"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over seventy years of age his mind was notably clear, orderly and active, and his talk (usually a carefully constructed monologue) was stately, formal and precise. He used no slang, and retained scarcely a word of his boyhood's vernacular. The only emotional expression he permitted himself was a chuckle of glee over an intellectual misstatement or a historical bungle. Novels, theaters, music ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... to be desired; and the French in which immediately he begged a thousand pardons for the intrusion was so admirable that it seemed hard to believe he was the same man who had, only a few hours earlier, composedly traded the slang of the States with a chauffeur in front of ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... and said so many quaint things in priceless slang that he kept me laughing; but I had eyes if not ears only for Di and Major Vandyke. "Say, he's rushing your sister, isn't he? Making a direct frontal attack—what?" remarked my neighbour, so it must have been conspicuous. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that he has got to make the taught think for themselves. In proportion as his teaching makes them contribute their share of effort will it be fruitful. This is, of course, the merest truism, sometimes dignified in the current pedagogical slang by the name of "self-activity," or the like. But whatever new bottles the theorists, and their extreme left wing the faddists, may choose to serve up our old wine in, the fact is there: children have got to be made to use their own brains. The eternal question ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... Fisher paused in her thoughts, arrested by the strange expression. Where had it come from? How was it possible for it to come at all? It might have been one of Mrs. Wilkins's, in its levity, its almost slang. Perhaps it was one of hers, and she had heard her say it and unconsciously ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the Lyceum was to get everything "rotten perfect," as the theatrical slang has it, before the dress rehearsal. Father's test of being rotten perfect was not a bad one. "If you can get out of bed in the middle of the night and do your part, you're perfect. If you can't, you don't ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... previous chapter. On another occasion, a prisoner complained that there was a beetle in his hash. An examination was made; but whether the beetle was alive and got away, or whether the prisoner himself had "bugs," as the slang is, at any rate the examiners reported no beetle. The matter was then brought before the authorities, who ordered the complainant to ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the assassin; and the badin on the handle of the fan. Short curls upon the temples were designated cavaliers; ringlets were garcons; while a hundred other inanities of the same description compelled the great ladies of the period to adopt a slang which was perfectly unintelligible to all save the initiated; and when we add to these details the well-authenticated fact that the royal apartments were fumigated with powdered tobacco (then a recent and costly importation into France), in lieu of the perfumes which had previously been in use ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... old gentlemen on a train who did not know each other. They fell into conversation and one told the other that he had seen an officer, while jumping from his horse, trip over his sword and fall. But instead of the word sword he made use of the old couleur-student slang word "speer,'' and the other old boy looked at him with shining eyes and cried ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... as difficult to find words to describe Nieuport as it is to talk of metaphysics in slang. The words don't seem invented that will convey that haunting sense of desolation, that supreme quiet under the shock of continually firing guns. Hardly anything is left now of the little homely bits that, when I saw the place last autumn, reminded one that this was once a city ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... Elizabethan London the eclat of the inns was at its brightest, and during the reigns of Elizabeth's two nearest successors London submitted to the Inns-of-Court men as arbiters of all matters pertaining to taste—copying their dress, slang, amusements, and vices. The same may be said, with less emphasis, of Charles II.'s London. Under the 'Merry Monarch' theatrical managers were especially anxious to please the inns, for they knew that no play would succeed which the lawyers had resolved to damn—that ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Especially to the excitable, high-strung Harris, whose great eyes almost popped from his head at the continuous display of tropical marvels, and whose exclamations of astonishment and surprise, enriched from his inexhaustible store of American slang and miner's parlance, burst from his gaping mouth at every turn of the sinuous trail. From the outset, he had constituted himself Carmen's special protector, although much to Rosendo's consternation, for the lank, awkward fellow, whose lean shoulders bent under the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... rules. She held a surprise inspection of the juniors' desks and drawers, and pounced upon illicit packets of chocolate; she examined their books, and confiscated any which she considered unsuitable; she put a ban upon slang, and wrote out a new set of dormitory regulations. Her efforts were hardly so much appreciated as they deserved. The girls grumbled at this ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... a young, and as Fong had said, "awful smart boy." Smuggled into the country in his childhood, he spoke excellent English, interspersed with slang. He repeated his story with a Chinaman's unimaginative exactness, not a detail changed, omitted or overemphasized. The young men were impressed by him, intelligent, imperturbable and self-reliant, a man admirably fitted ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... and very ceremonious affair must that lovers' row have been. No swearing, no slang or loud talking, but everything deliberate and in the best of form. Lady Betty telling Morelove to go about his business, and that quickly, but doing so with a stately elegance worthy of the great Mrs. Barry; the suitor bowing low, with his white ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... said Kathleen, in her easy slang, "is that he never pulls any knighthood-in-flower stuff, yet you somehow feel it's there. Know what I mean? There's a scrapper ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Franklin, physicians most of them, able, audacious men, who kept him well supplied with squibs, essays, and every variety of sense and nonsense known in that age. The Courant was, indeed, to borrow the slang of the present day, a 'sensational paper.' Such a tempest did it stir up in Boston that the noise thereof was heard in ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... of colloquial idioms, when to write in a loose slang had become a mark of loyalty, this is the only L'Estrange vulgarism I ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and she had a sister who was not pretty. It seemed to me that even the sad sea waves were kinder to the Pretty Girl, such is the influence of youth and beauty. There were various men—heavy swells I should call some of them, only that that would be slang; but heavy swells were the order of the day. Then there was a benevolent old lady who believed in everything—in the music, and the Jane Moseley, and the long days, and the summer. There was another old lady of restless mind, who evidently believed ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... prose used for serious writing. But the conversation of many of the characters is in the plebeius sermo, the actual speech of the lower orders, of which so little survives in literature. It is full of solecisms and popular slang; and where the scene lies, as it mostly does in the extant fragments, in the semi-Greek seaports of Southern Italy, it passes into what was almost a dialect of its own, the lingua franca of the Mediterranean under the Empire, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... dare to write even to public women. How can I express what must have been Madame Lichtenstein's horror on reading this production,—an incomprehensible collection of all the low expressions that army slang could furnish! The evidence of a third person was necessary to convince her that the signature, M——, Surgeon-major of the Imperial French Guard, was not the forgery of some miserable drunkard. In her profound indignation the princess ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... She was endeavoring to wean her sister from the habit of using slang expressions; but Alice always boasted that she liked to take "short cuts," and that slang—that is, her refined variety—offered the best method of accomplishing ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... word, either a shortened form of chicane, or derived from the Ger. Schick, tact or skill), a term properly used, in French artistic slang, of a work of art possessing brilliant but superficial technical ability, or of one executed without reference to a model or study of nature. The use of the word in French dates from the reign of Louis XIV. and then denoted a lawyer who was master of "chicane." "Chic," in general use, now connotes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... acknowledged by all his acquaintance to be one of the best fellows in the world, and to beat every one at slang, but U——y and A——se. He is the terror of the Charleys, and of the poor unfortunate roofless nightly wanderers in the streets. You perceive his long white hair, and by no means engaging features. Yet he has vanity enough to think himself handsome, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... you would call her by her right name, Neale," said Ruth, sharply, for she did not approve of Neale's slang. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... As it was, I used to wonder sometimes if I could possibly bear it. You understand why, now; don't you? And yet, in a way, it is NOT like hers. Hers is deeper; and she often speaks with a delicious kind of drawl, and uses heaps of slang; and you are such a very proper little person; and possess what the primers call 'perfectly correct diction.' What fun it would be to hear you and Jane talk together! And yet—I don't know. I should be on thorns, all ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... and wash dishes, and I don't say slang words any more, and I can weed everything ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... on the 22d of February, the President greatly damaged his cause by denouncing a Senator and a Representative, and using the slang of the stump against the Secretary of the Senate in the midst of an uproarious Washington mob. The people were mortified that the Executive of the nation should have committed so ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... saw traffic policemen with their Stop and Go signals in the middle of the Sahara; telephones, check books, motorcycles and automobiles in use, and so on. In addition, the leaders were filled with modern business and other slang; and the spectacle of a huge negro wrapping Cleopatsy in a modern Axminster rug and carrying her in to show her to Antony (instead of, as according to history, Caesar) kept the spectators in a roar of laughter. For an originally-worked-out ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... that to sneer shows wisdom, That a gibe outvalues a reason, That slang, such as thieves delight in, Is fit for the lips of the gentle, And rather a grace than a ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... through the window with tireless perseverance, making an effort to wring or dry each article in turn. The other gentleman on top received them all rather grimly, and had not perhaps been amused by the situation but for the exploit of his hat. It was of the sort called in Italian as in English slang a stove-pipe (canna), and having been made in Italy, it was of course too large for its wearer. It had never been any thing but a horror and reproach to him, and he was now inexpressibly delighted to see it steal ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the term in its slang sense, and mean to insinuate that we are a couple of unfortunate beggars, I ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... concerned, indeed, Mr. Fox did his best to avoid those faults which the habit of public speaking is likely to generate. He was so nervously apprehensive of sliding into some colloquial incorrectness, of debasing his style by a mixture of parliamentary slang, that he ran into the opposite error, and purified his vocabulary with a scrupulosity unknown to any purist. "Ciceronem Allobroga dixit." He would not allow Addison, Bolingbroke, or Middleton to be a sufficient authority ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was a "gentleman," he was. It was beneath his dignity to work—even to guide the reins of the horse he rode—but it was not beneath his dignity to sponge on his friends (I think the verb "to sponge" is too expressive to remain slang) or to borrow without repaying. Moreover, in case of extremity, it is said that Mother Yang-ban and Sister Ann might take in washing, as is recorded in the classic lays of our own land, but Father never defiled himself by doing anything ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... profess ignorance of slang terms used in evidence, and seek explanation from counsel. Lord Coleridge in the following story had his inquiry not only answered but illustrated. A witness was describing an animated conversation between the pursuer and defendant in a case ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... is a slang expression, used to express incredulity. It has somewhat the same meaning as the slang phrase heard in the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... know what you mean; and I must remind you also that in this school we neither teach nor learn slang." ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands Shakspeare must have drunk in a portion of that frank artless sense of beauty which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in ennobling those who were born there: yonder dirty, swindling, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever they might ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... of the week that Mr. GRUNDY tumbles upon A Pair of Spectacles in a volume of French plays. The period to which the very slight and uninteresting story of Haddon Hall belongs is just before the Restoration, but the dialogue of "the book" is spiced with modern slang, both "up to date" (the date being this present year of Grace, not sixteen hundred and sixty) and out of date. The "out-of-date" slang, which is, "I've got 'em on"—alluding to the Scotchman's trousers—has ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... however, by the bookmaker, who, having no views, but seeing an opportunity for fun, brought up reinforcements of chaff and slang, easily construable into profanity, and impregnated with terse humour. Many of the ladies had spoken of the bookmaker as one of the best-mannered men on board. So he was to all appearance. None dressed with better taste, nor carried himself with such an air. There was even a deferential ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and lightened the burthen of her drooping spirit. If she were sad before, what would she be now, deprived of the society of the only being to whom she could unfold the spiritual mysteries of her romantic soul? Was such a character to be left alone in this world of slang and scrip; of coarse motives and coarser words? Then, too, she was so intelligent and so gentle; the only person who understood him, and never grated for an instant on his high ideal. Her temper also was ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... custom of inventing an arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose of disguising references to functions and parts of the body regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common. Such private slang, growing up independently in families, and especially among women, as well as between lovers, is now almost universal. It is not confined to any European country, and has been studied in Italy by Niceforo (Il ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the decomposition of the art, I thought, as I held myself in my seat. Of course, I meant decomposition of tones, as the slang of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the premier, assuming that he was the party pointed at, attacked what he called "the bishop's gross and virulent invective—his malignant, calumnious, and false insinuations—his well-known powers of pamphleteering slang." Here the noble lord was called to order, and the Earl of Winchelsea moved that the words "false insinuations" and "pamphleteering slang" should be taken down. After some observations from Earl Grey, Lord ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... common nickname on me. I'd have torn her eyes out only for Lindsay, who had the assurance to tell me that if he had not interfered I'd have had the worst of it—that I'd come off second best, and such slang; yes, and then added afterwards, that he was sorry he interfered. That's the kind of a husband he is, and that's the life I lead. Now, this property is mine, and I can leave it to any one I please; he hasn't even a ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Todd's speech was choicest English or the cosmopolitan, technical slang of the sea, mingled with wonderful profanity. But one habit of his early days he never dropped: he wore, in the hottest weather, and in storm and battle, the black frock and choker of the clerical profession. Standing now with one foot on the fore-hatch, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... stereotyped in modern slang, and yet the idea could not but have existed under other words in the days of those flush individuals, Midas and Croesus. The first of these moneyed gentlemen found gold too plenty for comfort, while the latter, by his unfortunate end, proved that even at that early time riches had learned to fly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... trades, all callings, become picturesque by the water's side, or on the water. The soil, the slovenliness, is washed out of every calling by its touch. All river-crafts, sea-crafts, are picturesque, are poetical. Their very slang ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... help you with pleasure, madame," replied Patty, dimpling with fun as she heard the old lady's unsuccessful attempts in American slang. "My name is Patty Fairfield; and though I seldom use the slang of my country, I'm more or less familiar with its terms, and can enlighten you concerning them, at least to a degree. To me your language is difficult; ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... highland burn, should be now part and parcel of this great Argonaut army. Already my native uncouthness was a thing of the past, and the quaint mannerisms of my Scots tongue were yielding to the racy slang of the frontier. More to the purpose, too, I was growing in strength and wiry endurance. As I looked around me I realised that there were many less fitted for the trail than I, and there was none with such a store of glowing health. You ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... from another stand-point! He looked from Lillian, graceful, sceptical, and shallow, to the young girl beside him, so frankly modern in her appreciation of life. This, then, was love as seen by the eyes of the world—the world that accepts, judges, and condemns in a slang phrase or two! Very slowly the blood receded ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... you any more as to details. Bayreuth is full of ghosts—the very trees on the terrace whisper the names of Liszt and Wagner—but Madame Cosima is running the establishment for all there is in it financially—excuse my slang—and so Bayreuth is deteriorating. I saw her, Liszt's daughter, von Buelow, and Wagner's wife—or rather widow—and her gaunt frame, strong if angular features, gave me the sight of another ghost from the past. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... tediousness. I have flaunted these truisms before you in order to exorcise that modern slang of yours which is more false than the overstrained forms of a feudal France. To shut out glory is not to be practical. You are not adjusting your life artistically; there is too much strain, too little warmth, too much self-complacence. I see that you are really younger ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... sailor, and his knowledge of sea-life, of seamen, and of sea-slang, is generally attributed to the instructions of his brother, the master of a ship. This brother was subsequently lost at sea, and Dibdin is said to have written Poor Tom Bowling as his elegy. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... to a holy life. You should use the very choicest words. Words that are wholly free from vulgarity, slang, and the spirit of the world. Untidiness, uncleanness, carelessness, and shabbiness are not at all beautiful ornaments in a holy life. But quietness, modesty, and reticence are gems which sparkle in a holy life like diamond ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... principle that robbery done on a large scale is only a smirch to the reputation,—transferring thus to financial matters the loose principles of love in the eighteenth century. Diard now became a sort of business man, and concerned himself in several of those affairs which are called shady in the slang of the law-courts. He practised the decent thievery by which so many men, cleverly masked, or hidden in the recesses of the political world, make their fortunes,—thievery which, if done in the streets by the light of an oil lamp, would see a poor devil to the galleys, but, under gilded ceilings ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... wandered over the country dressed in grotesque fashion, pretending to be mad and working upon the fears or the charity of people for alms. They were common in the time of Shakespeare, and were found even as late as the Restoration. The slang phrase "to sham Abraham," is a survival of the practice. There was a ward in Bethlehem (or Bedlam) Hospital, called the Abraham Ward, and hence probably arose the name of these beggars. Harmless lunatics who had been discharged were often ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Herford in The Manchester Guardian.—'Bell's talk is full of salt and vivacity, a brilliant stream in which city slang reinforces rustic idiom, and both are re-manipulated by inexhaustible native wit. She is the most remarkable creation in a gallery where not a single figure is indistinct or conventional.... Mr. Gibson's essay—for there is confessedly something experimental about it—must be reckoned, with those ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... Samyooel whispered into his one ear, "Whitewash!" and Florence into tother, "Charles the I.!" and flamin up like a conflagratid oil well, he waded it. Then I felt that it wuz all right. Then my soul expanded; and ez he went on, pilin Billinsgate upon Billinsgate, usin Tennessee stump slang, improved by a liberal mixter uv the more desprit variety he hed picked up in Washinton and Baltimore, I felt that it wuz indeed well with us. He wuz talkin ez a Dimokrat to Dimokrats; and it wuz appreciated. Strippin off all uv the disguise ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... you mean?" asked Margaret, who could not abide slang of any kind. "No, indeed, Basil. Your Uncle John is the head of the house, in every possible way. I hope you are all going to be very good and obedient. He is the kindest, best man ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... with the funniest quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would eat it off even clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating eyes, to show if I'm worth the asking price. But here was real love being made off down in the earth (we'd run away from the others ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the audience, not their passionate sympathy. When, in the minds of the deluded producers, the beholders should be weeping or sighing with desire, they are prophesying the next step to one another in worldly George Ade slang. This is illustrated in another good Action Photoplay: the dramatization of The Spoilers. The original novel was written by Rex Beach. The gallant William Farnum as Glenister dominates the play. He has excellent support. Their team-work makes them worthy of chronicle: Thomas Santschi as McNamara, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... she doesn't know where Bella picks up her slang words. I think it is Mr. Ned who teaches her, for when he comes home in the summer he often says, with a sly twinkle in his eye, "Come out into the garden, Bella," and he lies in a hammock under the trees, and Bella perches ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... to her as she chattered away her hurried, inexpressive unmeaning slang, and looked at him with her bright, small, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... whispered, "this is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really must hear ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... countenanced even by eminent writers; some, misapplications that weaken and disfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, downright vulgarisms—that is, phrases that come from below, and are thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them. These last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. Against such abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of some of them, they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be readily distinguishable from their healthy neighbors, clinging for ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... hand to his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... sufficient number had accumulated he would read them all through, with the greatest care. There upon the table, the whole soul of Gordon lay before him—in its incoherence, its eccentricity, its impulsiveness, its romance; the jokes, the slang, the appeals to the prophet Isaiah, the whirl of contradictory policies—Sir Evelyn Baring did not know which exasperated him most. He would not consider whether, or to what degree, the man was a maniac; no, he would ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... must a minister's wife be supposed to utter only prunes and prisms? I shan't. Everybody on Patterson Street uses slang—that is to say, metaphorical language—and if I didn't they would think me insufferably ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... one else, I imagine," said Hugh. "If the phrases ever had any meaning, it has long ago vanished into obscurity. I have seen explanations given of many popular terms but never of these. After I am gone, though, Bessie, you had better give up slang. It is all very well with me, and to tell the truth, I have taught you all you know, but it would not do with ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... that's slang. I forgot you were so terrible superior. But you've got good cause to know I'm virtuous. Lands sakes! I guess nobody ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... novelty celestial That very night was visible and clear; At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial, And clad in uniform, were loitering near A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal Took their impatience somewhat patiently, Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"— (A certain slang of the Academy, I beg the reader won't ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... employed impart to it much dignity and beauty; but there is no standard of orthography, nor any grammar, and but few rules of universal application. Every Siamese writer spells to please himself, and the purism of one is the slang or ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... idea of the meaning of the word "pad." Afterwards, he learned that "pad" was slang for bed ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... into the priest's more philosophic pleasures. He seemed to know a great deal both about the fishing and the books, though of these not the most edifying; he spoke five or six languages, though chiefly the slang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and very motley societies, for some of his cheerfullest stories were about gambling hells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or Italian brigands. Father Brown knew that the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... in hansoms, nor climbed to the topmost 'bus, Nor talked with a twang in the latest slang; They left these fashions to us. But, ah, she was sweet and pleasant, though possibly not well-read, The excellent wife who cheered your life, And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... plays yet," said Ashton; "that man depicts a certain style of life, and he must be true to it. If he enacts the part of a costermonger, he must swear and talk slang, and commit crimes, if need be, or anything suiting the character he assumes; or else the thing would be absurd, and the gentleman and costermonger would be ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... look of disgust,—"don't use your sailor slang here! To see that doesn't require ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the "forlorn hope" either of ending his days or obtaining a tomb in Westminster Abbey. From the captain, after a time, the term descended to all the little gallant band. In no part of our community will you find such {527} meaning expressions (often very slang ones) used as in the army. A lady, without hearing anything to shock "ears polite," might listen to the talk of a mess table, and be unable to understand clearly in what the conversation consisted. "He is gone to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... which I think rather nice. You'll find a bunch of clippings in my second drawer there. Be sure and show them to your father, and don't fail to keep him in touch with your work: he can help you once he's aroused to what you can do. By the way, you must boil the slang out of your system. It's charming, but it won't do. First thing you know it will be slipping in to your ink-pot and corrupting your manuscripts. You know better; I don't! As you go on Nan Bartlett can probably ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... faces, and then bowed gravely. William could assume the airs of a serene judge when the humor seized him. And yet in his natural condition he was the most rollicking fellow in the troop, being somewhat addicted to present day slang, just as Bobolink ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... Flamenco de Roma, a slang term for the gipsies. Roma does not stand for the Eternal City, but for the nation of the romi, or the married folk—a name applied by the gipsies to themselves. The first gipsies seen in Spain probably came from the Low Countries, hence their ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... lovely and the goose hangs high!" cried the Captain, who on grand occasions was not above a little slang. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... far I should be from laughing. "In your case," he continued, "the pathognomonic, if you will excuse medical slang, was every now and then broken by the intrusion of altogether ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... territory in the harbor of Chefoo. Perhaps we were not content to sit at the mahogany table in the glistening white and brass bound wardroom surrounded by those eager, sunburned faces, to hear sea slang and home slang in the accents of Maine, Virginia, and New York City. We forgot our dark-skinned keepers with the slanting, suspicious, unfriendly eyes, with tongues that spoke the one thing and meant the other. All the memories of those six months of deceit, of broken pledges, of unnecessary ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... sound of approaching footsteps, it half raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the tarantula, which is extremely ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... for communicating our ideas to each other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy to observe these precise and beautiful forms of expression; it clips its words; throws its sentences together without regard to grammar; falls into slang; draws its figures from the coarse and low and sensual side of life, instead of from its ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... fall on yourself, Scotch!" advised Jenks, dropping into the slang he had overheard some boy use. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... what Juan's scheme was. When they find out what Juan has done, and see the holes in the bottom of all the pots, they cannot help laughing. The captain, however, addresses Juan with all the epithets found in a common slang dictionary. The captain now decides never to let Juan stay in the house alone, and from that time on takes him with them ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Englishman—a thoroughly good fellow, kindly, tolerant, brave, and generous, who could not possibly change his spots. He had failed utterly to acquire the American idiom, and his attempts at cowboy slang were often amusing—especially to Redfield, who prided himself on being ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... personages of the realm, and their entertaining this high opinion of themselves can scarcely be wondered at; they were low fellows, but masters of driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed as his unquestionable right; and then these ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... must be eleven ounces of meat or salt-fish, four ounces of bread, and farinaceous vegetables equal to six plantains; besides this, they are bound to give them two suits of clothes—all specified—yearly. Alas! how appropriate is the slang phrase "Don't you wish you may get 'em?" So beautifully motherly is Spain regarding her slaves, that the very substance of infants' clothes under three years of age is prescribed; another substance from three to six; then comes an injunction ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... accent would fall familiarly on her ear. There was the drawback, however, that he always preferred to talk in a marvelous English, combining Castilian precision with what he fondly believed to be Californian slang. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a little what a 'square meal' might be, but he was getting somewhat used to the prevalence in the West of those figurative forms of expression which we call slang. So he took it for granted that "square meals" were for some reason preferable to meals of any other geometrical form, and answered simply that he would look up Mrs. Deming's house after business ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... sometimes heavily trimmed with Madeira work, sometimes with a plain scollop of double linen warranted to wash and wear for ever. The material was also invariably of a kind to wear, a fine linen or a closely woven English longcloth. How any one woman could want some six dozen "nighties" (the silly slang sounds especially silly when I think of those solid highly respectable German garments) was a question no one seemed to ask. The bride's father could afford six dozen; it was the custom to have six dozen if you could pay for them, and there they were. The thin cambric garments French women ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... and supremely indifferent to the purity of their native language—the formula is still further curtailed by the use of "to feel" in a technical sense, meaning, "to recommend-for-the-purposes-of-feeling-and-being-felt"; and at this moment the "slang" of polite or fast society in the upper classes sanctions such a barbarism as "Mr. Smith, permit me to feel ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... Rowland for an Oliver" is no slang phrase of the eighteenth century; it is a proverbial expression as old as the days of the romances of Roland and Olivier. The other two were phrases put into the mouths of two characters (Dr. Ollapod, in Colman's Poor Gentleman, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... ousted the crusading hero of the song, and put the slang for "sergeant" in his stead, Jacqueline leaned back on the gunwale quite contented. She fell to gazing on the transparent emerald of the inshore, and plunged in her hand. The soft, plump wrist turned baby pink under the riffles. Of a sudden Berthe her maid ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... put in your telly time, Mr. Tracy. Slang goes in cycles these days. They simply don't dream up a whole new set of expressions every generation anymore because everybody gets tired of them so soon. Instead, older periods of idiom are revived. For instance, scram is coming ...
— Subversive • Dallas McCord Reynolds |
