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noun
Substantive  n.  (Gram.) A noun or name; the part of speech which designates something that exists, or some object of thought, either material or immaterial; as, the words man, horse, city, goodness, excellence, are substantives.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Substantive" Quotes from Famous Books



... interlocutor, "should always precede the substantive, for we should never utter the name of God without first giving Him ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... another people, gratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself, should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices. We therefore protest against a useful and tuneful noun-substantive, a native of France, the word bouquet, being maimed into boquet, a corruption as dissonant to the ear as were to the eye plucking a rose from a variegated nosegay, and leaving only its thorny stem. Boquet is heard at times in well-upholstered drawing-rooms, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... an actual grisette, drawn by perhaps the greatest master of artistic realism (adjective and substantive so seldom found in company!) who ever lived, see that Britannia article of Thackeray's before referred to—an article, for a long time, unreprinted, and therefore, till a comparatively short time ago, practically unknown. This and its companion ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... regarded their strange-speaking neighbours as 'barbarian,' that is 'stammering,' or even as 'dumb.' So the Russians call their neighbours the Germans njemets, connected with njemo, indistinct. The old name Slovene, Slavonians, is probably a derivative from the substantive which appears in Church Slavonic in the form slovo, a word; see Thomsen's Russia and Scandinavia, p. 8. Slovo is closely connected with the old Slavonic word for 'fame'— slava, hence, no doubt, the explanation of Slave favoured ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... class with "eating," "walking," "speaking" words such as "rain," "sunrise," "lightning," which do not denote what would commonly be called actions. These words illustrate, incidentally, how little we can trust to the grammatical distinction of parts of speech, since the substantive "rain" and the verb "to rain" denote precisely the same class of meteorological occurrences. The distinction between the class of objects denoted by such a word and the class of objects denoted by a general name such as "man," "vegetable," or "planet," ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... words 'singing mind' are doubtless accurately English, since you employ them; but at Boston the collocation would be deemed barbarous. You fly off the handle. The epithet, sir, is not in concord with the substantive." ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... three or four passages in his Genie du christianisme. Fayette and Lefeuvre-Deumier also gave a few fragments; but it was not until 1819 that a first imperfect attempt was made by H. de la Touche to collect the poems in a substantive volume. Since the appearance of the editio princeps of Chenier's poems in La Touche's volume, many additional poems and fragments have been discovered, and an edition of the complete works of the poet, collated with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... elegantiae literarum. He was, nevertheless, a man of many strange notions. It is well known that about the commencement of the eighteenth century, in our English books, printed in the mother country, the substantive words were almost always begun with a capital; the like practice obtained in many newspapers; but Longworth, not content with the partial change which time had brought about, of sinking these prominent and advantageous upper case type, waged a war of extermination against almost ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... been begun before Dr. Cairns left Berwick, and he supported it with voice and pen till the close of his life. He did so, it need not be said, without bitterness, endeavouring to make it clear that his quarrel was with the adjective and not with the substantive—with the "Established" and not with the "Church," and under the strong conviction that he was engaged "in a great ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns

... "desperate courage," as it is defined by Sir Walter Scott. The word in its present accepted substantival form is a misconstruction of the verbal substantive dorryng or durring, daring, and do or don, the present infinitive of "do," the phrase dorryng do thus meaning "daring to do." It is used by Chaucer in Troylus, and by Lydgate in the Chronicles of Troy. Spenser in the Shepherd's Calendar first adapted derring-do as a substantive ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... that ideal art is not only one with our nature intellectually, but in all ways; it is the path of the spirit in all things. Moreover, emotion is in itself simple; it does not need generalization, it is the same in all. It is rather a means of universalizing the refinements of the intellect, the substantive idealities of imagination, by enveloping them in an elementary, primitive feeling which they call forth. Poetry, therefore, especially deals, as Wordsworth pointed out, in the primary affections, the elementary passions of mankind; and, whatever be its ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... a word used to join a substantive, as a modifier, to some other preceding word, and to show the relation of the substantive to that word; as, by, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

... very doubtful. In Cordova's vocabulary, as given by Ternaux-Compans, "fleche" is given as the meaning of quii-lana. In Tzotzil gtox signifies "to split, break off, break open, to chop." In Maya we have tok; which, as a substantive, Perez explains by "pedernal, la sangria;" as a verb it signifies "to bleed, let blood." In this dialect tox denotes "to drain, ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... is supposed to have to his body; and so they spoke of this fine essence of the fermented liquid as being the spirit of the liquid. Thus came about that extraordinary ambiguity of language, in virtue of which you apply precisely the same substantive name to the soul of man and to a glass of gin! And then there is still yet one other most curious piece of nomenclature connected with this matter, and that is the word "alcohol" itself, which is now so familiar to everybody. Alcohol originally meant a very fine powder. The ...
— Yeast • Thomas H. Huxley

... God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Eternal life is not [Greek: gnosis], knowledge as a possession, but the state of acquiring knowledge ([Greek: hina gignoskosin]). It is significant, I think, that St. John, who is so fond of the verb "to know," never uses the substantive [Greek: gnosis]. ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... another neighbor of ours, hardly less known to fame, though in a widely different line of usefulness, makes a very distinct picture in my mind; this was Ephraim Wales Bull, the inventor of the Concord grape. He was as eccentric as his name; but he was a genuine and substantive man, and my father took a great liking to him, which was reciprocated. He was short and powerful, with long arms, and a big head covered with bushy hair and a jungle beard, from which looked out a pair of eyes singularly brilliant and penetrating. He ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... in every thing a double nature of good; the one, as every thing is a total or substantive in itself; the other, as it is a part or member of a greater body; whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conservation of a more general form. Therefore we see the iron in particular sympathy moveth to the loadstone; but yet if ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... evidence that was given in the course of the Royal Commission Inquiry; that the assessment of witnesses was a necessary part of the findings he reached as to the cause of the accident; that the assessment was not a part of the substantive findings of the Commission; and "whether having reached his conclusion he expresses himself vehemently or refrains from pungent comment is entirely a matter for him". Similar submissions were made in relation to the second cause of action ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan

... the 11th verse of the first chapter of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature, with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the 11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was specifically directed to "bring ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... man; his name was Solamona: and we esteem him as the lawgiver of our nation. This king had a large heart, inscrutable for good; and was wholly bent to make his kingdom and people happy. He therefore, taking into consideration how sufficient and substantive this land was to maintain itself without any aid (at all) of the foreigner; being five thousand six hundred miles in circuit, and of rare fertility of soil in the greatest part thereof; and finding also the shipping of this country ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon

... the actor; in which case, it signifies very little whether there be any sense in it or no. Now, your reading play is of a different stamp, and must have wit and meaning in it. These latter I call your substantive, as being able to support themselves. The former are your adjective, as what require the buffoonery and gestures of an actor to be joined with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... any way affect their character, as regards the Revelation which they were worked to prove or of which they form a part. Revelation uses these events for its own purposes. Some of these events are spoken of as evidences of a divine mission. Some of them are substantive facts embraced in the message delivered. And if for these purposes they have served their turn, if they have arrested attention which would not otherwise have been arrested, if they have overcome prejudices, if they have compelled belief, ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter

... asked the lady. Her tone and accent made the substantive sound criminal. It almost hissed, the way ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... Subscribe (sign) subskribi. Subscribe (money) monoferi. Subscription monoferado. Subscription abono. Subsequent sekva. Subside mallevi. Subsidy helpa mono. Substance substanco. Substantial fortika. Substantiate pruvi. Substantive substantivo. Substitute anstatauxi. Subterfuge artifiko. Subterranean subtera. Subterraneous subtera. Subtile maldika. Subtle ruza. Subtract elpreni. Subtraction elpreno. Suburbs cxirkauxurbo. Subvention helpa mono. Subversive detruanta. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... generally observed a Russian-mediated cease-fire in place since May 1994, and support the OSCE-mediated peace process, now entering its fifth year. Nevertheless, Baku and Xankandi (Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh region) remain far apart on most substantive issues from the placement and composition of a peacekeeping force to the enclave's ultimate political status, and prospects for a negotiated settlement ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... expressly made for hanging, as he stretches it out, in pale defiance, over the half-door of his hutch. Bark's parts of speech are of an awful sort - principally adjectives. I won't, says Bark, have no adjective police and adjective strangers in my adjective premises! I won't, by adjective and substantive! Give me my trousers, and I'll send the whole adjective police to adjective and substantive! Give me, says Bark, my adjective trousers! I'll put an adjective knife in the whole bileing of 'em. I'll punch their adjective heads. I'll ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... satisfy the demands of the spirit. It leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander without end. Then the heart resists it, because it balks the affections in denying substantive being to men and women. Nature is so pervaded with human life, that there is something of humanity in all, and in every particular. But this theory makes nature foreign to me, and does not account for that consanguinity which we acknowledge ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... drawl that afflicts the ear than a nasal twang. You notice in every sentence a curious shifting of emphasis. America, with the true instinct of democracy, is determined to give all parts of speech an equal chance. The modest pronoun is not to be outdone by the blustering substantive or the self-asserting verb. And so it is that the native American hangs upon the little words: he does not clip and slur "the smaller parts of speech," and what his tongue loses in colour it gains ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... is Den Siste Gloede (literally "The Last Joy"). The title as it stands is expressive. The substantive is "joy"—but it is so qualified by the preceding "last," a word of overwhelming influence in any combination, that the total effect is one of sadness. And the book itself is a masterly presentment of gloom. Masterly—or most natural: it is often hard to ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... the r has been softened into l. The Sanskrit kapala has almost entirely superseded the use of the old native word ulu or hulu, the head; the latter, however, is found in composition with a Sanskrit word in the substantive hulubalang, a war-chief, from hulu, head, and ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell

... and has his full share of faults, and though the owner of a style, is capable of excruciating offences. His habitual use of the odious word "individual" as a noun-substantive (seven times in three pages of 'The Romany Rye') elicits the frequent groan, and he is certainly once guilty of calling fish the "finny tribe." He believed himself to be animated by an intense hatred of the Church of Rome, and disfigures many of his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... considerable and, in no small measure, new. Mycerinus, a piece of some 120 lines or so, in thirteen six-line stanzas and a blank-verse coda, is one of those characteristic poems of this century, which are neither mere "copies of verses," mere occasional pieces, nor substantive compositions of the old kind, with at least an attempt at a beginning, middle, and end. They attempt rather situations than stories, rather facets than complete bodies of thought, or description, or character. They supply an obvious way of escape for the Romantic tendency which does ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... enough to embrace the legitimate desires of a civilized and enlightened people determined in all their relations to pursue a conscientious and religious life. We can not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases. It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much disturbed by the thought of either isolation or ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... his head very little about that; and we still less. We should have been greatly surprised by the novelty and the forbidding look of such words in the grammatical jargon as substantive, indicative and subjunctive. Accuracy of language, whether of speech or writing, must be learnt by practice. And none of us was troubled by scruples in this respect. What was the use of all these subtleties, when, on coming out of school, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... received in response to the NPRM had already been addressed, and some called for minor clarifications that have been made to the final regulations. Other comments, whether raised for the first or second time, raise substantive issues ...
— Supplementary Copyright Statutes • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... an example of absolute divergence of meaning, inherited from the Latin; but as they are different parts of speech, I allow their plea of identical derivation and exclude them from my list. On the other hand, the substantive beam is an example of such a false homophone as I include. Beam may signify a balk of timber, or a ray of light. Milton's ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... speak the soliloquy last night?" "Oh, against all rule, my lord, most ungrammatically! Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus—stopping as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice a dozen times, three seconds, and ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... The passage is ingeniously worked into its context; and if we were to consider it as only intended to serve the purpose of a sudden and dramatic discomfiture of the Traveller's somewhat inconsiderate moralizings on captivity, it would be well enough. But, regarded as a substantive appeal to one's emotions, it is open to the criticisms which apply to most other of Sterne's too deliberate attempts at the pathetic. The details of the picture are too much insisted on, and there ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... "maze," signifying a labyrinth, probably comes from the Scandinavian, but its origin is somewhat uncertain. The late Professor Skeat thought that the substantive was derived from the verb, and as in old times to be mazed or amazed was to be "lost in thought," the transition to a maze in whose tortuous windings we are lost ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... Substantive only, or else a phrase consisting of a Substantive and one or more Adjectives (or phrases ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll

... substantive union of the soul with God was the distinguishing feature of the pantheistic religious creeds of India, as it was also of some of the Greek philosophical systems. In the Middle Ages, while many of ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... archaically expressed by a second and abstract substantive. This peculiarity is common in the South African family, as in Ashanti; but, as Bowdich observes, we also find it in Greek, e.g. , "heresies of destruction" for destructive. Another notable characteristic ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Acategorematic word is one which can neither form, nor help to form, a term [Footnote: Comparatively few of the parts of speech are categorematic. Nouns, whether substantive or adjective, including of course pronouns and participles, are so, but only in their nominative cases, except when an oblique case is so used as to be equivalent to an attributive. Verbs also are categorematic, but only in three of their moods, the Indicative, the Infinitive, and the ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... remain, stay. Adj. existing &c v.; existent, under the sun; in existence &c n.; extant; afloat, afoot, on foot, current, prevalent; undestroyed. real, actual, positive, absolute; true &c 494; substantial, substantive; self-existing, self-existent; essential. well-founded, well-grounded; unideal^, unimagined; not potential &c 2; authentic. Adv. actually &c adj.; in fact, in point of fact, in reality; indeed; de facto, ipso facto. Phr. ens ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... deliberately coined by Shelley 'on no better warrant than the exigency of the rhyme.' There can be little doubt that 'uprest' is simply an overlooked misprint for 'uprist'—not by any means a nonce-word, but a genuine English verbal substantive of regular formation, familiar to many from its employment by Chaucer. True, the corresponding rhyme-words in the passage above referred to are 'nest,' 'possessed,' 'breast'; but a laxity such as 'nest'—'uprist' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... upper part of the ridge of some elevated and exposed land." As a prefix, its meaning depends upon the fact whether the word attached to it be an adjective or a substantive. If an adjective be attached, it has the second signification; i.e. it is the upper part of some exposed land, having the particular quality involved in the adjective, such as, "Cefndu," "Cefngwyn," "Cefncoch," the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... of the Creditor is Riah,' said Mr Fledgeby, with a rather uncompromising accent on his noun-substantive. 'Saint Mary ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... referring to a single person. This is not correct, for the moment the word is generally used to denote an individual, it is to be considered as a pronoun in the singular number, the following verb should be regulated by that circumstance and considered as in the singular.... Indeed, in the substantive verb, the word has taken the singular form of the verb, you was, which practice is getting the better of old rules and probably will be established." But old rules have considerable vitality, and the general opinion still is that if an individual permits ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... is freest from passion will be the winner of the game. As a maxim, after the fashion of Rochefoucauld, this doctrine may have enough truth to be plausible; but when seriously accepted and made the substantive moral of a succession of stories, one is reminded less of a really acute observer than of a lad fresh from college who thinks that wisdom consists in an exaggerated cynicism. When ladies of this variety break their hearts, they either die or retire in a picturesque ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... of Bi are rarely if ever used. They are here given complete, because they correspond to the analogy of other verbs; and show how accurately the various modifications of time may be expressed by the substantive ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... p. 150). This could only be proved by giving examples of such highly deficient languages, which Mr. Spencer does not do.[13] In many savage speculations there occur ideas as subtly metaphysical as those of Hegel. Moreover, even the Australian languages have the verb 'to see,' and the substantive 'sleep.' Nothing, then, prevents a man from saying 'I saw in sleep' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... 'very old men, worn out by lack of food and sleep, could not arrangements have been made, or influence have been secured, or a petition presented, whereby a well-born Sikh might have eased them of some portion of their great burden, even though his substantive rank—' ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... of course, an impossibility in any language, just as a negative substantive, another name for the same thing, is a direct contradiction in terms. No matter how negative the idea to be given, it must be conveyed by a positive expression. Even a void is grammatically quite full of meaning, although unhappily empty in fact. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... the pale of India, it is as widely extended as the English language is beyond the limits of Germany. The rival religion of the Brahmins expelled it. Which of the two was the older is uncertain. Still more difficult is it to determine how far each is a separate substantive mythological growth, or merely a modification ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... that the conclusions of pure mathematics are applied, corrected, and adapted, by mixed; but so too the conclusions of Anatomy, Chemistry, Dynamics, and other sciences, are revised and completed by each other. Those several conclusions do not represent whole and substantive things, but views, true, so far as they go; and in order to ascertain how far they do go, that is, how far they correspond to the object to which they belong, we must compare them with the views taken out of that object by other sciences. Did we proceed upon the abstract theory ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... race fast decaying,—specimen of the true fine gentleman, ere the word "dandy" was known, and before "exquisite" became a noun substantive,—let me here pause to describe thee! Sir Sedley Beaudesert was the contemporary of Trevanion and my father; but without affecting to be young, he still seemed so. Dress, tone, look, manner,—all were young; ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... peculiarities may, from the force of circumstances, be left in abeyance for a time, or even permanently, but the dominant features must be retained. It is not enough to have genuine Consistories, we must have genuine Classes. And, under whatever modifications, the substantive elements of our polity must be reproduced in the mission churches established by the blessing of God upon the men and ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... averments in pleading; especially, in pleading in abatement, where the utmost certainty and precision are required. (Chitty on Pl., 457.) That the plaintiff himself was a slave at the time of action brought, is a substantive fact, having no necessary connection with the fact that his parents were sold as slaves. For they might have been sold after he was born; or the plaintiff himself, if once a slave, might have became a freeman before action ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... was silently regularized, and missing or invisible periods (full stops) after standard abbreviations such as "m." or "pl." were silently supplied. Other errors in punctuation or typography are listed separately, after the more substantive errors. ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall

... L'Ennuye? he shook his head; too common; he would have none of it. Le Frondeur? no; too much trouble; he shrugged his abhorrence. Le Blase? he allowed, might be too true. But would they hazard a substantive verb? He would give them four-and-twenty hours to consider, and he would take twenty-four himself to decide. They should have his definitive to-morrow, and he was sliding away, but Lady Castlefort, as he passed her, cried, "Going, Lord Beltravers, going ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... functions, passions, and procedures of the Lamb crucified from the foundation of the world;—the incarnation, cross, and passion,—in short, the whole life of Christ in the flesh, dwelling a man among men, being essential and substantive parts of the process, the total of which they represented; and on this account proper symbols of the acts and passions of the Christ dwelling in man, as the Spirit of truth, and for as many as in faith have received him, in Seth and Abraham no less effectually than in John and Paul! For this is the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... perish. The business of the physician is to keep the proportions just and harmonious; but, as no pure element exists alone, the physician must employ the qualitas in conjunction with the materia. These (to make a phrase) substantive qualities, are found in medicines or food, which, like all objects of sense, are either cold, hot, dry, or moist, and available of course in the management of a cold, hot, dry, or moist ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... story bears most directly and clearly the impress of his character, and partly because, as will be seen, it was more continuous. I must, however, warn my readers against a possible illusion of perspective. To Fitzjames himself the legal career always represented the substantive, and the literary career the adjective. Circumstances made journalism highly convenient, but his literary ambition was always to be auxiliary to his legal ambition. It would, of course, have been injurious to his prospects at the bar had it been supposed that the case was ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... epigram at our expense. Hence the tendency in these productions, and in medical lectures generally, to overstate the efficacy of favorite methods of cure, and hence the premium offered for showy talkers rather than sagacious observers, for the men of adjectives rather than of nouns substantive in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... melodious sound of chimes. The college clock was beginning to strike ten. He had scarcely got into the passage, and closed the door after him, when a roar as of a bereaved spirit rang through the room opposite, followed by a string of words, the only intelligible one being the noun-substantive "globe", and the next moment the door opened and Moriarty came out. The last stroke of ten was just booming from ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... there is no substantive verb. The predicate and subject are combined as in the examples already given (cf. p. 312, 2). But when the present indicates a state in opposition to one preceding it, ga is used before the adjective, or ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... direction of Latium, answering to the symbolic hearth in the aedes Vestae, and this very naturally took the name of the deity associated with entrances. Two other iani probably existed in the forum, and the name was later on transferred as a substantive to similar objects in Roman colonies, while a feminine form, ianua, came to be used for ordinary house entrances.[251] Whether there ever was a cult of the god at the real gateway of a city we do not know; there was none at the symbolic gateway of Rome, which was in no sense a temple. But the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... adopt on the plea of ameliorating its lot."[148] On lui fit adopter! But who were the on, and how did they work? With what instruments and what fulcrum? Never was the convenience of this famous abstract substantive more fatally abused. And if religion, government, and opinion had all aggravated the miseries of the human race, what had lessened them? For the Encyclopaedic school never attempted, as Rousseau did, to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... word is now used in a most ignorant way; and from its misuse it has come to be a word wholly useless: for it is now never coupled, I think, with any other substantive than these two—faith and confidence: a poor domain indeed to have sunk to from its original wide range of territory. Moreover, when we say, implicit faith, or implicit confidence, we do not thereby indicate any specific kind of faith and confidence differing ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... the stage a red-haired, laughing-hyena faced, fustian-coated biped, exclaiming—'My name is Wall! I have a substantive amendment to move to the resolution now proposed—('Go off, off! ooh, ooh, ooh! turn him out, out, out!') We are met in a place where religion is taught (groans). Well, then, we are met where they "teach the young idea how to shoot"'—(laughter, groans, and 'Go on, Wall.') ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various

... necessary to occupy further room with more instances of so familiar a phrase, though perhaps it may not be out of the way to remark, that miss is used by Andrewes as a substantive in the same sense as the verb, namely, in vol. v. p. 176.: the more usual form being misture, or, earlier, mister. Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary, most unaccountably treats these two forms as distinct words; and yet, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... echoed Avis, mournfully. "I don't think Latin was ever meant for girls. My brother did Caesar two years ago, and he's in Virgil now, though he's a year younger than I am. It seems quite easy to him, but I never know which verb goes with which substantive, or whether a thing is a nominative or a genitive. I look out all the words in the dictionary, and learn their meanings, but I can't make the least sense of them until Miss Harper shows me how they fit into the sentences. Why isn't Latin arranged like English? Everything seems ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... this yellow colour is observed on the surface only, the grain otherwise possessing that pure white colour characteristic of Neradol D tanned leather. Further, it may be noted that leathers tanned—with Neradol D fix basic coal-tar dyes excellently, whereas acid and substantive dyestuffs are fixed with other ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... justice to observe, that he, as well as the corrector of the folio, 1632, adds the necessary letter s to the word "creature," making the plural substantive agree with her other exclamation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... by myself can noun substantive stand, Impose on my Owners, and save my own land; You call me masculine, feminine, neuter, or block, Be what will the gender, sirs, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... of all the substantive rights of the human personality; guaranteed by judicial power, cemented in the principles in force in all the cultured nations; that the judicial authorities, when applying the laws, be penetrated by and identified with the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... divorce. In order to obviate the conclusion to which these decisions clearly tended, the Supreme Judicial Court proceeded to minimize the authority of the Ecclesiastical Courts, by suggesting that "the decisions of those Courts upon questions of substantive law are not of the same weight here as are the decisions of the English Courts of Law and Chancery;" because "the Ecclesiastical Courts proceeded according to the Canon Law as allowed and adopted in England; but the Canon Law was never adopted by the Colonists ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... the intervals mentioned all six subjects recall movement couplets better than verb couplets. In view of the small difference here and of his whole record, however, M is probably to be classed as indifferent in both substantive and action series. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... for child is Kind, which, as a substantive, finds representatives neither in Gothic nor in early English, but has cognates in the Old Norse kunde, "son," Gothic -kunds, Anglo-Saxon -kund, a suffix signifying "coming from, originating from." The ultimate radical ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... been rendered iron-bound, brass-bound, hearth-encircling, curved like an eagle's beak, etc. Benches and helmets of ceremony are evidently intended, probably ornamented with brass-work or figures of eagles. But to whichever substantive applied, I take its meaning to be ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... peccadilloes, for he tells us when he does repent, and, to be just to him, there often follows some improvement. Again, the sins of the religious diarist are of a very formal pattern, and are told with an elaborate whine. But in Pepys you come upon good, substantive misdemeanours; beams in his eye of which he alone remains unconscious; healthy outbreaks of the animal nature, and laughable subterfuges to himself that always command belief ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... signifies to steady;—as a substantive, a comprehensive mind. A man is said to "lose his ballast" when his judgment fails him, or he becomes ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... I am in no humor for jesting. Damas. I see you understand something of the grammar; you decline the non-substantive "small-swords" with great ease; but that won't do—you must take a lesson ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... to be spitted and roasted. One wet morning, when the weather was that in which the snails make their tracks, a melancholy time, and suitable to reverie, Blanche was in the house sitting in her chair in deep thought, because nothing produces more lively concoctions of the substantive essences, and no receipt, specific or philter is more penetrating, transpiercing or doubly transpiercing and titillating than the subtle warmth which simmers between the nap of the chair and a maiden ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... (line 31) against hasinu (line 29) have been used to indicate "The axe it was," or "because of the axe?" It would be worth while to examine other texts of the Hammurabi period with a view of determining the scope in the use and meaning of the emphatic ma when added to a substantive. ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous

... appellation from any place, being always used adjectively—"vin clairet," not vin de clairet. I am perhaps not quite correct in stating, that the word is always used as an adjective; for we sometimes find clairet used alone as a substantive; but I conceive that in this case the word vin is to be understood, as we say "du Bordeaux," "du Champagne," meaning "du vin de Bordeaux," "du vin de Champagne." Eau clairette is the name given to a sort of cherry-brandy; and lapidaries apply the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... the more material and substantive relations between signs and language, it is to be expected that analogies can by proper research be ascertained between their several developments in the manner of their use, that is, in their grammatic mechanism, and in the genesis of the sentence. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... recovered from the MSS. of De Quincey will, the Editor believes, be found of substantive value. In some cases they throw fresh light on his opinions and ways of thinking; in other cases they deal with topics which are not touched at all in his collected works: and certainly, when read alongside the writings with which the public is already familiar, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... the law which made slavetrading felony. But there was not the smallest injustice in enacting that the Central Criminal Court should try felonies committed long before that Court was in being. In Torrington's case the substantive law continued to be what it had always been. The definition of the crime, the amount of the penalty, remained unaltered. The only change was in the form of procedure; and that change the legislature was perfectly justified in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... retorted with Shakespeare's 'doth progress down thy cheeks.' I confess that I was never satisfied with this answer, because the accent was different, and because the word might here be reckoned a substantive quite as well as a verb. Mr. Bartlett (in his dictionary above cited) adds a surrebutter in a verse from Ford's 'Broken Heart.' Here the word is clearly a verb, but with the accent unhappily still on the first syllable. Mr. Bartlett says that he 'cannot say whether the word was ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... by her grand speech, which neither in matter nor manner would he have changed in the smallest particular. But into Miss Anthony's private correspondence one must look for examples of her most effective writing. Verb or substantive is often wanting, but you can always catch the thought, and will ever find it clear and suggestive. It is a strikingly strange dialect, but one that touches, at times, the deepest chords of pathos and humor, and, when stirred by some great ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Monarquia Indiana, Lib. vi, cap. xxiv. Camaxtli is also found in the form Yoamaxtli; this shows that it is a compound of maxtli, covering, clothing, and ca, the substantive verb, or in the latter instance, yoalli, night; hence it is, "the Mantle," or, "the garb of night" ("la faja nocturna," Anales del Museo Nacional, ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... se brindara: que ella se brindara is treated as a substantive clause, which el precedes as it would ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... didn't think of competing; and since this sort of thing carries its own penalty, the designation which they shared with so many distinguished persons in history became a byword on the lips of envious persons and small boys, by which they wished to express effeminacy and the substantive of the "stuck-up." "D'ye take me fur a bank clurk?" was a form of repudiation among corner loafers as forcible ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... the habit of using the adjective for the substantive, especially fair for fairness; one example ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... from a grant of arms to a pair of wooden legs; so it is not surprising if, in Oxford, such an every-day commodity as a dog can be obtained through the medium of "filthy lucre;" for there was a well-known dog-fancier and proprietor, whose surname was that of the rich substantive just mentioned, to which had been prefixed the "filthy" adjective, probably for the sake of euphony. As usual, Filthy Lucre was clumping with his lame leg up and down the pavement just in front of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... is," said Dorsenne again, jocosely, "that in the father's dictionary the word has another meaning: Conversion, feminine substantive, means to him income.... But let us reason a little, Countess. Why do you think it sad that the daughter should see her father's character in her own light?... You should, on the contrary, rejoice at it.... And why do you find it melancholy ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... of the English version of the Pentateuch is sometimes such as Addison would not have ventured to imitate; and Addison, the standard of moral purity in his own age, used many phrases which are now proscribed. Whether a thing shall be designated by a plain noun-substantive or by a circumlocution is mere matter of fashion. Morality is not at all interested in the question. But morality is deeply interested in this, that what is immoral shall not be presented to the imagination of the young and susceptible in constant connection with what is attractive. For every ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... neuter substantive to which the adjective agrees; the poet refers it to the person. Of the same kind is that which is said by Dione ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... this chapter, entitled "The Jewish Cemetery in Prague and the Council of Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel," will disclose the fact that every substantive statement contained in the Protocols and elaborated in them is to be found ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... a passer: "I-uns's uses about here." "Critter" means an animal—"cretur," a fellow-creature. "Longsweet-'nin'" and "short sweet'nin'" are respectively syrup and sugar. The use of the indefinite substantive pronoun un (the French on), modified by the personals, used demonstratively, and of "done" and "gwine" as auxiliaries, is peculiar to the mountains, as well on the Wabash and Alleghany, I am told, as in Tennessee. The practice of dipping—by which is meant not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... surprises me, since Pocock, Lane and Palmer, and Fresnel and Perron among French Orientalists, as also Burton, all retain the final aspirate h, the latter taking special care to distinguish, by some adequate, diacritical sign, those substantive and adjective forms with which words ending in the final aspirate h ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... it to that perplexing extent that to look at it was like being knocked on the head with it, the stranger becoming stunned and stertorous under the shock of its incomprehensibility,—from the days when VAUBAN made it the express incorporation of every substantive and adjective in the art of military engineering, and not only twisted you into it and twisted you out of it, to the right, to the left, opposite, under here, over there, in the dark, in the dirt, by the gateway, archway, covered way, dry way, wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens

... always directed to the commanding officer who has obtained them, the influence which I was beginning to have in the regiment was greatly increased and went some way to calm my regrets at not having been awarded substantive rank for ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... from matter as separate existences and substantives, spiritual or immaterial; so the Goodness, Wisdom, Justice, Mercy, and Benevolence of God are not independent existences, personify them as men may, but attributes of the Deity, the adjectives of One Great Substantive. But we know that He must be Good, True, Wise, Just, Benevolent, Merciful: and in all these, and all His other attributes, Perfect and Infinite; because we are conscious that these are laws imposed on us by the very nature of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... ancient form, of German origin. There is no consensus expressed in it and the symbolism is elaborate. The libellus dotis is evidently an innovation. It has a Latin name and is a contingent, not a substantive part of the man's acts. The old German form shows that the Latin church usage had not ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... as clear as daylight. I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of "the survival of the fittest." This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words Natural Selection. I formerly thought, probably in an exaggerated degree, that it was a great advantage ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... should be rejected (with all the consequences of its rejection apparent) or that it should be passed without these clauses. There was no necessity for their abandonment of any opinion or principle, nor any obstacle to the appropriation clauses being brought forward again and again in a substantive independent shape. Besides this, it is not pretended that these clauses were to produce any immediate perhaps not even any remote, effect, and they not only acknowledge that the state of Ireland calls for an immediate ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... intended to form a summary guide to the vast and varied contents of the Dictionary and its Supplement. Every name, about which substantive biographic information is given in the sixty-three volumes in the Dictionary or in the three Supplementary Volumes, finds mention here in due alphabetical order. An Epitome is given of the leading facts and dates that have been already recorded at length ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... Father of the living Word, His substantive Wisdom, Power, and Eternal Image, the perfect Begetter of the perfect One, the Father of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... He glanced helplessly at Aunt Ri, who promptly responded: "Naow, honey, don't yeow talk. 'Tain't good fur ye; 'n' Feeleepy 'n' me, we air in a powerful hurry ter git yer strong 'n' well, 'n' tote ye out er this—" Aunt Ri stopped. No substantive in her vocabulary answered her need at that moment. "I allow ye kin go 'n a week, ef nothin' don't go agin ye more'n I see naow; but ef yer git ter talkin', thar's no tellin' when yer'll git up. Yeow jest shet up, honey. We'll ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... upon two more words unknown to Shakespeare; {256} besiege, as a noun substantive, and invired ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... money; shishka [Bump or swelling.] (on pronouncing which one had to join one's fingers together, and to put a particular emphasis upon the two sh's in the word) meant anything fresh, healthy, and comely, but not elegant; a substantive used in the plural meant an undue partiality for the object which it denoted; and so forth, and so forth. At the same time, the meaning depended considerably upon the expression of the face and the context of the conversation; so that, no ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... earth, and a rising again of life above it; but it is hard to find definite traces of any personal goddess. The Olympian Demeter and Persephone dwindle away as we look closer, and we are left with the shadow Thesmophoros, 'She who carries Thesmoi',[16:1] not a substantive personal goddess, but merely a personification of the ritual itself: an imaginary Charm-bearer generated by so much charm-bearing, just as Meilichios in the Diasia was generated from ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... doubt, be placed on this curious fact; but hardly any construction can be placed on it which does not in some way connect Grimald with the publication. It may be added that, while his, Surrey's, and Wyatt's contributions are substantive and known—the numbers of separate poems contributed being respectively forty for Surrey, the same for Grimald, and ninety-six for Wyatt—no less than one hundred and thirty-four poems, reckoning ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... nothing of ablative, conjunctive, substantive, or grammar, no more than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet these will give you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear them, and peradventure shall trip as little in their language as the best masters of art ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... gold.' It is a feminine adjective. The substantive is omitted. I think the passage may mean—'The city of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... divisions of this great race are those with which we have most to do in history and in literature. Our own English language is made up of the dialects of different tribes, many of whom agreed in their use of words which they had derived from our Aryan ancestry. Thus our substantive verb I AM appears in the original Sanscrit of the Aryans as ESMI, and m for ME (MOI), or the first person singular, is found in all the verbal inflections. The Greek form of the same verb was ESMI, which became ASMI, and in Latin the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... concept of Federalism; (2) the doctrine of the Separation of Powers; (3) the concept of a Government of Laws and not of Men, as opposed especially to indefinite conceptions of presidential power; (4) and the substantive doctrine of Due Process of Law and attendant conceptions of Liberty. What I proposed to do is to take up each of these doctrines or concepts in turn, tell something of their earlier history, and then project ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... Pavilioned in its tent of light. Shelley was fond of the word Pavilion, whether as substantive or as verb. See St. 50: 'Pavilioning the dust of ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... dislikes are excited, and so absolutely unable to check himself whenever he feels tempted thus to go off, lacks the very first qualifications of the critic:—lacks them, indeed, almost as much as the mere word-grinder who looks to see whether a plural substantive has a singular verb, and is satisfied if it has not, and horrified if it has. His most famous sentence "The Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities live for ever" is certainly noble. But it would have been better if the Humanities had oftener choked ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Substantive" :   law, adjective, noun, substantival, substantial, jurisprudence



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