"Misnomer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enclosed between them, when it is seen aright. Browning's idea in the poem he declared in reply to a question of Dr Furnivall, "was to show merely how a Don Juan might justify himself, partly by truth, somewhat by sophistry." No more unhappy misnomer than this "Don Juan" could have been devised for the curious, ingenious, learned experimenter in life, no man of pleasure, in the vulgar sense of the word, but a deliberate explorer of thoughts and things, who argues out his case with so much fine casuistry and often with the justest conceptions ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... bedroom, till, about dawn, his legs gave way beneath him; and think, think, think, till his mind recoiled, confused and helpless, from the dead wall of its objects. And, out of all this walking and thinking, there emerged, after an hour of stupor, that it would be a misnomer to call sleep, two fixed results. The first of these was that he hated his father as a lost soul must hate its torturing demon, blindly, madly, impotently hated him; and the second, that he could no longer delay taking his wife into his confidence. Then he remembered the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... electrotyping is as follows: The form is locked up very tightly, and is then coated with a surface of graphite, commonly known as blacklead, but it is a misnomer. This is put on with a brush, and may be done very evenly and speedily by a machine in which the brush is reciprocated over the type by hand-wheel, crank, and pitman. A soft brush and very finely powdered graphite are used; the superfluous powder being removed, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... conceivable that does not destroy the doctrine which it professes to interpret—that does not convert it into its own negative? As if a geometrician should name a sugar- loaf an ellipse, adding—"By which term I here mean a cone;"—and then justify the misnomer on the pretext that the ellipse is among the conic sections! And yet—notwithstanding the repugnancy of the doctrine, in its unqualified sense, to Scripture, Reason, and Common Sense theoretically, while to all practical uses it is intractable, unmalleable, and altogether ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Mother Earth has ta'en the infection— (That rogue Copernicus, 'tis said First put the whirring in her head,) A planet She, and can't endure 40 T'exist without her annual Tour: The name were else a mere misnomer, Since Planet is but Greek for Roamer. The atmosphere, too, can do no less Than ventilate her emptiness, 45 Bilks turn-pike gates, for no one cares, And gives herself a thousand airs— While streams and shopkeepers, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... this very word "dead" is an absurd misnomer, as most of the entities classified under this heading are as fully alive as we are ourselves; the term must be understood as meaning those who are for the time unattached to a physical body. They may be subdivided into ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... these questions is contained in the reply that it is read from the akashic records; but that statement in return will require a certain amount of explanation for many readers. The word is in truth somewhat of a misnomer, for though the records are undoubtedly read from the akasha, or matter of the mental plane, yet it is not to it that they really belong. Still worse is the alternative title, "records of the astral light," which has sometimes been employed, for these records lie far beyond the ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... deserves remark, that in most recorded cases of the descent of projectiles, the weather has been settled, and the sky clear; a fact which plainly places them apart from the causes which operate to produce the tempest, and shows the popular term thunder-bolt to be an entire misnomer. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... substandard language, vernacular. vulgar language, obscene language, obscenity, vulgarity. jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot; St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang. pseudology[obs3]. pseudonym &c. (misnomer) 565; Mr. So-and-so; wha d'ye call 'em[obs3], whatchacallim, what's his name; thingummy[obs3], thingumbob; je ne sais quoi[Fr]. neologist[obs3], coiner of words. V. coin words, coin a term; backform; Americanize, Anglicize. Adj. neologic[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... it be not a misnomer, we are prompted to say that "ENQUIRE WITHIN" is peopled with hundreds of ladies and gentlemen, who have approved of the plan of the work, and contributed something to its store of useful information. There they are, waiting to be questioned, and ready to reply. Within each page some ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... be the medicinal virtues of these foods, or however appropriate the term "condimental" which has been applied to them, it is quite certain that their whilom designation "concentrated" was a misnomer. Their composition shows that they possess a degree of nutritive power considerably below that of linseed-cake, and but little, if at all, superior to that ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... spread its branches over the entire width and half the length of the roof. Ordinarily, of course, its foliage was as green as the leaves on the maples of the avenue or on the neighbouring elms, and the name of the Inn might have seemed to the summer or winter traveller an odd misnomer; but in autumn when the frost came early and the great mass of green flushed to a deep crimson it could not have been known more appropriately than as the Inn at the ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... grievance of the Dissenters in England and Wales in single school areas under the Education Act of 1902. Ireland may not unjustly be said to be a single university area, for to call an examining Board a university is a misnomer. It is surely not too much to assert that the conscientious scruples of the Irish Catholics to forms of education of which they do not approve are as strong as the feelings of the Non-conformist conscience. The attempt to force undenominationalism on the country has been an expensive ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... proved an exception to the rule. The only method yet discovered of overcoming this tendency to the selfish use of power, whether consciously or unconsciously, by those possessing it, is the distribution of the power among all who are its subjects. Short of this the name free government is a misnomer. ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... passed since the night when I lost half-a-sovereign and found twelve hundred and fifty pounds in looking for it, and instead of that horrid hole, for which, after all, Eldorado was hardly a misnomer, a very different scene stretched away before us clad in the silver robe of the moonlight. We were camped—Harry and I, two Kaffirs, a Scotch cart, and six oxen—on the swelling side of a great wave of bushclad land. Just where we had made our camp, however, the bush was very sparse, and only ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... 'everything else is the same.' But that is just what cannot be. A new factor has been introduced, it may be a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset calculation—a something in his character in virtue of which his second choice is different from his first. It is an utter misnomer to call it 'chance.' Even though he had tossed a coin and acted on the throw, his action would still be determined by the ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... as his (Mr. Thorneycroft's) son, in order that the hated name of Allerton, to which the boy was alone legally entitled, might never offend his ear. There was something added insinuative of a doubt of the legality of the marriage, in consequence of the misnomer of the bridegroom ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the Reverend Doctor Opimian, dining with his friend Squire Gryll; 'a curiously complicated misnomer. We have an excellent old vegetable, the artichoke, of which we eat the head; we have another of subsequent introduction, of which we eat the root, and which we also call artichoke, because it resembles the first in flavour, although, me judice, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... They were written merely for popular effect, to be spoken before a miscellaneous audience, in which any abstract topics of moral philosophy would be the last to awaken an interest. The title of the book is accordingly a misnomer. It would lead no one to suspect the rich and diversified character of its contents. They present no ambitious attempts at metaphysical disquisition. They are free from dry technicalities of ethical speculation. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... a sleepy little colt, the name of Noddy was considered very appropriate but, as the burro grew older, it showed such intelligence and energy that its name was a dreadful misnomer. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... text-books have not kept pace with the knowledge of its leading minds. Such is confessedly the case in the department of Medical Jurisprudence. This very term, Medical Jurisprudence, as now used in colleges, is generally acknowledged to be a misnomer. There is no reason why it should be so used. The leading medical writers and practitioners are sound at present on the moral principles that ought to direct the conduct of physicians. It is high ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... the friar: "the rules of our holy alliance require new birth. We have excepted in favour of Little John, because he is great John, and his name is a misnomer. I sprinkle, not thy forehead with water, but thy lips with ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... About that she had, at any rate, been in the right—it was not safe for any man to look upon such beauty. I was a hardened vessel in such matters, having, with the exception of one painful experience of my green and tender youth, put the softer sex (I sometimes think that this is a misnomer) almost entirely out of my thoughts. But now, to my intense horror, I knew that I could never put away the vision of those glorious eyes; and alas! the very diablerie of the woman, whilst it horrified ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... a great misnomer called Parliamentary Reforms, went, not in the intention of all the professors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, in my opinion, not very remote effect, home to the utter destruction of the Constitution of this kingdom. Had ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of doctrine were once entered, might be multiplied. The retranslation of the Nicene Creed and the more accurate punctuation of its sentences; the rendering of the word Sabbath in the Fourth Commandment into its English equivalent of Rest; the abolition of the curious misnomer under which we go on calling XXXVIII Articles XXXIX; the removal from the Catechism, or else the conversion into mother English of that sad crux infantum, the answer to the question, "What desirest thou ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... degenerated into cowardly fear of censure. I might say of Giri what Scott wrote of patriotism, that "as it is the fairest, so it is often the most suspicious, mask of other feelings." Carried beyond or below Right Reason, Giri became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily—have been turned into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... during the middle of the nineteenth century as "American Lutheranism" was a misnomer, for in reality it was neither American nor Lutheran, but a sectarian ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... this contest called by its promoters an "Air Derby"? In our opinion, with rules allowing the use of other modes of travel as well as aircraft, the title is a decided misnomer. It should have been termed a "Go-As-You-Please Derby." Not a single one of these contestants accomplished the girdle by airplane alone; every winner took a steamship across the Pacific. Here's hoping that when another 'round-the-world contest is pulled off it will be tagged with a title ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... endless contradictions, which spring from the idea of a Personal Deity, with the Synthesis, the Begriff of Providence, our Agnostic takes refuge in the sentiment of an unknown and an unknowable. He objects to the countless variety of forms assumed by the perception of a Causa Causans (a misnomer), and to that intellectual adoption of general propositions, capable of distinct statement but incapable of proofs, which ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... in the pueblo region. So far as the architecture was concerned war and a hostile human environment produced not degeneration but development. This came about partly by reason of the peculiarities of the country, and partly through the methods of war. The term war is rather a misnomer in this connection, as it does not express the idea. The result was not brought about by armed bodies of men animated by hostile intentions or bent on extermination, although forays of this kind are too common in later pueblo history, but rather by predatory bands, bent on robbery ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... once all but occasioned its suppression. Both journals are published weekly, and both have a considerable circulation, though it must be owned that their title of "comic" is for the most part a sad misnomer. That the Russians are naturally devoid of humor no reader of Gogol or Griboiedoff, Pushkin, Kriloff or Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... lit. palace, but commonly meaning, in modern Arabic, an upper story or detached corps de logis (pavilion in the French sense, an evident misnomer in the present case).] ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... discontent of the seething underside of the American system Socialism is a misnomer. Were there no Socialism there would be just as much of this discontent, just the same insurgent force and desire for violence, taking some other title and far more destructive methods. This discontent is a part of the same planless confusion that gives on the other side the wanton irresponsible ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... two-thirds of the Lower were French Canadians. A French-Canadian member was nominated for the speakership and elected unanimously. Both races were for the most part represented by members whose official title of 'Honourable Gentlemen' was not at all a misnomer. The French members of the Assembly were half distrustful both of it and of themselves. But they knew how to add grace and dignity to a very notable occasion. The old Bishop's Palace served as the Houses of Parliament and so continued for many years to come. It was ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... have some name in going about, for people to pick up," he explained to Mugby High Street, through the Inn window, "and that name at least was real once. Whereas, Young Jackson!—Not to mention its being a sadly satirical misnomer for ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... to the east of the Benevolent Asylum, we went over a little rise called Mount Pleasant, which, on a damp sort of a day, with the rain beating around one, seemed certainly a misnomer. After about two miles, we came to a branch-road leading to Pentridge, where the Government convict establishment is situated. This we left on our right, and through a line of country thickly wooded (consisting of red ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... became famous. The old Waterford glass is especially noteworthy, and as a speculation, apart from the interest it possesses for collectors, is worth securing. Bristol glass to the uninitiated appears to be a misnomer, in that the beautiful white milk-like surface upon which so many exquisite floral designs have been painted looks more like egg-shell porcelain, but when held up to the light is found to be of glass-like ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... of cruelty there was one woman conspicuous among the rest. By her companions she was called Fatima. The old sailor, ignorant of Arabic feminine names, thought "it a misnomer," for of all his she-persecutors she was the leanest and scraggiest. Notwithstanding the poetical notions which the readers of Oriental romance might associate with her name, there was not much poetry about the personage who so assiduously assaulted Sailor Bill,—pulling his whiskers, slapping ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... attributed the wisdom of some mortal hero to whispered advice from Zeus or his messenger Hermes. Longfellow's famous poem is based upon Schoolcraft's book entitled The Hiawatha Legends, which is really a misnomer, for the book consists chiefly of Ojibwa stories about Manabozho, son of the West Wind. There was really no such legend of Hiawatha as that which the poet has immortalized. See Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... until the pursuing and long visible disaster finally overtook the company in Centropolis, Illinois (this is not the real name of the city, but it is no more flagrant a misnomer than the one it boasts). They played a matinee here and an evening performance, to two almost empty houses; that gave them the coup ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to rhythmic swing like that of a river, which carries the stream of prices now on this side of the valley, now on that. But this fluctuation of general prices surely can be so greatly moderated in magnitude and in evil results as to make the word "crisis" almost a misnomer. It is toward the attainment of this irreducible minimum of uncertainty and disaster in business that efforts should ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... acutely reminded that the term "prig" as applied to Leslie was a misnomer; he hated the thought of the other word, which reflectively ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... these elements have been isolated, that is to say, separated in a pure state from the accompanying ore. Therefore, pure radium is a misnomer, though we often hear the term used. [Footnote: Since the above was written Madame Curie has announced to the Paris Academy of Sciences that she has succeeded in obtaining pure radium. In conjunction with Professor Debierne she treated ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... rather than reason caused the artist to guard himself by throwing up his left arm. He caught the knife thrust in the fleshy part of it, and the pain was like the red-hot sting of a gigantic wasp. It flashed through his brain then that the term cold steel was a misnomer. The next moment his right hand had brought down the heavy knob of his stout stick on the curly head of the Italian, and Pietro fell like a log at his feet. Standish set his teeth, and as gently as possible drew the stiletto from ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... to be tested, and are no doubt open to modification. On one point, however, and this an essential one, we apprehend no grounds of complaint. There will be no crowding. The train is practically endless, the word terminus being a misnomer for the circular system of tracks to which the station (six hundred and fifty by one hundred feet) at the main entrance of the grounds forms a tangent. The line of tourists is reeled off like their thread ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... "era of good feelings" applied to the Administration of President Monroe is a misnomer. It is descriptive neither of politics nor of business and industry, for the historic Democratic party was all but rent by bitter personal animosities, and the country was prostrated by a ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... replied Owen, with a twitch about the corners of his mouth that seemed to be along the sarcastic order, as if deep down in his heart the lad thought the name might be a misnomer, according to ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... which had been served on the big lanai, the one with a northerly exposure, though exposure is indeed a misnomer ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... Ketchim Realty Company was something of a misnomer. The company itself was an experiment, whose end had not justified its inception. It had been launched a few years previously by Douglass Ketchim to provide business careers for his two sons, James and Philip. The old gentleman, still hale and vigorous, was one of those sturdy ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the actual conditions? First, the name "rural libraries" I found a misnomer. It in no sense represents facts. The words imply community interests, interests alike of adult and child, whilst the reality is that these libraries are simply school deposits, composed wholly of "juvenile books," graded up to but not beyond the seventh grade. When one realizes that ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... kerosene test, so far as the writer is concerned, is a misnomer, because raw linseed oil is used exclusively as giving more satisfactory results, and being less troublesome ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... spacious old mansion and would have been considered a large one even in the north, where, during the past fifty years, palaces have sprung into existence under the misnomer of "cottages." Happily, it did not tower up into the air as many of the so-called cottages do, but spread itself comfortably over the greensward, the central building being the only one ambitious enough to attain to two stories and a sharply peaked roof, in which were set several ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... curious fact, by the way, that all the places which make Broadway notorious are in the side streets. Just as it is a curious misnomer to call the toughest section of it the Tenderloin. Broadway has no slums. Laboring people, even, never make any distinguishable element in its populace. This is, of course, owing to its geographical position. But there is one fact which is immensely to its credit, and is perhaps due to the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... eccentricities of pronunciation; for instance, he accents 'capitalist' on the second syllable, and repeats the words with grave challenge to all and sundry. Speaking of something which he wishes to stigmatise as a misnomer, he exclaims: 'It's what I call a misnomy!' And he follows the assertion with an awful suspense of utterance. He brings his speech to a close exactly with the end of the tenth minute, and, on sitting down, eyes his ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the desire, prevailing during the 16th and 17th centuries, to obtain complete families of instruments to play in concert. The invention of the basset horn in 1770 is attributed to a clarinet maker of Passau, named Horn, whose name was given to the instrument;[2] by a misnomer, the basset horn became known in Italy as corno di bassetto, and in France as cor de basset. In 1782, Theodore Lotz of Pressburg made some modifications in the instrument, which was further improved by two instrumentalists of Vienna, Anton and Johann Stadler, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the bran and practically all of the germ have been removed from the wheat. Whole wheat flour, or entire wheat flour, is the name given to the flour that has had a great part of the outer covering of the wheat kernel removed. It is a misnomer. Graham flour, named after Dr. Graham, is the product of the whole wheat kernel, and it will be noted that it is richer in salts and protein than the white flour and the whole wheat flour. The whole wheat flour and Graham flour we find on the market ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... symphony best expresses the suggestive potency in music, the operatic form incarnates its capacity of definite thought, and the expression of that thought. The term "lyric," as applied to the genuine operatic conception, is a misnomer. Under the accepted operatic form, however, it has relative truth, as the main musical purpose of opera seems, hitherto, to have been less to furnish expression for exalted emotions and thoughts, or exquisite sentiments, than ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... statue, by Sir R. Westmacott, R.A., cast from captured French cannon, and erected at a cost of L10,000 by the women of England in 1820, "in honour of the Duke of Wellington and his brave companions in arms." It is copied from a Roman antique, but the name is a misnomer. The road along the north side of the Serpentine is now thronged every day with bicyclists, to whom the Park has been lately thrown open. Here also are held the annual meets of the Four-in-Hand and Coaching ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... writer of excellent lyrics and romances of this kind will be almost sure to fail in real drama. I wish, in order to avoid confusion of thought, that the term "dramatic" were only used of poetry which belongs to drama itself. I have heard Chaucer called dramatic. It is a complete misnomer. His genius would have for ever been unable to produce a good drama. Had he lived in Elizabeth's time, he would, no doubt, have tried to write one, but he must have failed. The genius for story-telling is just the genius which is incapable of being a fine dramatist. And the opposite is also true. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... London and in other capitals so many of these have been established, and continue to flourish, that they obviously perform certain useful and welcome functions; but my own criticism would be that to call them clubs for "authors" or "writers" is a misnomer which fails to particularize the real basis of membership. In the modern world, no doubt, all writers, merely as writers, have certain interests in common. They have, in the first place, to get their works published, and the business of publication is a very complex process, which has necessarily ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... hot air and radiant heat. However, much of what is called roasting is in reality baking. Foods cooked in the oven of an ordinary coal or gas range are really baked, although they are said to be roasted, and a covered roasting pan is a misnomer. Food must be exposed to the air in the process of cooking if it is to be ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... a resonance cavity of voice. In fact, in a certain register its vibration is felt so distinctly that we speak of these notes as being sung in the "chest register," which, so far as it implies that the tones are produced in the chest, is a misnomer. The same is true of "head register," in which vibration is felt in the head where, however, it is needless to say, the "head tones" ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... the period, 'Mucedorus' and 'Faire Em,' have also been assigned to Shakespeare on slighter provocation. In Charles II.'s library they were bound together in a volume labelled 'Shakespeare, Vol. I.,' and bold speculators have occasionally sought to justify the misnomer. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... river at the north end of Weymouth Bay. At half-past ten A.M., passed Piper's Islands, and steered for Young Island; could not make it out for some time, when we did see it, found it only a small reef above water, not worthy the name of an island; such a misnomer is likely to mislead; hauled up for the reef M. At noon, abreast of Haggerstone Island, steered to give Sir Everard Home's Isles a berth; saw natives on Cape Grenville; hauled in for Sunday Island; the wind light from the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... insidious enemy. That the introduction of an informal and healthful and inexpensive way of entertaining is a grand desideratum no one can fail to observe and allow. But with the growth of an idea the tea blossomed into a supper, and the little knot into a crowd, and of course the name became a misnomer. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... thorn-like tree-hopper and all of its queer harlequin tribe are near relatives to the buzzing cicada, or harvest-fly, whose whizzing din in the dog-days has won it the popular misnomer ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... an unfortunate misnomer, and its general adoption has led to much confusion of ideas. The word "Normal," from the Latin norma, a rule or pattern to work by, does not differ essentially from "Model." A Normal School, according to the ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... she has transformed some of the most degraded portions of London by her improved tenement houses for the poor. One place, called Nova Scotia gardens,—the term "gardens" was a misnomer,—she purchased, tore down the old rookeries where people slept and ate in filth and rags, and built tasteful homes for two hundred families, charging for them low and weekly rentals. Close by she built Columbia Market, costing over a million dollars, intended for the convenience of small dealers ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... selected. Most children seem to be brought up on maxims which presuppose mental deficiency and constitutional carelessness. But the naturally over-thoughtful and too-conscientious child, the child to whom applies Sir John Lubbock's observation that the term "happy childhood" is sometimes a misnomer, needs no admonition to "Try, try again," and to "Never weary of ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... Historical Facts connected with Nantwich and its Neighbourhood. Now, after giving this work a most careful perusal, I cannot but think that the title of the book is, in this instance at least, a misnomer. The authoress, for it was written by a lady long resident in the vicinity, has evidently wrought upon the foundations of others; and taking the veteran Ormerod as a sufficient authority, has given full vent to her imagination, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... shape. I think that the man who gave them this name must have seen them from a great distance; for as we approach them, the graceful curvilinear lines which obtained for them this delicate appellation appear angular and ragged. From our present point of view the name seems a misnomer. If there were twelve of them instead of three, they might better be called the "Titans," to illustrate their relation to the surrounding country. He indeed must have been of a most susceptible nature, and, I would fain believe, long a dweller amid these solitudes, ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... the most positive beautifier, the best cosmetic. The term "beauty sleep" is no misnomer. Sleep freshens the complexion, smoothes out wrinkles, clears out the brain, strengthens the muscles, puts light into the eyes and color into ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... In a recent number of the Jahrbuecher, xxxv, No. 2 (1915), there is a discussion of the name of the Peloponnesian War apropos of the present "World-war," or, if you choose, "Wirrwarr." For our war the misnomer "The Civil War" has been adopted ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... R. thus speaks is indifferently called egg and tongue, egg and dart, as well as egg and arrow. It seems to me that the egg is a complete misnomer, although common to all the designations; and I fancy that the idea of what is so called was originally derived from the full-length shield, and therefore that the ornament should be named the shield and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... who would tell us that the very name is a misnomer. Have we not been assured by the German critics and their English disciples that there were no patriarchs and no Patriarchal Age? And yet, the critics notwithstanding, the Patriarchal Age has actually existed. While criticism, so-called, has ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... man, the Far Oriental artist is emphatically a realist; it is when he turns to nature that he becomes ideal. But by ideal is not meant here conventional. That term of reproach is a misnomer, founded upon a mistake. His idealism is simply the outcome of his love, which, like all human love, transfigures its object. The Far Oriental has plenty of this, which, if sometimes a delusion, seems also second sight, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... emancipation would give us, in seventy years more, 16,000,000 slaves. It will be seen that this process is not emancipation, but merely transposition, or change of locality. The very name of emancipation, thus applied, is a misnomer. ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... of using paddles," reflected Jack, "but it was a misnomer, for they have none, and they would not have pushed so far out from shore when they knew I expected to return so soon. All that proves that a party of devils have also a boat and are hunting for the one in which our new friends ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... the position, that I should have been tempted to try and get it for Anna, if she had been at all likely to meet Mrs. Mompert's wants. It is really a home, with a continuance of education in the highest sense: 'governess' is a misnomer. The bishop's views are of a more decidedly Low Church color than my own—he is a close friend of Lord Grampian's; but, though privately strict, he is not by any means narrow in public matters. Indeed, he has created as little dislike in his diocese as any bishop on the bench. He has always remained ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... with great delight, and his people went into a state of immense rejoicing—firing guns, and shouting, and beating kettles and drums, in honour of the arrival of the "white faces;" which name was certainly a misnomer, seeing that our faces had by that time become the very reverse of white—indeed they were little lighter than the countenances of the good people ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... I must premise that the name of Ditton-in-the-Dale is in a great measure a misnomer, as the house and estate which bear that name, are situated on what a visiter would be at first inclined to call a dead level, but on what is in truth a small secondary undulation, or hollow, in the broad, flat valley through which the father ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... that Shakespeare shows much judgment in the naming of his plays. From this observation several critics have excepted Julius Caesar, pronouncing the title a misnomer, on the ground that Brutus, and not Caesar, is the hero of it. It is indeed true that Brutus is the hero, but the play is rightly named, for Caesar is not only the subject but also the governing power ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... introduced the term "unconscious cerebration," which has since then been a popular phrase of explanation. The facts are now known to us far more extensively than he could know them, and the adjective "unconscious," being for many of them almost certainly a misnomer, is better replaced by the vaguer term ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... is changing into ternary form; unfortunately, however, the latter term is used for a different kind of movement. To speak of a movement in sonata-form, containing three sections (exposition, development, and recapitulation) as in binary form, seems a decided misnomer. ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... P. Hale, an insubordinate Democrat from New Hampshire, for the same offense, and at the time screaming that the "blood of our glorious battle-fields in Mexico rested on the hands of the President"; Mr. Clingman challenging the House with the broad statement that "it is a misnomer to speak of our institution at the South as peculiar; ours is the general system of the world, and the free system is the peculiar one," and Mr. Palfrey dryly responding that slavery was natural just as barbarism was, just as fig-leaves and bare skins were a natural dress. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... of "Giants," given years ago to the New York club's team, has become a misnomer. The team most entitled to it in 1894 was that of the Chicago club, no other club team making such a show of heavyweight players last season as did Anson's real "Giants," as will be seen by the appended record. Look at the figures ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... by the defendants in the case now pending in Ireland, is of very rare occurrence in ordinary practice—a recent statute having entirely superseded every advantage formerly to be derived from this plea, in cases of a misnomer, or a wrong name, and of a false addition or a wrong description of the defendant's rank and condition, which were the principal occasions on which it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... number who could pay down the money that Simone could pay down; and as to argument, Griffo of the Dragon-flag was too busy a man to bother about other people's arguments. Yet Griffo left the Company of Death a misnomer, as far as he was concerned. Griffo had let the Reds ride onward to Arezzo and back to Florence, very much to Simone's annoyance and discomfiture. What, then, was the cause of Griffo's defalcation, and who had inspired him to this signal ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a misnomer for the extraordinary establishment, studio and domicile combined, at which we dismounted. It is not a hut, and neither in architectural motive nor the artistic proclivities of its inmates has it aught to do with the centuries when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... explain why such an extraordinary misnomer as overproduction, should be applied to a situation that would better be described as famine; why a condition should be said to result from glut when it was obviously the consequence of enforced abstinence? Surely, the mistake was equivalent to diagnosing ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... venerable oaks that bend over it like loving guardians protecting it from evil. My ears are prepared to hear a musical Indian name - "Laughing-Waters " at least; but, like a week's washing ruthlessly intruding upon love's young dream, falls on my waiting ears the unpoetic misnomer, "Nine-Mile Creek." Over good roads to Syracuse, and from thence my route leads down the Erie Canal, alternately riding down the canal tow-path, the wagon-roads, and between the tracks of the New York Central Railway. On the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... and violence, would be but to carry out the absurdity, of which the public are guilty, in holding abolitionists responsible for the mobs, which are got up against them. These mobs, by the way, are called "abolition mobs." A similar misnomer would pronounce the mob, that should tear down your house and shoot your wife, "Henry Clay's mob." Harriet Martineau, in stating the fact, that the mobs of 1834, in the city of New York, were set down to the wrong ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... usual, when after the coveted cream; that larger pussy, the tiger, steals lightly towards the ambushed hunter who is to furnish him the next delicious meal; and "Tarquin's ravishing strides" are undoubtedly a misnomer, for the Roman must have been something more or less than man if he did not tip-toe his sandals or cast them off altogether, when he stole towards ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... larger Socialist parties described in the foregoing, there are two smaller organisations composed of revolutionary Socialists of the most violent type, whose Socialism is a misnomer for Anarchism. They are "The Socialist Party of Great Britain" domiciled in London, and "The Socialist Labour Party" (an American importation), domiciled in Edinburgh. Their programmes, as those of the other Socialist organisations, will ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... summoned reenforcements and invoked the majesty of the law in the form of an officer. The affray, from first to last, was most depressing and gave to the unwilling witness a feeling that civilization is something of a misnomer and that ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... works of those much-abused monks, who in general are so frequently defamed by the thoughtless boys who write for the secular press, and by the equally empty-headed old women—of both sexes—who write for that class of periodical which by a curious misnomer is designated religious. These are the people, who, it is to be feared, shut their eyes to the truth, lest they should be ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... Referring to the power of the Supreme Court in our scheme of government, Jefferson said "It is a misnomer to call a government republican, in which a branch of the supreme power is independent of the nation." Works, Vol. X, ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... oysters had always been remarkable. It occurred to Bruin, as he had now some trifling capital, that he would invest a portion in such articles as made up the fixtures and stock-in-trade of an oyster-merchant: the former expression is, however, a misnomer, for the stall and tubs included under the term fixtures would be more properly described as moveables. This was soon effected; and Bruin having chosen a semi-respectable thoroughfare, where he would have a chance of a customer or ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... state temperately the beliefs of youth as opposed to the contentions of age; to go over all the field where the two differ, and produce at last a little volume of special pleadings which I might call, without misnomer, "Life at Twenty-five." But times kept changing, and I shared in the change. I clung hard to that entrancing age; but, with the best will, no man can be twenty-five for ever. The old, ruddy convictions deserted me, and, along with them, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cords are ulcerated, or inflamed, however slightly, as in sore throat produced by a cold, the voice will be changed. The loss of speech among public speakers is generally produced by a relaxation of the vocal ligaments. Hence, bronchitis is a misnomer for this affection. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... muscular arrangement at the cardiac orifice of the esophagus, so that spasmodic stenosis at this level is not possible and the term cardiospasm is, therefore, a misnomer. It was first demonstrated by the author that in so-called cardiospasm the functional closure of the esophagus occurred at the diaphragmatic level, and that it was due to the "diaphragmatic pinchcock." Anatomical studies have corroborated this finding by demonstrating a definite sphincteric ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... insisted my guardian. Dunny has the biggest heart in the world, with a cayenne layer over it, and this layer is always thickest when I am bound for distant parts. "I mean every word of it, I tell you, Dev." Dev, like Dunny, is a misnomer; my name is Devereux—Devereux Bayne. "Don't you risk your bones enough with the confounded games you play? What's the use of hunting shells and shrapnel like a hero in a movie reel? We're not in this war yet, though we soon will be, praise the Lord! ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Whistling-Thrush (rather a misnomer, by the way) breeds on the slopes of the Nilghiris, never ascending higher than 6000 feet. The nest is always placed on some rock in a mountain torrent; it is a coarse and, for the size of the bird, a very large structure, and though I have never measured the nest, I should say that the ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume |
