"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to amphikupellon being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman's fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from, us to hold up his translation as what a translation of Homer might be. But we can still dismiss ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... cities of the Peloponnese had access to the sea, he excuses himself by saying that he found it in Dicaearchus and copied it word for word (Att. vi. 2. 3). In the same passage he used an incorrect adjective, Phliuntii for Phliasii; he says that he had already corrected his own copy, but the mistake survives in the single palimpsest in which this work has been preserved. The only merits, therefore, which can be claimed for Cicero are that he invented a philosophical terminology for the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... quite correctly, 'transgression,' and intensified by that strong adjective attached, 'a great transgression,' literally means rebellion, revolt, or some such idea; and expresses, as the ultimate issue of conscious transgression prolonged and perpetuated into habit, an ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... used, the first serving as a qualifying adjective to the second, a hyphen should be inserted between them. Writers and printers frequently omit the hyphen in such cases, causing an unnecessary obscurity to the reader; thus, "Colonel Baden-Powell, when in West Africa, fell in love with a native saying, ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... the Miltonic movement. The trick of verse in line 3 is quite too exquisite for Beowulf. The whole piece has a straining after pomp and majesty that is utterly foreign to the simple, often baldly simple, ideas and phrases of the original. Nearly every adjective is supplied by the translator: in Old English the 'sword' is 'bloody,' in Conybeare the 'gallant sword drops fast a gory dew'; the cave becomes a mansion; the 'floor' is 'dust'—dust in an ocean cave!—'heaven's candle' becomes 'heaven's ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... which Mr. Weller attached to this last-mentioned adjective, did not appear; but, as it was evident from the tone in which he used it that it was a favourable expression, Mr. Pickwick was as well satisfied as if he had been thoroughly enlightened on ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... In the same manner, when the student in grammar is first presented with the problem of interpreting the grammatical value of the word driving in the sentence, "The boy driving the horse is very noisy," he is compelled to apply to its interpretation the ideas noun, adjectival relation, and adjective, and also the ideas object, objective relation, and verb. In this way the child secures the mental elements which he may organize into the new experience, or knowledge (participle), and thus gain control of the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... 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 enough of the terrible world of the early eighteenth century to be aware that even ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 sky is ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Hutchinson—to use the adjective which John Adams was wont to apply to himself and other patriots to the manner born—was a Massachusettensian. He had sympathized with the people, but he now turned against them. Before Judge Sewall went ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... time to glance down and discover that the yellow nondescript was no more than a pup when a burly youth charged into the restaurant and demanded in no uncertain tones to know where that adjective dog had ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... and partly because, as will be seen, it was more continuous. I must, however, warn my readers against a possible illusion of perspective. To Fitzjames himself the legal career always represented the substantive, and the literary career the adjective. Circumstances made journalism highly convenient, but his literary ambition was always to be auxiliary to his legal ambition. It would, of course, have been injurious to his prospects at the bar had it been supposed that the case was inverted; and as a matter of ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the bridegroom. Their negligence was the result, not of deliberate wish to let their lights go out, but of their heedlessness; and because of that negligence they earned the name of 'foolish.' If we do not look forward, and prepare for possible drains on our powers, we shall deserve the same adjective. If we do not lay in stores for future use, we may be sent to school to the harvesting ant and the bee. That lesson applies to all departments of life; but it is eminently applicable to the spiritual life, which is sustained only by communications ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... even in the summer his leisure minutes 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 ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... Oxford, such an every-day commodity as a dog can be obtained through the medium of "filthy lucre;" for there was a well-known dog-fancier and proprietor, whose surname was that of the rich substantive just mentioned, to which had been prefixed the "filthy" adjective, probably for the sake of euphony. As usual, Filthy Lucre was clumping with his lame leg up and down the pavement just in front of the Brazenface gate, accompanied by his last "new and extensive assortment" of terriers of every variety, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... thank you for the adjective, though. I got the contract from him. By the way, he's not my uncle, of course; he was simply a great friend of my mother's. I inherited the friendship, and in these last five years he and I have somehow managed to get mighty close together. Eight years or so ago," ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... name of a supposed informer. The adjective, [Greek: pyrrhos], yellow, the colour of ordure, is contained in the construction of this name; thus a most disgusting piece of word-play ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... are—I will not call them false friends—this noun should never follow that adjective. To what shall I liken them—to the young gorilla, that even while its master is feeding it, looks trustingly in his face and thrusts forth its paw to tear him? Who blames the gorilla? Torn from its dam, caged or chained, it owes its captor a grudge. To the serpent? The ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Every epithet or adjective beyond what is needed to give the image, is a five-barred gate in the path of the eager mind travelling ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... people greeted each other affectionately, and momentarily blocked the Dover Street Tube exit in doing so. The adjective "old" was misleading. Their united ages would certainly not have ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... experience," replied Chirac, pronouncing the p of the adjective, "it will be very interessant. ... To observe one's self, in such circumstances ..." ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... complaint, I will, however, admit that this misleading adjective comes as a boon in the discourse I am now meditating. Since, returning to my old theme of the Garden of Life, I find that the misapplication of that word Hanging, and its original literal suggestion, lends added significance to this ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... 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, a house empty for the great part; full of rooms, empty of ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... Smith's shoulder with a closer pressure. "What did she tell you?" said the doctor. "Let me have it word for word. Did she say she was going away?—did she speak of this—this—fellow?" exclaimed the doctor, with an adjective over which charity drops a tear. "Can't you tell me without any supposes, ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... 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
... the adjective which she repeated oftenest, in an almost awestruck whisper, as her eyes travelled over immense spaces; for she thought that the desert might have dropped out of the sun. The colour of sand and sky was colour ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, in fact, anything of which ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... "empty, 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 a led horse; ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... dramatist! But, in the first place, I do not believe that, having regard to the relative scope of the play and of the novel, the necessity for leaving out is more acute in the one than in the other. The adjective "photographic" is as absurd applied to the novel as to the play. And, in the second place, other factors being equal, it is less exhausting, and it requires less skill, to refrain from doing than to do. ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... if he will. (Excuse so many DANGEDS. It is the creature's only adjective.) He was engaged to work for this institution by the president of the board of trustees, and he will not move from that house until the president of the board of trustees tells him to go. I don't think ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... naughtiness, even: of his partiality for the neighbourhood of a certain drawer which contained preserved cherries. Of his cheek in daring to address the assistant as "Pretty" without the Mr., and, the youth objecting, his ready substitution of an adjective which certainly was more descriptive of his appearance. Of his riding on Mr. Pretty's back when he, in pursuit of his duty, must crawl on all fours under the counter; his clinging to his legs when duty again called him to mount the steps for the topmost shelf. Nothing was too absurd, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... her hearers; for without mental originality and a distinct sort of creative force her defective voice would have failed to charm, where in fact it did provoke raptures. She was, in the exact sense of a much-abused adjective, a phenomenal singer, and it is the misfortune of the present generation that she died too ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... by being placed out of their natural order. In the natural order, adjectives and adverbs precede the words they modify; conditional and concessive clauses precede the clauses they modify; an object follows a verb; and prepositional phrases and adjective clauses follow the words they modify. These rules are general. Moving a part of a sentence from this general order usually emphasizes it. "George went to Boston next" emphasizes a little the time; but "Next ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... 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 or repellant appearance. ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... what is completed, permanent, powerful, perfected, perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective [kije, kise], which they applied to the greatest ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... 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, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... us teach, That it hath nine parts of speech;— Article, adjective, and noun, Verb, conjunction, and pronoun, With preposition, and adverb, And interjection, as I've heard. The letters are just twenty-six, These form all words when rightly mix'd. The vowels are a, e, o, i, With u, and sometimes w and y. Without the little vowels' aid, No word or syllable ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... to 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 ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... "Amphibious. Adjective, derived from two Greek words, amphi, a fish, and bios, a beast. An animal supposed by our ignorant ancestors to be compounded of a fish and a beast; which therefore, like the hippopotamus, can't live on the land, and dies in ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... the adjective as if she rather enjoyed it, then stretched herself again luxuriously, with sensuous enjoyment. She had riden with the Rajah in the early ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... 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, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... sitting-room had 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 ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... rest." Before long Browning amused himself in picking up for a few pauls this or that picture, on seeing which an accomplished connoisseur, like Kirkup, would even hazard the name of Cimabue or Ghirlandaio, or if not that of Giotto, then the safer adjective Giottesque. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... a new adjective when he wrote his romance of The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha—a world in which the filibusters are those of commerce, the pirates those of trade. When we English call an action "quixotic," we do not exactly ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... talk is of a "League of Nations" merely. I follow the man who is, more than any other man, the leader of English political thought throughout the world to-day, President Wilson, in inserting that significant adjective "Free." We western allies know to-day what is involved in making bargains with governments that do not stand for their peoples; we have had all our Russian deal, for example, repudiated and thrust back upon our hands; and it is clearly in his mind, as it must be in the ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... civilized and enlightened people determined in all their relations to pursue a conscientious and religious life. We can not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases. It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much disturbed by the thought of either isolation or entanglement of pacifists and militarists. The physical configuration ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... implies a judgment of the qualities which such a diet entails. This word is derived, in fact, from the Latin adjective "Vegetus" (strong). The word "Vegetalism," which we oppose to the preceding one, admits only the establishing of a fact, that of the choice—exclusive or preferred—of the nutritious matters in the ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... to medicines intended to open or purge the bowels, a diuretic has the property of exciting the flow of urine, a diaphoretic excites perspiration, and a demulcent protects or soothes irritated tissues, while haemoptysis denotes a peculiar variety of blood-spitting and aphthous is an adjective applied to ulcerations in ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... 71: Phineus.—Ver. 399. Any further particulars of the person here named are unknown. Some commentators suggest 'Phini,' and that some female of the name of Phinis is alluded to, making the adjective 'justissime' ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... parts company with the Concord philosopher. The latter, as we know, decried the mystical conception of fixed symbolism in any domain. But Freud, although theoretically agreed, falls victim in practice to the fascinations of the dream-book cipher method which he has condemned. The adjective Freudian is now justly a by-word, among psychopathologists, for a stereotyped habit of reducing each item of a dream to some cryptic allusion or roundabout reference to the primitive demands of the infantile ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... because a man can not talk and eat at once. It was true that he was hungry, that hunger is a piquant sauce, and that artist was an adjective too mild to apply to the cook. But the other reason was his chief one. Yasmini ate daintily, as if only to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... silence. Even the "Isn't it lovely?" and "oh, how wonderful!" types of people can scarcely say more than "Niagara!" Strange, too, it is that one seldom hears the word "scrumptious." Perhaps the people have chosen the adjective we heard a German use, who on being asked how he enjoyed the view from the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... 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, ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... Heine's imagination dwelt more fondly on the abstract pathos and purity of a maiden than on her individual gaiety and courage. In older women, also, these latter qualities were the spells for Browning; and, with him, a girl sets forth early on her brave career. That is the just adjective. His girls are as brave as the young knights of other poets; and in this appreciation of a dauntless gesture in women we see one of the reasons why he may be called the first "feminist" poet since Shakespeare. To me, indeed, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... "point" agreement obtained; it was admitted on all sides that the horse tasted sweet. One might suppose the adjective to be a recommendation; but it was not so; quite the contrary (the nearer the bone, etc. does not apply to a saddle of horseflesh). And yet there were people who liked their porridge sweet! who, after ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... failed and failed lamentably, in spite of the noble lives that were spent in labouring for such a compromise. For it is the whole essence of a Supernatural Religion to be supreme in it own province—the very adjective asserts it; and any endeavour to compromise on this entirely vital point is in itself a denial of the principle, For a while this was not perceived. Men regarded the Christian Church—or rather, that which they took to be the Christian Church—merely, on its earthly side, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... have different modes of signification are employed in propositions in what is superficially the same way. Thus the word 'is' figures as the copula, as a sign for identity, and as an expression for existence; 'exist' figures as an intransitive verb like 'go', and 'identical' as an adjective; we speak of something, but also of something's happening. (In the proposition, 'Green is green'—where the first word is the proper name of a person and the last an adjective—these words do not merely have different meanings: they ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... sensible girl,' exclaimed the old gentleman the moment I entered the room.' (You will notice I put no comma after 'plain.' I am taking it he did not intend one. You can employ one adjective to qualify another, can't you?) 'And I will put it to her, What difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church in ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... refreshments were "delicious" at the Jones party when he sees the word in connection with the viands at the Smith party. No two parties were ever "elegant" the same week. No two events were "charming." No two women were "exquisitely" gowned. The person who was assigned the adjective "delightful" by Miss Larrabee might stick it in front of a luncheon, pin it on a hostess, or use it for an evening's entertainment. But he could use it only once. And with a list of those present and the adjectives thereunto appertaining, even a new boy could get up ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... the Johnsonian period has assumed, in spite of the lexicographer's own dislike of that adjective, prodigious dimensions. After the critical labours of Malone, Murphy, Croker, J. B. Nichols, Macaulay, Carlyle, Rogers, Fitzgerald, Dr Hill and others, it may appear hazardous to venture upon such a well-ploughed field where the pitfalls are so numerous and the materials so scattered. I ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... 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 she ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... The very adjective! Felix and I recognized its beautiful fitness at once. Yes, the Story Girl WAS fascinating and that was the final word to be said ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... The brown baby in the picture is the little girl at her side,—the elder sister of the other brown baby who is doing its best to pull from its mother's lap the doll's dress upon which she is sewing. Yes, that is "dear old Ess," as Charlie calls her yet, though why he will persist in applying the adjective we are ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... 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 ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... is selected, such as Columbus, George Washington, etc. The first pupil called upon must describe the subject with a descriptive adjective beginning with "A". The second, third, and fourth, etc., adding to this description by using adjectives beginning with the letter "A". This continues until the adjectives beginning with the letter "A" have been exhausted. Then the letter "B" is used and the game ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... 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 Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... ship out of soundings, Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings, Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle, Deaf to even the definite article - No verbal message was worth a pin, Though you hired an ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... 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 domain of ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... is that which is loved of the gods,' is shipwrecked on a refined distinction between the state and the act, corresponding respectively to the adjective (philon) and the participle (philoumenon), or rather perhaps to the participle and the verb (philoumenon and phileitai). The act is prior to the state (as in Aristotle the energeia precedes the dunamis); and the state of being loved ...
— Euthyphro • Plato
... was considered quite impossible to convey the wires over sea, but now we are at a loss to comprehend where the difficulty lay! So wags the world. Tempora mutantur—excuse me for quoting the Etruscan. What would we do without the Atalantic telegraph? (Pundit says Atlantic was the ancient adjective.) We lay to a few minutes to ask the cutter some questions, and learned, among other glorious news, that civil war is raging in Africa, while the plague is doing its good work beautifully both in Yurope and Ayesher. Is it not truly remarkable that, before the magnificent light shed upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... The adjective 'positive' contains the same fallacy. Apparently Comte meant by the choice of it to convey the sense that he would limit research to phenomena in their orders of resemblance, co-existence and succession. But to call the inquiry into phenomena positive, in the sense that it ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... An adjective is like an infant in leading strings— it cannot go alone. It always requires to be joined to a substantive, of which it shows the nature or quality— as lectio longa, a long lesson; magnus aper, a great boar; pinguis puer, a fat boy; macer puer, a lean boy. In making love (as you will ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... printed English Essay, 8vo. containing 500 pages, on the Superstitions, Ghosts, Legends, &c. of all parts of the principality, to be delivered before February 3, 1831. Now when the limited period proposed for the collection of 500 pages of matter, and the above little adjective all is considered, it must appear obvious that such an Herculean labour is not capable of being accomplished by one individual alone.—Imagining it, therefore, to be a matter of impossibility to perform what the very reverend gentleman requires, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... most delicious drink, But best of all when fresh, I think. Add then my second, and you make An adjective, small pains to take! My third must strait and narrow prove Or 'twill not lead to heaven above. Now for my whole—a countless host In which each separate ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... 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," that ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... thirty-seven years from Waterloo, and my remembrances upon this subject go back to a period lying much behind that great era), I used to be annoyed and irritated by the false interpretation given to the Greek word aion, and given necessarily, therefore, to the adjective aionios as its immediate derivative. It was not so much the falsehood of this interpretation, as the narrowness of that falsehood, which disturbed me. There was a glimmer of truth in it; and precisely that glimmer it was which led the way to a general and obstinate misconception of the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... something to compare English with, and that 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 ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... out on the distant sacred mountain, Fujiyama, which is revered by all Japan. Sometimes the clouds rested lovingly on its crest, and sometimes almost veiled it, but twice we saw the entire snow-covered space and no adjective can describe the matchless glory of that view. Poets have sung of it, and legend has woven fantastic tales around it, which the natives accept without ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... as her father," replied Lady Laura, with whom that favourite adjective served for everything in the way of praise. To her the Pyramids and Niagara, a tropical thunderstorm, a mazourka by Chopin, and a Parisian bonnet, were all alike charming. "I suppose solidity isn't so nice in a girl," she went on, laughing; ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... In the lulls of his outcry could be heard the querulous monotone of Mrs. Hoopington and the sharp staccato barking of the fox-terrier. Vladimir, who did not understand a tithe of what was being said, sat fondling a cigarette and repeating under his breath from time to time a vigorous English adjective which he had long ago taken affectionately into his vocabulary. His mind strayed back to the youth in the old Russian folk-tale who shot an enchanted bird with dramatic results. Meanwhile, the Major, roaming round ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... strangely unpleasant-looking Roumanian gent, who wore a knit sweater of a strangely ugly red hue, impeccable clothes, and an immaculate velour hat which must have been worth easily fifty francs. We called this gent Rockyfeller. His personality might be faintly indicated by the adjective Disagreeable. The porter was a creature whom Ugly does not even slightly describe. There are some specimens of humanity in whose presence one instantly and instinctively feels a profound revulsion, a revulsion ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... vigilant and reassuring beyond the common, but one was quite silently so; the other, who spoke a little English, encouraged us from time to time to believe that they were "strong mans," afterward correcting himself in conformity to the rules of Portuguese grammar, which make the adjective agree in number with the noun, and declaring that they were "strongs mans." We met many toboggan men who needed to be "strongs mans" in their ascent of our track, with their heavy toboggans on their heads; but some of them did not look strong, and our own arrived spent ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... old cottage!" she returned, with a shrill rendering of each adjective. "You would have us go and live in that damp, ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... handsome man. At his best he could never have been that, and in the recent past he had managed to acquire a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth half-way across his cheek. Even when his face was in repose he had an odd expression; and when, as he chanced to do now, he smiled, odd became a mild adjective, quite inadequate for purposes of description. It was not an unpleasant face, however. Unquestionably genial, indeed. There was something in it that had a quality ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... girls had sought their favorite pine parlor, and were deep in talk. High would be a more descriptive adjective; for Viola Vincent was the principal talker, and her shrill, clear treble quivered up to the very tree-tops, startling the birds in their nests, and sending the squirrels scampering to and fro ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... the wild talk of delirium, sometimes that it may have referred to some band of people, perhaps to these very gipsies in the plantation. I do not know whether the spotted handkerchiefs which so many of them wear over their heads might have suggested the strange adjective ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... A mere play on words. That adjective he wanted for a rhyme, To match with Gian Bellino ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... This 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. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... is an adjective meaning calm, and little glaring, and is specially attributed to the moon in spring. The line ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... my dear Martha, ever since our most felicitous conjugation, I hardly know what the exemplary verb audio means. I could scarcely translate it. Ours is a truly grammatical union. Not the nominative case with verb—not the relative with the antecedent—not the adjective with the substantive—affords a more appropriate illustration of conjugal harmony, than does our matrimonial existence. Peace and quietness, however, are on your tongue—affection and charity in your heart—benevolence ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a sentence is not dissimilar from that in English. The adjective precedes the noun it qualifies, and sentences usually follow the formula, ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... think of no book published the present season which will more delight the wide-awake, adventure-loving boy. It is, to borrow the adjective from the title, ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... has been a special characteristic of certain periods, like that of the Alexandrian Greeks 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 ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Desire was not looking. They had come a little way "up trail"—at least Desire had said it was a little way, and her companion was too proud of his recovered powers of locomotion to express unkind doubt of the adjective. There had been no rainy days for a week. The air was sun-soaked, and salt-soaked, and somewhere there was a wind. But not here. Here some high rock angle shut it out and left them to the drowsy calm of wakening Summer. Below them lay the blue-green gulf, white-flecked ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... as in the above examples, although exceptions will be found, e.g., when the adjective recalls to our mind a quality which is already known to belong to it, it ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... Tatius, who lived about the same time, calls the animal hippos tou Neilou, which is, he says, its Egyptian name. It seems probable that the word hippopotamus is a Roman corruption of the Greek substantive and adjective, and {36} is not a proper Greek word. Why this animal was called a horse is not evident. In shape and appearance it resembles a gigantic hog. Buffon says that its name was derived from its neighing like a horse (Quad., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... 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 ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... peculiarities, and thus afford little assistance in the search for a universally applicable rule of guidance. Doctor Holmes, I believe, objects to having the term "medicated" applied to his tales; but surely the adjective is not reproachful; it indicates one of the most charming and also, alas! inimitable features ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the north side of the Lady Chapel, with which it was connected by openings cut in the main wall. This chapel was one of those of which Fuller so quaintly wrote, "A chantry was what we call in grammar an adjective, unable to stand of itself, and was therefore united for better support to some ... church." An addition to the building in a much later style, it was founded by Margaret (daughter and sole heir of William, Lord Botreaux,) in 1464; she was interred within its walls in 1477. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... in response to my salutation. 'Take care of your ——y self.' (His favourite adjective had long ceased to have any meaning whatever for this good fellow. He now used it even as some ladies use inverted commas, or other commas, in writing. And sometimes, when he had occasion to use a word as long as, say, 'impossible,' he would actually drag in the meaningless expletive as ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... "H'm, the 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
... delivery of this parable, was restored to life after he had lain for 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 to the beggar but ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... 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 make that idea definite we ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton |
