"Idiomatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Catalogue continues to list this as a "translation" of Ovid's Metamorphoses, X. For a somewhat later example of an actual translation of this tale, considerably amplified, see James Gresham's (not Graham's, as in STC) The Picture of Incest, STC 18969 (1626), ed. Grosart (Manchester, 1876). In idiomatic English, occasionally ornamented with such triple epithets as "azure-veyned necke" and "Nectar-candied-words," Gresham expands Golding's Ovid by more than 300 lines. Although he invents a suitable brief description of Mirrha's ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... Tract is one of great interest, not only on account of its intrinsic merit, but also for the racy style of writing adopted by its author. We find him continually garnishing his language with such idiomatic and colloquial expressions as the following:—"Quhae's sillie braine will reache no farther then the compas of their cap" (page 2); and again, "but will not presume to judge farther then the compasse of my awn cap" (p. 20). He observes of ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales. . . . The result is a real book — a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic. He can tell a ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... the first place, it is in every respect different from all others which I have studied, with perhaps the exception of the Turkish, to which it seems to bear some remote resemblance in syntax, though none in words. In the second place, it abounds with idiomatic phrases, which can only be learnt by habit, and to the understanding of which a Dictionary is of little or no use, the words separately having either no meaning or a meaning quite distinct from that which they possess when thus conjoined. And thirdly the helps afforded ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... to the old doctrine of temperaments, the English character must be classed not under the phlegmatic but under the melancholic temperament; and the French under the sanguine. The character of a nation may be judged of in this particular by examining its idiomatic language. The French, in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly bubbling up from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings, have appropriated all the phrases of passion to the service of trivial and ordinary life: ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... letters of Nestorians, it has not been deemed essential to follow slavishly every Syriac idiom, for, instead of these letters owing their interest, as some have supposed, to their translators, they may have sometimes rather suffered from renderings needlessly idiomatic. ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... Athenaeum both brothers give splendid testimony to their astonishing and epoch-making gift in transferring classical and Romance metrical forms into elegant, idiomatic German; they give affectionate attention to the insinuating beauty of elegiac verse, and secure charming effects in some of the most alien Greek forms, not to mention terza rima, ottava rima, the Spanish gloss, and not a few ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... inestimable value of its having been made when it was, and being what it is. In his opinion it was made at the happy juncture when our language had attained adequate expansion and flexibility, and when at the same time its idiomatic strength was unimpaired by excess of technical distinctions and conventional refinements; and these circumstances, though of course infinitely subordinate to the spiritual influence of its subject-matter, he considered to be highly ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... that the above edifying and idiomatic homily was intended for some sporting contemporary, but, with his accustomed courtesy, he gives it for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... Idiomatic Items Important to Publishers Indian, The Interesting to Bone Boilers Interior Illumination Indian Question, The Information Wanted Inspiration vs. Perspiration Items from ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... The idiomatic sentences of the bluff fisherman, as in their racy vernacular they were blithely given utterance to by the manly voice of the Reader, seemed to supply a fitting introduction to the drama, as though from the lips of a Yarmouth Chorus. Scarcely had the social ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... however, I could not have been in better hands. He was highly intelligent, and he interpreted my statements with a fluency and accuracy which were astonishing. Only now and again did he stumble and hesitate. This was when he was presented with an unfamiliar expression or idiomatic sentence. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... been fortunate enough to receive much commendation from military men, and for them it is now specially issued in its present form. For the general public it may be as well to add that, where translations are appended to the French phrases, those translations usually follow the idiomatic and particular meaning attached to these expressions in the argot of the Army of Algeria, and not the correct or literal one given to such words or sentences ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... particular, individual, specific, proper, personal, original, private, respective, definite, determinate, especial, certain, esoteric, endemic, partial, party, peculiar, appropriate, several, characteristic, diagnostic, exclusive; singular &c. (exceptional) 83; idiomatic; idiotypical; typical. this, that; yon, yonder. Adv. specially, especially, particularly &c. adj.; in particular, in propria persona[Lat]; ad hominem[Lat]; for my part. each, apiece, one by one, one at a time; severally, respectively, each to each; seriatim, in detail, in great detail, in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... temptations and doubts that beset the ordinary man, its picturesque style, which of itself would make the book stand out above ten thousand ordinary stories. Pilgrim's Progress is still one of our best examples of clear, forceful, idiomatic English; and our wonder increases when we remember that it was written by a man ignorant of literary models. But he had read his Bible daily until its style and imagery had taken possession of him; also he had a vivid imagination, a sincere purpose to help his fellows, and his simple rule of rhetoric ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... condemnation, in this connection, of one of the most beautiful of Canon Bright's liturgical compositions, the Collect beginning, "O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment and light riseth up in darkness for the godly." Of this exquisite piece of idiomatic English, the reviewer allows himself to speak as being "a very ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... language is more stilted and less terse and idiomatic than the colloquial dialect; and even where pure Malay is employed, the influence of Arabic compositions is very marked. Whole sentences, sometimes, though clothed in excellent Malay, are unacknowledged translations of Arabic phrases. This may be verified by any one ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... offer idiomatic difficulty; for convenience in locating these phrases the page and line numbers ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... various sources. The book thus prepared is modeled on the plan of an ordinary book, with headings, table of contents, and even with an illuminated title page devised by the aid of the interpreter according to the regular Cherokee idiomatic form, and is altogether a unique specimen of Indian literary art. It contains in all two hundred and fifty-eight formulas and songs, which of course are native aboriginal productions, although the mechanical arrangement ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... only to add that the translation is, perhaps, not always idiomatic, though in this matter I have availed myself of some valuable assistance, for which I feel ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... that Mrs Jenkins was at Abertewey when Howel made his triumphant entry there, but the following morning he gave her to understand, as delicately as he could, that the idiomatic translations of the Welsh language which had been so refreshing in London, would be better in her native town than at Abertewey, and ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... mine brodder!" he exclaimed, in fairly idiomatic English, but with a broken pronunciation that was a mixture of Dutch, American, and Malay. His language therefore, like himself, was nondescript. In fact he was an American-born Dutchman, who had been transported early in life to the Straits Settlements, had received ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... no tale of Homeric blows and knocks, Argonautic voyaging, or Theban family woe that inflamed their imaginations and spurred them onward. They were plodding away at the Greek Testament, immersed in a chapter of the idiomatic and difficult Epistle to ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... OTHER STORIES by Fyodor Dostoievsky (The Macmillan Co.). These two new volumes continue the complete English edition of Dostoievsky which is being translated by Constance Garnett. The renderings have the same qualities of idiomatic speech and subtly rendered nuance which is always to be found in this translator's work, and although both of these volumes represent the minor work of Dostoievsky, his minor work is finer than our major work, and characterized by a passionate curiosity about the human soul and a deep insight ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... modern books for acquiring a knowledge of the Dutch language. If E. V. insist upon modern books, he cannot have better than Hendrik Conscience's novels, or Gerrits's Zoon des Volks. I would, however, advise him to get a volume of Jacob Cats' Poems, the language of which is not antiquated, and is idiomatic without being ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... watchfulness, which inspired Morton with great distrust and aversion. Mr. Birnie not only spoke French like a native, but all his habits, his gestures, his tricks of manner, were, French; not the French of good society, but more idiomatic, as it were, and popular. He was not exactly a vulgar person, he was too silent for that, but he was evidently of low extraction and coarse breeding; his accomplishments were of a mechanical nature; he was an extraordinary arithmetician, he was a very ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... evidenced in many ways—the sculptors' over-insistence on the "mold," the outer rather than the inner subject or content of his statue—over-enthusiasm for local color—over-interest in the multiplicity of techniques, in the idiomatic, in the effect as shown, by the appreciation of an audience rather than in the effect on the ideals of the inner conscience of the artist or the composer. This lack of perceiving is too often shown by an over-interest in the material value of the effect. The pose of self-absorption, which ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... this chap! He was German, and didn't care who knew it. He was unlike the man who had disguised himself as an English officer, at the house of the heliograph, but had betrayed himself and set this whole train of adventure going by his single slip and fall from idiomatic English that Harry Fleming's sharp ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... went rapidly ahead, and spent her sixpence on a present to console Alec for the indignity of having been beaten. Then, too, they write letters in French to their mother, which are solemnly sent by post. It is not very idiomatic French, but it is amazingly flexible; and it is delicious to see the children at breakfast watching Maud as she opens the letters ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... impel feebler and less agile natures to follow the tracks of light and emulate the choice examples set before them, with swifter movements and with richer results than they could ever have attained, if not thus encouraged. Proverbial axioms flourish copiously in the idiomatic ground and vernacular climate of unlearned, undisciplined, unreflective minds, as thistles on the highway where every ass may gather them. But precious maxims, those "short sentences drawn from a long experience," as Cervantes calls them, are found mostly in the writings of the greatest geniuses, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the ease, grace, and various power of Scott's,—or the racy, idiomatic character of Thackeray's,—or the exquisite purity and transparency of Hawthorne's: but it is a manly, energetic style, in which we are sure to find good words, if not the best. It has certain wants, but it has no marked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... quitaba a m esa nia; there are two idiomatic uses in this phrase: 1. cualquiera in an ironic sense nadie (a frequent use); 2. quitaba quitara, a substitution of tense often found in the main clause of a contrary to fact, or less vivid ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... elder sister. Indeed, his acquaintance with La Cica, as he afterward confessed, had given him a taste for foreign ladies. He carried on little conversations with the Senorita in broken English. The Senorita's English was pretty, but not very idiomatic. The Senator imitated her English remarkably well, and no doubt did it out of compliment. He also astonished the company by speaking at the very top of a voice whose ordinary tone was far stronger ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... remarkable interest and ability.... Mr. Worsaae's book is in all ways a valuable addition to our literature.... Mr. Thoms has executed the translation in flowing and idiomatic English, and has appended many curious and interesting notes ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... on the score of antique fashion, because it is in essentials the form with which modern readers are acquainted in modern story-telling; and more especially because the language is unaffected and idiomatic, not "quaint" in any way, and because the conversations are like the talk of living people. The Sagas are stories of characters who speak for themselves, and who are interesting on their own merits. There are good and bad Sagas, and the good ones are not all ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... coldly. "And you think me incapable of keeping your secret, ah, gimmick, I believe is the idiomatic ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... The idiomatic passages "aohe puko momona o Kohala," etc., and (on page 387) "e huna oukou i ko oukou mau maka i ke aouli" ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... conversation was about Paris. The King spoke of pleasant adventures there, of the life he and Madame had lived, of the delight of having money to spend, really enough of it, in a city like Paris. He told his stories well, his vehemently idiomatic English emphasizing his points. He became lyrical in his appreciation of the joys of life. When dessert was on the table and port took the place of champagne he lapsed into ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... friend Horatio Bridge; went fishing with him, for what they called white perch, probably the saibling; [Footnote: The American saibling, or golden trout, is only indigenous to Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, and to a small lake near Augusta.] and was greatly entertained with the peculiarities of an idiomatic Frenchman, an itinerant teacher of that language, whom Bridge, in the kindness of his heart, had taken into his own house. The last of July, Cilley also made his appearance, but did not bring the Madeira with him, and Hawthorne has left this rather critical portrait ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and "four," in horary reckoning, were convertible terms. The old Roman method of naming the hours, wherein noon was the sixth, was long preserved, especially in conventual establishments: and I have no doubt that the English idiomatic phrase "o'clock" originated in the necessity for some distinguishing mark between hours "of the clock" reckoned from midnight, and hours of the day reckoned from sunrise, or more frequently from six A.M. With ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... rather not. These five letters, as I have said, are addressed to a "Dear Signor Francesco, friend of my friend," and who, of course, is Francesco Gori; and are written, which no other letters of Mme. d'Albany's are, not in French, but in tolerably idiomatic though far from correct Italian. Only one of them has any indication of place or date, "Genzano, Mardi"; but this, and the references to Alfieri's approaching journey northward and to Gori's intention of escorting him as far as Genoa, is sufficient to show that they must have been written in ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... him with an anguished mute appeal for help. Mrs. Tootle repeated her question with emphasis and a change of countenance which he knew too well. The poor fellow had not the tact to appear to understand, and, as he might easily have done, mystify her by some idiomatic remark. He stammered out his apologies and excuses, with the effect of making ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... the words of a most [16] versatile master of English—happily not yet included in Mr. Saintsbury's book—a writer who has dealt with all the perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as idiomatic, as easy and ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... sein}, idiomatic use of the future tense to express probability or supposition, with the adverb, idioms {doch} or {wohl} added to bring out the sense more clearly—I hope that it is ... or ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... evident originality and even genius in the pages of this unusual book. In a comparatively temperate review, August 4, 1860, the Cosmopolite, of Boston, while deploring that nature is treated here without fig-leaves, declares the style wonderfully idiomatic and graphic, adding: "In his frenzy, in the fire of his inspiration, are fused and poured out together elements hitherto considered antagonistic in poetry—passion, arrogance, animality, philosophy, brag, humility, rowdyism, spirituality, ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... yapayati dharmam ka desayati. This is evidently an idiomatic phrase, for it occurs again and again in the Nepalese text of the Sukhavativyuha (MS. 26 b, l. 1. 2; 55 a, l. 2, etc.). It seems to mean, he stands there, holds himself, supports himself, and teaches the law. Burnouf translates the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... their mutual transactions. The completion of that was reached when they took the profits and divided them. It might include the mutual reckoning of profit and loss. The phrase "from mouth to interest" is very idiomatic. The "mouth," or verbal relationships, included all they said, the terms they agreed upon. The word "interest" here replaces the more usual "gold;" both mean the "profit," or the balance due to each. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... regret that it is not practical to give examples from the Quartets which, in many respects—especially in the Minuets with their inexhaustible invention[116] and their bubbling spirits—represent Haydn at his best. But the real effect of his Quartets is so bound up with idiomatic treatment of the strings that in any transcription for pianoforte the music suffers grievously. It is through the score, however, that everyone should become familiar, with the contents of the Quartets in C major, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of Spanish was faultless, and I always took particular pleasure in hearing her read the idiomatic Castilian of Cervantes. Nevertheless, my mind wandered; and, try as I might, I could not help thinking more of the theft of the diamonds than the doughty deeds of the Don and the shrewd sayings of Sancho Panza. Not ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... is written in the narrative style, as being much better suited to the tastes and capacities of my colored readers, and I have used simple and plain English language, discarding the idiomatic and provincial language of the southern slaves and ignorant whites, expecting thereby to help educate the blacks in the ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... that a translation must reproduce the exact thought of a language, that idiomatic utterances of the one language must be replaced by similar utterances in the other, and that the genius of both the language from which and the one into which the translation is made must be observed by the translator, Luther has every rhetoric ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... not "see" her "sweetness of speech"; so we must understand that he addressed her and found out that she was fluent of tongue. But this idiomatic use of the word "see" is also found in the languages of Southern Europe: so Camoens (Lus. 1. ii.), "Ouvi * * * vereis" lit. "hark, you shall ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... French languages, indeed, and with many Latin poets of the school curriculum, Shakespeare in his writings openly acknowledged his acquaintance. In 'Henry V' the dialogue in many scenes is carried on in French, which is grammatically accurate if not idiomatic. In the mouth of his schoolmasters, Holofernes in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and Sir Hugh Evans in 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' Shakespeare placed Latin phrases drawn directly from Lily's grammar, from the 'Sententiae Pueriles,' and from 'the good old Mantuan.' The influence of Ovid, especially the 'Metamorphoses,' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Bosambo went on, as yet uncertain of his ruler's attitude, since Bones must need, at this critical moment, employ English and idiomatic English, "that since the last moon was young I have lain in my hut never moving, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, being like a dead man—all this my headman ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... the answers kept for reference. He seemed to love his pen, and to write without effort,—never aiming, it is true, at the higher graces of style, somewhat diffuse, too, both in French and in English, but easy, natural, idiomatic, and lucid, with the distinctness of clear conceptions rather than the precision of vigorous conceptions, and a warmth which in his public letters sometimes rose to eloquence, and in his private letters often made you feel as if you were listening ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... As no books were published in time, the University had to issue an amended notice omitting the books from the list. To supply the want, I have ventured to write the "Boy's Ramayana" and this humble book. I have tried my best to narrate briefly, in simple and idiomatic English, the stories on which the chief Sanskrit dramas are based. I hope that the University will be pleased to re-insert "The Boy's Ramayana" and this book in the list of books ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... appraised him correctly—"sized him up," in Dade's idiomatic phraseology—and knew that his vicious impulses were surface ones that had been acquired and not inherited, as he had thought. ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Catalan she puzzled out for herself with such natural insight that the experts to whom these translations have been submitted found hardly a word to change. 'After all,' as she herself wrote, 'ballads are simple things, and require, as a rule, but a limited vocabulary, though a peculiarly idiomatic one.'" ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... and Booch-Arkossy in the "Eco de Madrid" recommend the translation of a good idiomatic work into English and its translation into the language of the original, carefully comparing such retranslation with the original and noting mistakes. With the teacher, such translation may be made by word of mouth, ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous
... little singular when it is remembered how difficult it is to convey the broken Indian language to a French reader. This is one of the best features of Cooper's novels—the striking manner in which he portrays the language of the North American Indian and his idiomatic expressions. Yet such is the charm of his stories that they have found their way over Europe. The translations into the French language ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... as to his guide. One sole rule, if he will attend to it, governs in a paramount sense the total possibilities and compass of pronunciation. A very famous line of Horace states it. What line? What is the supreme law in every language for correct pronunciation no less than for idiomatic propriety? ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... an inanimate object (here a window) is highly idiomatic and must be cultivated by the practical Arabist. In the H. V. the unfinished part is the four-and-twentieth door of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of its heroine. Its subtle conception of the nicest variations of feeling, is no less remarkable than its precision in the use of language, the work, for the most part, not only reading like the production of a native, but of one familiar with the most intimate resources of idiomatic English. A very few exceptions to this remark in some portions of the dialogue, whose naivete atones for their inaccuracy, only present the general purity of the composition in a more striking light. We sincerely trust that the writer, who has been so happily distinguished ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... rhetoric; and yet these expressions are among the most forcible ones in the language, and are continually used by the best writers. These expressions that lie outside all rules we call idioms. Compare the following idiomatic expressions with the unidiomatic expressions that succeed them. The second expression in each group is in accord with the strict rules of composition; but the first, the idiomatic, is ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... outset we must have him form the letter to see that he really knows the outline, the ultimate aim is to enable him to form these practically without conscious direction. In language work, also, the child must acquire many idiomatic expressions ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... differing from that of all other peoples. What style is to the man, that is idiom to the race. It is the crystalization in verbal forms of peculiarities of race temperament—- perhaps even of race eccentricities . . . . . English which is not idiomatic becomes at once formal and lifeless, as if the tongue were already dead and its remains embalmed in those honorable sepulchres, the philological dictionaries. On the other hand, English which goes too ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... features resembled a feature of his mother's, but sometimes he 'had her look.' From the capricious production of inarticulate sounds, and then a few monosyllables that described concrete things and obvious desires, he had gradually acquired an astonishing idiomatic command over the most difficult of Teutonic languages; there was nothing that he could not say. He could walk and run, was full of exact knowledge about God, and entertained no doubt concerning the special partiality of a minor deity ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Among the idiomatic terms adopted by United States Marines everywhere, the expression "shove off" is used more frequently than any other. In the sea-soldier lingo, if a Marine goes home on furlough, leaves his camp or garrison or goes anywhere, ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... not look for more than a general idea of the meaning and plan of the author. To be practically serviceable, an English version of any classical or foreign work should be literal, and with the literalness as idiomatic as may be; and if the text to be rendered is in verse, the English equivalent should preferably be in verse without rhyme or in prose. The object to be attained in these cases is a transfer of the conceptions, notions, or theories of writers ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... at some distance from the street, with pleasant grounds in its front and rear, was appropriately named by its original proprietor "Mount Rural," though not, perhaps, with the most exact observance of the requirements of grammatical construction. Still, it has some authority for being considered idiomatic, for does not "Pilgrim's Progress" tell us of the "Palace Beautiful?" And doubtless many other instances might be cited of the substitution of an adjective for a noun. At all events, the worthy owner, who built his house in the most approved style ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... But the American has lost the elementary uses of his mother tongue. He is perpetually inventing new abstract terms, generalizing with boldness and power and utter contempt of usage. But the rich idiomatic sources of his speech lie too deep for him. They are the glory and the joy of our motherland. You may take up "Bradshaw" and amuse yourself on the wettest day at the dullest inn, nay, even amid the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... when I met him, a few days later, he must have been struck by the sudden warmth of my friendship—the quick idiomatic cordiality of my French to him. This mutual friendship of ours lasted till his death in '88. And so did our ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... believed also that constant dwelling upon such models of simple, pure, idiomatic English is the easiest and on all accounts the best way for children to acquire a mastery ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... write such pure and idiomatic Portuguese, often used peculiar Spanish, not perhaps so much from ignorance as from a wish to make the best of both languages. Thus he uses the personal infinitive and makes words rhyme which he must have ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... robbed of the thought and beauty of his smooth diction, and gives but imperfect meaning and interpretation to many idiomatic expressions. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... is awkward. Tytler laid down his "Principles of Translation" in 1791—and a majority of translators are still unaware of their existence. Yet it ought to seem self-evident to every thinking mind that idiomatic equivalence, not verbal identity, must form the basis of a good and faithful translation. When an English mother uses "you" to her child, she establishes thereby the only rational equivalent for the "du" used under similar circumstances by her ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... crois bien: on l'entendait d'une lieue, 'I should rather think it was talking, you could hear it a mile off.' The sentence is elliptical, vous demandez being understood before s'il. Note the idiomatic use of bien, and cf. je le veux bien, 'I am perfectly willing'; voulez-vous bien vous en aller, 'won't you go away!' je donnerais bien un franc, 'I shouldn't mind ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... was by no means an inexperienced writer. He had written large volumes of Journals, memoirs for the Geographical Society, articles on African Missions, letters for the Missionary Society, and private letters without end, each usually as long as a pamphlet. He was master of a clear, simple, idiomatic style, well fitted to record the incidents of a journey—sometimes poetical in its vivid pictures, often brightening into humor, and sometimes deepening into pathos. Viewing it page by page, the style of the Missionary Travels is admirable, the chief defect being want of perspective; ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... The ellipsis may be supplied thus: he meditated an invasion of Brit. and would have invaded it, had he not been velox ingenio, etc. But in idiomatic Eng. nibut. Of course fuisset is to be supplied with velox ingenio and mobilis poenitentiae. Al. poenitentia. But contrary to the MSS. Mobilis agrees with poenitentiae (cf. Liv. 31, 32: celerem poenitentiam), which is a ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... more remarkable, as a most extraordinary change has taken place in the language of these islands during the latter half of the eighteenth century; insomuch that the language of the Indian inhabitants consists entirely of Spanish words, but all the inflexions, the syntax, and the idiomatic manner of expression are Chilese, that is to say exactly corresponding to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Lexicon. In which the equivalent for English Words and Idiomatic Sentences are rendered into literary and colloquial Arabic. Royal 4to, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... TESTAMENT. The Greek Testament: with a critically-revised Text; a Digest of Various Readings; Marginal References to Verbal and Idiomatic Usage; Prolegomena; and a Critical and Exegetical Commentary. For the Use of Theological Students and Ministers. By Henry Alford, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Vol. I., containing the Four Gospels. 944 pages, 8vo, Cloth, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... these objections were now removed. The educated Arab finds a book printed in characters modeled after the most approved specimens of Arab caligraphy. He soon perceives the style to be that of a man who is master of this wonderful language in all its grammatical and idiomatic niceties and rich resources. As a literary work it secures his respect, and thus invites a candid perusal. If he reads it, he finds the truths of Christianity clearly and correctly stated. Its beneficial ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... which, by some strange mischance, had been left unlocked! In vain I mumbled something touching my love of mineralogy, and that a lapidary had offered I knew not what for my collection. I was compelled to "bundle," as the idiomatic, but ignorant woman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... vers d'occasion should' (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for however trivial the subject-matter may be—indeed, rather in proportion to its ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... is here used as a pseudo-auxiliary; see l. 155, N,—L'emporter, idiomatic for "to win the day." The substantive, for which the fossilized pronoun le stands, is uncertain. Cf. l'chapper belle, idiomatic for "to ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... written composition. The correct use of written language is best taught by selecting for compositions subject-matter that deeply interests the children. If persevered in, this will secure a good, strong, idiomatic use of English. If the words of a selection that has been studied appear now and then in the children's conversation or writing, it should be a matter for praise; for this means that new words have been added to their vocabulary, and that the children have ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... no reformation. He was indeed precisely what we now call a Broad Churchman, accepting forms as convenient, though not essential, to faith. No one was better qualified to interpret him than Froude, whose translations of his letters, though free and sometimes loose, are vivid, racy, and idiomatic. Froude was by no means a blind admirer of Erasmus. His favourite heroes were men of action, and he regarded Luther as the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... in many cases that which is spoken of as something extraneous, dragged in aforethought, for the purpose of singularity, the result more truly of a most earnest and single-minded labor after the utmost rendering of idiomatic conversational truth; the rejection of all stop-gap words; about the most literal transcript of fact compatible with the ends of poetry and true feeling for Art? This a point worthy note, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... effective command of both languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the difficulties ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... she said, in idiomatic English, "you have candid eyes. You make me feel like telling stories when you gaze at me so appealingly. Don't be shocked"—the girl had coloured—"perhaps I shall, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of the meeting, however, was entirely neutralised by the fact that in the same passage stood the study of Rigby, the head of the house. Also Rigby was trying at the moment to turn into idiomatic Greek verse the words: "The Days of Peace and Slumberous calm have fled", and this corroboration of the statement annoyed him to the extent of causing him to dash out and sow lines among the revellers ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... had been declared to be. Apart from a little Latin, a considerable training in writing the English language, and a great deal of miscellaneous reading of an extremely light variety, I really had no culture at all. I could not speak an idiomatic sentence in French or German; I had the vaguest ideas about applied mechanics and science; and no thorough knowledge about anything; but I was supposed to be an educated man, and on this stock in trade I have done business ever since—with, to be sure, the added capital of ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing: it is less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and is enriched and adorned with phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both ancient and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain license of expression by the difficulty of filling up the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of this plan, he makes a quotation from the massive folios of Luther—a passage as he calls it of "hearty sound sense," and gives the simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the "original," with ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... 145-146, the wife retained her status. The Code throughout assumes that a man has only one wife—the assat simtim of our text. The phrase "so" (or "that") before "as afterwards" is to be taken as an idiomatic expression—"so it was and so it should be for all times"—somewhat like the phrase mahriam arkiam, "for all times," in legal documents (CT VIII, 38c, 22-23). For the use of mk see ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... returns into the first, and is both mediate and immediate. As Luther's Bible was written in the language of the common people, so Hegel seems to have thought that he gave his philosophy a truly German character by the use of idiomatic German words. But it may be doubted whether the attempt has been successful. First because such words as 'in sich seyn,' 'an sich seyn,' 'an und fur sich seyn,' though the simplest combinations of nouns and verbs, require a difficult and elaborate ...
— Sophist • Plato
... if not noticing to what place I had brought him. Then he drew himself up short, and gazed around him for a moment. "Ha, the Anglais," he said—and I may mention in passing that his English, in spite of a slight southern accent, was idiomatic and excellent. "It is here, then; it is here!" He was addressing once ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... Madame DUDEVANT'S writings is now at its zenith, and the present volume is a very welcome addition to those already so well set forth by Messrs. ROBERTS. It has been translated into excellent idiomatic English by ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... state that the task of mastering the idiomatic eccentricities of the French language gave me some small inconvenience. With Greek, with Latin, with Hebrew, I am on terms of more or less familiarity; but until this present occasion the use of modern ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... end of the book were German proverbs and "Idiomatic Phrases," by which latter would appear to be meant in all languages, "phrases for the use of idiots":—"A sparrow in the hand is better than a pigeon on the roof."—"Time brings roses."—"The eagle does not catch flies."—"One should ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... bearing a suspicious resemblance to "Il a le mot pour rire." "He do the devil at four" has no reference to an artful scheme for circumventing the Archfiend at a stated hour, but is merely a simulacrum of the well-known gallic idiomatic expression "Il fait le diable a quatre." Truly this is excellent fooling; Punch in his wildest humour, backed by the whole colony of Leicester Square, could not produce funnier English. "He burns one's self the brains," "He ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... Lit. "So, an thou wilt, burden thy mind (i.e. give thyself the trouble, kellifi khatiraki,) and with us [is] a China dish; rise and come to me with it." Kellifi (fem.) khatiraki is an idiomatic expression equivalent to the French, "donnez-vous (or prenez) la peine" and must be taken in connection with what follows, i.e. give yourself the trouble to rise and bring me, etc. (prenez la peine de vous lever et de m'apporter, etc.). Burton, "Whereupon, an-thou please, compose thy ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... cumbersome form. It was issued in six bulky volumes, with only eight or nine verses to a page, and a running commentary in the margin. The paper was strong, the binding dark brown, the page quarto, the type Latin, the style chaste and idiomatic, and the commentary fairly rich in broad practical theology. But all this was no use to the poor. For the benefit, therefore, of the common people the Brethren published a small thin paper edition in a plain calf binding. It contained an index of quotations from ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... love her beyond anything in the world. For former instances of this idiomatic expression, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... a yet different kind is an imitation of Rabelais, which is not so badly done, but cannot be well translated into English, because of its grotesque and idiomatic character. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... version has the appearance of being hammered out with great labor, and as a whole it is cold and constrained; scarce any thing seems spontaneous; it is only now and then that the translator has caught the fervor of his author. Homer, of course, wrote in idiomatic Greek, and, in order to produce either a true copy of the original, or an agreeable poem, should have been translated ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and varying their business and their potations, their fierce strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich humour, gleams of native wit, and racy phrases of idiomatic slang. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... intellectual woman; and I believe that if ever her letters should be collected and published, they would be thought generally to exhibit as much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as pure "mother English," racy and fresh with idiomatic graces, as any in our language—hardly excepting those of Lady M. W. Montague. These are my honours of descent, I have no other; and I have thanked God sincerely that I have not, because, in my judgment, a station which raises a man too eminently above ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... of our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner of the Orientalist who "commences" and "concludes"—never begins and ends, who never uses a short word if he can find a long word, who systematically rejects terse and idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism is to be employed and whose pompous stilted periods are the very triumph of the "Deadly-lively"! By arts precisely similar the learned George Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... to the family. They have a proverb, the pithiness of which is much lost in this paraphrase, "No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity." The mildness of all government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalised by their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or forbidden—viz., "It is requested not to do so and so." Poverty among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held in common, or that all are equals in the extent of their possessions or the size and luxury of their habitations: ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... interrupted; stung by the bitter irony, he told the speaker in fluent idiomatic Hindustani precisely what he might expect if his "lord" ever got the shadow of a chance ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... studying the commentary the student should underline in the text the idiomatic expressions here indicated, including those to which he is referred back in the Reviews. As irregular verb-forms are introduced with special frequency, it would be well to keep the list of irregular verbs at hand for reference. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... next to you the little French girl, Aurelie Deraismes. I should be pleased, Constance, if you would assume an oversight of her school career. She can help you to a more idiomatic knowledge of French—and you can do the same for ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... and, as I have just pointed out, one who knows how to use the pedal can secure an endless (almost orchestral) variety of tone-colors on the piano, thanks to the hundreds of overtones which can be made to accompany the tones played. Chopin spoke the language of the piano. His pieces are so idiomatic that they cannot be translated into orchestral language any more than Heine's lyrics can be translated into English. Chopin exhausted the possibilities of the pianoforte, and the piano exhausts ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... however, has had so great a part in the shaping of modern drama in Ireland as Yeats. His Deirdre (1907), a beautiful retelling of the great Gaelic legend, is far more dramatic than the earlier plays; it is particularly interesting to read with Synge's more idiomatic play on the same theme, Deirdre ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... you! Ain't paying out good credits for you to sit there like you was buying on your own!" The Salarkian who loomed above him spoke accentless, idiomatic Basic Space which came strangely from between his yellow lips. A furred hand thrust the handle of a mop-up stick at the young man, a taloned thumb jerked the direction in which to use that evil-smelling ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... good deal ruffled, used a considerable amount of idiomatic Greek, and made for the boys ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... taken of them, but on 3rd March we were asked if we would withdraw from the college for three months in order that we might "reconsider our opinions", so that possibly we might "be led by Divine guidance to such views as would be compatible with the retention of our present position". Idiomatic English was clearly not a strong point with the council. Of course we refused. If we had consented it might have been reasonably concluded that we had taken very little trouble with our "views". Again we asked for compliance with our requests, but the only answer we got was that our "connexion ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... plank, he will jump in and rescue me. Under these circumstances, I am perfectly safe in talking French to him "Mais je ne vous attendais ce matin"—I've got an idea that this is something uncommonly grammatical—"a cause de votre lettre que je viens de recevoir"—this, I'll swear, is idiomatic—"ce matin. La voila!" I pride myself on "La," as representing my knowledge that "lettre," to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... essentially receptive and not creative. He is altogether wanting in independence of thought. On the other hand, the Ignatian letters are remarkable for their individuality. Of all early Christian writings they are pre-eminent in this respect. They are full of idiomatic expressions, quaint images, unexpected turns of thought and language. They exhibit their characteristic ideas, which obviously have a high value for the writer, for he recurs to them again and again, but which the reader often finds it extremely ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... Enterprise' I became introduced to a Californian celebrity, rich in eccentricities of thought, lively in fancy, quaint in remark, whose residence upon the fringe of civilization had allowed his humour to develop without restraint, and his speech to be rarely idiomatic." ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... translator from the Old Irish must continue to be, for some time to come, rather exactness in rendering than elegance, even at the risk of the translation appearing laboured and puerile. This should not, however, be carried to the extent of distorting his own idiom in order to imitate the idiomatic turns and expressions of the original. In this translation, I have endeavoured to keep as close to the sense and the literary form of the original as possible, but when there is conflict between the two desiderata, I ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... delicacy, or his good-breeding. The patience, gentleness, and kind feeling, with which he contrived at once to excuse and to remedy certain blunders made by the workmen in the execution of his orders, and the clearness with which, in perfectly correct and idiomatic English, slightly tinged with a foreign accent, he explained the mechanical and scientific reasons for the construction he had suggested, gave evidence at once of no common talent, and of a considerate-ness and good-nature ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... the Christian life. Every trial, every difficulty, every experience of joy or sorrow, of peace or temptation, is put into the form and discourse of a living character. Other allegorists write in poetry and their characters are shadowy and unreal; but Bunyan speaks in terse, idiomatic prose, and his characters are living men and women. There are Mr. Worldly Wiseman, a self-satisfied and dogmatic kind of man, youthful Ignorance, sweet Piety, courteous Demas, garrulous Talkative, honest Faithful, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... not only correct, it is highly idiomatic. Mrs. Ascher bridled with pleasure. It pleased her to think that she was patting the bottom dog's head. I did not remind her that in the group which she had just modelled the Spirit of Irish Poetry, for whose benefit she intended to buy guns, had got its ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... is treated in the same way, the pupils translating the words previously given and the instructor giving the meaning of the new words only. Then making use of the first idiomatic expression "il y avait," an explanation is given, showing how it can be changed into the interrogative form "y avait-il?" and the pupils are questioned rapidly as follows, using only ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber
... retained the idiomatic expression of the original, raised himself, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to me to give the more grand ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... long on his Pennsylvania farm that he even thought in English instead of in German, and, strangely enough, in English much less broken and idiomatic than that which he spoke. But his phraseology was the only thing about him that had changed. In modes of feeling, habits of life, he was the same he had been forty years ago, when he farmed a little plot of land, half wheat, half vineyard, in the ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... brother Laurence should accompany him was also to be expected. But the other and more richly attired was somewhat less easy to be certified. The Lord James of Douglas it was, who spoke French with the idiomatic use and easy accentuation of a native, albeit of those central provinces which had longest owned the sway of the King of France. The brothers MacKim also spoke the language of the country after a fashion. For many Frenchmen ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... supposed, rather desultory teaching. But she took the corrections and explanations with a sweetness that was quite enchanting. And she could translate quite well, in an idiomatic fashion. Really, with the right kind of training she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... to verbal criticism, and prove, in many instances, that he had not yet quite formed his taste to that idiomatic English, which was afterwards one of the great charms of his own dramatic style. For instance, he objects to the following phrases:— "Then I fell to my task again."—"These things come, with time, to be habitual."—"By ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... time continued for a long time to exist contemporaneously. Hence it became necessary to distinguish one from the other by name, and thus the notation from midnight gave rise, as I have remarked in one of my papers on Chaucer, to the English idiomatic phrase "of the clock;" or the reckoning of the clock, commencing at midnight, as distinguished from Roman equinoctial hours, commencing at six o'clock A.M. This was what Ben Jonson was meaning by attainment of majority at six ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... Harrison, and deftly tempting them to fresh excursions in her language. She put a question in infantile French to Bob presently, whereupon that guileless youth, with a childlike smile, answered her with a flood of idiomatic phrases, in an accent purer than her own—collapsing with helpless laughter at her amazed face. After which, Madame neglected her other patrons to hover about their table like a stout, presiding goddess, guiding them gently to the best dishes on the menu, and ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... classical literature. Latin literature was very much neglected, and Greek nearly altogether. The more was the astonishment at finding a rare delicacy of critical instinct, as well as of critical sagacity, applied to the Greek idiomatic niceties by a Scottish lawyer, viz., that the same eccentric judge, first made known to ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... could not but happen when a mind so original as that of the boy Jose was concentrated upon it. His first stumbling block was met in the prayer of Jesus in an attempt to render the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread," into idiomatic modern thought. The word translated "daily" was not to be found elsewhere in the Greek language. Evidently the Aramaic word which Jesus employed, and of which this Greek word was a translation, must have been an unusual one—a coined expression. And what ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... mistress and dog has turned on the spelling of a word it has been necessary to give the entire sentence in German. There are also some quaint remarks of which I have been loth to omit the original, these being sure to appeal to anyone acquainted with idiomatic German. ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... this task in his own queer, plodding, English way. To the niceties of style and form he paid little attention. He tells the story as best he can, in his own slangy, cumbrous, Latin-English, but idiomatic way—there is little selection or self-suppression, but he makes his points. He draws from a copious store. Considered as social satire, it is an exposure of the silliness and futility of our system of competitive capitalism superimposed on feudalism. Or you may take it as a book of ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... actor, commenced author, commenced tinker, commenced tailor, commenced candlestick-maker:—Elegant phraseology, though we venture to think, hardly idiomatic or logical, which came into vogue in England in the early part of the last century, and which, as it is never uttered here by cultivated people, it may be proper to remark, is there used by the best writers. Akin to it is another mode of expression ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... in his heart of hearts upon that occasion (when surrounded by all his splendour, and assisted by the seductive arts of Terpsichore and Bacchus) to whisper to Mrs. M'Catchley those soft words which—but why not here let Mr. Richard Avenel use his own idiomatic and unsophisticated expression? "Please the pigs, then," said Mr. Avenel to himself, "I shall pop ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... language spoken is French. As many of the plenipotentiaries do not understand it, they cannot be blamed for relaxing attention while it is being employed, and keeping up a desultory conversation among themselves in idiomatic English, which forms a running bass accompaniment to the voice, often finely modulated, of the orator. Owing to this embarrassing language difficulty, as soon as a delegate pauses to take his breath, his arguments and appeals are done by M. Mantoux into English, and then it is the turn ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... above, I was thinking rather of the mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as brahman, atman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that brahman, neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in that sense in the Atharva-veda, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... of the idiomatic structure, the passage has hitherto been misunderstood; and Warburton proposed to read, "Which teacheth me," but was fortunately opposed by Johnson, although he did not clearly understand the passage. I have ventured to change am to are, for I cannot ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... subjunctive used optatively (Abbott, Sec. 365). (Stage Direction) puts by: puts on one side, refuses. goes about to rise, i.e. endeavours to rise. This idiomatic use of go about still lingers in the phrase 'to go about one's business'; comp. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Alphabet. Some Jews, according to Mr. Thorn, found it in [Hebrew: JSHW NTSRJ] Jesus of Nazareth. I find on inquiry that this satire was actually put forth by some medieval rabbis, but that it is not idiomatic: it represents quite fairly "Jesus Nazarene," but the Hebrew wants an article quite as much ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... S. R. Crockett, for example, who is no more to be compared with him than I to Hercules. Such readers as were competent to judge of him ranked him high, but, south of the Tweed, such readers were few and far between, for he employed the idiomatic Scotch in which he chose to work with a remorseless accuracy, and in this way set up for himself a barrier against the average Englishman. His genius, charming as it was, was not of that tremendous ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... as he is a musician, he coaxes and curses his men in perfect, idiomatic French, German and Spanish as well ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... their author's productions, next after Don Quixote; in correctness and grace of style they stand before it.... They are all fresh from the racy soil of the national character, as that character is found in Andalusia, and are written with an idiomatic richness, a spirit, and a grace, which, though they are the oldest tales of their class in Spain, have left them ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
