"Solecism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must change one of them or wait till another time to play, for in England to pay in gold is a solecism only pardonable in a stranger. Perhaps you noticed that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Imagine yourself writing an office-letter to a secretary of state, which letter is to be read by the whole Cabinet Council, and very possibly afterward laid before parliament; any one barbarism, solecism, or vulgarism in it, would, in a very few days, circulate through the whole kingdom, to your disgrace and ridicule. For instance, I will suppose you had written the following letter from The Hague to the ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... a state or commonwealth out of a mixture of the three forms of government received in the schools, however it be derided as a solecism and absurdity by some late writers on politics, hath been very ancient in the world, and is celebrated by the gravest authors of antiquity. For although the supreme power cannot properly be said to be divided, yet ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... the grounds for advising Her Most Gracious Majesty to extend her royal clemency to the deserving young man. The result of my petition by no means surprised me, for I was always confident that an English gentleman could never be guilty of the solecism against English customs implied by keeping in prison a young gentleman who could perform so meritorious an act as to fall heir to many bags of gold and sixteen thousand acres ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... principles be correct, then is he bound to pronounce the law of God itself manifestly unjust and iniquitous. For that law as clearly recognizes the right of property in man as it could possibly be recognized in words. But it nowhere commits the flagrant solecism of supposing that this right of the master annuls or excludes all the rights of the slave. On the contrary, the rights of the slave are recognized, as well as those of the master. For, according to the law of God, though "a possession," and an "inheritance," ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... exposed with great ability by Henry J. Raymond, whose arguments were unanswered and unanswerable; but nothing could stay the prevailing impatience of Congress for speedy legislation looking to the early return of the rebel districts to their places in the Union. The bill was a legislative solecism. It did not abrogate the existing Rebel State governments. It left the ballot in the hands of white Rebels, and did not confer it upon the black loyalists. It sought to conciliate the power it was endeavoring to ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... gentlewoman's good breeding, or the proper pride of a girl who respected herself. How these school-girls must despise her! What was she to do? Wait for the girls to whisper and chatter as all girls will, however trained? Or go at once to the Miss Stone with whom she had most to do, tell her the solecism of which she, Rose, had been guilty in the best behaved of schools, and abide by Miss Stone's decision, though it should be that she and her sisters would in future dispense with the services of Miss Rose Millar ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... is the proper genitive of "which" only at such times as "which" retains its quality of impersonification. Well! I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me. I never learned grammar; and not only Sir Hugh Evans but even Mrs. Quickly might puzzle me about Giney's case and horum harum horum.[253] ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... forward. Captain Calder felt very much as he did, for he was even still less accustomed to ball-rooms, though his true gentlemanly feelings and innate sense of propriety prevented him from committing any solecism in good manners. Sims and Dicky Glover ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... presume the same law holds with regard to ladies. It often is so felt; but we are inclined to say that it never produces half the discomfort or half the feeling of implied inferiority that is shown by a great man who desires his visitor to be seated while he himself speaks from his legs. Such a solecism in good breeding, when construed into English means this: "The accepted rule of courtesy in the world require that I should offer you a seat; if I did not do so, you would bring a charge against me in ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... handed it to Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the superscription. "Oh, yes," he said, smiling, "I know 'em by instinct." Relieved of its envelope, the missive turned out to be eighteen months old, and began with the usual amusing solecism: "As one of the most famous of American authors I would ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... included, in his picture of a domestic menage, "a wife not too learned..." She is not willing to lose a woman's birthright of love and devotion, but is not quite sure how far it might be affected by her ability to detect a solecism. Hence, she offers a great deal of subtle flattery to masculine self-love. With curious ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... what is more serious, the pleasant, chatty evenings spent in Common Room are likewise a thing of the past. Married Fellows, if they dine in Hall, return home after dinner, and junior Fellows go to their books or pupils. In my early Oxford days, a married Fellow would have sounded like a solecism. The story goes that married Fellows were not entirely unknown, and that you could hold even a fellowship, if you could hold your tongue. Young people, however, who did not possess that gift of silence, had often to wait till they were ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... whose drink is of costly essences.' He had no mercy on them here. 'Very bunglers in sensuality, who know not her laws, and confound her ordinances, flinging down their souls to be trampled beneath the heels of luxury! As the play has it, Door or window, all is one to them. Such pleasures are rank solecism.' One observation of his in the same spirit fairly caps the famous censure of Momus. Momus found fault with the divine artificer for not putting his bull's horns in front of the eyes. Similarly, Nigrinus complained that when these men crown themselves in their banquets, they put the garlands ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... that this very expression, god of the sky, god of the cloud, is so entire an anachronism that we could not even translate it into Vedic Sanskrit without committing a solecism. It is true, no doubt, we must use our modern ways of speaking when we wish to represent the thoughts of the ancient world; but we cannot be too much on our guard against accepting the dictionary representative of an ancient word for its real counterpart. ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... [110] This solecism is found in the Irish as well as in the Scottish Gaelic translation. The Manks translation has avoided it. In the Irish version and in the Scottish Gaelic version of 1767, a similar instance occurs in Acts, ii. ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... sincerely by the men, with an under-current of pity and mockery by the women. Then they were all at dinner—the bride in the place of honor—running the gauntlet of all those eyes on the alert for any solecism of good manners. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... before. The one invaded Irving's premieres at the Lyceum. The other sang paeans in praise of the Bancrofts. The French plays, too, were the feigned delight of all the modish world. Not to have seen Chaumont in Totot chez Tata was held a solecism. The homely mesdames and messieurs from the Parisian boards were 'lionised' (how strangely that phrase rings to modern ears!) in ducal drawing-rooms. In fact, all the old prejudice of rank was being swept away. Even more significant than the reception of players was a certain effort, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... evening, so that he may pass a happy Sunday. The inaccuracies fascinate him. They offer such a splendid chance of showing the knowledge possessed by him—and his library. When very young he deals with the matter in a straightforward fashion, and trounces the author for every unwitting solecism and willing falsification that ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... reason she was fond of seeing great crowds and large stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures—a class of efforts as to which she had often committed the conscious solecism of forgiving them much bad painting for the sake of the subject. While the Civil War went on she was still a very young girl; but she passed months of this long period in a state of almost passionate excitement, in which she felt herself at times (to her ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... church clock broke off our dialogue. He took out his diamond watch, compared it with the time, found that to delay a moment longer would be a solecism which might lose him a smile or be punished with a frown; repeated a couplet on the pangs of parting with friends; and with an embrace, in the most glowing style of Paris, bounded across the street, and was lost in the crowd which blocked up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... had been too strong for her; in her maternal flutter she had committed the solecism of touching in so many words ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... more pleasant than, when some name crosses one, to go and get acquainted with the owner of the name: and this Biographie really has found places for people whom one would have thought almost too small for so comprehensive a work—which sounds like a solecism, or ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... all very well," said Glossin, beginning to fear lest the firm expostulation of Bertram should make some impression on Sir Robert, who would almost have died of shame at committing such a solecism as sending a captain of horse to jail—"This is all very well, sir; but is there no person nearer whom you ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... artificiality, but to be credited with a true sincerity of selection in juxtaposing his soft corals and carnations and gleaming topaz, amethyst, and sapphire hues. The most exacting literalist can hardly accuse them of solecism in their rendering of nature, true as it is that their decorative sense is so strong as to lead them to impose on nature their own sentiment instead of yielding themselves to absorption in hers, and thus, in harmonious ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell |
