable in England, but not to the same extent, though some gross departures from idiomatic propriety, such as different to for different from, are common in England, which none but very ignorant persons would be guilty of in America.... In the tenses of the verbs, I am inclined to think that well-educated Americans conform more ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... supposed, rather desultory teaching. But she took the corrections and explanations with a sweetness that was quite enchanting. And she could translate quite well, in an idiomatic fashion. Really, with the right kind of training she would ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Orleans for the twelve "deniers'' he received there when "poor and naked'' on his way to Paris. He translated seven books of Diodorus (1554), the Daphnis et Chloe of Longus (1559) and the Opera Moralia of Plutarch (1572). His vigorous and idiomatic version of Plutarch, Vies des hommes illustres, was translated into English by Sir Thomas North, and supplied Shakespeare with materials for his Roman plays. Montaigne said of him,"I give the palm to Jacques Amyot over all our French writers, not only for the simplicity and purity ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Booch-Arkossy in the "Eco de Madrid" recommend the translation of a good idiomatic work into English and its translation into the language of the original, carefully comparing such retranslation with the original and noting mistakes. With the teacher, such translation may be made by word of mouth, the teacher translating into English and the pupil retranslating ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous
... will not always find the translation of the speeches in idiomatic English, but it may be pointed out that in most cases that defect is due to the translator having aimed at preserving, as far as possible the stamp of originality as it exists ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... with an anguished mute appeal for help. Mrs. Tootle repeated her question with emphasis and a change of countenance which he knew too well. The poor fellow had not the tact to appear to understand, and, as he might easily have done, mystify her by some idiomatic remark. He stammered out his apologies and excuses, with the effect ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... easy, idiomatic, and nervous style marks all Thackeray's work for his twenty-six years of activity, and is equally perfect for whatever purpose it is used, and in whatever key he may choose to compose. It naturally culminates in Vanity Fair, written just in the middle of his literary career. Here not ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... supply it. Excuse the defect of all idea, or spiritual intuition of God, and allow yourself to bring Him as plaintiff or defendant into a common-law court,—and then I cannot conceive a clearer or cleverer piece of special pleading than Asgill has here given. The language is excellent—idiomatic, simple, perspicuous, at once significant and lively, that is, expressive of the thought, and also of a manly proportion of feeling appropriate to it. In short, it is the ablest attempt to exhibit a scheme of religion without ideas, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... characters, incidents, and scenes alike live in that of his readers as things actually known and remembered by themselves, in its touches of tenderness and quaint humour, its bursts of heart-moving eloquence, and its pure, nervous, idiomatic English, Macaulay has said, "Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road on which he has been backwards and forwards a hundred times," and he adds that "In England during the latter half of the seventeenth century there were ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the rostrum they extended their audio-appendages and retractile fingers and accorded him a round of applause. He extended his own "hands" and held them up for silence, then, retracting them again, he seated himself before the little lectern and began his report, the idiomatic translation of which ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... book were German proverbs and "Idiomatic Phrases," by which latter would appear to be meant in all languages, "phrases for the use of idiots":—"A sparrow in the hand is better than a pigeon on the roof."—"Time brings roses."—"The eagle does not catch flies."—"One should ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... of their brows, to read a meaning into that miracle of agglutinative ingenuity, an Hungarian sentence, will be able to appreciate the immense labour of rendering some four hundred pages of a Magyar masterpiece of peculiarly idiomatic difficulty into fairly readable English. But my profound admiration for the illustrious Hungarian romancer, and my intimate conviction that, of all continental novelists, he is most likely to appeal to healthy English taste, which has ever preferred ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Carlyle himself?—a dread image-breaker, implacable as Cromwell, but higher and nobler than he, with the tenderness of a woman in his inmost heart, full of music, and glory, and spirituality, and power; his speech genuine and idiomatic, not battles only, but conquests; and all his highest, best, and gentlest thoughts robed in the divine garments of religion and poetry;—such was Luther, and as such Carlyle delights to behold him. Are they not akin? We ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... An idiomatic expression, equivalent to our vulgar English phrase, "He was struck all ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... language. In the first place, it is in every respect different from all others which I have studied, with perhaps the exception of the Turkish, to which it seems to bear some remote resemblance in syntax, though none in words. In the second place, it abounds with idiomatic phrases, which can only be learnt by habit, and to the understanding of which a Dictionary is of little or no use, the words separately having either no meaning or a meaning quite distinct from that which they possess ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and varying their business and their potations, their fierce strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich humour, gleams of native wit, and racy phrases of idiomatic slang. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... familiarity with the language—far more than is required for simply reading a book. Though there are few provincialisms, and all classes of the people use the same words—except the words of foreign origin, which are used only by the upper classes—the peasant always speaks in a more laconic and more idiomatic ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... bed at Formosa, I hope, dear Lady Kirkbank,' the Cuban answered, with perfect sang froid. 'Smithson is out of it, as you idiomatic English say. I hope, Lady Kirkbank, you will be as kind to me as you have been to Smithson; and depend upon it I shall make Lady Lesbia as good a husband as ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of unknown meaning; apparently some kind of plant. Such a word seems out of place here, and may be idiomatic, like our "flowery language." But the preceding line obviously ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... Bridge; went fishing with him, for what they called white perch, probably the saibling; [Footnote: The American saibling, or golden trout, is only indigenous to Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, and to a small lake near Augusta.] and was greatly entertained with the peculiarities of an idiomatic Frenchman, an itinerant teacher of that language, whom Bridge, in the kindness of his heart, had taken into his own house. The last of July, Cilley also made his appearance, but did not bring the Madeira with him, and Hawthorne has left this rather critical portrait of ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... actor, commenced author, commenced tinker, commenced tailor, commenced candlestick-maker:—Elegant phraseology, though we venture to think, hardly idiomatic or logical, which came into vogue in England in the early part of the last century, and which, as it is never uttered here by cultivated people, it may be proper to remark, is there used by the best writers. Akin to it is another mode of expression as commonly met with in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... governs in a paramount sense the total possibilities and compass of pronunciation. A very famous line of Horace states it. What line? What is the supreme law in every language for correct pronunciation no less than for idiomatic propriety? ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... reprintings was thoroughly deserved, for North's Plutarch is among the richest and freshest monuments of Elizabethan prose literature, and, apart altogether from the use made of it by Shakespeare, is in itself an invaluable repertory of honest, manly, idiomatic English. No abstract of the Plutarchian matter need be given here, as all the more important passages drawn upon for the play are quoted in the footnotes to the text. These will show that in most of the leading ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... the student should underline in the text the idiomatic expressions here indicated, including those to which he is referred back in the Reviews. As irregular verb-forms are introduced with special frequency, it would be well to keep the list of irregular verbs at hand for reference. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... prologue, intended to bring Napoleon and Ivan-angel on the stage and lay the foundation of the plot. The story-teller's keen sense of fun and humor is shown in many little touches, but he never means to be irreverent. The whole legend is set forth in the racy, idiomatic, highly elliptical language of the common Russian muzhik, and is therefore extremely difficult of translation; but I have tried to preserve, as far as possible, the spirit and flavor of ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... the verses he was collecting. 'Vers de societe and vers d'occasion should' (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for however trivial the subject-matter may be—indeed, rather in proportion to its ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... convinced of the inestimable value of its having been made when it was, and being what it is. In his opinion it was made at the happy juncture when our language had attained adequate expansion and flexibility, and when at the same time its idiomatic strength was unimpaired by excess of technical distinctions and conventional refinements; and these circumstances, though of course infinitely subordinate to the spiritual influence of its subject-matter, he considered to be highly important in ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... formality were asked to have a drink at the bar. Meanwhile Denis Castellan had gone into the smoking-room, where he found the sandy-haired, blue-eyed man still sitting at his table in the corner, smoking his cigar, and looking over the paper. He touched him on the shoulder and whispered, in perfectly idiomatic German: ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... and difficult. Luther's complaints concerning the seriousness of his task in attempting to teach the patriarch Job to speak idiomatic German might doubtless have found an echo in the experience of this corps of scholars in forcing Luther into idiomatic English. We are confident, however, that, as in Luther's case, so also here, the general verdict of readers will be that they have been eminently ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... while]; "she had to let him in, and when he was, he lay," etc.; "the Giant got up cruelly early." These, and others like them, are profusely scattered through the tales, apparently from the mistaken notion that they have some idiomatic force. They jar upon the ear of the reader who comes to them from Mr. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... highest returns into the first, and is both mediate and immediate. As Luther's Bible was written in the language of the common people, so Hegel seems to have thought that he gave his philosophy a truly German character by the use of idiomatic German words. But it may be doubted whether the attempt has been successful. First because such words as 'in sich seyn,' 'an sich seyn,' 'an und fur sich seyn,' though the simplest combinations of nouns and verbs, require a difficult and elaborate ...
— Sophist • Plato
... had been trained at Balliol, in the days when Greek was the indispensable ear-mark of a gentleman, could thus meet their American associate on the most sympathetic terms. Page likewise spoke a brand of idiomatic English which immediately put him in a class by himself. He regarded words as sacred things. He used them, in his writing or in his speech, with the utmost care and discrimination; yet this did not result in a halting or stilted ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... as it is awkward. Tytler laid down his "Principles of Translation" in 1791—and a majority of translators are still unaware of their existence. Yet it ought to seem self-evident to every thinking mind that idiomatic equivalence, not verbal identity, must form the basis of a good and faithful translation. When an English mother uses "you" to her child, she establishes thereby the only rational equivalent for the "du" used under similar circumstances by her ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing: it is less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and is enriched and adorned with phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both ancient and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain license of expression by the difficulty ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sacred soil of my country." A publication that also interested me was a weekly paper brought out in Hamburg and written in English. It was filled with jokes, beneath which were German notes explaining any difficult or idiomatic words and phrases. With all their hatred of England the Huns still continued to ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... names and terms, as well as in idiomatic expressions, and the preparation of the explanatory notes has therefore been a perplexing task. A fairly complete statement under each mythological reference would in the aggregate reach the proportions of a treatise on Norse mythology, but the limitations of space made such elaboration impossible. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... much lost in this paraphrase, "No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity." The mildness of all government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalised by their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or forbidden—viz., "It is requested not to do so and so." Poverty among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held in common, or that all are equals in the extent of their possessions or the size and luxury of their habitations: ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... interrupted; stung by the bitter irony, he told the speaker in fluent idiomatic Hindustani precisely what he might expect if his "lord" ever got the shadow of a chance to lay ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... France as any foreign novelist. This is a little singular when it is remembered how difficult it is to convey the broken Indian language to a French reader. This is one of the best features of Cooper's novels—the striking manner in which he portrays the language of the North American Indian and his idiomatic expressions. Yet such is the charm of his stories that they have found their way over Europe. The translations into the ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... of intellectual cultivation; even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... work, Bismarck is following the psychic necessities of his character; is acting in a very personal way, upheld always by the soldier's virtue, ambition. There is also a large element of self-love. His idiomatic lust for control is to be accepted as a root-fact of his peculiar type of being. And while on the whole his ambition is exercised for the good of his country, herein he is acting, in addition, under the ardent appetite, in his case a passion, to dominate millions ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... despite unseemly tendencies, there is evident originality and even genius in the pages of this unusual book. In a comparatively temperate review, August 4, 1860, the Cosmopolite, of Boston, while deploring that nature is treated here without fig-leaves, declares the style wonderfully idiomatic and graphic, adding: "In his frenzy, in the fire of his inspiration, are fused and poured out together elements hitherto considered antagonistic in poetry—passion, arrogance, animality, philosophy, brag, humility, ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... written must depend, for their recognition, on the sympathetic insight of the reader. We can only promise him the utmost fidelity in the translation, having taken no other liberty than the substitution of common idiomatic phrases, peculiar to our language, for corresponding phrases in the other. The original metre, in every instance, has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... 4, note. The ellipsis may be supplied thus: he meditated an invasion of Brit. and would have invaded it, had he not been velox ingenio, etc. But in idiomatic Eng. nibut. Of course fuisset is to be supplied with velox ingenio and mobilis poenitentiae. Al. poenitentia. But contrary to the MSS. Mobilis agrees with poenitentiae (cf. Liv. 31, 32: celerem poenitentiam), which is a qualifying gen. ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... only to add that the translation is, perhaps, not always idiomatic, though in this matter I have availed myself of some valuable assistance, for ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... one of the most beautiful of Canon Bright's liturgical compositions, the Collect beginning, "O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment and light riseth up in darkness for the godly." Of this exquisite piece of idiomatic English, the reviewer allows himself to speak as being "a very ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... Christian life. Every trial, every difficulty, every experience of joy or sorrow, of peace or temptation, is put into the form and discourse of a living character. Other allegorists write in poetry and their characters are shadowy and unreal; but Bunyan speaks in terse, idiomatic prose, and his characters are living men and women. There are Mr. Worldly Wiseman, a self-satisfied and dogmatic kind of man, youthful Ignorance, sweet Piety, courteous Demas, garrulous Talkative, honest Faithful, and a score ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... resemblance to "Il a le mot pour rire." "He do the devil at four" has no reference to an artful scheme for circumventing the Archfiend at a stated hour, but is merely a simulacrum of the well-known gallic idiomatic expression "Il fait le diable a quatre." Truly this is excellent fooling; Punch in his wildest humour, backed by the whole colony of Leicester Square, could not produce funnier English. "He burns one's self ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... of great interest, not only on account of its intrinsic merit, but also for the racy style of writing adopted by its author. We find him continually garnishing his language with such idiomatic and colloquial expressions as the following:—"Quhae's sillie braine will reache no farther then the compas of their cap" (page 2); and again, "but will not presume to judge farther then the compasse of my awn cap" (p. 20). ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... the words of Celtic origin for things having to do with every-day peaceful life,—the life of a settled nation,—words like basket (to take an instance which all the world knows) form a much larger body in our language than is commonly supposed; it is said that a number of our raciest, most idiomatic, popular words—for example, bam, kick, whop, twaddle, fudge, hitch, muggy,—are Celtic. These assertions require to be carefully examined, and it by no means follows that because an English word is found in Celtic, therefore we get it ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... I have sought after simple and idiomatic English, studying the noble archaism of the King James Bible, rather than affecting the Wardour Street dialect of William Morris or Professor Earle, which is often utterly unintelligible to any but the special student of Middle English. My translation is faithful, but not literal; ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... long on his Pennsylvania farm that he even thought in English instead of in German, and, strangely enough, in English much less broken and idiomatic than that which he spoke. But his phraseology was the only thing about him that had changed. In modes of feeling, habits of life, he was the same he had been forty years ago, when he farmed a little plot of land, half wheat, half vineyard, in the Mayence meadows in the fatherland,—slow, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... books, he cannot have better than Hendrik Conscience's novels, or Gerrits's Zoon des Volks. I would, however, advise him to get a volume of Jacob Cats' Poems, the language of which is not antiquated, and is idiomatic without ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... it is far less sincere. French silks and French laces may be superior, but it is much better to make use of the English language. Whenever there is any doubt between two words or expressions, choose the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Let ladies eschew fine phrases as they would rouge; let them love simple words as they do native roses on their cheeks. A true lady should be emulous to deserve that praise which the old poet Chaucer bestows on ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... particular, individual, specific, proper, personal, original, private, respective, definite, determinate, especial, certain, esoteric, endemic, partial, party, peculiar, appropriate, several, characteristic, diagnostic, exclusive; singular &c (exceptional) 83; idiomatic; idiotypical; typical. this, that; yon, yonder. Adv. specially, especially, particularly &c adj.; in particular, in propria persona [Lat.]; ad hominem [Lat.]; for my part. each, apiece, one by one, one at a time; severally, respectively, each to each; seriatim, in detail, in great detail, in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Californian celebrity, rich in eccentricities of thought, lively in fancy, quaint in remark, whose residence upon the fringe of civilization had allowed his humour to develop without restraint, and his speech to be rarely idiomatic." ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... may remember that Mrs Jenkins was at Abertewey when Howel made his triumphant entry there, but the following morning he gave her to understand, as delicately as he could, that the idiomatic translations of the Welsh language which had been so refreshing in London, would be better in her native town than at ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the rank and dignity of an English classic. Plot, style, and truthfulness are of the soundest British character. Racy, idiomatic, mirror-like, always interesting, suggesting thought on the knottiest social and religious questions, now deeply moving by its unconscious pathos, and anon inspiring uproarious laughter, it is a work the world will not ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... human is our Bismarck, whose lust for control is idiomatic; let us get this clearly, first ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... may be read either literally or in its idiomatic sense, i.e., "Folk convicted or suspected of murder ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... more to drive them away." It would not have been possible for her to define the words in this sentence; and yet she had caught the author's meaning, and was able to give it in her own words. The next lines are still more idiomatic, "When Suetonius left the country, they fell upon his troops and retook the island of Anglesea." Here is her interpretation of the sentence: "It means that when the Roman general had gone away, the Britons began to fight ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller |
