"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Slang!" said Massachusetts, looking up again. "One cent for the missionary fund. You will clothe the heathen at this rate, Maine. That is ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... that," said Bailey. "And you'll come near beating, too. We shall have to work harder than ever, but I'll beat Jack Allingham—or bust! Excuse the slang, Gertie, but I've ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... truth from anybody, and from anywhere, and in any form. He listened for it from Emma Goldman, the pope, or a sophomore; preached from a pulpit, a throne, or a soap-box; in the language of science, in slang, in fine rhetoric, or in the talk of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... two together. (They must have been twins.) "This is that way. To put all twenty yoke of us to the big gun as soon as Two Tails trumpets." ("Two Tails" is camp slang for the elephant.) ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... "You've recently," she observed, "got into a new way. Whatever slang you happen to hear outside you come and tell me. And whenever you read any improper book, you poke your fun at me. What! have I become a laughing-stock ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... poetry which is continually flowing is slang. Every day a nameless poet weaves some fairy tracery of popular language. It may be said that the fashionable world talks slang as much as the democratic; this is true, and it strongly supports the view under consideration. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... came to pass, when the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine. 49. And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. 50. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... see you at your Berlin wools. Pardon me - but whenever I see a lady busy with her needle and a bit of canvass, I always think she is hard up for something to think of. Pardon again, Daisy. I know you have no mercy upon slang." ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... against each other, and—Heaven save the mark!—by the very politicians who have been most bitter in their denunciation of "geographical parties." Here comes a little Western lawyer, with unlimited resources of slang and slender capital of ideas, barely redeemed from being an absolute blackguard by the humanizing influences of a New England college, but showing fewer and fewer symptoms of civilization as he forgets the lessons of his collegiate life; and he delights an audience of New York "roughs," adopted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... she was pretty and merry and kind; and, above all, she had mastered to perfection the rare art of letting children alone. If we kept ourselves tolerably clean, and refrained from quarrelling or talking slang, Aunt Olivia did not worry us. Aunt Janet, on the contrary, gave us so much good advice and was so constantly telling us to do this or not to do the other thing, that we could not remember half her instructions, ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... effect of a moral shower-bath. Loquacious as a cricket, he smokes, drinks, wears a profusion of trinkets, overawes the common people, passes for a lord in the villages, and never permits himself to be "stumped,"—a slang expression all his own. He knows how to slap his pockets at the right time, and make his money jingle if he thinks the servants of the second-class houses which he wants to enter (always eminently suspicious) ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... this country, we are moved by the strange piquancy of event and language. From the new sounds and scenes, these Anglo-Saxons hewing a way through pine and hemlock now, as their ancestors hewed a way into England, have added fresh words and phrases to our common tongue. These words are not slang, they are pure primeval language. They express the act, or the scene, or the circumstance, as exactly as if it was painted in sound. For instance, the word "crack" expresses the noise of a rifle; say "crack," and you have the very ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... cried Joe with a laugh. "Excuse my slang, but I know just how it is," he proceeded. "You've made up your mind to go, and you're getting all the advance information you can, to spring it on me. I know your tricks. Well, you won't go ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... in The Manchester Guardian.—'Bell's talk is full of salt and vivacity, a brilliant stream in which city slang reinforces rustic idiom, and both are re-manipulated by inexhaustible native wit. She is the most remarkable creation in a gallery where not a single figure is indistinct or conventional.... Mr. Gibson's essay—for there is confessedly something experimental about it—must be reckoned, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... to re-echo in his consciousness. The flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever they might be socially. And Gerald ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... living—she, the granddaughter of so grand a man as the late Dean of Dunwich—had it not been for poor Mamma's ridiculous fancies. Mamma was so faddy! Before Dolly had spent three whole days at the rectory, she talked just as the Compsons did; she picked up by pure instinct the territorial slang of the county families. One would have thought, to hear her discourse, she had dressed for dinner every night of her life, and passed her days in the ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... was of the friendly, neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers—strangers for the most part, in all probability, to one another—and in ten minutes' time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... his play, but he took up a string of reasoning like this: "Because I am the only boy mama has set out to make me as good as Mabel, and she doesn't allow me to use slang nor anything of the kind. I know if there were half a dozen boys here, it would be different. I suppose it is all right for girls and women, but, bah! I can't be a goody-goody. I am only a boy. I guess it won't pay to bother about good manners, like a girl. I am too busy these days, when there is ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Salisbury, your memory is admirable. Yes, I was hard up. But the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I became harder up. My financial state was described by a friend as 'stone broke.' I don't approve of slang, mind you, but such was my condition. But suppose we go in; there might be other people who would like to dine—it's ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... that Frank used slang, but just then he was in want of a better expression by means of which to ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... thoughtlessness, or from yielding to the bad bit in them, join in silly school talk, silly mysteries, giggling, criticizing other people, boasting about home, loud, rough ways of talking, slang, cliques and exclusive friendships (every one of which is underbred, as well as silly or unkind), and are yet, three-quarters of them, fit for something better,—at home they would be better, and at school they could ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... can spare a devil from the office occasionally," I said carelessly; but I felt that my remark was brutal. In answer to her look of pained surprise I added, "Pardon me that I used the vile slang of the shop; I meant one of the boys employed in the printing-rooms. Mrs. Yocomb, I have now satisfied you that I'm too much of a bear to deserve any gentler nurse. I truly think I had better return to town at once. I've never been very ill, and have no idea how to behave. It's already clear ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... The slang term for the Health Exhibition at Kensington was familiar to him from the English papers he had seen in Paris. As soon as Eve had passed on he obtained a like ticket and hastened down the steps in pursuit. ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... evening, when Diana had left him, and he had been thinking seriously of his own career, and those many transactions of his troubled life which, in the slang denomination of the day, would be called "shady," he derived some scrap of comfort ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... his wrists covered up with clean cuffs, blessed if he didn't look distinguished—at least, that's the only word I can think of that fills the bill. And he talked beautiful language, not like the slang he hove at Brown and ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... words were uttered was so venomous, that Bob realized the speaker meant mischief, though he was ignorant of the fact that in the slang of tramps who beat their way on railroads, "con" betokened conductor, and "blind baggage" the platform of the coach in a ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... the honesty of this confession, and in the same way I sympathize with those Officers of the Salvation Army who, in racing slang, cannot 'stay the course.' ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... droll, which I think rather nice. You'll find a bunch of clippings in my second drawer there. Be sure and show them to your father, and don't fail to keep him in touch with your work: he can help you once he's aroused to what you can do. By the way, you must boil the slang out of your system. It's charming, but it won't do. First thing you know it will be slipping in to your ink-pot and corrupting your manuscripts. You know better; I don't! As you go on Nan Bartlett can probably save you a good many bumps: she's a ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... but I don't believe so, and am willing to risk twenty thousand dollars on the continuance of the vein. If it is there, that sum of money ought to enable us to reach it from your present shaft; and if we do strike it, why, in the slang of the day, the Copper Princess is simply a 'peach.' Are you game to accept my offer and go in for ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... look up to him as to an oracle, treasure up his cant phrases, echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey lore, and, above all, endeavor to imitate his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back thrusts his hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, and is an ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... make his speech when he knew the king was within earshot—a little bit of that 'artifice' of his which has left such an impression in the theatre, that the phrase, 'As deep as Garrick,' is still current stage slang."[219] ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... where a weak minority gave signs of hardihood, I usually adopted their side in argument; and, as I was fully au fait to all the slang of party at least, it became my business in promotion of fun, to fan the flame, which in one instance had nearly ended in getting myself and my allies turned out of an honest Jacksonian's house, who swore no such libellous Whigs should drink at his bar. In fact, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... showed little rows of milk teeth, like white shells. The blue eyes and the baby smile went up, confidingly, to the young ragamuffin's face. There had been kindness here. The boy had taken to Jo, it seemed; and was benevolently evincing it, in the best way he could, by teaching her good-natured slang. ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... smooth-faced, boyish chap, slightly stooped, exceedingly neat, black-haired, and of medium height. He was like Beth only in a "family" manner. His nose was a trifle large for his face, but something in his modest, good-natured way, coupled to his earnest delivery of slang in all his conversation, lent him a certain charm that no ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... marri'd, say, I've chucked some things, An' learned a whole lot more to fill the space. I've slung all slang; crook words 'ave taken wings, An' I 'ave learned to entertain with grace. But when ole Missus Flood comes round our place I don't object to 'er, for all 'er sighs; Becos I likes 'er ways, I likes 'er face, An', most uv all, she 'as them ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... grievance of it, until she sees fit to drop him. When that moment arrives she can make him let go, and lower away all right. Just now Hartley is hanging on quite perceptibly, and if it entertains you to slang him behind his back, I suppose you will slang him, but he won't drop off before you've done with him, Clarice, if I know anything of your methods." Her face flushed and she began to look angry. "Mind you, I don't object to Hartley. As ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... agents in carrying her off; and St. Kilda, belonging then to Macleod, was selected as the place of confinement. The name by which she was spoken or written of was Corpach, an ominous distinction, corresponding to what is called subject in the lecture-room of an anatomist, or shot in the slang of the Westport murderers' [Burke and Hare]. Sir Walter adds that 'it was said of M'Neil of Barra, that when he dined, his bagpipes blew a particular strain, intimating that all the world might go to dinner.' Croker's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... examining the papers. Suddenly this cautious, strong-minded man looked up into Yuba Bill's waiting face, and said quietly, in the despicable slang of ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... (Peter) wrote a slang description of a fight he had witnessed to a lady." Unlucky Peter! "Was ever woman in this manner wooed?" The lady "glanced her eye over page after page in hopes of meeting with something that was intelligible," ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... not attempt to conceal a slight gesture of horror. The tall Russian looked down upon him commiseratingly. 'He is of the Few?' he asked of Ernest, that being the slang of the initiated for a member of the aristocratic and ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... what we call slang or flash songs. He tells us that there were poets who composed songs in the dialect of the mob; and who succeeded in this kind of poetry, adapted to their various characters. The French call such songs Chansons a la Vade; the style ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... prim. Your airs are funny now, but you'll grow up an affected little goose, if you don't take care. I like your nice manners and refined ways of speaking, when you don't try to be elegant. But your absurd words are as bad as Jo's slang." ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... met, every fellow traveler on the road, and taught Ruskin in turn a good bit about humdrum, picturesque mankind. And he would have made him laugh! Possibly you think it incongruous, impossible, the picture of happy-go-lucky, ridiculous Bobbie, with his slang and his grin and his outlook on life, and Ruskin, the great critic, the master of style, the intellectual giant. But then you reckon without Bobbie's quality of Penguinity, and without Ruskin's humanness. It is alike impossible to withstand the contagion of Bobbie's ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... into ridicule for the diversion of himself and of chance comers-in. "The Elf—da," says he, "was too exquisitely pretty; I could make no fun out of that."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 37. I doubt whether Johnson used the word fun, which he describes in his Dictionary as 'a low cant [slang] word.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... to snob?”—A snob in English slang is a bootmaker, so the squatter wanted his man to do a bit ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... with the rulers of men. In the old days they cured their own and their people's bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that the fire is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other things, and few among their people guess how much they owe in mere life and money to what the slang of the minute ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... Patty agreed, rising to enthusiasm as she called the school roll. "Kid McCoy uses too much slang. We'll teach her manners. Rosalie doesn't like to study. We'll pour her full of algebra and Latin. Harriet Gladden's a jelly fish, Mary Deskam's an awful little liar, Evalina Smith's a silly goose, Nancy ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... instances the supposed foreign tongues were nothing more than the ordinary dialects of the country modified by an affected accentuation, by the introduction of a few cabalistic terms, and by the use of descriptive circumlocutions and figurative words in place of ordinary expressions, a slang, in short, such as rascals and pedants invariably coin ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... calling the church covenant of the Boston divines "a stinking carrion and a human invention," was fined L10, while Thomas Makepeace, another Weymouth malcontent, was informed by those in power that "they were weary of him," or, in modern slang, that "he made them tired." Parson Lenthal himself, being sent for by the convention, weakened at once in a way his church followers must have bitterly despised; he was "quickly convinced of his error and evil." His conviction was followed with his confession, and in open court he gave under ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... grace, his eloquence, his literary charm. His style was entirely his own. He played strange tricks with the English language, heaped words upon words, strung adjective to adjective; mingled passages of Ruskinesque description with jerky fragments of modern slang. These mannerisms grew with his growth, but in the seventies they were not sufficiently marked to detract from the pure pleasure which we enjoyed when we listened to his preaching as to "a very ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... the growth of those plants, foreign and English, which love to have their roots in water-soaked mud or the beds of running streams, while leaves and flowers rise far above into the light. Other pools should become "beds" for the water-flowers that float upon the surface. In the slang of the rock garden the plants living and flourishing on upright rocks are called "verticals." If we must have a slang for the flora of the brook garden we will term them "horizontals"— the plants that lie flat on the water surface, and only use their stems as ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... a little rest and change, and yet—I am just selfish enough to consider my own pleasure; I should like to invite her down for a fortnight, and give two or three little spreads, don't you young people call them? You see I am not quite up in slang. A dinner and one or two little teas, and an at home evening, something to say to people that I am really here, though there have been several cards left, and I must get well for Thursday. How stupid to indulge in such an inane freak when ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and with the same grave, sleepless expression on his cast-iron features. The boy, Robin Tips, was at the helm, looking very sleepy. He was an English boy, smart, active, and wide-awake—in the slang sense—in which sense also we may ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... and said so many quaint things in priceless slang that he kept me laughing; but I had eyes if not ears only for Di and Major Vandyke. "Say, he's rushing your sister, isn't he? Making a direct frontal attack—what?" remarked my neighbour, so it must have been conspicuous. One could see Major Vandyke consciously ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... interrupted the telling of O. Henry's last story. He had planned to make this story different from his others, the beginning of a new series in a style he had not previously attempted. "I want to show the public," he said, "that I can write something new—new for me, I mean—a story without slang, a straightforward dramatic plot treated in a way that will come nearer my idea of real story-writing." Before starting to write the present story, he outlined briefly how he intended to develop it: Murray, the criminal accused and convicted of the brutal murder ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... assistance only of the local locksmith. It's astonishing how good a job a locksmith in France can do, even on an automobile, the mechanism of which he perhaps has never seen before. Officially the locksmith in France is known as a serrurier, but in the slang of the land he is the cambrioleur du pays, a name which is expressive, but which means nothing wicked. He can put a thread on a bolt or make a new nut to replace one that has mysteriously unscrewed itself, which is more than many a mere ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... clothed. With the ancients, and not less with the elder dramatists of England and France, both comedy and tragedy were considered as kinds of poetry. They neither sought in comedy to make us laugh merely, much less to make us laugh by wry faces, accidents of jargon, slang phrases for the day, or the clothing of commonplace morals in metaphors drawn from the shops or mechanic occupations of their characters; nor did they condescend in tragedy to wheedle away the applause of the spectators, by representing ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... experienced confidence; spoke, in a voice of surpassing sweetness, with decision and considerable overt contempt for the phraseology of convention—swearing without the least affectation, slanging heartily when slang best suited ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... right, my dear fellow. I understand that it is the refined slang of the modern boudoir, and only known ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... for the letter, which she read through carefully, then, "It has been a deliberate plot on Ethel Grimmer's part," she said. "She has gone out of her way to do it. I know she has got fast and vulgar lately, smoking cigarettes and talking slang; but I did not think she would do ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the foot-lights, artists and their models, literary men of Bohemian tendencies, these are the people whom Billy Burgundy has selected for characterization. True, they speak their lines in slang, but it is the slang of the educated, and is ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... When an occasion arose which seemed to demand a special effort, the talk around the "chuck-wagon" was so riddled with slang from all corners of the earth, so full of startling imagery, that a stranger might stare, bewildered, unable to extract a particle of meaning. And through it blazed such a continual shower of oaths, that were themselves sparks of satanic poetry, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... to any one who had not lost his sense of appreciation of the noblest of all the works of Nature. Both men fulfilled that requisite of the powerful athlete that they should look larger without their clothes than with them. In ring slang, they buffed well. And each showed up the other's points on account of the extreme contrast between them: the long, loose-limbed, deer- footed youngster, and the square-set, rugged veteran with his trunk like the stump of an oak. The betting began to rise upon the younger man from ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the guests at the dinner said that the Americans by the introduction of slang were ruining the English language. Mr. James Russell Lowell had come evidently prepared for this controversy. He said that American slang was the common language of that part of England from which the Pilgrims sailed, and that it had been preserved in certain parts of the United States, notably northern ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... Street into the Strand, and there the world was still alive, though it was now nearly one o'clock. The debauched misery, the wretched outdoor midnight revelry of the world was there, streaming in and out from gin-palaces, and bawling itself hoarse with horrid, discordant, screech-owl slang. But he went his way unheeding and uncontaminated. Now, now that it was useless, he was thinking of the better things of the world; nothing now seemed worth his grasp, nothing now seemed pleasurable, nothing capable of giving joy, but what ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... his careless, disdainful air; and who had said, like a man accustomed to every magnificence, fatigued with luxury, blase with pleasure, and caring only for what is truly pschutt (to use the latest slang): "Pretty women so ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... than the seeds. Opium is extracted from poppy straw in commercial operations that produce the drug for medical use. Qat (kat, khat) is a stimulant from the buds or leaves of Catha edulis that is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), ephedrine, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... patient, we'll come back with a couple of axes and BREAK in. But we'll try the nervous breakdown first, and we'll try it now. I will be a naval officer," declared Ford. "I made the round-the-world cruise with our fleet as a correspondent, and I know enough sea slang to fool a medical man. I am a naval officer whose nerves have gone wrong. I have heard of his sanatorium through——" "How," asked Ford sharply, "have ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... ill-watered as the northern district of Somersetshire, &c. These people are locally called jowsers; and it is probable, that from the suspicion with which their art has been usually regarded amongst people of education, as a mere legerdemain trick of Dousterswivel's, is derived the slang word to chouse for swindle. Meantime, the experimental evidences of a real practical skill in these men, and the enlarged compass of speculation in these days, have led many enlightened people to a Stoic epochey, or suspension of judgment, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... very well what I mean, Rix. I'm using your own slang in speaking to you because you wouldn't comprehend decent language. It isn't the first time you've been warned not to make such a row here close to a lot of wounded and dying men. Now I mean business. Quit it ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... her endeavour to elevate this boy in the world? What the mystery that brought to the gamin this guardian angel in the form of a variety actress who mingles bright sayings with lack of grammar, who tells Rabelaisian anecdotes in one minute and philosophizes in slang about the issues ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... far as to say that, Veronica. And I wish you wouldn't use slang. Dick is a man, and a man—well, never mind about a man. You, Veronica, must never forget that you're a lady. Justice must not be looked for in this world. Sometimes the wicked get what they deserve. More often they don't. There seems to be no rule. Follow ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... fall on yourself, Scotch!" advised Jenks, dropping into the slang he had overheard some boy use. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... forefathers—and we have had burlesques in which the loved fairy tales that have charmed the imaginations of thousands, or subjects of mythology that belong to the religious history of the greatest people on record, are turned into coarse pot-house jests, with slang for wit, but without the playful elegance by which Planche justifies his sport. It is a sign of intellectual barrenness in the writers; for what is easier than parody? what means of raising a laugh so certain and so cheap as to roll a statue from its pedestal and stick ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the closet the skill and energy which distinguished him when the moon was on the heath. Though not born to the arts of peace, he was determined to prove his respect for letters, and his masterpiece is no less pompous in manner than it is estimable in tone and sound in reflection. He handled slang as one who knew its limits and possibilities, employing it not for the sake of eccentricity, but to give the proper colour and sparkle to his page; indeed, his intimate acquaintance with the vagabonds of speech enabled him to compile a dictionary of Pedlar's French, which has been pilfered ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... of the Castle exhausted their adulation, and had received their last reward for upholding the appointment. The Tory press, hungry for the spoil which it maddened the others to lose, paid back the compliments by intense vituperation. The slang of party warfare was bandied in the usual fashion, without thought or a care beyond the interest of party. The Register, to everybody's astonishment, took up the one cause not represented, namely, that of the country. Davis denounced the appointment as an insult to that country, and with a ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... Earl called me to him when he had finished, and talked so beautifully to me; he paid me some such grand old-fashioned compliments, and his voice sounds as if he had learnt elocution in his youth. There is not a word of slang or anything modern; one quite understands how he was able to wake up the House of Lords before his legs gave way. It seems sad that such a ninny as Charlie should succeed him. I feel proud of being related to him, but I shall never think of Lady Carriston except as a distant cousin. Both Charlie ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... the depot wagon rattle by and, peering from the window, saw that, except for Mr. Lumley, it was empty. Not even a summer boarder had come to brighten our ways and lawns with reckless raiment and the newest slang. Summer boarding season was almost over now. Bayport would soon be as dull as dish water. And the captain admitted to himself that it WAS dull. He had half a mind to take a flying trip to Boston, make the round of the wharves, and see if any of the old shipowners ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... waiting near the door, and held out his hand with a dramatically significant gesture when the little Scotchman entered. "Put her there!" he exclaimed heartily, with an exuberant reversion to the slang ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... didn't care if it was, there were others not so good-natured as Lizzie, who, though often vastly entertained by Becky, were quite ready to believe that the spirit of mimicry she possessed had something lawless about it, especially when she broke forth into the slang of the street,—"gutter-slang," the other parcel-girls called it,—the lawlessness seemed to gather a sort of proof. And so it was that, in spite of the entertainment she afforded, and a certain kind of respect in which her "smartness" ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... astounding development of all! The child was utterly transformed. There was no sign of his mother's hand upon his clothes, his neatly brushed hair or his shiny face. His eyes, too, seemed to have grown bigger. Alfred had been a vulgar little boy, addicted to slang and immoderately fond of noisy games. Burton tried to call him back to his mind. It was impossible to connect him in any way with the child whom, through a crack in the door, he could see standing upon a chair the better to scrutinize closely the few engravings ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... often were brutally frank to each other. Fanny had the vision, Fenger the science to apply it. Sometimes her intuition leaped ahead of his reasoning. Then he would say, "I'm not sold on that," which is modern business slang meaning, "You haven't convinced me." She would go back and start afresh, covering the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... back even unto the third generation; he could order a dinner at Sherry's as readily as drinks at Sharkey's. Most valuable accomplishment of all, he learned to laugh. In the way of by-products he picked up a working acquaintance with American, English and German slang—French slang he already knew as a mother-tongue—considerable geographical knowledge of the capitals of Europe, America and Illinois, a taste that discriminated between tobacco and the stuff sold as such in France, and a genuine passion ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... her quaint terms of endearment, slang, and epithets, but as she grew into a beautiful and refined and dignified girl, it was still more piquant to be addressed in the highly unladylike (or ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the same he could never bear any allusion to this tree-climbing episode in his martial career, which, as it happened, had taken place in full view of his retainers, among whom it remained the greatest of jokes. Indeed, he wanted to kill a man, the wag of the party, who gave him a slang name ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... meditation. I could not choose but wonder at myself when I looked back to this time last year, and remembered my idle evenings in third-rate cafes, on the rive gauche, playing dominoes, talking the foul slang of Parisian bohemia, and poisoning my system with adulterated absinthe. And now I feast upon sweet cakes and honey, and think it paradisiac enjoyment to play whist—for love—in a farm-house parlour. I am younger by ten years than I ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... voice tense with excitement; "she has seen and intends to speak us. See, she has stopped her engines, and is hailing the Asashio! What a jolly, bloomin' chance," (Ito was very proud of his command of English slang, and availed himself of every possible opportunity to air it) "to honourably torpedo her! Will the honourable Swinburne augustly grant the humblest of his ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... case is much stronger than this. It will be said that this poetry is peculiar to the country populace, and that the dim democracies of our modern towns at least have lost it. For some extraordinary reason they have not lost it. Ordinary London slang is full of witty things said by nobody in particular. True, the creed of our cruel cities is not so sane and just as the creed of the old countryside; but the people are just as clever in giving names to their sins in the city as ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... obsolescent."—Dr. Crombie, Etymol. and Syntax, p. 193. Some recent grammarians, however, retain it; among whom are Bullions and M'Culloch. Wells retains it, but marks it as, "Obsolete;" as he does also the preterits bare, clave, drove, gat, slang, spake, span, spat, sware, tare, writ; and the participles hoven, loaden, rid from ride, spitten, stricken, and writ. In this he is not altogether consistent. Forms really obsolete belong not to any modern list of irregular verbs; and even such as are archaic and obsolescent, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... sniffed the young ruffian, now using that half-whining, half-sneering form of discourse peculiar alike to the vicious chevalier of Paris and his confrere of the provincial centres. Accent and slang alone distinguish between them; the argot, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... South, we sympathize with the West. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of to-day. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... facts to Uncle John; and then he turned to the chauffeur, who was fumbling with the tyre—it was something complicated, not only just the bursting—and in a minute or two he was down in the mud giving such practical advice. And you never heard such slang! But I believe men like that sort of thing, as the chauffeur was not a bit offended at being ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... traditions of the poor are reproduced in the education of the poor? I do not wish the coster's irony to appeal as coarsely in the school as it does in the tap room; but does it appear at all? Is the child taught to sympathize at all with his father's admirable cheerfulness and slang? I do not expect the pathetic, eager pietas of the mother, with her funeral clothes and funeral baked meats, to be exactly imitated in the educational system; but has it any influence at all on the educational system? ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... is said that in Saugor no Bania dare go past a Bundela Rajput's house without getting down from his pony and folding up his umbrella. In Hindu slang a 'Chhatawali' or carrier of an umbrella was a term for a smart young man; as in the line, 'An umbrella has two kinds of ribs; two women are quarrelling for the love of him who carries it.' Now that the umbrella is free to all, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... me not to turn out." Is turn out a slang phrase here, or is it a term commonly used in speaking of the assemblage ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... tediousness. I have flaunted these truisms before you in order to exorcise that modern slang of yours which is more false than the overstrained forms of a feudal France. To shut out glory is not to be practical. You are not adjusting your life artistically; there is too much strain, too little warmth, too much self-complacence. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... quietly than the procession on Monday. There were about 25,000 men, mostly well dressed, no noise or tumult, a vast crowd. It was a failure altogether; Melbourne's answer was good. They say 250,000 men are enrolled in the Unions, and the slang name for those who won't belong to them is 'dungs;' the intimidation used is great. There was quite as great a crowd assembled yesterday to see old Lady Hertford's funeral go by. The King sent all the royal carriages, and every other carriage ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Slang and Colloquialisms.—Slang, we are often reminded, is common—meaning vulgar. And yet, there are some slang phrases that are so expressive, and convey so much meaning in few words that the temptation to use them is irresistible. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... modest and the prettiest girl in Red River. Her old school companions called her a darling. Tom Whyte said "he never seed nothink like her nowhere." The clerks spoke of her in terms too glowing to remember; and the last arrival among them, the youngest, with the slang of the "old country" fresh on his lips, called her a stunner! Even Mrs. Grant got up one of her half-expressed remarks about her, which everybody would have supposed to be quizzical in its nature, were it not for the frequent occurrence of the terms "good girl," "innocent creature," which seemed ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... line of stuff!" She had never before employed Felicity's brand of slang. It came unpleasantly from her tongue. "The wages of sin and ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... keys were put in motion, and he opened the grate to let them pass, eyeing John Ayliffe with considerable attention as he did so. Locking the grate carefully behind him, he lighted them on with his lantern, muttering as he went in the peculiar prison slang of those days, various sentences not very complimentary to the tastes and habits of young John Ayliffe, "Ay, ay," he said, "clerk be damned! One of Tom's pals, for a pint and a boiled bone—droll I don't know him. He must be twenty, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... George turned into his own Dragon. What an unnatural transformation! He, who had said luxury was hurrying the civilized world to destruction, wore a pearl in his scarf-pin worth thousands of dollars if it was worth a cent. He had all the latest slang of a Bond Street Nut. (By the way, over here when one talks of a "nut" it doesn't mean a swell, but a youth who is what they'd call "dotty" or "bunny on the 'umph" in a London music hall.) And though his ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... you mean?" asked Margaret, who could not abide slang of any kind. "No, indeed, Basil. Your Uncle John is the head of the house, in every possible way. I hope you are all going to be very good and obedient. He is the kindest, best man in ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... people. Here is this Mrs. Harrison, smoking cigarettes—and cigars, too, sometimes, in the open air; drinking grog at night, and sometimes in the morning; letting Tom Edwards and the foolish boys who imitate him talk slang to her without putting them down; always ready for a walk or drive with the last handsome young man who has arrived; and utterly ignoring her husband, except when she makes some slighting mention of him for not sending her money enough: what is the effect of all this upon ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... said gently. "I'm sorry if I hit too hard. But I feel rather strongly on that subject. I've no wish to slang you. I only want to set you on your feet, and keep you there. So we may as well ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... these procuresses will write to men of means of their acquaintance, informing them in some cipher or slang phrase that they have a new importation in their house awaiting eligible disposition. Large sums are often paid under such circumstances, and the fresh importation is usually sold in this way five or six times. In other words, she is represented ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... at the University of Cambridge, Eng., explained in the following passage. "Many ... step ... into the Church, without any pretence of other change than in the attire of their outward man,—the being 'japanned,' as assuming the black dress and white cravat is called in University slang."—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... my feet, mentally at least. I don't suppose any one could set me permanently on my physical, corporeal pins. Beg pardon for the slang, Conny, I don't forget how you and Sybil used to lecture me for that, and my other vices. Poor sis, she had given up the drink talks latterly, given me over as hopeless, and so I am. Con., I have ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... great-great-grandfathers, not yet having ceased to think of themselves as Englishmen, used to distinguish themselves as "Continentals," while the king's troops were known as the "British." The quaint term "Continental" long ago fell into disuse, except in the slang phrase "not worth a Continental" which referred to the debased condition of our currency at the close of the Revolutionary War; but "American" and "British" might still serve the purpose sufficiently whenever it is necessary to distinguish between the two great English nationalities. ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... be fair to credit such a noble creature with talking, or even thinking, slang, but Dick Darvall clearly understood her to say something of the sort, for after a while he reduced speed to a kind of india-rubber walk and patted ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... caste by feigning amiable doubt, and ignorance, and innocence. What they most fear is that they may carry a scent of the schools about with them, so they put on extremely Parisian airs, venture on somersaults and slang, and assume all the grace of dancing bears in their eager desire to please. From that desire spring the sarcastic shafts which they aim at science, they who pretend that they know everything, but who go back to the belief of the humble, the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... lottery-stands; and I believe that each little shanty and puppet-show had its band or fraction of a band, for there was never heard such a tooting and blowing and scraping, such a pounding and dinning and slang-whanging, since the day of stopping work on the Tower of Babel. The circus band confined itself mostly to one tune; and as it went all day long, and late into the night, we got to know it quite well; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... who use it, and thus we pass from the pompous grandiloquence of king and herald to the common English and coarse conceits of clown and nurse and grave-digger; from the bombastic speech of Glendower and the rhapsodies of Hotspur to the slang and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... at me for an instant, and, had he spoken his inmost thoughts, probably they might have been appropriately expressed in the slang phrase, "Ah, what are you givin' me?" "Well, it might have been his grandfather's ghost, I daresay," he facetiously remarked at length, "but, anyhow, there seemed to be a strong resemblance between Harvey Farnham ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... complete language must be, with its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds; the many forms that single words may take, especially if they are verbs; the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang and inflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues these simians have![1] Where another race, after the most frightful discord and pains, might have slowly constructed one language before this ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Father's guiding hand. The ex-gold-diggers, Baldwin Burr and Jacob Buckley, fought their battles over again, and sang the camp-fire songs. Philosopher Jack sat beside his mother, who was a little deaf, to explain the miners' slang and point the jokes. Watty Wilkins became involved in Susan, and was comparatively useless; but he laughed at the jokes, whether he saw them or not, and joined with telling effect in the choruses. ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... up this chapter of accidents with an account of the manner in which a party of strangers, to use a slang but expressive phrase, came to grief during a visit ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... away from home, he said. At first he found that a wholly new place and new people took him out of himself ("surprised me," he said, "so that I could not live everything beforehand"). Thus he fled. The slang he used, "chased himself all over the country," seemed peculiarly expressive. He had been in foreign countries; he had herded sheep in Australia (so he said), and certainly from his knowledge of the country he had wandered with the gamboleros of ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson |
