"Twang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this question another—Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had, a certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... and once more the big building rang with cheering. As the sound of hearty acclamation died away there was a great clatter of thrust-back benches through which the tuning of a fiddle broke. Then out of the tentative twang of strings rose, clear and silvery, the lament of Flora Macdonald, thrilling with melancholy, and there were men and women there whose hearts went back to the other wild and misty land of rock and pine and frothing river ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... his aim, he shot arrow after arrow. His wife Renuka used to pick up the shafts when shot and repeatedly bring them back to that descendant, endued with blazing energy, of Bhrigu's race. Pleased with the whizzing noise of his arrows and the twang of his bow, he amused himself thus by repeatedly discharging his arrows which Renuka brought back into him. One day, at noontide, O monarch, in that month when the sun was in Jyesthamula, the Brahmana, having discharged all his arrows, said ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... thyself and thy real and thy apparent place, and know him and his real and his apparent place, and act in some noble conformity with all that. What! The star-fire of the Empyrean shall eclipse itself, and illuminate magic-lanterns to amuse grown children? He, the god-inspired, is to twang harps for thee, and blow through scrannel-pipes, to soothe thy sated soul with visions of new, still wider Eldorados, Houri Paradises, richer Lands of Cockaigne? Brother, this is not he; this is a counterfeit, this twangling, jangling, vain, acrid, scrannel-piping man. Thou dost well to say with ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... gentleman offering his hand to lead a lady to the piano. "Do excuse me, sir, I beg of you," she replies, "I have not touched an instrument of music half a dozen times since I was married—one, you know, has so much to do." Thus music as a science lags in the rear, while musical instruments in myriads twang away in the van: and thus the window cobweb having caught its flies for the season is swept away by ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... morning. There were eggs without egg-spoons, toast which was leathery from being kept, dried-up rashers, and grounds in the coffee. Above all, there was that dreadful smell which pervaded everything and gave a horrible twang ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mules, are you?" The speech is a stately drawl very different from the nasal twang of Eliphalet's bringing up. "Reckon you don't come from anywhere ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... overtures by gentlemen performers whose names and faces I know not, and such was the never ceasing rattling and noise in the card-room, where I was kept almost all the evening, that a general humming of musical sounds, and now and then a twang, was ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... placing my hand on another's throat and cheek, I enjoy the changes of the voice. I know when it is low or high, clear or muffled, sad or cheery. The thin, quavering sensation of an old voice differs in my touch from the sensation of a young voice. A Southerner's drawl is quite unlike the Yankee twang. Sometimes the flow and ebb of a voice is so enchanting that my fingers quiver with exquisite pleasure, even if I do not understand a ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... its part, but the Devil has since so over-done his, that what with the Vizor of Sanctity, which is the gadly Sneer, the drawing of the Face to a prodigious length, the formal Language, with a certain Twang through the Nose, and the pious Gogle, they are fitter to scare Children than ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Nature holds her breath before launching upon the world the bitter blasts and blizzards and awful cold of a sub-arctic winter. There are days and days together when the azure of the sky remains unmarred by clouds, and the sun shines uninterruptedly. The air, brilliantly transparent, carries a twang of frost. Evening is bathed in an effulgence of colour. The sky flames in startling reds and yellows blending into opals and turquoise, with the shadowy hills lying in a ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... by the revelation of this vast breach in her omniscience as the bright twang of knowingness in her voice had told him ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... repetition, "Truly I knew him, Merchant Gian as we used to call him; but you twang off his name as they speak it in his own ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a fine buck went by. He had not spied us while we lay still, but the moment my comrade moved, he threw up his head and bounded off. Yet not before a quick twang from Sir Ludar's bowstring had sent an arrow into his quarter. "Are you mad?" cried I, in terror, "it ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... with a confounded twang in his mouth, and a cracking pain in his head, he stood one moment and sniffed in the salt sea breeze. The moon was unfortunately on the waters, and her cool, beneficent light reminded him, with ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... mellow brown; the reed is of medium width, well developed, and nearly equal all over, and it is singularly bowed from bottom to top, meeting, when joined (for it is in two parts), just as will a string of a violin when you hold it in both hands, and twang it ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... myself, orty-like, hout, And wished it could go on all night, wich my pardner did ditto, no doubt. Modern Venice in minichure, CHARLIE, ain't really so dusty, you bet; I wos quite a Bassanio in breeks, and I ain't lost the twang of it yet. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... A tuft of yellow beard on the end of his sharp chin, gave his face a comical expression resembling that which caricature bestows on Uncle Sam. His voice was pitched in a high key, and was modified by that nasal twang supposed to indicate Yankee origin; but a habit of giving his declarative sentences an interrogative finish, might denote that he came from the mountain regions of Pennsylvania or Virginia. A pair of linsey pantaloons, a blue hunting shirt with a fringe of red ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... a gage of ben bouse,[4] And stall thee by the salmon into clowes,[5] To maund on the pad, and strike all the cheats, [6] To mill from the Ruffmans, Commission, and slates, [7] Twang dells i' th' stiromel, and let the Quire Cuffin And Harman Beck strine and trine to the ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice had more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard in New York in many a day. I mentally doubled the fee I had intended to give him. And now Alva and she were coming down the stairway. I was amazed at sight of her. Her evening dress had given place to a pretty blue street suit with a short skirt—white showing ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Twang! The arrow sped through the air, but it was too dark for them to follow its flight with their eyes. With their hearts in their mouths, they ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... unison when striking the butt of the arrow. And so we had all things ready for the discharge; whereupon, I placed my foot upon the trigger, and, bidding the bo'sun watch carefully the flight of the arrow, pushed downwards. The next instant, with a mighty twang, and a quiver that made the great stock stir on its bed of rocks, the bow sprang to its lesser tension, hurling the arrow outwards and upwards in a vast arc. Now, it may be conceived with what mortal interest we watched its ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... that I should take exception to the guffaw? Ten years ago I too guffawed, though I hope with not quite the Kensingtonian twang. The first Cezannes I ever saw seemed to me to be very funny. They did not disturb my dreams, because I was not in the business. But my notion about Cezanne was that he was a fond old man who distracted himself by daubing. I could not say how my conversion to Cezanne began. When one is not a practising ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... turned Bell back once more to the telephone. His magnetized telegraph wire stretched from one room to another located in a remote part of the building. One day Watson accidentally plucked a piece of clock wire that lay near this telegraph wire, and Bell, working in another room, heard the twang. A few seconds later Watson was startled when an excited and somewhat disheveled figure burst into his room. "What was that?" shouted Bell. What had happened was clearly manifest; a sound had been sent distinctly over an electric wire. Bell's harmonic telegraph immediately went into ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... sheets as the wind caught it on the other quarter, making the long switch of a mast to spring like a bow, while the weather-shrouds slacked up for a moment in bights, and then came back taut with a twang you might have heard a mile! We could now see, as the space opened behind the rock, another frightful jagged ledge, on which the rollers were heaving in liquid masses high up a precipitous rock, and where the channel was not a cable's ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... of cheek and lips, Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Harold! Good day, Dobbins! [Exit. DOBSON. 'Arold! The feller's cleaen daaezed, an' maaezed, an' maaeted, an' muddled ma. Deaed! It mun be true, fur it wur i' print as black as owt. Naaeay, but 'Good daaey, Dobbins.' Why, that wur the very twang on 'im. Eh, lad, but whether thou be Hedgar, or Hedgar's business man, thou hesn't naw business 'ere wi' my Dora, as I knaws on, an' whether thou calls thysen Hedgar or Harold, if thou stick to she I'll stick ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... banjo, Matt," urged Joe. "Nothing like the merry old twang to make the new boys feel at home in ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... and very well; thoroughly understanding the text: with clear articulation, and the moderate emphasis proper to room-reading; with the advantage also of never having known the Theatre in his youth, so that he has not picked up the twang of any Actor of the Day. Then he read me King John, which he has some thoughts of editing next after Richard III. And I was reminded of you at Ipswich twenty-eight years ago; and of your Father—his look up at Angiers' Walls as he went out in Act ii. I wonder that Mrs. Siddons should ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... when or Why he came to call it tenor, But the fact remains he sang With a subtle nasal twang Just because he liked to do so (He was Carr, but not CARUSO), And with such a force of lung That, whatever tune he sung, It was like a projectile With a range ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... be received into the bosom of that Church of which his sovereign, many of his family, and the greater part of the civilized world, were members." And his lordship added a postscript, of which Esmond knew the inspiring genius very well, for it had the genuine twang of the seminary, and was quite unlike poor Frank's ordinary style of writing and thinking; in which he reminded Colonel Esmond that he too was, by birth, of that Church; and that his mother and sister should have his lordship's ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thought him by his face to be Scottish; nor could his accent undeceive me. For as there is a lingua franca of many tongues on the moles and in the feluccas of the Mediterranean, so there is a free or common accent among English-speaking men who follow the sea. They catch a twang in a New England Port; from a cockney skipper, even a Scotsman sometimes learns to drop an h; a word of a dialect is picked up from another hand in the forecastle; until often the result is undecipherable, and you have to ask for the man's place of birth. So it was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... April bird, that one does not have to go to the woods or away from his own door to see and hear, is the hardy and ever- welcome meadowlark. What a twang there is about this bird, and what vigor! It smacks of the soil. It is the winged embodiment of the spirit of our spring meadows. What emphasis in its "z-d-t, z-d-t" and what character in its long, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... departing. Singly or in pairs, glittering in finery, they came mincing down the steps, the ghost of the night's smirk fading to jadedness as they sought the dark recesses of their chairs. From within sounded the twang of fiddles still swinging manfully at it, and the windows were bright with the light of many candles. When the door was flung open to call the chair of Lady Mary Carlisle, there was an eager pressure of the throng ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... from the economic appetite on the first floor, where the plebian stomach is stayed with tea and lentils, even to the very house-top, where are administered comforting syrups and a menu that is sweetened throughout its length with the twang of lutes, the clash of cymbals, and the throb of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... My mind is suddenly ablaze with its sunshine, with its opulent colour, luminous and soft; I think of the cities, the white cities bathed in light; of the desolate wastes of sand, with their dwarf palms, the broom in flower. And in my ears I hear the twang of the guitar, the rhythmical clapping of hands and the castanets, as two girls dance in the sunlight on a holiday. I see the crowds going to the bull-fight, intensely living, many-coloured. And a thousand scents are ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... essentially a New-Englander. His background was that of Boston and its remote suburbs. And when he preaches the necessity of the cooperative commonwealth, he does it with a Yankee twang. In fact, he is as essentially native American as Norman Thomas, the present leader of the Socialist Party ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... lately for Sir O'Brallaghan, in Mr. Macklin's new farce of Love A-la-mode. He says that he does not keer to disgreece his tongue with imiteetions of that rascal brogue. As if there was any call for imiteetions, when he has such an admirable twang of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... see an archer in the very act of discharging his arrow, a dancer with one foot in the air, or a gladiator extending his fist to all eternity, I grow tired, and ask, When will they perform what they are about? When will the bow twang? the foot come to the ground? or the fist meet its adversary? Such wearisome attitudes I can view with admiration, but never with pleasure. The wrestlers, for example, in the same apartment, filled me with disgust: I cried out, For heaven's sake! give the throw, and have done. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... clean-shaven. His features were unusually expressive and mobile from his somewhat scornful mouth to his deep-set, observant eyes, and clearly denoted the absence of the stolid Saxon strain in his blood. His accent too, though not that of an educated man, was quite free from the hateful Cockney twang. His dress was spare as his figure, but though well worn there was something spruce and trim about his whole demeanour which indicated that he was not totally indifferent to the impression he created on others. He looked round the "office," ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... he is not the first of the sort I have seen; though it's true he rather exceeds any other. But as a nation—continued he in his reveries—these Spaniards are all an odd set; the very word Spaniard has a curious, conspirator, Guy-Fawkish twang to it. And yet, I dare say, Spaniards in the main are as good folks as any in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Ah good! last ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... to thy well-known rivulet, And slake his death-thirst. Hark, that quick fierce cry That rends the utter silence! 'tis the whoop Of battle, and a throng of savage men With naked arms and faces stained like blood, Fill the green wilderness; the long bare arms Are heaved aloft, bows twang and arrows stream; Each makes a tree his shield, and every tree Sends forth its arrow. Fierce the fight and short, As is the whirlwind. Soon the conquerors And conquered vanish, and the dead remain Mangled by tomahawks. The mighty woods Are still again, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... twang, twang!" cried the Kyrofatalapynx, and the two little fairies fell down exhausted and disheartened. The vine was cut but ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... played on by the spirits of just men made perfect, I ceased to search further for it in that procession,—for though the men composing it might be just enough, they were evidently a long way from perfection. And when it is remembered that all these harps were twang-twanging away furiously, and that their strings were being swept over with no Bochsa fingers, few will wonder that I longed for cotton-wool, and blessed the memory of Paganini, who had only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears), ending in some such style as this: "and other gentlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,"—giving a sort, of sentimental twang to the two words,—"and sends it round among you!" And forthwith the loving-cup—several of them, indeed, on each side of the tables—came slowly down ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... silence followed, and then Long Tom said, "There is another has had his lesson, Sir Eustace. I heard a bow twang across there, and as there was no cry you may be sure that the shaft sped straight, and that the man had no time ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... pine warbler's song may be varied by the individual singer from time to time. I heard one fine bird singing in the stereotyped form. As he sang a flicker flicked in the distance. Whereupon the pine warbler sang again, the same trill but with a tittering twang about it that just jocosely imitated the flicker. I saw no other warbler or other bird near enough to be the beneficiary of this joke. He did it just for himself, and his motions as he flew over to the next tree seemed a visible chuckle that ended in a saucy flirt of the two white tall feathers ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... consideration. He still teaches that the primitive cell, with which, it is supposed, all organisms begin, is in all the same, but, being placed in different situations, is developed here into a man, and there into a mushroom. "The offspring," he says, not without oracular twang, "is like its parent, not because it includes an immortal typical form, but because it is exposed in development to the same conditions as was its parent." Behold a cheap explanation of the mystery of life! If one inquire how the vast variety of parental conditions was obtained, Dr. Draper is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... communities who are seldom utterly illiterate, and as seldom scholarly. I have listened in vain for any national twang, drawl, or peculiar intonation. The young people, perhaps, speak rather faster than English of the same age, that is all. On the other hand, anything like picturesque, expressive language within the limits of grammar ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... den there dwelt an old, melancholy, grizzled man of the name of Tari (Charlie) Coffin. He was a native of Oahu, in the Sandwich Islands; and had gone to sea in his youth in the American whalers; a circumstance to which he owed his name, his English, his down-east twang, and the misfortune of his innocent life. For one captain, sailing out of New Bedford, carried him to Nuka-hiva and marooned him there among the cannibals. The motive for this act was inconceivably small; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recognition of danger in the very charm of her attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness to fall on James. He did not remember ever having been quite alone with Irene before. And, as he looked at her, an odd feeling crept over him, as though he had come ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... twang'd thy bow, mighty youth, in the foray, Dread gleam'd thy brand in the proud field of glory; And when heroes sat round in the Psalter of Tara, His counsel was sage as ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... long-drawn hymn floated through the windows and wandered into the woods. The twang of the tuning-fork was drowned by a succession of cries. The smart young man's eyebrows went up to meet his roach while he stood in the aisle astonished to see a lady in trailing black clothes pounce upon a child ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... camp, but Fox-eye would not turn back. He drew his arrows from the quiver, and prepared to fight. But, even as he placed an arrow, a Snake had crawled up by his side, unseen. In the still air, the Piegan heard the sharp twang of a bow string, but, before he could turn his head, the long, fine-pointed arrow pierced him through and through. The bow and arrows dropped from his hands, he swayed, and then fell forward on the grass, dead. But now the warriors came pouring from the ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... The twang of a dozen bowstrings followed, from some large blocks of stone which embarrassed the pass at the junction of the two roads, and both the Thracians who preceded the carnage, went down, one of them killed outright, the other, with his horse shot dead ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Livio burst into a studied and insulting shout of laughter, stopped abruptly without remembering to bring it to a proper finish, and began to be pleasant to the embroidery-seller, speaking broken American English with a strong nasal twang. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... dressed as for a ball. There was a priest at the table to tell the girls what to do. High Mass was performed, then a long sermon was delivered by a priest who spoke very fluently, but with a strange twang and in a very odd style, continually apostrophising the two girls by name, comparing them to olives and other fruit, to candelabri, and desiring them to keep themselves pure that 'they might go as virgins into the chamber ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of the hill, with a dip of green meadow-land below them, rising on the other side into coppices. The twang of the horn, and the babbling cry of the hounds, reminded Albinia that the hunting season had begun, and looking over a gate, she watched the parti-coloured forms of the dogs glancing among the brushwood opposite, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you are selling my knife," and reaching out and taking it in my hand, after making a few preliminary remarks, I began with the twang of the almost extinct down east Yankee, and in a high-pitched voice and at lightning ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... motionless treads the air. But his powerful wings, as she sweetly sings, They droop to the briny wave, And slowly he falls near the castle walls, And sinks to his ocean grave. Was it arrow unseen with glancing sheen, The twang of the string unheard, Sped from hunter's bow, that has laid him low, And has pierced that kingly bird? That has brought his flight, from the realms of light, Where his hues in ether glow, To float for awhile in the sun's last smile, Then dim ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... his hand, from habit, going to his mouth. His attention being thus called to the force of habit, the strong-armed son of Pandu set his heart upon practising with his bow in the night. And, O Bharata, Drona, hearing the twang of his bowstring in the night, came to him, and clasping him, said, 'Truly do I tell thee that I shall do that unto thee by which there shall not be an archer equal ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... life. For her these consisted of teaching a club of girls to sew, of instructing a group of mothers in the art of making cakes and pies and salads, and of hearing a half hundred little children repeat their A B Cs. Only the difference in setting, only the twang of foreign tongues, only the strange precociousness of the children, made life at all different from the life at home. She told herself, fiercely, that she might be a teacher in a district school—a country school—for all the good ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... a pleasure 'tis to hedge My temples here with heavy sedge, Abandoning my lazy side, Stretched as a bank unto the tide, Or to suspend my sliding foot On the osier's undermined root, And in its branches tough to hang, While at my lines the fishes twang? But now away, my hooks, my quills, And angles, idle utensils! The young MARIA ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... way which is peculiar to the children of the wild, but has been lost by their domestic degenerates. The sun was shining full in at the little diamond-paned window. The window was open, and a late fly of metallic hue was shooting about with a pinging noise, like the twang of some instrumental string. But neither fly, nor sun, nor the tick of the little clock on the mantelpiece had awakened the cat. It was the click of the little ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... used to know him too well in my drinking days. He'll never disguise that look of that wicked eye of his from them as knows him well; and though he's got summat in his mouth to make him talk different, I could tell the twang ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... breathless silence of the crowded audience consisting of seven boys and three girls, exclusive of Kitty Collins, who insisted on paying her way in with a clothes-pin. I raised the cross-bow, I repeat. Twang! went the whipcord; but, alas! instead of hitting the apple, the arrow flew right into Pepper Whitcomb's mouth, which happened to be open at the time, ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... French cavalry corps had a fine charger assigned to him, of which he became passionately fond, and which, by gentleness of disposition and uniform docility, equally evinced its affection. The sound of the trumpeter's voice, the sight of his uniform, or the twang of his trumpet, was sufficient to throw this animal into a state of the greatest excitement; and he appeared to be pleased and happy only when under the saddle of his rider. Indeed he was unruly and useless to every body else; for once, on ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... thrice more glorious at once the glorious three names of England, of Grenville, and of Tennyson for ever. From the affectation of cosmopolitan indifference not AEschylus, not Pindar, not Dante's very self was more alien or more free than Shakespeare; but there was nothing of the dry Tyrtaean twang, the dull mechanic resonance as of wooden echoes from a platform, in the great historic chord of his lyre. "He is very English, too English, even," says the Master on whom his enemies alone—assuredly not his most loving, most reverent, and most ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and shouted, Keeping measure as I sped, To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe As it sprang beneath ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Go, Sir Andrew; scout me for him at the corner of the orchard, like a bum-baily. So soon as ever thou see'st him, draw; and as thou drawest, swear horrible; for it comes to pass oft, that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twang'd off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earn'd ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... Music. Laughing, sobbing, Feet gliding after sliding feet; His—hers— The ballroom blurs— She feels the air Lifting her hair, And the lapping of water on the stone stair. He is there! He is there! Twang harps, and squeal, you thin violins, That the dancers may dance, and never discover The old stone stair leading down to the river With the chestnut-tree branches hanging over Her and her lover. Theodore, still ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... already turbulent. The hot wind had passed, and the air was sweet and free from dust. As he moved along the street, Done's ear caught the squeak and the twang of fiddle and banjo coming through the confusion of voices. Step-dancing and singing were the most popular delights. The ability to sing a comic song badly was passport enough in digger society. The streets were lit with kerosene. Here and there ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... eyes turned up, his mouth turned down; His accent caught a nasal twang; He oiled his hair; there might be heard The grace of God in every word Which ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... stimulated and flattered the audience, pleased to find themselves on such easy terms with the new language. But to Pinchas the idea of peppering his pure Yiddish with such locutions was odious. The Prince of Palestine talking with a twang—how could he permit such an outrage ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... boats for Cyril, prattled with Lady Temple, or studied with Rachel, all was done with grace, zest, and sympathy peculiarly her own. Two practisings at the school removed the leaden drawl, and lessened the twang of the choir; and Mr. Touchett looked quite exalted, while even Rachel owned that she had hardly believed ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would comprise a jew's-harp, a bit of catgut, screws whittled out of wood, tacks, spools, pins, and the like. But when robbed of all these he could generally secrete a piece of elastic, which, when put between his teeth and stretched to its utmost capacity, would yield a delightful twang when played upon with the forefinger. He could also fashion an interesting musical instrument in his desk by means of spools and catgut and bits of broken glass. The chief joy of his life was an old tuning-fork that the teacher of the singing ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... itself a permanent magnet, the same results would happen in the other wire if it were rapidly moved toward and away from this permanent magnet. If the reader should stretch a wire tightly between two pegs on a table, and should then hold the arms of a common horseshoe magnet very near it, and should twang the stretched wire with his finger, as he would a guitar string, the electrometer would show an induced alternate current in the wire. Since this is an illustration of the principle of the dynamo, stated in its simplest form, it may be well to remember that in this manner—with ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... fortunate rush, he does not indulge in Allsopp or Guinness. He hoarsely orders a 'pot' of some local brewer's manufacture—a man who knows exactly what he likes, and arranges to meet the hardy digestion of the mower and the reaper. He prefers a rather dark beer with a certain twang faintly suggestive of liquorice and tobacco, with a sense of 'body,' a thickness in it, and which is no sooner swallowed than a clammy palate demands a second gulp to wash away the relics of the first. Ugh! The second requires a third swig, and still a fourth, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of all the governors Lower Canada had yet had, corresponded, most confidentially, with his home masters, somewhat, perhaps, to the prejudice of his honor the administrator. As general Simcoe loathed the nasal twang, attenuated appearance, and the vulgar republicanism of a downeast American, so Mr. Witsius Ryland abominated Romanism. Speaking of the Roman Catholic clergy of Canada, he says:—"I call them Popish to distinguish ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... quality in it is as unexplainable as the poem itself is untranslatable. It has that inexpressible cadence and inflection of the Norse dialect which you feel (if you have the conditions for recognizing it) in the first word a Norseman addresses to you. It has that wonderful twang of the Hardanger fiddle, and the color and sentiment of the ballads sung and the legendary tales recited around the hearth in a Norwegian homestead during the long winter nights. With Bjoernson it was in the blood. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... help it. I was born and bred a west-country man, thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the noblest Saxon kingdom of Wessex, a regular "Angular Saxon," the very soul of me adscriptus glebae. There's nothing like the old country-side for me, and no music like the twang of the real old Saxon tongue, as one gets it fresh from the veritable chaw in the White Horse Vale; and I say with "Gaarge Ridler," ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... good fellow. He was a tall, gaunt, long-headed man, with large features and spectacles, and a deep internal voice, with a twang of rusticity in it; and he goggled over his plate like a horse. I often thought that a bag of corn would have hung well on him. His laugh was equine, and showed his teeth upwards at the sides. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and nearer. There was a little laugh in a girl's voice, then the dry twang of the plucked strings of a guitar, then silence. After a minute the guitar strings twanged again, and a girl's voice began to sing ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... nostrils dilating, as if the air did not rush in fast enough to cool his blood, while Silas Peckham was speaking. The Head of the Apollinean Institute delivered himself of these judicious sentiments in that peculiar acid, penetrating tone, thickened with a nasal twang, which not rarely becomes hereditary after three or four generations raised upon east winds, salt fish, and large, white-bellied, pickled cucumbers. He spoke deliberately, as if weighing his words well, so that, during his few remarks, Mr. Bernard had time for a mental accompaniment with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Lanpher plucked at the loose strings of his courage, and managed to draw out a faintly responsive twang. "I'll show you whether I got guts—" ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... his plans to seize Tell, and without a dream of danger, for the pass was silent and seemed deserted. But suddenly to his ears came the twang of the bow he had heard before that day; through the air once more winged its way a steel-barbed shaft, the heart of a tyrant, not an apple on a child's head, now its mark. In an instant more Gessler fell from his horse, pierced by Tell's fatal shaft, and breathed his last before ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... 16 Chaplain [Mr. Twang], and leaning. 4to 1696 'her Chaplain, and leaning'. I have inserted Twang's name and given in l. 19 speech-prefix 'Twang' which all former editions mark 'Chap.', altering, however, to 'Twang' later in this ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... Yeo, for the very purpose of holding up to ridicule that time-honored melody, had put into it the true nasal twang, and rung it out as merrily as he had done perhaps twelve years before, when he got up John Oxenham's anchor in Plymouth Sound. And it befell also that Ayacanora, as she stood by Amyas's side, watching the men, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... sharpening this great arrow, he grinned until his horrid teeth looked like a pale-fence around a little garden, and he muttered to himself as he worked away,—"Four hundred and nine more rubs, and I can send it twang through him; twang, ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... He spoke questioningly: and after what seemed a long pause the answer came, muffled but audible. "Yes, yes! This is Mr. Stephens' office. Who is it wants us from Paris?" The question was put in a Cockney voice, and the London twang seemed exaggerated by its transmission over those miles and miles of wire by land, under the sea, and then ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the sleeping echoes. It was succeeded by a yell which seemed to come from under the window. Several dark forms rose so suddenly that they appeared to spring out of the ground. Then came the peculiar twang of Indian bows. There were showers of sparks and little streaks of fire with long tails like comets winged their parabolic flight toward the cabin. Falling short they hissed and sputtered in the grass. Jonathan's rifle spoke ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... Indian of North or South America, instead of an Indian of the "East Indies," he would have pierced those fishes with an arrow at every twang ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... great deal of modern and sentimental Christianity is very defective in this respect. You cannot love Jesus Christ too much, but you can love Him with too little reverence. And if you take up some of our luscious modern hymns that people are so fond of singing, I think you will find in them a twang of unwholesomeness, just because the love is not reverent enough, and the approaching confidence has not enough of devout awe in it. This generation looks at the half of Christ. When people are suffering from indigestion, they can only see half of the thing that they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... all. Van Koppen was described as a brisk, genial, talkative old fellow, rather fat, with a clear complexion, sound teeth, shrubby grey beard, a twang barely sufficient to authenticate his transatlantic descent, and the digestion of a boa-constrictor. He was tremendously fond of buttered tea-cakes—so the Duchess said; a man who, in the words of Madame Steynlin, "really appreciated good music" and who, as the PARROCO never ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... an Irishman from a Londoner by his accent; so you can a Scotchman; or a Yorkshireman for that matter: why should you not be able to tell an American? The error of your countrymen consists in attributing to all our people the nasal twang, which is almost peculiar to one section of the country. If I were asked the peculiar characteristic of a New-Yorker's speech, I should say monotone. Notice any one of our young men—you will find his conversational voice pitched in the same key. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... containing ancient prophecies, horoscopes and potent exorcisms. Messengers, one after another, were sent out from thence to command silence in the great halls, where the assembled youths and girls were kissing, singing, shouting and dancing to the shrill pipe of flutes and twang of lutes, clapping their hands, rattling tambourines—in short, enjoying to the utmost the few hours that might yet be theirs before they must make the fatal leap into nothingness, or at least into the dim shades ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... who survive, the voice has a peculiar nasal twang, as in phonation the air is expelled through the nose instead of through the mouth, and the articulation, especially of certain consonants, is very indistinct. Taste and smell are deficient. The constant exposure of the nasal and pharyngeal ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the sun. When it arrives, it is thrown down on the sand, to swelter in the heat with the rest, and remains there probably for days before it is transferred into the cask. It is this proceeding which gives to sherry that peculiar leather twang which distinguishes it from other wines—a twang easy to imitate by throwing into a cask of Cape wine a pair of old boots, and allowing them to remain a proper time. Although the public refuse to drink Madeira as Madeira, they are ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... at a distant tree and pressed the trigger. There was a twang as the arrow was ejected. He jerked the sliding pistol grip forward and back to reload, pressing the trigger an instant later. Another arrow ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... met with. As he came towards it, however, he heard the loud sound of a man's voice going steadily on as if with some discourse. "Some preachment," said he to himself: "they've got a thorough-going Roundhead, I can hear his twang through his nose! Shall ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a forest traversed by a narrow path; now the scene is crowded with a log storehouse and well-used roads, several shanties, piles of glycerine cans, a barge waiting the arrival of the tug, swarms of boats and canoes, and groups of navvies standing round the storehouse, whence we hear the twang of a rudely played, but not unmusical, violin: Indians and squaws, beside their wigwams, complete the picture. Here we met our old friend Cahill, who came on board to say good-bye. He had been away haymaking ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... acquainted with all the approved renderings of the Episcopal morning service, but when the clergyman who officiated at the Abbey began to twang out "Dearly beloved brethren," &c., in a nasal, drawling semi-chant, I was taken completely aback. It sounded as though some graceless Friar Tuck had wormed himself into the desk and was endeavoring, under the pretense of reading ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Patrol was a Southern boy, Charlie Maxfield by name, though known simply as "Chatz." He possessed all the traits to be found in boys who have been born and raised south of Mason and Dixon's line, was inclined to be touchy whenever he thought anyone doubted his honor, talked with a quaint little twang that was really delightfully musical, and taken in all had grown to be a prime favorite ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... following succinct and business-like memorandum of a ghost-seer. "Anno 1670. Not far from Cirencester was an apparition. Being demanded whether a good spirit or a bad, returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious perfume, and most melodious twang. M.W. Lilly believes it was a Fairie. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... of a little man is that little Fokare, my lor," Mademoiselle Coralie said, in her own language, and with the rich twang of that sunny Gascony in which her swarthy cheeks and bright black eyes had got their fire. "What a droll of a man! He does not look to ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made him was to ask, "When you first came amongst us, major, you spoke with the barbaric provincialism and nasal twang of your countrymen, but in your years with us you have lost them. Could ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... pond-lilies, peopled with bullfrogs and water snakes, and haunted by two white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would beat as we approached it; what fearful glances we would throw around! And if by chance a plash of a wild duck, or the guttural twang of a bullfrog, struck our ears, as we stole quietly by—away we sped, nor paused until completely out of the woods. Then, when I reached home, what a world of adventures and imaginary terrors would I have to relate to my ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... His step quickens. He cuts the wildest figures in a frenzy of abandoned joy. With a leap through the door he is gone. The guitar stops with a sudden twang and Stuart's laughter roars. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... absinth and some West Indian bitters," Granet replied. "A chap who often goes to the States brought it back for me. Gives a cocktail the real Yankee twang, ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his bowstring, and drew it to his ear. Then, as Fion shot forward his outstretched hands, casting a vivid light from his finger-tips over the surface of the sea, the arrow sped with a twang and a whiz. ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... taste, flavor, gust, gusto, savor; gout, relish; sapor^, sapidity^; twang, smack, smatch^; aftertaste, tang. tasting; degustation, gustation. palate, tongue, tooth, stomach. V. taste, savor, smatch^, smack, flavor, twang; tickle the palate &c (savory) 394; smack the lips. Adj. sapid, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the uproar which now arose, to the shouts which echoed across the dreary camp, to the reports of rifles which men, almost too aged to work, and employed as guards, let off in every direction. There was the twang of bullets in the air, while the darkness was punctuated by many a spot of flame, which showed where the sentries were doing duty. That commotion brought the Commandant flaring out of his quarters again, stamping his feet with anger, bellowing ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... suddenly pricked up his ears at the sound of the slow rumble of a wagon turning into the yard. The wagon halted, and they heard the buzzing twang ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... The white, western moonlight threw sharp, blue shadows below us. The streets were silent at that hour, and we could hear the gurgle of the fountain in the Post Office square across the street, and the twang of banjos from the lower verandah of the Hotel Lincoln, where the colored waiters were serenading the guests. The drop lights in the office were dull under their green shades, and the telegraph sounder clicked ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... were half a dozen spears' lengths from the brushwood when the sharp twang of a bowstring broke the stillness, and an arrow that was meant for the Queen's face flew just between her and the Lady Anne. The fair woman flushed suddenly at the danger; on the dark one's forehead a vein stood out, straight from the parting of the hair, downward between the ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... broken wall, And the wolf shall chase his shadow and his mate the panther call. From the prairies and the regions where the pine-plumed forest grows Shall arise the tawny legions with their lances and their bows; And again the cries of battle shall resound along the plain, Bows shall twang and quivers rattle, women wail their warriors slain; And by lodge-fire lowly burning shall the mother from afar List her warrior's steps returning from the daring deeds ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... or two," said the King, retaining his seat. "Why, man, I have scarce had my tongue unchained to-day; and to talk with that northern twang, and besides, the fatigue of being obliged to speak every word in character,—Gad, it's like walking as the galley-slaves do on the Continent, with a twenty-four pound shot chained to their legs—they may drag it along, but they cannot move with comfort. And, by the way, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... answer, with the true cockney twang. "Trade ain't very brisk. There's too bloomin' many of us ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... built tracks. If aeronautics is to be made popular, every one must be able to take part in it. It must cease to be a highly specialized business. It must be put on a basis where the ordinary person can snap the flying wires of a machine, listen to their twang, and know them to be true, just as any one now thumps his rear tire to see whether ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... one trying to sing, though not knowing one note from another. One old man by me sang five notes below the key; a woman on the other side screamed out as many above; a girl before me had a strong nasal twang. I should think you'd go distracted; and, by the way, what a quantity of common ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... sit i' Parliament Weant tak advice frae lads that talk farm-twang; If t' coontry goes to t' dogs, it's 'cause they've sent Ower mony city folk to ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... "Barbarians of the plain." Mackay could see little difference between them and the Chinese, except in the cast of their features, and their long-shaped heads. They wore Chinese dress, even to the cue, worshiped the Chinese gods, and spoke with a peculiar Malayan twang. ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... The dancing is kept up, at intervals, throughout the day, but the crowd, the spirit, and the lite come in at night. The next night, which was the last, we went ashore in the same manner, until we got almost tired of the monotonous twang of the instruments, the drawling sounds which the women kept up, as an accompaniment, and the slapping of the hands in time with the music, in place of castanets. We found ourselves as great objects of attention as any ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Twang went Ni-ha-be's bow at that instant, and the man next to Bill was raising his rifle to fire, when his arms were suddenly seized by a grasp of ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... Rankin, you've a nasal name— I'll sound it through "the speaking-trump of fame," And wondering nations, hearing from afar The brazen twang of its resounding jar, Shall say: "These bards are an uncommon class— They blow their noses with a tube of brass!" Rankin! ye gods! if Influenza pick Our names at christening, and such names stick, Let's all be born when summer suns withstand Her prevalence and chase her from the land, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... freshness. The third section with the appoggiaturas realizes a vivid vision of country couples dancing determinedly. Who plays No. 2 of this set? It, too, has the "native wood note wild," with its dominant pedal bass, its slight twang and its sweet-sad melody in C sharp minor. There is hearty delight in the major, and how natural it seems. No. 3 in E is still on the village green, and the boys and girls are romping in the dance. We ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... hypostasis tickled his brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... he listed all the world over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed. Dark man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of Clare's fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang. Her aunt Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her grandpapa Forey pretended to grumble at bridal presents being ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which Kit enveloped in an inimitable air of domesticity. Her past had not been unconnected with the minor stage. She could play on the piano from ear, and sing the songs of the street with a charming cockney twang. But there was nothing of the stage about her now. She was born for domesticity and, as the wife of Malim, she wished to forget all that had gone before. She even hesitated to give us her wonderful imitations of the customers at the fried fish shop, because ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... to be that it deepens the desolation—a mind unredeemed by virtue save in the shape of remorse—unvisited by weakness, until it came transmuted into the tiger of madness—whose very sermons were satires on God and man—whose very prayers had a twang of blasphemy—whose loves were more loathsome than his hatreds, and yet over whose blasted might and most miserable and withered heart men mourn, while they shudder, blend tears with anathemas, and agree that the awful mystery of man itself is deepened by its relation to the mystery of the wickedness, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... when the chief employment of the evening ceased, Nigel appealed much to Myra, and endeavoured to draw out her mind and feelings. He lent her books, and books that favoured, indirectly at least, his own peculiar views—volumes of divine poesy that had none of the twang of psalmody, tales of tender and sometimes wild and brilliant fancy, but ever full of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... situation. She upbraided her husband as he was scaling the palisades to escape by night, fortified him with wine, girded his sword on herself, and caused her female attendants—of whom there were "several tens"—to twang bowstrings. Katana, taking heart of grace, advanced single handed; the Yemishi, thinking that his troops had rallied, gave way, and the Japanese soldiers, returning to their duty, killed or ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... call him, though by religion I follow the prophet, whose name be blessed," he added, with an expression of face I did not then understand. "I call myself Isaacs for convenience in business. There is no concealment about it, as many know my story; but it has an attractive Semitic twang that suite my occupation, and is simpler and shorter for Englishmen to write than Abdul Hafizben-Isak, which is ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... I opened my eyes, so he cheerfully remarked, in a strong twang known by some supercilious English as the ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... harp of Arleon. And of all the weapons hanging on those walls none were more calamitous to Camorak's foes than was the harp of Arleon. For to a man that goes up against a strong place on foot, pleasant indeed is the twang and jolt of some fearful engine of war that his fellow-warriors are working behind him, from which huge rocks go sighing over his head and plunge among his foes; and pleasant to a warrior in the wavering ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... answer, but I do not know what train of thought my casual remark had suggested in him, for presently he began to speak. He spoke in a low voice, without any expression, but his accents were educated, and it was a relief to hear him after the twang and the vulgar intonations which for some time ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... Instinctively he thrust out his fiddle at them. The jarring of the strings made than leap back. Hope returned. He drew his hand violently across the strings—twang, twang! Instantly the wolves sprang back as if he had fired a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... his father's statue, and, after much silent examination, the spokesman of the party inquired, "Well, sir, what is this intended to represent?" William Story, in telling these little anecdotes, gave the Yankee twang to ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the extreme, redolent with the sagest deductions, and overflowing with a magnificent and truly Eastern redundancy of the most poetical tropes. I will now proceed to give you an extract from the celebrated speaker on the war side—"the renowned Jonathan J. Twang." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... scout mee for him at the corner of the Orchard like a bum-Baylie: so soone as euer thou seest him, draw, and as thou draw'st, sweare horrible: for it comes to passe oft, that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharpely twang'd off, giues manhoode more approbation, then euer proofe it selfe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... money, as we had the United States colours up. He said he thought it was the Sumter, and wanted to be on the safe side. The whole scene between the officer and the captain of the Joseph Park was ludicrous in the extreme. The answers to questions with that Yankee nasal twang and Yankee cunning, the officer seeing through it and enjoying it all the while, made many ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... Orpheus tickled his Harp so well, That he tickled Eurydice out of Hell, With a Twing come Twang, and a Twing come Twang; but, Some say Euridice was a Scold Therefore the Devil of her took hold, With a Twing come ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... old woman, "is the third night, and these fires must blaze yet eleven nights and days more, during which time the axe is not seen in the hand of the forester, nor doth the bow twang in the woods of Tarapajan; neither may he which seeth these rites depart ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... No-body was with me all this while. And No-body did drink, and, wink, and scink, And on occasion freely spent his chink. If anyone desire to know the man, Walk, stumble, Trundle, but in Barbican. There's as good beer and ale as ever twang'd, And in that street kind No-body[6] is hanged. But leaving him unto his matchless fame, I to St. Albans in the evening came, Where Master Taylor, at the Saracen's Head, Unasked (unpaid for) me both lodged and fed. The tapsters, hostlers, chamberlains, and all, Saved me a labour, that ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... the correct kind of letter to write to excuse a dirty trick, Sam. It's got the true, rotten, swell twang about it." ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke |
