"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... daughter understood in the adjective applied to her a hint which the wily lady would not have dared to make direct to the high-spirited old soldier, namely, that the continuance of his livelihood might depend on his consent. Betty knew likewise ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for further explorations. Scutari has always been described as such a beautiful town. The adjective does not seem picturesque: yes, quaint, strange decidedly. One's second impression after ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... in the East are so accustomed to the adjective "blue" in connection with the jay that we are surprised to find that P. c. capitalis wears no blue whatever, but dons a sombre suit of leaden gray, somewhat relieved by the blackish shade of the wings and tail, with their silvery or frosted lustre. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... not unfrequently made by omitting to repeat the article in a sentence. It should always be repeated when a noun or an adjective referring to a distinct thing is introduced; take, for example, the sentence, "He has a black and white horse." If two horses are meant, it is clear that it should be, "He has a black and ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... ... am quite confuse. [sic] Queen Victoria used the feminine form of the French adjective, "confus, e, confused, overpowered; ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... word is an adjective, formed with the proper termination from the noun, batture, which means a bank upon which the sea beats, reef or sand-bank. Cap Batturier may therefore be rendered sand-bank cape, or the cape of the sand-banks. Batturier does not appear in the dictionaries, and was doubtless coined by Champlain ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... in a moment of that unknown power when words suggest something fuller than their own meaning, and in which simplicity itself broadens the mind of the reader. So that it is impossible to put one's finger upon this or that and say this adjective, that order of the words has given the touch ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... primum maritum. So the ellipsis might be supplied. Ultra here is equivalent to longior in the next clause, as T. often puts the adverb in place of the adjective, whether qualifying ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... adjective which does duty on all occasions in Sussex. A countryman will scarcely speak three sentences without dragging in this word. A friend of mine who had been remonstrating with one of his parishioners for abusing the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... said, after Miss Morris had left them. "A most charming young lady. Is it not so?" he added, waving his cigarette in a gesture which expressed the ineffectiveness of the adjective. ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... in person. As he leisurely put his appearance in order, he thought: "Verily one's adventures begin upon leaving home." He was human, consequently his curiosity was pleasantly stimulated to discover what lay before him: but the little adjective in the first sentence of his appellant's letter was fatal to the idea of any violent enthusiasm ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... of artillery from the Confederate left indicated that a heavy conflict had begun in that quarter. The Federal troops were charging Marye's Hill, which was to prove the Cemetery Hill of Fredericksburg. This frightful charge—for no other adjective can describe it—was made by General French's division, supported by General Hancock. The Federal troops rushed forward over the broken ground in the suburbs of the city, and, "as soon as the masses became dense enough,"[1] ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... distinction between the verbal adjective and the present participle; but the Academy lays down one ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... stronghold, was Anderida, that is, the Holy Oak; from dar, oak (Sanskrit, daru, a tree), and da, good. It is worth remarking that this idea survives in the personal name, Holyoak; for who ever heard of "Holyelm," or "Holyash," or a similar form compounded of the adjective and the name of any other tree than the oak. If there is an exception it is in the name of the holly. The Cornish Celtic word for holly was Celyn, from Celli (or Kelli), a grove; literally a grove-one; so that the holly ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... for his reason if not for his life, as he averaged ten hours a day steady work, and when the spell was on him would pass night after night at his study table, rewriting, cutting, modelling his play, never contented, always striving after a more expressive adjective, a more harmonious or original rhyme, casting aside a month’s finished work without a second thought when he judged that another form expressed his idea ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... haven't any more ideas of grammar than a broomstick. You know I called 'cat' a conjunction the other day. Now, you shall help me in grammar, for I'm blessed if I know whether I'm a noun or an adjective, and I'll pay ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... no word in the English language more deadly in its vague import than that apparently harmless adjective. As applied to a human being, it generally conveys every kind of odious significance, and curiously enough it is seldom ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... image, or holy picture, is obraz; the adjective "cultured" is derived from the same word in its sense of ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the duchess's one concession to morbid sentiment. After the demise of the duke she had found it so depressing to be invariably addressed with suave deference by every male voice she heard. If the butler could have snorted, or the rector have rapped out an uncomplimentary adjective, the duchess would have felt cheered. As it was, a fixed and settled melancholy lay upon her spirit until she saw in a dealer's list an advertisement of a prize macaw, warranted a grand talker, with a vocabulary of over ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... reads "Sardinian." It is not certain whether the adjective employed is [Greek: sardanios] or [Greek: sardanikos]. I suspect that Oriphyles here makes an intentional play upon ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... slang, adds nothing of sense or sound to the word. It is like a piece of dead wood in a tree, and is better lopped off. Nor does the use of "bully" prove a wholesome respect for the past. It is true that our Elizabethans used this adjective in the sense of great or noble. "Come," writes Ben Jonson in "The Poetaster," "I love bully Horace." {*} But in England the word was never of universal application, and was sternly reserved for poets, ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... The title of the work, in manuscript, from which the grammatical notices have been elaborated is Arte y Vocabulario de la lingua Dohema, Heve Eudeva; the adjective termination of the last and first name being evidently Spanish, as is also the plural terminations used elsewhere in some of the modifications of those words. We have only the definition of Heve with certainty given as "people;" to the word "nation" in the vocabulary, there being ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... the distinguished scientist, Miss Timson's chief, was the only man she could think of to whom Tims could possibly apply the possessive adjective. Tims bridled. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... another play on words, for "sinzera" may be the adjective "sincere" or the two words "sin zera," "waxless," and hence in this last meaning, an allusion to the third line of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... country," Rita went on, dwelling on every adjective with infinite relish, "came a girl, a daughter of the country that was bleeding, dying. She was young; she had fire in her veins instead of blood; she was a San Real. She stayed in a house—a place—near the seashore, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... person than the penitent woman mentioned by St. Luke. It has also the official sanction of the governments of Great Britain and the United States. In England the word is pronounced Maudlin, whence maudlin, adjective, unpleasantly sentimental. With their Maudlin for Magdalene, and their Bedlam for Bethlehem, the English may justly boast ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... name of a great quarter in London, Mary-le-bone, as ludicrously ungrammatical. The writers had learned (or were learning) French; and they had thus become aware, that neither the article nor the adjective was right. True, not right for the current age, but perfectly right for the age in which the name arose; but, for want of elder French, they did not know that in our Chaucer's time both were right. Le was then the article feminine as well as masculine, and bone ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... hers, and went upstairs to see grand-mamma; and Julian sat on my lap, very tired with play, eating a cold buckwheat cake, and gazing out. "Mamma! Mountain! Lake!" he kept ejaculating. Wise child! What could be added, in the way of adjective, that would enhance? "Thou eye among the blind!" thought his mother. At last he was so weary with sport that he slipped down upon the floor, and lay upon his back, till he finished eating his buckwheat cake. Then I put him to bed. Me clasped his blessed little arms ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... invented an adjective for us that expresses the midnight caterwaul—"ghastful." Bartholomew probably suffered from those two minor curses of humanity—the amorous cat and the wandering cur. But he has preserved for us a noble eulogy of the dog, and has a reference to the tale of the dog of Montargis, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... Note 3. This adjective also was peculiar to the peerage and the Royal Family. It was given to every relation except between husband and wife: and the French beau-pirt for father-in-law is doubtless derived from it. Nay, it was conferred on the Deity; and ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... industry and they know more about it than we do in the North. Consequently they do not need our assistance, even if we were able to give it, and, therefore, without any fear of our being criticised for using the adjective "northern" we can limit our investigations and discussions to nut culture in the northern part of the United States with a full knowledge that our southern brethren can take care of themselves, and, in addition, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... from which emergence has become practically impossible. These lank figures carry no charm of womanhood,—nothing that can draw from sweater or general employer more than a sneer at the quality of the labor of those waiting always in numbers far beyond any real demand, until for both the adjective comes to be "superfluous," and employer and employed alike wonder why the earth holds them, and what good there is in an existence made up simply of ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take "ranch" eggs, how pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with "yard" eggs, such an "out in the open—let the rest of the world go by" impression they confer. And so reassuring, too, as though ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... sailor word; it means anything at all; it may be made an adjective or a verb, or almost any part of speech, to serve a purpose or express a thought. Here it meant that there was to be no fooling at the helm, that she was to be steered as by Gunter himself. "Full an' by," was the word. "Full an' by, an' no damned ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... the meaning of "letters of horning," a term occasionally, though rarely, met with in documents drawn up by notaries? And, a propos, why should "notaries public," with regard to the noun and adjective, continue to place ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... Here the adjective is made emphatic by being put before its noun; in 4, 14 the same effect is gained by putting ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... adjective appears to be an afterthought," grumbled the bachelor; then, when she merely laughed teasingly after the manner of women, ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... name, it is easily accounted for. She was born on the twenty-ninth day of February, the year of her birth being bisextile. Unor means February, Unorna, derivative adjective, 'belonging to February.' Some one gave her the name to ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... to pique him with this adjective, she was disarmed by the heartiness of his admission, "As green as grass! But I'd like to help you all the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... truthful we poets! The "language of Love" Is a phrase we employ full oft; But whenever we do, we prefix thereto, You've noticed, the adjective "soft." ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... with slavery in the Southern States. Now Lincoln himself—whether for good reasons or bad must be considered later—thoroughly disapproved of the actual agitation of the Abolitionists; and the resolutions in question, but for one merely theoretical point of law and for an unctuous misuse of the adjective "sacred," contained nothing which he could not literally have accepted. The objection to them lay in the motive which made it worth while to pass them. Lincoln drew up and placed on the records of the House a protest ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... if,—(as will be often the case in the arts and sciences,)—no synonyme exists, we must either invent or borrow a word. In the present instance the appropriation has already begun, and been legitimated in the derivative adjective: Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful mind. If therefore I should succeed in establishing the actual existence of two faculties generally different, the nomenclature would be at once determined. To the faculty by which I ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 85: [Greek: Orkia] is probably used as an adjective, understanding [Greek: iereia], the victims that were slain in order to ratify the oath. See however Buttm. Lexil. ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... an instrument of production," they say. That is true. But when, changing the noun into an adjective, they alter the phrase, thus, "The land is a productive instrument," ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... 'Accost her, knight, accost!' in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakspearian in the phrase—'give a coasting welcome,' ('coasting' being taken as the epithet and adjective of 'welcome,') that had the following words been, 'ere they land,' instead of 'ere it comes,' I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome to a salute ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... or France has to offer makes any impression on the Californiac because it's different from California. As for the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, he simply never sees it. The Netherlands are dismissed with one adjective—flat. For a country to be flat is, in the opinion of the Californiac, to relinquish its final claim to beauty. A Californiac once made the statement to me that Californians considered themselves a little better than the rest of ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... ordinary persons and even professional philosophers speak of reason as if it were a jewel that can be placed in a drawer or in a human skull, they are simply myth-makers. It is precisely in this ever recurring elevation of an adjective or a verb to a noun, of a predicate to a subject, that this disease of language, as I have called mythology, has its deepest roots. Here lies the genesis of the majority of gods, not by any means, as it is generally believed I have taught, merely in later quibbles and misunderstandings, ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... was a champion worth while! He did nothing by halves. He was of the breed of men who grow more intense, more convinced, more thorough, as they talk. One adjective begets another, one warm allusion gives birth to a warmer, one flashing impulse evokes a brighter confidence, till the atmosphere is flaming with conviction. If Jean Jacques started with faint doubt regarding anything, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a considerable renown among her acquaintance, not only for its peculiar charm, which combined and reconciled the tastes of two very different generations, but also for its radiant cleanness. There are many clean houses in the Five Towns, using the adjective in the relative sense in which the Five Towns is forced by chimneys to use it. But Mrs. Maldon's sitting-room (save for the white window-curtains, which had to accept the common grey fate of white window-curtains in the district) was clean in the country-side sense, almost in the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... his mother. She had been beautiful, a gentle, lovable daughter of generations of social refinement. Her father and grandfather had lived "pretty high." In truth, had the doctors dared, "alcoholic," as an adjective, would have appeared in both their death certificates; and the worm must have been in the bud, for she died suddenly at twenty-five, following a short, apparently inadequate illness. Thus, three-year-old Francis was left to a busy father's care, a maiden aunt's theoretical ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... men that was plainly town-bred; there was a certain difference in the cut of their clothes and the way they wore them. Then she saw two or three whispering together, and the next moment came a brutal shout. She could not catch the sentence, but she heard the word "Papist" with an adjective, and caught the unmistakable bullying tone of the man. The next instant there broke out a confusion: a man dashed up the step from the crowd beneath, and she caught a glimpse of Dick Sampson's furious face. Then the group bore ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... be the law of every language. Thus, having adopted the adjective fraternal, it is a root which should legitimate fraternity, fraternation, fraternization, fraternism, to fratenate, fraternize, fraternally. And give the word neologism to our language, as a root, and it should ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is the richest in the world, and yet somehow in moments when words count most we generally choose the wrong ones. The adjective "cross" as a description of his Jove-like wrath that consumed his whole being jarred upon Derek profoundly. It was as though Prometheus, with the vultures tearing his liver, had been ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... For three or four centuries they have called their own customs "Christian," and have thus claimed for them a religious authority and sanction which they do not possess by any connection with the principles of Christianity. Now, however, the adjective seems to be losing its force. The Japanese regard nudity with indifference, but they use dress to conceal the contour of the human form while we use it to enhance, in many ways, the attraction. "Christian" mores have been enforced by the best breechloaders and ironclads, but the Japanese now seem ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the soliloquy last night?" "Oh, against all rule, my lord, most ungrammatically! Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus—stopping as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... and confused as this in which we live. Of course serenity does not always go with genuineness. We must say of Dr. Johnson that he was genuine, and yet we know that the stormy tyrant of the Turk's Head Tavern was not serene. Carlyle was genuine (though that is not quite the first adjective we should choose to describe him), but of serenity he allowed cooks and cocks and every modern and every ancient sham to deprive him. Serenity is a product, no doubt, of two very different things, namely, vision and digestion. Not the eye only, but the ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... favorite mouthpiece of President Davis. It had stood like a wall during the cruelties of Reconstruction; had fought the good fight for white man's rule; had crucified carpet-baggism and scalawaggery upon a cross of burning adjective. Later it had labored gallantly for Tilden; denounced Hayes as a robber; idolized Cleveland; preached free trade with pure passion; swallowed free silver; stood "regular," though not without grimaces, through Bryanism. The Post ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... isn't business-like, I don't know what is!" exclaimed Cadbury, when it was read through. "If ink was a shilling a drop, you couldn't have been more chary of it. There's not an 'a', 'an', or 'the' throughout, nor a comma, nor an adjective, and the contractions are masterly. We're all born commercial clerks, that's what ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... also signifies "the upper part of the ridge of some elevated and exposed land." As a prefix, its meaning depends upon the fact whether the word attached to it be an adjective or a substantive. If an adjective be attached, it has the second signification; i.e. it is the upper part of some exposed land, having the particular quality involved in the adjective, such as, "Cefndu," "Cefngwyn," "Cefncoch," the black, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... must be adequate to send her representatives to the lower House. I know the time may not have come for mooting a question of this sort; but I know the time will come, and that woman will be something more than a mere adjective to man in political matters. She will become a substantive also. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the word Pausanias uses, of the cup in the hand of Dionysus—the wood was plated with gold. Liddell and Scott definition of the adjective chryseos: "golden, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... always spoken of Sara as a clever little devil, but Robert showed no surprise at the new adjective. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the use of words in the wrong parts of speech, as a noun for a verb, or an adjective for an adverb. Sometimes newspapers are guilty of such faults; for journalistic English, though pithy, shows here and there traces of its rapid composition. You must look to more leisurely authorities. The speakers and writers ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... civil war?' asked Grandpapa, with a gentle emphasis on the adjective, which caused the combatants to calm their ardour ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... twenty years, perhaps, not more than two can be recalled who have visited the United States as mature, great artists,—Wilhelmj and Ysaye. Many violinists of excellent ability have been heard, and to some of them some day the adjective great may be applied. The fact that they have devoted their energies to concert work, and have been favourably received by the most important musical organisations, makes them celebrated, but the word great ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... The fleet have been mostly round that way this week past. Shall I show you round a bit, sir? I'm the acting manager, formerly sole manager." Oily Dave contrived to throw a withering emphasis on the latter adjective, and roiled up his eyes in a manner meant to imply injured innocence, which, however, only expressed low-down ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... were few and far between. But he carried his Greek grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjective, or part of a verb, without being ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and conflicts of this ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... quiet independence, indomitable will, and never-ceasing purpose to "get on," which is a characteristic of the New England women, and which may be summed up in the expressive adjective "capable." Armed with this power, she cheerfully teaches school, makes dresses, binds books, or "keeps house," considering no honest work degrading, and proving ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... Lordship actually urge me to the contrary, I should say, Let the election go on, and all take our chance. That seems to me the fair, manly, ENGLISH [great emphasis on the last adjective], ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rather than chemical analysis have already become, among the illuminati, so widely adopted that these denominations now stand in considerable danger of being weakened in significance through a too careless use. The adjective "bromidic" is at present adopted as a general vehicle, a common carrier for the thoughtless damnation of the Philistine. The time has come to formulate, authoritatively, the precise scope of intellect which such distinctions suggest and to define the shorthand of conversation which their use ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... The adjective robust as applied to myself is, I think, a trifle misplaced. I suggest ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... satiric description of the Court before which his Amelia stood her trial, he describes himself as an 'old gentleman.' The adjective seems hardly applicable to a man of forty five; but, to quote again from Mr Austin Dobson, "however it may have chanced, whether from failing health or otherwise, the Fielding of Amelia is suddenly a far older man than the Fielding of Tom Jones. The robust and irrepressible vitality, the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... often used the adjective "humble" before the noun "friend," glossing it with a somewhat exaggerated account of Denas and their relationship, but with Denas herself she never thought of such qualification. Denas had all the native independence of her class—the fisher ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... imagination. I would that the writing could be as cold in tone as the criticism of those who consider everything other than polished ice almost amusing—to judge by the way they handle it, dismissing it with an airy grace and a hurting adjective. Would they be quite so cool, we wonder, if the little wronged girl were their own? But we do not write for such as these. The thought of the cold eyes would freeze the thoughts before they formed. We write for the earnest-hearted, who are not ashamed to confess they care. And yet we ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... Moliere's. The terminal "e" played an important part in grammar; in many cases it was the sign of the infinitive — the "n" being dropped from the end; at other times it pointed the distinction between singular and plural, between adjective and adverb. The pages that follow, however, being prepared from the modern English point of view, necessarily no account is taken of those distinctions; and the now silent "e" has been retained in the text of Chaucer only when required by the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... been telling the Germans that his father, the ex-Kaiser, is now 'legally' dead. We must get rid of that adjective without delay."—John Bull. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... player with pencil and paper. The first thing to write on the paper is an adjective which applies to a man. The paper is then folded over and passed to the right. This time each one writes the name of a man (either present or absent), folds the paper so the next one can't see what is written, and passes ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... voice, and with an air of anxious simplicity, Doddle began, 'Article, noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, outerjection, beginning with ies in the plural—as, baby, babies; lady, ladies; hady, hadies. Please, sir, isn't that ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... not easy to guess why Nash employed this Italian word instead of an English one. Lento means lazy, and though an adjective, it is used here substantively; the meaning, of course, is that the idle fellow who ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... imagine, in the habit of meeting. It should be added that Eva herself appears in the photograph as well as the simulacra of humanity. The faces are, on the whole, both pretty and piquant, though of a rather worldly and unrefined type. The latter adjective would not apply to the larger and most elaborate photograph, which represents a very beautiful young woman of a truly spiritual cast of face. Some of the faces are but partially formed, which gives them a grotesque ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... created things, or manifested through them. (18) Thus El, or Eloah, signifies powerful, as is well known, and only applies to God in respect to His supremacy, as when we call Paul an apostle; the faculties of his power are set forth in an accompanying adjective, as El, great, awful, just, merciful, &c., or else all are understood at once by the use of El in the plural number, with a singular signification, an expression ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... and their Roman imitators, to whom we shall recur in a later chapter, and the mediaeval Troubadours and Minnesingers. To the present day sentimentality in love is so much more abundant than sentiment that the adjective sentimental is commonly used in an uncomplimentary sense, as in the following passage from one of Krafft-Ebing's books (Psch. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Adjective is a name which we are entitled to add to a thing, when we know it to possess ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... White Gypsum; Baryta: Magnesium Carbonate: Talc, Soapstone.—V., Organic Colours—1. Colours of Vegetable and Animal Origin: (a) Substantive (Direct Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Annatto; Turmeric: Safflower; (b) Adjective (Indirect Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Redwood; Cochineal; Weld: Persian Berries; Fustic Extract; Quercitron: Catechu (Cutch); Logwood Extract—2. Artificial Organic (Coal Tar) Colours: Acid Colours; Basic Colours: Substantive (Direct Dyeing) Colours; ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... Chalky is an excellent adjective to describe the appearance of our outlook when the light is much diffused and shadows poor; the scene is ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Wallisian(s), Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, or Wallis ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... what I call liberal in that affair,"—half the critics of the day would use the adjective instead of the adverb here, and why should Deacon Prates English be any better than his neighbours?—"and so I've admitted to his friends over on the Vineyard. But, Gar'ner, our great affair still remains to be accounted for. Do you wish to have the room cleared ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... I know, Aunt Hannah, everything you would say if you could. But please skip the hysterics. We've all had them, and Kate has already used every possible adjective that you could think up. Now it's just this." And he hurriedly gave Mrs. Stetson a full account of the case, and told her plainly what he hoped and expected that ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... demeanour' and of the reports of 'his uprightness of dealing which argues his honesty.' In 1601—when near the zenith of his fame—he was apostrophised as 'sweet Master Shakespeare' in the play of 'The Return from Parnassus,' and that adjective was long after associated with his name. In 1604 one Anthony Scoloker in a poem called 'Daiphantus' bestowed on him the epithet 'friendly.' After the close of his career Jonson wrote of him: 'I loved the man and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... meaning of "I am well," and may be called a substitute for our verb "to be." By incorporating yalu with this expression, it makes it more emphatic, as, Yalu murrung nginyadhu, "Really I am well." Any adjective describing a human attribute may be taken as a predicate, as, good, bad, strong, sleepy, and employed with the modifications of ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews
... language we find immediately the radical a, atl, which signifies water, war, and the top of the head. (Molina, "Vocab. en lengua Mexicana y Castellana.") From this comes a series of words, such as atlan—on the border of or amid the water—from which we 'have the adjective Atlantic. We have also atlaca, to combat, or be in agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart from the water, and in the preterit makes Atlaz. A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... condition. I personally hold that it is perfectly constitutional openly to strive after independence, but lest there may be dispute as to the constitutional character of any movement for complete independence, the doubtful and highly technical adjective "constitutional" has been removed from the altered creed in the draft. Surely it should be enough to ensure that the methods for achieving our end are legitimate, honourable, and peaceful, I believe that this was the reasoning ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... another 'exalted criminal' in the style of Karl Moor. In the stage version we observe that the motto from Sallust has been dropped, and that while the title of 'tragedy' (Trauerspiel) is retained, the adjective 'republican' is omitted. Furthermore, without any radical revision of the preceding portraiture taken as a whole, a non-tragical conclusion has been substituted for the final catastrophe. Fiesco, hard pressed by the strenuous ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... This adjective "blamed" is the virtuous oath by which simple people, who are improving their habits, cure themselves of a stronger epithet, as men take to flagroot who are ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... there were diamond-shaped tickets (containing nothing but the price) for bonnets, gloves, and flimflams generally. The legends on the tickets gave no sort of original invention. The words 'lasting,' 'durable,' 'unshrinkable,' 'latest,' 'cheap,' 'stylish,' 'novelty,' 'choice' (as an adjective), 'new,' and 'tasteful,' exhausted the entire vocabulary of tickets. Now Mr. Povey attached importance to tickets, and since he was acknowledged to be the best window-dresser in Bursley, his views were entitled to respect. He dreamed of other tickets, in original ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... very pointed ones, which only succeeded in making her laugh. The conversation proceeded something as follows: "I am charmed that I have fallen to your Highness." "Equally charmed," I replied; "but my rank does not admit the adjective you do me the honor to apply." "No?" was the answer. "Well, I'll wager you anything that when the butler pours your wine in the first course he will call you Count, and in the next Prince. You see, ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... That's quite original. I told my cousin, Thayer, that if she could hail you with a new adjective, I should present you as a candidate for a ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... comparisons between the relative dangers of shell-fire and riding on a waggon. By the way, there is always a healthy antagonism between gunners and drivers. When one class speaks of the other there is generally an adjective prefixed. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... valuable reference to Knox proves the etymology from the Latin. Terrene, as an adjective, occurs in old English. See quotation ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... Head may be reckon'd the placing the Adjective after the Substantive, the Transposition of Words, the turning the Adjective into a Substantive, with several other Foreign Modes of Speech which this Poet has naturalized to give his Verse the greater Sound, and throw it out ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... won a rich prize in an architectural competition, and afterwards commissions and rewards and honors had flowed in upon him in constantly increasing measure. While he did not yet quite merit the adjective which Isabella Marne had applied to him, there was every promise that he would soon be, ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... been a situation of higher psychological interest, for never before have we seen a body of some six hundred exceptional men called on to take each his individual line upon a subject which touched him to the core. I say "individual line" and "exceptional men." Does either adjective require defending? ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... a pronoun. It is used as such in legal documents, but it is incorrect to employ it in business letters as other than an adjective. Use instead ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... days in the tomb. The name, a Greek variant of Eleazar, signifies "God is my help." In many theological writings, the rich man of this parable is called Dives, but the name is not of scriptural usage. "Dives" is a Latin adjective meaning "rich." Lazarus the brother of Martha and Mary (John 11:1, 2, 5) is one of three men mentioned by name as subjects of our Lord's beneficent miracles; the other two are Bartimeus (Mark 10:46) and Malchus (John 18:10). Commenting on the fact that our Lord gave a name ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... be a very good one, as it signifies a self-controlled and reasonable nature. The verb ANDRISO, signifying to render hardy, manly, strong, to display vigor, and make a manly effort of self-control, would be equally appropriate in the adjective form, ANDRIKOS, and still more in the noun ANDRIA, which signifies manhood or manly sentiments and conduct. It would not, however, be preferable to the English word, MANLINESS, which is as appropriate a term as Sanity ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... should act directly upon individuals, it obviously became necessary to abandon the articles of confederation, and work out a new constitution in all its details. The plan, as now reported, omitted the obnoxious adjective "national," and spoke of the federal legislature and federal courts. But to the men who were still blindly wedded to the old confederation this soothing change of phraseology did not conceal their defeat. On the very day that the compromise ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... At that unhappy adjective, Sampson jumped up, cast away his patient's hand, forgot her existence—she was but a charming individual—and galloped into his ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that of "I love my love." Each of the players must describe the minister's cat, going right through the alphabet to do so. "The minister's cat is an angry cat," says one; "an anxious cat," says another; and so on until everyone has used an adjective beginning with "A." Then they take the "B's." "The minister's cat is a big cat," and ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... hovers over Butte like a London fog. More wealth is every year dug out of the earth in Butte, and more money is squandered there by more different kinds of people, than in any place of its size on earth. The dictionary needs one adjective which should qualify Butte and no other place. Many a time while there I've expected to see Satan rise up out of a hole. Whenever I start to leave I feel I am going away from the ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... for the stewards to wait with anything approaching to sang-froid. Moncrieff was quietly happy. He seemed pleased his mother was so great a favourite. Aunt, in her tropical toilet, looked angelic. The adjective was applied by our mutual friend Captain Roderigo de Bombazo, and my brothers and I agreed that he had spoken the truth for once in a way. Did he not always speak the truth? it may be asked. I am not prepared to accuse the worthy Spaniard of deliberate falsehood, but if everything ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... sylvan or wild. In its earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized by the epithet sylvaticus in Varro, De re rustica, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent silvestris, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... also the figure of "Nature" on top of the music niche and the capital bulls on the pylons toward the north of the court. These terra cotta bulls are surely worthy of the adjective derived from them. Their relative size is very good, and to see them in the richness of their color against the upper regions of a dark blue ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Hidatsa does not differ materially from that of any of the cognate tribes. When they wish to distinguish between the actual father and a father's real or potential brothers, or between the actual mother and the mother's real or potential sisters, they use the adjective ka'ti (ka{LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H}t{LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN O}i), real, true, after the kinship term when the actual parent ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... making it as luscious and effulgent as a seed catalogue, with rhetorical pictures about as florid and unconvincing. To him the town was a veritable Troy—full of heroes and demigods, and honourables and persons of nobility and quality. He used no adjective of praise milder than superb, and on the other hand, Lige Bemis once complained that the least offensive epithet he saw in the Banner tacked after his name for two years was miscreant. As for John Barclay, he once told ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... an adjective in the picturesque report of Columbus in regard to this sea and these islands that is not now as appropriate and fitting as in the days when its glowing words ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Italian, and look at the word nicchia. Both from Alberti and from Baretti we find it to bear the meaning of "a charge, a duty, or an employment;" and if before this word we place the adjective piccola, we have piccola nicchia, "a small task, or trifling service to be performed." Now I think no one can fail to see the identity of the meanings of the expressions piccola nicchia and pique-nique; but it remains to show how the words themselves may be identical. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... withdraw the word "unconventional" on Mr. Moore's objection that he would be at the mercy of Mr. Sims' judgment if the word was retained. "The Independent Theatre" played the play and Mr. Sims paid the money. It was perhaps just as well for Mr. Moore that the adjective was withdrawn, for the play was little less conventional than "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" or "Sowing the Wind," to mention two successes of that year by play-makers that took their art a little more seriously than Mr. Sims. In a way, too, "The Strike at Arlingford" is unoriginal. Lady Ann Travers ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... it. Let those officious neighbors keep on talking; and when they have talked themselves blind, you may tell them, for me, that what money we have is safe," said Marcy, with a good deal of emphasis on the adjective. "If you want to see what mother brought back from the city, go and look at the servants. Every one of them is dressed in a new suit. Now go on and tell me the bad news. I'm ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... writer have been an ancient Roman?" If we answer in the affirmative, how can we explain coming repeatedly across this sort of writing, "lacu IN ipso" (XII. 56), that is, a monosyllabic preposition placed between a substantive and an adjective or pronoun, a kind of composition found in the poets, but disapproved by the prose-writers, who, if so placing a preposition, used a dissyllable and put the adjective first. Independently of a monosyllabic preposition ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... difficulty and danger of maintaining similar sentiments in a slaveholding community, and a slave State. Mrs. Gage spoke boldly whenever her thought seemed to be required, and soon found herself branded as an "abolitionist" with every adjective appended that could tend to ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... distinctly that the numerals were due to the Hindus.[12] This is as plainly asserted by later Arab {6} writers, even to the present day.[13] Indeed the phrase 'ilm hind[i], "Indian science," is used by them for arithmetic, as also the adjective hind[i] alone.[14] ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... heavy and other artillery is absolutely indispensable. And over ground deliberately wrecked and obstructed such artillery must take time to bring up. And yet—to repeat—how rapidly, how "persistently" all difficulties considered, to use the King's adjective, has the British Army pressed on the heels of ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... akouontas myein to stoma kai medeni tauta exegeisthai]); Petersen, the latter. There is no doubt that [Greek: myesis] was opposed to [Greek: epopteia], and in this sense denoted incomplete initiation; but it was also made to include the whole process. The prevailing use of the adjective [Greek: mystikos] is of something seen "through a glass darkly," some knowledge purposely wrapped up ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... well, in some—comfortable kind of business," he said heartily. That adjective "comfortable" was a hasty substitute for the adjective "honest," which had been almost on his lips as he uttered his friendly wish. He was too well disposed to all the world not to feel profound pity for this white-headed old man, who for so many ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... adjective was most unfortunate for his cause. It was the word of words that Colette detested; doubtless because she had been so often ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... not like the adjective. "I am one of them," wondering what the effect of this admission would be. "I am not English, but of the brother race. Forgive me if I have imposed on you, but it was your fault. You said that I was English, and I was too lonesome to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... title. Reference has already been made to this famous production in the early portion of our discussion of Greene's work. The reader will recall what was said there of its contents, its popularity and influence, and of the meaning of the term Marlowesque, an adjective referring more directly to Tamburlaine than to any other of Marlowe's plays. It is in this play that our ears are dinned almost beyond sufferance by the poet's 'high astounding terms', that the hero most nearly 'with his uplifted forehead strikes the sky': incredible victories are ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the keenest observation with the ripest reflection, that her style owes its essential force. She is a thinker,—not, perhaps, a passionate thinker, but at least a serious one; and the term can be applied with either adjective neither to Dickens nor Thackeray. The constant play of lively and vigorous thought about the objects furnished by her observation animates these latter with a surprising richness of color and a truly human interest. It gives to the author's style, moreover, that lingering, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... and Prince sent to us. Now Prince had proved himself an excellent wheeler, yet he had to go into the lead and let the Outlaw retain his old place. There is an axiom that a good wheeler is a poor leader. I object to the last adjective. A good wheeler makes an infinitely worse kind of a leader than that. I know . . . now. I ought to know. Since that day I have driven Prince a few hundred miles in the lead. He is neither any better nor any worse than the first mile he ran ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... have used the word, it occurs to me that "childlike" is an adjective the best applied to this man, in spite of his portliness, and his ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... the publisher calls the Loafer's narratives "thrilling," but I, as editor of the Diaries, would prefer another adjective. The Loafer was a man who only cared for gloom and squalor after he had given up the world of gaiety and refinement. Men of his stamp, when they receive a crushing mental blow, always shrink away like wounded animals and forsake their companions. A very distinguished man, who is now ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... isn't nice to you, you old saint! The only thing I ever liked about Frances Andrews was that she got into bigger scrapes than I did and made my misdemeanors seem small in comparison. She was clever enough, I'll grant you that, but peculiar is a kind adjective to use in describing that girl. Why, Molly, she was the most unpopular girl at Wellington. Even her own class did not stand by her. She was crooked, ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... A term used as a noun or as an adjective to indicate in an alternating current, the production of a very great number of alternations per unit of time—usually expressed as ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... scrupulous fairness. You have, indeed, flattered me very strongly by representing me as constantly thinking of and for other people, whereas the rest think of themselves alone, but on the other hand you have contradictorily called me "unsocial," which is certainly the last adjective I should have expected to find in the neighborhood of my name. I deny, it is true, that what is now called "society" is society in any real sense, and my best wish for it is that it may dissolve too rapidly to make it worth the ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... inanimate, Her eyes no saucy glance address, There was no angling for success. Her features no grimaces bleared; Of affectation innocent, Calm and without embarrassment, A faithful model she appeared Of "comme il faut." Shishkoff, forgive! I can't translate the adjective.(83) ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... girl," she said. She was always very angry when anyone else called her a little girl, even if the adjective that went first was not "silly" but "nice" or "good" or "clever." And it was only when she was very angry with herself that she allowed Roberta to use ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... suffused with a beautiful pink or rosy tint, the dark shaft lines and pale edges of the feathers of the back giving it a striped appearance. The forepart of the top of the head is blackish, and the cap is brown, from which he gets the qualifying adjective of his name. In the best nuptial plumage the rosy coloring is heightened to an intense crimson, especially on the wings, tail coverts, and the under parts. The female's attire is paler and duller of tint, the pink being sometimes almost obsolete. Oddly enough, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... or old Reformers, who have been taught by experience, and are willing now to adopt the word 'Conservative,' at least in its adjective sense. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... strafe the chicken!" 'Gott strafe England!' Strafe has become a noun, a verb, an adjective, a cussword, and a term of greeting. Soldier asks soldier how he is strafing to-day. When the Germans are not called Boches they are called Strafers. "Won't you strafe a little for us?" Tommy sings out to the German trenches when they are close. What hopes? That gallant youngster ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... new and delightful prospect. There were the numerous tales,—tales as perfect as the world has ever seen; "La Morte Amoureuse," "Jettatura," "Une Nuit de Cléopâtre," etc., and then the very diamonds of the crown, "Les Emaux et Camées," "La Symphonie en Blanc Majeure," in which the adjective blanc and blanche is repeated with miraculous felicity in each stanza. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... knowledge and acquisition of new ideas is reflected in language by an increase of words. But an examination of words in common use will show that they are nearly all the names of concepts. Proper names are the principal exception. Every common noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition is the name of a concept; for example, horse, beauty, to steal, running, over, early, yellow, grape, ocean, etc. To understand these concepts there must be somewhere a progress from the individual to the abstract, an induction from ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... a query about this alleged derivation of the name of the city, a competent Hebrew scholar writes to me: "The nearest approach to Nauvoo in Hebrew is an adjective which would be transliterated Naveh, meaning pleasant, a rather rare word. The letter correctly represented by v could not possibly do the double duty of uv, nor could a of the Hebrew ever be au in English, nor eh of the Hebrew be oo in English. Students of theology ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... ruddy, with a coronet of potatoes, a necklace of potatoes, a breastpin of potatoes—and lastly, an apron full of potatoes. She herself resembled indeed a gigantic potatoe, and philologians might have conjectured that her very name was no more than a corruption of the adjective mealy. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... sad abuse of the adjective little; I am quite aware of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little, finical; affected,—all Japan is contained, both physically and morally, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... England the testimony of one who has seen the original draught of that 'Fare thee well.' This original copy had evidently been subjected to the most careful and acute revision. Scarcely two lines that were not interlined, scarcely an adjective that was not exchanged for a better; showing that the noble lord was not so far overcome by grief as to have forgotten his reputation. (Found its way to the public prints through the imprudence ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Novellae is a classic adjective, but a barbarous substantive, (Ludewig, p. 245.) Justinian never collected them himself; the nine collations, the legal standard of modern tribunals, consist of ninety-eight Novels; but the number was increased by the diligence of Julian, Haloander, and Contius, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... something so scientific and so logical as Esperanto. Take, for instance, analysis. I will not say it is difficult but I will say it is impossible to analyze an English word, because every word can be so many things. It can generally be an adjective, a noun, a verb, a preposition, a conjunction, and an interjection, that is, the same word, without any structural change, so that it is difficult for a child to discriminate and label the word. Take the word "benefited." That might be used in the past tense (I benefited), ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... visit—but why should I speak of her in these formal terms? To me, when I thought of her, which I did only too often, she was Juliet, with perhaps an adjective thrown in; and as Juliet I shall henceforth speak of her (but without the adjective) in this narrative, wherein nothing has been kept back from the reader—Juliet's visit, then, had been a great ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... on occasion, a very trivial and ill-considered word or phrase will cling closer and longer than a serious or thoughtful judgment. When Theodore Roosevelt called Thomas Paine "a filthy little Atheist" (or was the adjective "dirty"? I really forget!) he was very young,—only twenty-eight,—and doubtless had accepted his viewpoint of the great reformer-patriot from that "hearsay upon hearsay" against which Paine himself has ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... through "rag-time," etc., to an almost subliminal thought—an adjective resembling "verisimilitudinarious," perhaps, qualifying the "con" or confidential talk that proved useless to bring Mame back to ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... then the adjective French became in Federal mouths an epithet of abhorrence and abuse; up went the flag of dear Old England, the defender of the faith and of social order. The opposition party, on the contrary, saw in the success of the French people, in their overthrow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... he lays aside rhyme, and writes in blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective to the substantive, and the substantive to the verb; and leaves out little particles, a, and the; her, and his; and uses frequent appositions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations of style be ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... adjective, "nervous," are used in two totally distinct senses: one, that which is vague and unsubstantial, purely mental or subjective, and, in the realm of disease at least, imaginary; the other, purely anatomical, referring to certain ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... good-natured adjective or two if I can, and thank him, and tell him I am lying under a sense of obligation ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... old Saxon word for spirit and is still used in the Name of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Ghostly, the adjective form of the word, has been retained in the Prayer Book and means spiritual, e. g., in the Confirmation service one of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Ghost is called "ghostly strength," ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... which I mention to you, my dear Smith, in strict confidence, in case the heroine of the anecdote should find that her confession is made known. An old lady—properly so called, both as respects the adjective and the noun, for she was past eighty, and was refined and pure—astonished my friend, by asking him one day to try and get a volume or two for her of the works of Assa Behn. He did so—no little wondering at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... chalice upon the virginal bosom of which one small touch of color burned like a flame. And thus, little step after little step, they went from little wonder to little wonder. Dolly liked small things; it was the microscopic aspect of Nature that touched her heart; she had an adjective all her own for such: they were "baby" things—baby flowers, baby brooks, baby stars. This appealed less to Charles-Norton, hungry for big sweeps. And even now, he caught himself yawning once, and casting a look at ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... couplet gave him employment for the rest of the morning, and lunch-time found him still dissatisfied. An adjective avoided his quest—the right adjective; the one and only word which expressed the precise shade of meaning desired. From the recesses of his brain it peeped at him, now advancing so near that it was almost within grasp, anon retreating to a shadowy distance. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... is the adjective denoting the "Sioux" Indians and cognate tribes. The word "Sioux" has been variously and vaguely used. Originally it was a corruption of a term expressing enmity or contempt, applied to a part of ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... properly corseted and gowned would have been set down unquestionably as "a voluptuous beauty." Here in the laundry, in stocking-feet and an unbelted black shirt-waist turned far in at the neck, she was merely "mushy," to use the adjective of her detractors. The queen owed her nickname to the boss, with whom she was said to "stand in," being "awful soft after him." She was a sort of assistant to the foreman, bossing the job when he was not around, and lending a hand ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... concerned; in a word, classic, romantic, impressionistic art is doomed; only symbolism will endure; for symbolism only is there a future. Signor Marinetti, who coined the hideous word, "Futurism," goes still further. Literature, too, must throw off the yoke of syntax. The adjective must be abolished, the verb of the infinite should be always employed; the adverb must follow the adjective; every substantive should have its double; away with punctuation; you must "orchestrate" your language (this outrivals Rene Ghil); the personal ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... of eleven years ago ("slushy and disgusting"), or to The New York Post ("sterile and malodorous ... worse than immoral—dull"), or to Ainslee's Magazine ("inconsequent and rambling ... rather nauseating at times"). These devotees of the adjective that hunts in pairs are hardly to be discussed, I suppose, in connection with any rewards except such as accrue to the possessors of a certain obtuseness, who always and infallibly reap at least the reward of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... badly." "He looks badly." The former sentence implies defective nerves of sensation, the latter, imperfect vision. Use the adjective. ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... An adjective is a word used to qualify, limit, or define a noun, or a word or phrase which has the value of a noun. Nouns are ordinarily very general and indefinite in meaning, for example, man conveys only a very general idea. To ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton |
