"Expletive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aroused in Sukey's breast high impulses and pure motives; but it brought from her red lips, amid their nest of dimples, the contemptuous expletive "Fool," and I am not sure that she was entirely wrong. A due respect for the attractiveness and willingness of her sisters is wise in a woman. Rita's lack of wisdom may be excused because of the fact that her trust in Sukey ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... opened the door, turned off the gas, and walked upstairs, hearing on the way a growl of Fulbert's—'That's what comes of being cad to a stupid brute of an old tradesman;' and likewise a bouncing, rolling, and tumbling, and a very unchorister-like expletive from Lance, but he hurried up, like the conclave from the vault at Lindisfarn, only with a sinking heart, and looks that made his sisters say how tired he must be. The boys were seen no more, but sent word by Bernard that they were ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... great but as yet undeveloped talent. The repeated use of the expletive "do" in such phrases as "I do sigh", or "I pray and do pine", mars the verse somewhat. As Pope remarked and humorously illustrated ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... why! they are tears of joy. Si is often used to introduce an emphatic assertion. It may be translated by an expletive or omitted entirely. Cf. p. 45, line 31 ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... old Spanish was pronounced viuda and assonated in i-a. This expletive que is common in ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... qui s'en prendre, 'on whom to lay the blame.' Note the expletive use of en and cf.— en vouloir qn., 'to have a grudge against some one.' en venir aux mains, 'to come to blows.' il en est de mme de . ., 'it is the same with ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... of the flimsy turn in it; and the third line has rather too serious a cast. The fourth Stanza is a very indifferent one; the first line is, indeed, all in the strain of the second Stanza, but the rest is mostly an expletive. The thoughts in the fifth Stanza come fairly up to my favorite idea [of] a sweet sonsy Lass. The last line, however, halts a little. The same sentiments are kept up with equal spirit and tenderness in the sixth Stanza, but ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Vowels in the second Line, the Expletive do in the third, and the ten Monosyllables in the fourth, give such a Beauty to this Passage, as would have been very much admired in an Ancient Poet. The Reader may observe the following Lines ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... And again the expletive of disillusion burst from between Mallory's teeth as he saw the front-page double-column spread, a type-specialty of the usually conservative Ledger upon which it prided itself, dwindle to a carefully handled inside-page ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ridiculously intellectual, repulsively athletic, and revoltingly frivolous. In appearance they are either lank, gaunt, flat-footed lamp-posts, or else over-dressed, unnaturally-shaped, painted dolls. Their extravagance exhausts expletive! When they belong to the class of society generally denoted with a capital S, they invariably smoke, drink, gamble and swear. They neglect their homes and their children. They have little principle and less sense, no morals, no heart and ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... wired to Medicine Bend for Henry. Henry comes up last night with a brand-new rifle, presented, I imagine, by the Medicine Bend Black Hand Local, No. 13. This is the gun," explained Lefever feebly, holding forth the exhibit. "The lever," he added with a patient expletive, "broke." ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... exclamation, this time an expletive of deep relief. He fought with himself a moment, then murmured an apology. "Sorry. You gave me a start-decidedly. Herman Dietz, eh? Well, well! You made me think for a moment that I was a guest in the house of ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Captain Bingo, jerked out of his reclining attitude by vigorous utterance of the expletive, "you could have bowled me over with a scent-squirter when I came back to brekker and found her gone, and a cocked-hat note of farewell left for me on the dressing-table pincushion, in regular elopement style; ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of the expletive was proof that the full horror of the situation had not immediately come home to him. His mind in the first few moments was occupied with the problem of how the door had got that way. He could not remember shutting it. Probably ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... a glass of wine, they were flogged for smoking; if they swore, they received eighty lashes for every expletive; and after eighty lashes it was a common thing to die. Before long, flogging grew to be so everyday an ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... "Saa for Satan, [Footnote: Expletive, equivalent to "The Devil!" or "Damnation!"] girl, be quiet!" I whispered, stamping ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... idle dog; but where's the good of doing anything? I only know if I was not—not condemned to—to this—this life,' (had it not been for a sort of involuntary respect to the gentle compassion of the softened hazel eyes regarding him so kindly, he would have used the violent expletive that trembled on his lip;) 'if I was not chained down here, Master Philip should not stand alone as the paragon of the family. I've as much ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the vowels in this line, the expletive do in the next, and the ten monosyllables in that which follows, give such a beauty to this passage as would have been very much admired in ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... The final expletive was totally unnecessary, but it meant a thing he did not say. Whatsoever was thrusting him this way and that, speaking through his speech, leading him to do things he had not dreamed of doing, should have its will with him. He had been fastened to the skirts of this beggar imp and ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and rage of poor Mr. Schulemberg at finding that he was sold, though the goods were not! I decline reporting the conversation any farther, lest its strength of expression and force of expletive might be too much for the more queasy of my readers. Suffice it to say, that the swindlee, if I may be allowed the royalty of coining a word, at once freed his own mind and imprisoned the body of M. M. ——; for in those days imprisonment for debt was a recognized institution, and I think few ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... behind him. Mr. Wendover stood a minute looking after him; then, with some vehement expletive or other, walked up to his writing-table, drew some folios that were lying on it towards him, with hasty maladroit movements which sent his papers flying over the floor, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mr. Houghton and Eleanor?" He glanced at her, and Edith, rowing hard, saw the sudden angry look, and was so surprised that she caught a crab, almost keeled over, laughed loudly, and said, "Goodness!" which was at that time, her most violent expletive. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... which they consider endears them greatly to the young people, and recommends them to the acquaintance of their honored parents, if these happen to accompany them. The other boarders commonly call our diminutive companion That Boy. He is a sort of expletive at the table, serving to stop gaps, taking the same place a washer does that makes a loose screw fit, and contriving to get driven in like a wedge between any two chairs where there is a crevice. I shall not call that boy by the monosyllable referred to, because, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pearls. He loved remote thoughts, quaint expressions, fantastic ideas. He especially attached himself to any violent symptoms of human nature. Being in a picture-gallery, he observed a stout sailor in towering disgust at one of the old masters, spit his tobacco-juice at it, and swear, with an expletive, that he could do better himself. The honest opinion honestly expressed, the truth and vigor of the man, delighted Lamb, and he rushed up to him to shake hands. Whenever the sailor, after that, wrote to his friends in London, he wished to be particularly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... lover. Her father's keeping secret his receipt of Godfrey's letter until he had mailed its answer, could mean only that the answer was for Godfrey to come home. The General's talk of being tired by the writing of it was a purely expletive irony, for he had written with the brevity of an old soldier to a young sailor; but he had written that trouble was impending, that its source was Arthur, and that the last hope of removing it ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... curse upon thee! and Carew in his Survey of Cornwall of 1602 gives a by no means nice phrase (which he spells all anyhow and translates wrong), Mollath Dew en dha ’las! The curse of God in thy belly! Another serio-comic but rather cryptic expletive, peculiar to Camborne, or at any rate to the Drama of St. Meriasek, is Mollath Dew en gegin! God’s curse in the kitchen! It does not seem to mean anything in particular, except perhaps that one’s food may not agree with one, though it makes quite as much sense as the ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... absolutely quelled her. It was not now that she was afraid of him,—not at this moment, but that she was knocked down as though by a blow. She had been altogether so unused to such language that she could not get on with her matter in hand, letting the bad word pass by her as an unmeaning expletive. She wearily poured out the cup of tea and sat herself down silent. The man was too strong for her, and would be so always. She told herself at this moment that language such as that must always absolutely silence her. Then, within a few minutes, he desired her, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... into any sort of sincere human contact. In the radiance of these discoveries, and the tumult of their reaction, she made a fool of herself as freely and conspicuously as when she so rashly adopted Eliza's expletive in Mrs. Higgins's drawing-room; for the new-born Wellsian had to find her bearings almost as ridiculously as a baby; but nobody hates a baby for its ineptitudes, or thinks the worse of it for trying to eat the matches; and Clara lost no friends by her follies. They laughed ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... Mr. Glentworthy, with a profane expletive, pops his head out at the top of the stairs, and inquires who wants him. The visitors have advanced into a little, narrow passage, lumbered with all sorts of rubbish, and swarming with flies. Mr. Saddlerock (for this is the old man's name) seems in a declining mood, the building ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... had grown expletive, more than was his wont. It was no longer a matter of tracking the white steed. Indians were near. Caution had become necessary, and neither the company nor counsel of the humblest was to be scorned. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... white under the tan. Don Diego crossed himself and muttered a prayer. Juan Gonzalvo uttered an expletive and half smothered it in a gasp as the face of Tahn-te caught the light ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... still standing in his pet attitude, taking mental stock of all the fast-looking fair ones who might come under his notice. "Oh, bother?" I am not prepared to assert positively that I did not use a much stronger expletive. He ought to have seen them! What the deuce was the use of his sticking star-gazing there, unless to observe people, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... that the two thousand taxi-drivers still on strike have decided to offer their services to Sir AUCKLAND GEDDES for munition work. Suitable employment will be found for them in a high-expletive factory. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... on greeting or taking leave, and means, "I am your very obedient servant." Thus, if one has been talking to a small child, its mother will tell it to say "chow" before it goes away, and will then nod her head and say "chow" herself. The other use is a kind of pious expletive, intending "I must endure it," "I am the slave of a higher power." It was in this sense I first heard it at Rossura. A woman was washing at a fountain while I was eating my lunch. She said she had lost her daughter in Paris a few weeks ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... rapid expletive, and reproached her with not having been to see him. She hesitated a moment; then she simpered the least bit and bridled. "He comes to see me—without reproach! But it would not be the same for me to go to him, though, indeed, you may almost call him ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... fools, go two by two. Next came the treasurer of either house; One with full purse, t'other with not a sous. 310 Behind, a group of figures awe create, Set off with all the impertinence of state; By lace and feather consecrate to fame, Expletive kings, and queens without a name. Here Havard,[23] all serene, in the same strains, Loves, hates, and rages, triumphs and complains; His easy vacant face proclaim'd a heart Which could not feel emotions, nor impart. With him came mighty Davies:[24] on my life, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... drum up the valley seemed to Nicky-Nan to emphasise the loneliness all about him. But down by the Quay-head he came in sight of Policeman Rat-it-all (so named from his only and frequent expletive), seated on a bollard and ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... but with none of them had the word any meaning, nor has it any, ever, except in the pulpit; where it is a pity (as many an excellent clergyman has thought) that it is heard at all. Treat it lightly elsewhere, as an expletive and a mere way of speaking, and it will come to nothing as it deserves, and follow the obsolete "plagues" and "murrains" ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... first, and it is possible that he did not quite intend to use the expletive which broke from him. But he was remembering things also. Here were eyes he, too, had seen before—twelve years ago in the face of an objectionable, long-legged child in New York. And his own hatred of them ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his arrogance, his sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want of common decency and common humanity, are marked in strong lines. His traditional peculiarities of expression complete the reality of the picture. The authoritative expletive, 'Ha!' with which ne intimates his indignation or surprise, has an effect like the first startling sound that breaks from a thunder- cloud. He is of all the monarchs in our history the most disgusting: for he unites in himself all the vices of barbarism and refinement, without ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who the unwitting offender was, and asked, "What are they doin' to the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... gallery folk and the stalls worked cheek by jowl. Here a gentleman with an affected lisp, and close by an honest fellow, who could not deliver a sentence without an oath, or some still more horrible expletive that meant nothing at all in reality, but served to make respectable flesh creep: interspersed with these, Hottentots, Kafirs, and wild blue blacks gayly clad in an ostrich feather, a scarlet ribbon, and a Tower musket sold them by some good ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... he backed instead into the screen of the office window. Without even an expletive he turned, pushed in the screen, clambered adroitly through the aperture, and ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... without a whole Sackful of Misdeeds, and straightway hied him to St. John's Church, to fling his Sinful Ballast overboard and lighten ship. How he swore! I never heard a man take the entrails of Alexander the Great in vain before; but this was an ordinary expletive with Don Ercolo. He belonged to the Italian Language, though I suspected he had a dash of the Spanish in him; and many a Gay Bout over the choicest of Wines have I had with him at his Inn, as their College-halls ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... his foot down. "When I say a thing, I mean a thing. The sooner you understand that, the better. How dare you argue with me! Fiddle-de-dee!" For two pins Peter would have employed an expletive even stronger, so determined was ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... our Scotch dialect we call a sweet sonsie lass. The third stanza has a little of the flimsy turn in it; and the third line has rather too serious a cast. The fourth stanza is a very indifferent one; the first line, is, indeed, all in the strain of the second stanza, but the rest is most expletive. The thoughts in the fifth stanza come finely up to my favourite idea—a sweet sonsie lass: the last line, however, halts a little. The same sentiments are kept up with equal spirit and tenderness in the sixth stanza, but the second ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... (Arabic), get to hell out of here! ** Voetsak (Cape Dutch), ditto. *** Enenda zako (Kiswahill), ditto. **** Kuma nina (Kiswahill). An opprobrious, and perhaps the commonest expletive In the language, amounting to a request for details of the objurgee's female ancestry. By no means for use in ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... flies, remains uncertain, as the Hebrew term arob or oror which has been rendered in one place. "Divers sorts of flies," Ps. cv. 31; and in another, "swarms of flies," Exod. viii. 21, &c., means merely "an assemblage." a "mixture" or a "swarm," and the expletive. "of flies" is an interpolation of the translators. This, however, serves to show that the fly implied was one easily recognisable by its habit of swarming; and the further fact that it bites, or rather stings, is ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... about in another futile attempt to escape, and cursed his captors with gifts of expletive which came ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... Vanderbilt is reported to have said, "I have over a dozen sons, and not one is worth a damn." I fear me that every father with sons grown to manhood has at some time voiced the same sentiment, curtailed, possibly, only as to numbers, and softened by another expletive, which does not mitigate the anguish of his cry, as he sees the dreams he had for his baby boys fade away into a mist of ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... word adds nothing to the meaning of the sentence, but helps to fill out its form or sound, and serves as a device to alter its natural order. Such a word is called an EXPLETIVE. In the following sentence there is an expletive: THERE are no such ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... 'yellow'—a glass of agwa with yellow." Branch's voice shook. "I'm dying of a fever, and this ivory-billed toucan brings me a quart of poison. Bullets!" It was impossible to describe the suggestion of profanity with which the speaker colored this innocuous expletive. "Weak as I am, I shall gnaw his windpipe." He bared his teeth suggestively and ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... false coin. Smash a rag change a false note. Line 5. Duff sell sham smugglings. Nose and lag collect evidence for the police. Line 6. Get the straight get the office, and back a winner. Line 7. Multy (expletive) "bloody". Line 8. Booze and the blowens cop the lot: cf. "'Tis all to taverns and ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... to hear it," answered Michael, "for with such a flock of geese to say it to, the horrid expletive might be constantly on her lips. For my part, I simply refuse to let things be done in this light and airy style. I appeal to Mrs. Duke—it's ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... small group of surnames derived from oaths or exclamations which by habitual use became associated with certain individuals. We know that monarchs had a special tendency to indulge in a favourite expletive. To Roger de Collerye we owe some information as to the imprecations ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... wherein the suggestion of what is not the truth has been resorted to for the same purpose. At page 123 we read: "The disproportion of the two races—always dangerously large—has increased with ever-gathering velocity since the emancipation. It is now beyond control on the old lines." The use of the expletive "dangerously," as suggestive of the truculence of the people to whom it refers, is critically allowable in view of the main intention of the author. But what shall we say of the suggestion contained in the very next sentence, which we have italicized? We ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... to himself his usual solace, and smoking furiously for a while, he said: "D—-n!" Into this one favorite and familiar expletive he poured his anger, his vexation, and his fear. He believed at the moment that the inventor was alive. He believed that if he had been dead his boy would, in some way, have revealed the fact. Was he still insane? Had he powerful ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... I'll send the horse in;—that's all." Then Tifto found it best to say a few words to Captain Green. But the Captain also said a few words to himself. "D—— young fool; he don't know what he's dropping into." Which assertion, if you lay aside the unnecessary expletive, was true to the letter. Lord Silverbridge was a young fool, and did not at all know into what a mess he was being dropped by the united experience, perspicuity, and energy of the man whose company on the Heath he ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... of versification has some abatements. He uses the expletive do very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost, universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and finding the world satisfied, he ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... remarked, with his usual unconscious expletive, "I'd rather have a tiger-cat on my trail than that youngster, if he was to look that way. What do you suppose he's got ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... exploded his favourite expletive till it sounded ferocious, "That ain't quare feelin's. That's just plain old-fashioned laziness. You git yo'self back thar and tend ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... with a start of astonishment, and went into a fit of laughing, re-echoed by all the young ones, who were especially tickled by hearing, from another, the abbreviation that had, hitherto, only lived in the favourite expletive, "As sure as my name is ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Hurry, now, bring the shovels! Bring the picks!" and occasionally bursting forth with a perfect avalanche of orders. "Up with it! Down with it! Front with it! Back with it! In with it! Out with it!" all coupled with his favorite expletive, "Jasus Christ," which was as innocent of evil, I subsequently came to know, as a prayer. In short, he was simply wild Irish, and that was all there was to him—a delightful specimen, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... bent form gave him a patriarchal look and added to the effect of his fervid eloquence and his withering sarcasm. A man of iron heart, he was ever anxious to meet his antagonists, haughty in his rude self-confidence, and exhaustive in the use of every expletive of abuse permitted by parliamentary usage. In debate he resembled one of the old soldiers who fought on foot or on horseback, with heavy or light arms, a battle-axe or a spear. The champion of the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the Wildmere type. He never could think of this hope without smiling to himself. He had at last obtained the explanation of Madge's effort and success. By the superb result he measured the strength of the love which had led to it. "Great Scott!"—his favorite expletive—he had thought; "what a compass there is in her nature! I had long suspected her secret, but when I touched upon it last night she made my blood tingle by her magnificent resentment. I would sooner have trifled ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... rise to the occasion. He was one of those men who are usually too slack to burthen their souls with a refreshing expletive. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... greater light on an author than the concurrence of a contemporary writer, I am inclined to be of Hiccius' opinion, and to consider the "All" as an elegant expletive, or, as he more aptly phrases it elegans expletivum. The passage therefore ...
— English Satires • Various |
