"Idiomatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... multitude were sauntering in the mild though tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and varying their business and their potations, their fierce strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich humour, gleams of native wit, and racy phrases of idiomatic slang. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... omissions have been {xvi} supplied, idiomatic phrases have been collected and inserted, some alterations have been made by simplifying or compressing particular parts, and new examples and illustrations have been introduced throughout, according as the advantages which the author enjoyed enabled him to ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... do so when the enemy, he arrive?" asked Colonel Marchand, to whom the idiomatic speech of the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... hitherto primitive sign-language limitation of the Old Drift-men. At this age, the Neolithic, arithmetical questions arising in the course of life would necessarily assume a vocal value instead of a digital one. No longer would fifteen be counted by holding out ten fingers and five toes, but an idiomatic phrase, descriptive of the former sign-language, "of two hands and one foot's worth" would be used, just as to-day an African would express the same problem in a number of cows, and as the comparatively modern Roman used such pictorial phrases as "to condemn a person of his head." From this ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... if we had been Ruga-Ruga. But then we know the poor King was terribly frightened, and would never have dared to return, had we been RugaRuga—not he. We are not, however, in a mood to quarrel with him about an idiomatic phrase peculiar to him, but rather take him by the hand and shake it well, and say we are so very glad to see him. And he shares in our pleasure, and immediately three of the fattest sheep, pots of beer, flour, and honey are ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... they fell to the ground, and lay there prone before Him. They could have had no power at all against Him, except He had willed to surrender Himself to them. Again, though it is hypercritical perhaps to attach importance to what may only be natural idiomatic forms of speech, yet in this connection it is not to be overlooked that the language of all the Evangelists, in describing the supreme moment of Christ's death, is congruous with the idea that He died neither from the exhaustion of crucifixion, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... both brothers give splendid testimony to their astonishing and epoch-making gift in transferring classical and Romance metrical forms into elegant, idiomatic German; they give affectionate attention to the insinuating beauty of elegiac verse, and secure charming effects in some of the most alien Greek forms, not to mention terza rima, ottava rima, the Spanish gloss, and not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and accorded him a round of applause. He extended his own "hands" and held them up for silence, then, retracting them again, he seated himself before the little lectern and began his report, the idiomatic translation of which ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... about him with an anguished mute appeal for help. Mrs. Tootle repeated her question with emphasis and a change of countenance which he knew too well. The poor fellow had not the tact to appear to understand, and, as he might easily have done, mystify her by some idiomatic remark. He stammered out his apologies and excuses, with the effect of ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... M'Catchley, but he had fixed in his heart of hearts upon that occasion (when surrounded by all his splendour, and assisted by the seductive arts of Terpsichore and Bacchus) to whisper to Mrs. M'Catchley those soft words which—but why not here let Mr. Richard Avenel use his own idiomatic and unsophisticated expression? "Please the pigs, then," said Mr. Avenel to himself, "I shall pop ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "And you think me incapable of keeping your secret, ah, gimmick, I believe is the idiomatic term ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... of one of the most beautiful of Canon Bright's liturgical compositions, the Collect beginning, "O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment and light riseth up in darkness for the godly." Of this exquisite piece of idiomatic English, the reviewer allows himself to speak as being "a very poor composition, defective ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... of all other peoples. What style is to the man, that is idiom to the race. It is the crystalization in verbal forms of peculiarities of race temperament—- perhaps even of race eccentricities . . . . . English which is not idiomatic becomes at once formal and lifeless, as if the tongue were already dead and its remains embalmed in those honorable sepulchres, the philological dictionaries. On the other hand, English which goes too far, and fails of a delicate distinction ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... who could write such pure and idiomatic Portuguese, often used peculiar Spanish, not perhaps so much from ignorance as from a wish to make the best of both languages. Thus he uses the personal infinitive and makes words rhyme which he must have known could not possibly rhyme in Spanish, e.g. parezca with cabeza (Portug. pare[c,]a—cabe[c,]a). ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... what they called white perch, probably the saibling; [Footnote: The American saibling, or golden trout, is only indigenous to Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, and to a small lake near Augusta.] and was greatly entertained with the peculiarities of an idiomatic Frenchman, an itinerant teacher of that language, whom Bridge, in the kindness of his heart, had taken into his own house. The last of July, Cilley also made his appearance, but did not bring the Madeira with him, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... familiarity. But to translate the Swedish "du" with the English "thou" is as erroneous as it is awkward. Tytler laid down his "Principles of Translation" in 1791—and a majority of translators are still unaware of their existence. Yet it ought to seem self-evident to every thinking mind that idiomatic equivalence, not verbal identity, must form the basis of a good and faithful translation. When an English mother uses "you" to her child, she establishes thereby the only rational equivalent for the "du" used under similar ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... that the student derives from the dictionary is not sufficient. When one hears an educated foreigner speak, he detects little errors in his use of words,—errors which are not the fault of definition, but errors in the idiomatic use of words. This use cannot be learned from a dictionary, where words are studied individually, but only by studying them in combination with other words where the influence of one word upon another may be noted. There is little difference in the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... circumstance that "ten" and "four," in horary reckoning, were convertible terms. The old Roman method of naming the hours, wherein noon was the sixth, was long preserved, especially in conventual establishments: and I have no doubt that the English idiomatic phrase "o'clock" originated in the necessity for some distinguishing mark between hours "of the clock" reckoned from midnight, and hours of the day reckoned from sunrise, or more frequently from six A.M. With such ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... theological criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... between the peasant and poet. No one, however, has had so great a part in the shaping of modern drama in Ireland as Yeats. His Deirdre (1907), a beautiful retelling of the great Gaelic legend, is far more dramatic than the earlier plays; it is particularly interesting to read with Synge's more idiomatic play on the same theme, Deirdre of ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... success. The proprietor of the bank-neighboring cafe not only failed to recognize him; he was driven forth with revilings in idiomatic French ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... abroad. As works of invention, they rank, among their author's productions, next after Don Quixote; in correctness and grace of style they stand before it.... They are all fresh from the racy soil of the national character, as that character is found in Andalusia, and are written with an idiomatic richness, a spirit, and a grace, which, though they are the oldest tales of their class in Spain, have left them ever ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... somewhat later example of an actual translation of this tale, considerably amplified, see James Gresham's (not Graham's, as in STC) The Picture of Incest, STC 18969 (1626), ed. Grosart (Manchester, 1876). In idiomatic English, occasionally ornamented with such triple epithets as "azure-veyned necke" and "Nectar-candied-words," Gresham expands Golding's Ovid by more than 300 lines. Although he invents a suitable brief description of ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... Idiomatic Items Important to Publishers Indian, The Interesting to Bone Boilers Interior Illumination Indian Question, The Information Wanted Inspiration vs. Perspiration Items from ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... or his good-breeding. The patience, gentleness, and kind feeling, with which he contrived at once to excuse and to remedy certain blunders made by the workmen in the execution of his orders, and the clearness with which, in perfectly correct and idiomatic English, slightly tinged with a foreign accent, he explained the mechanical and scientific reasons for the construction he had suggested, gave evidence at once of no common talent, and of a considerate-ness ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... The idiomatic sentences of the bluff fisherman, as in their racy vernacular they were blithely given utterance to by the manly voice of the Reader, seemed to supply a fitting introduction to the drama, as though from the lips of a Yarmouth Chorus. Scarcely had the social ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... distance from the street, with pleasant grounds in its front and rear, was appropriately named by its original proprietor "Mount Rural," though not, perhaps, with the most exact observance of the requirements of grammatical construction. Still, it has some authority for being considered idiomatic, for does not "Pilgrim's Progress" tell us of the "Palace Beautiful?" And doubtless many other instances might be cited of the substitution of an adjective for a noun. At all events, the worthy owner, who built ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... je crois bien: on l'entendait d'une lieue, 'I should rather think it was talking, you could hear it a mile off.' The sentence is elliptical, vous demandez being understood before s'il. Note the idiomatic use of bien, and cf. je le veux bien, 'I am perfectly willing'; voulez-vous bien vous en aller, 'won't you go away!' je donnerais bien un franc, 'I shouldn't ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... come to the point. Adj. special, particular, individual, specific, proper, personal, original, private, respective, definite, determinate, especial, certain, esoteric, endemic, partial, party, peculiar, appropriate, several, characteristic, diagnostic, exclusive; singular &c (exceptional) 83; idiomatic; idiotypical; typical. this, that; yon, yonder. Adv. specially, especially, particularly &c adj.; in particular, in propria persona [Lat.]; ad hominem [Lat.]; for my part. each, apiece, one by one, one at a time; severally, respectively, each to each; seriatim, in detail, in great detail, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... [Footnote 27: The idiomatic passages "aohe puko momona o Kohala," etc., and (on page 387) "e huna oukou i ko oukou mau maka i ke aouli" are ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... must never forget that Shakespeare himself was chiefly romantic. He liked poetry which was like his own, and seems to have unconsciously judged other poets by that standard. He had no patience with idiomatic writing like that of Carlyle or Jean Paul; and he made incessant warfare on the subjective method. It is true that subjectivity may be called the peculiar vice of the nineteenth century, and yet it is a vice like the self-consciousness of the early Christians, that ought ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... deeply convinced of the inestimable value of its having been made when it was, and being what it is. In his opinion it was made at the happy juncture when our language had attained adequate expansion and flexibility, and when at the same time its idiomatic strength was unimpaired by excess of technical distinctions and conventional refinements; and these circumstances, though of course infinitely subordinate to the spiritual influence of its subject-matter, he considered ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... mused, in silence, near a minute. During this interval, he was thinking of the improbability of any but a bona-fide Englishman's dreaming of giving a vessel an appellation so thoroughly idiomatic, and was fast mystifying himself, as so often happens by tyros in any particular branch of knowledge, by his own critical acumen. Then he half whispered a conjecture on the subject to Vito Viti, influenced quite as much by a desire to show his neighbor his own readiness ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... origin for things having to do with every-day peaceful life,—the life of a settled nation,—words like basket (to take an instance which all the world knows) form a much larger body in our language than is commonly supposed; it is said that a number of our raciest, most idiomatic, popular words—for example, bam, kick, whop, twaddle, fudge, hitch, muggy,—are Celtic. These assertions require to be carefully examined, and it by no means follows that because an English word is found in Celtic, therefore we get it from thence; but they have not yet had the ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... ENGLISH. "The most important peculiarity of American English is a laxity, irregularity, and confusion in the use of particles. The same thing is, indeed, observable in England, but not to the same extent, though some gross departures from idiomatic propriety, such as different to for different from, are common in England, which none but very ignorant persons would be guilty of in America.... In the tenses of the verbs, I am inclined to think that well-educated Americans conform ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... exaggeration to say that the whole German people, barring the inevitable though small percentage of weaklings, is trying with terrific earnestness to live up to the homely Hindenburgian motto, "Durchhalten!" ("Hold out,") or, in more idiomatic American, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... frond! mine brodder!" he exclaimed, in fairly idiomatic English, but with a broken pronunciation that was a mixture of Dutch, American, and Malay. His language therefore, like himself, was nondescript. In fact he was an American-born Dutchman, who had been transported early in life to the Straits Settlements, had received ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... have a wretched scarecrow in a coat too small or too large for him,—generally the latter. For it is a curious fact, that the more uneducated a man is,—in which condition his ordinary language must of necessity be proportionately idiomatic,—the greater pains he takes, when he has formed the resolution of composing, to be splendid and expansive in his style. He racks his brains until he rummages out imperfect memories of the turgid paragraphs of cheap newspapers and novels which he has some time or other read, and forthwith struts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... issued by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, "Life in an Indian Village," is a sample of the kind of book relating to our Eastern Empire that we should like to see multiplied. It is the production of a scholarly native, T. Ramakrishna, B.A., who writes excellent idiomatic English without the slightest tendency to Johnsonian ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... said, are addressed to a "Dear Signor Francesco, friend of my friend," and who, of course, is Francesco Gori; and are written, which no other letters of Mme. d'Albany's are, not in French, but in tolerably idiomatic though far from correct Italian. Only one of them has any indication of place or date, "Genzano, Mardi"; but this, and the references to Alfieri's approaching journey northward and to Gori's intention of escorting him as far as Genoa, is sufficient to show that they must have been ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... home in Scotland, between the novels, or the passages in the novels, that are idiomatic, native, homegrown, intended for his own people, and the novels not so limited, the romances of English or foreign history—Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, Quentin Durward. But as a matter of fact these latter, though possibly easier to understand and better suited to the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... translation mainly upon this quality of literalism, for it is often the case that the closest literalist is the worst translator. It is often impossible to render the thoughts expressed in the peculiar idioms of one tongue into exactly corresponding idioms of another. There are idiomatic forms, especially in the Greek, which have no precisely correspondent forms in the English, and yet these are not unfrequently the most forcible expressions of any to be found in the original; any attempt to render these literally must be abortive; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... of the idiomatic structure, the passage has hitherto been misunderstood; and Warburton proposed to read, "Which teacheth me," but was fortunately opposed by Johnson, although he did not clearly understand the passage. I have ventured to change am to are, for I cannot conceive ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... language, as the Romans of the second and third centuries wrote in Greek instead of Latin. The consequence will be, that the language in question will tend to lose its nationality—that is, its distinctive character; it will cease to be idiomatic in the sense in which it once was so; and whatever grace or propriety it may retain, it will be comparatively tame and spiritless; or, on the other hand, it will be corrupted by the admixture of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... have just pointed out, one who knows how to use the pedal can secure an endless (almost orchestral) variety of tone-colors on the piano, thanks to the hundreds of overtones which can be made to accompany the tones played. Chopin spoke the language of the piano. His pieces are so idiomatic that they cannot be translated into orchestral language any more than Heine's lyrics can be translated into English. Chopin exhausted the possibilities of the pianoforte, and the piano exhausts the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... how difficult it is to convey the broken Indian language to a French reader. This is one of the best features of Cooper's novels—the striking manner in which he portrays the language of the North American Indian and his idiomatic expressions. Yet such is the charm of his stories that they have found their way over Europe. The translations into the French language ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Wiclif followed the Latin order of construction so literally as to make rather awkward English, translating, for example, Quid sibi vult hoc somnium? by What to itself wole this sweven? Purvey's revision was somewhat freer and more idiomatic. In the reigns of Henry IV. and V. it was forbidden to read or to have any {33} of Wiclif's writings. Such of them as could be seized were publicly burned. In spite of this, copies of his Bible circulated secretly ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... accepted version, as could not but happen when a mind so original as that of the boy Jose was concentrated upon it. His first stumbling block was met in the prayer of Jesus in an attempt to render the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread," into idiomatic modern thought. The word translated "daily" was not to be found elsewhere in the Greek language. Evidently the Aramaic word which Jesus employed, and of which this Greek word was a translation, must have been an unusual one—a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... classical literature. Latin literature was very much neglected, and Greek nearly altogether. The more was the astonishment at finding a rare delicacy of critical instinct, as well as of critical sagacity, applied to the Greek idiomatic niceties by a Scottish lawyer, viz., that the same eccentric judge, first made known to us ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing; it is less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and is enriched and adorned with phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both ancient and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain license of expression by the difficulty ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... have had occasion critically to read and examine the long series of his speeches who can be conscious of their considerable merits. The information is always full and often fresh, the scope large, the argument close, and the style, though simple, never bald, but vigorous, idiomatic, and often picturesque. He had not credit for this in his day, but the passages which have been quoted in this sketch will prove the justness of this criticism. As a speaker and writer, his principal ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... to any extent as guarantor of the scientific value and importance of your undertaking and refer any one to whom you may apply to me. It may be, in fact, that this is all you want, but as you have taken to the caprice of writing in my tongue instead of in that vernacular, idiomatic and characteristically Dohrnian German in which I delight, I am not so sure about your meaning. There is a rub for you. If you write to me in English again I will send the letter ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... any of the words in the following sentence, with the exception of [Ch] (an interrogative, by the way, which here happens to mean "why" but in other contexts is equivalent to "how," "which" or "what"): [Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch] "Affair why must ancient," or in more idiomatic English, "Why necessarily stick to the ways of the ancients in such matters?" Or take a proverbial saying like [Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch][Ch], which may be correctly rendered "The less a man has seen, the more he has to wonder at." It is one thing, however, to translate it correctly, and another ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Credner, who is followed by the author of 'Supernatural Religion,' argues from this that Eusebius had not seen the work in question [Endnote 239:2]. This inference is not by any means conveyed by the Greek. [Greek: Ouk oid' hopos] (thus introduced) is an idiomatic phrase referring to the principle on which the harmony was constructed, and might well be paraphrased 'a curious sort of patchwork or dovetailing,' 'a not very intelligible dovetailing,' &c. Standing in ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... often leads a speaker or writer to distrust natural and unconscious habit, even when it is right, and to put in its stead some conscious theory of literary propriety. Such a tendency, however, is directly opposed to the true feeling for idiomatic English. It destroys the sense of security, the assurance of perfect congruity between thought and expression, which the unliterary and unacademic speaker and writer often has, and which, with both literary and unliterary, is the basis for ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... in its idiomatic structure definite articles and indefinite, as in Latin? Some think that it has, others that it has not. They did not venture ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... modern books for acquiring a knowledge of the Dutch language. If E. V. insist upon modern books, he cannot have better than Hendrik Conscience's novels, or Gerrits's Zoon des Volks. I would, however, advise him to get a volume of Jacob Cats' Poems, the language of which is not antiquated, and is idiomatic without ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... Castellan had gone into the smoking-room, where he found the sandy-haired, blue-eyed man still sitting at his table in the corner, smoking his cigar, and looking over the paper. He touched him on the shoulder and whispered, in perfectly idiomatic German: ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... not left as he would have prepared them for the press if his life had been prolonged, yet much of the book will afford, on what he regarded as the chief study of his life, excellent examples of his style, so vigorously fresh and so happy in idiomatic ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... of any one of these may be acquired in a couple of months, and then the language lies open to the student. The knowledge of four words in five enables him to read with pleasure, and renders the acquisition of the few new words, as well as the idiomatic expressions, a matter of delight rather than of labour. Thus the Ooriya, though possessing a separate grammar and character, is so much like the Bengali in the very expression that a Bengali pundit is almost equal to the correction ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... replied the Professor, "a translation! What should I do with a translation? This is the Icelandic original, in the magnificent idiomatic vernacular, which is both rich and simple, and admits of an infinite variety of grammatical combinations and ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... more stilted and less terse and idiomatic than the colloquial dialect; and even where pure Malay is employed, the influence of Arabic compositions is very marked. Whole sentences, sometimes, though clothed in excellent Malay, are unacknowledged ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... you, Tibbetti," Bosambo went on, as yet uncertain of his ruler's attitude, since Bones must need, at this critical moment, employ English and idiomatic English, "that since the last moon was young I have lain in my hut never moving, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, being like a dead man—all this ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... The idiomatic expressions in this dialect are numerous, many will be found in the Glossary; the following may be mentioned. I'd 'sley do it, for I would as lief do it. I have occasionally in the Glossary suggested the etymology ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... and dignity of an English classic. Plot, style, and truthfulness are of the soundest British character. Racy, idiomatic, mirror-like, always interesting, suggesting thought on the knottiest social and religious questions, now deeply moving by its unconscious pathos, and anon inspiring uproarious laughter, it is a work the world will not willingly ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... mythological names and terms, as well as in idiomatic expressions, and the preparation of the explanatory notes has therefore been a perplexing task. A fairly complete statement under each mythological reference would in the aggregate reach the proportions of a treatise ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... literally, but, applied to business, means the agreement as to their mutual transactions. The completion of that was reached when they took the profits and divided them. It might include the mutual reckoning of profit and loss. The phrase "from mouth to interest" is very idiomatic. The "mouth," or verbal relationships, included all they said, the terms they agreed upon. The word "interest" here replaces the more usual "gold;" both mean the "profit," or the balance due to each. Usually we have the words "is ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... languages, indeed, and with many Latin poets of the school curriculum, Shakespeare in his writings openly acknowledged his acquaintance. In 'Henry V' the dialogue in many scenes is carried on in French, which is grammatically accurate if not idiomatic. In the mouth of his schoolmasters, Holofernes in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and Sir Hugh Evans in 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' Shakespeare placed Latin phrases drawn directly from Lily's grammar, from the 'Sententiae Pueriles,' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Lexicon. In which the equivalent for English Words and Idiomatic Sentences are rendered into literary and colloquial Arabic. ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... all art. It is evidenced in many ways—the sculptors' over-insistence on the "mold," the outer rather than the inner subject or content of his statue—over-enthusiasm for local color—over-interest in the multiplicity of techniques, in the idiomatic, in the effect as shown, by the appreciation of an audience rather than in the effect on the ideals of the inner conscience of the artist or the composer. This lack of perceiving is too often shown by an ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Froissart, and extracted enough from him in rapid French spasms—his idiomatic staccato French is often beyond my understanding—to give me a general idea of what Dawson had done. Thereafter I pursued my inquiries, pumping Dawson himself—who, for some reason, did not greatly value the affair—tackling ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... must be classed not under the phlegmatic but under the melancholic temperament; and the French under the sanguine. The character of a nation may be judged of in this particular by examining its idiomatic language. The French, in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly bubbling up from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings, have appropriated all the phrases of passion to the service of trivial and ordinary life: and hence they have no language of passion ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... of Spanish was faultless, and I always took particular pleasure in hearing her read the idiomatic Castilian of Cervantes. Nevertheless, my mind wandered; and, try as I might, I could not help thinking more of the theft of the diamonds than the doughty deeds of the Don and the shrewd sayings of Sancho Panza. Not that ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... He is altogether wanting in independence of thought. On the other hand, the Ignatian letters are remarkable for their individuality. Of all early Christian writings they are pre-eminent in this respect. They are full of idiomatic expressions, quaint images, unexpected turns of thought and language. They exhibit their characteristic ideas, which obviously have a high value for the writer, for he recurs to them again and again, but which the reader often finds it extremely difficult to grasp, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... repeating mere sounds; a musical organization and mimetic faculty; a sort of mocking-bird specialty, which I have known possessed in great perfection by persons with whom it was in no way connected with the study, but only with the use of the languages they spoke with such idiomatic ease and grace. Moreover, in my own case, both in Italian and German, though I understand for the most part what I read and what is said in these languages, I have had but little exercise in speaking them, and have been amused to find myself, while travelling, taken for an Italian as well ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... paper delivered in by Mr. Scott as a translation, perceive it to be written in a style which they conceived was little to be expected in a faithful translation from a Persian original, being full of quaint terms and idiomatic phrases, which strongly bespeak English habits in the way of thinking, and of English peculiarities and affectations in the expression. Struck with these strong internal marks of a suspicious piece, they turned to the Persian manuscript produced by Mr. Scott ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... offer him some guidance as to his guide. One sole rule, if he will attend to it, governs in a paramount sense the total possibilities and compass of pronunciation. A very famous line of Horace states it. What line? What is the supreme law in every language for correct pronunciation no less than for idiomatic propriety? ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... pleasant task in acquiring this language. In the first place, it is in every respect different from all others which I have studied, with perhaps the exception of the Turkish, to which it seems to bear some remote resemblance in syntax, though none in words. In the second place, it abounds with idiomatic phrases, which can only be learnt by habit, and to the understanding of which a Dictionary is of little or no use, the words separately having either no meaning or a meaning quite distinct from that which they possess when thus conjoined. And thirdly the helps afforded me ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... two methods of reckoning time continued for a long time to exist contemporaneously. Hence it became necessary to distinguish one from the other by name, and thus the notation from midnight gave rise, as I have remarked in one of my papers on Chaucer, to the English idiomatic phrase "of the clock;" or the reckoning of the clock, commencing at midnight, as distinguished from Roman equinoctial hours, commencing at six o'clock A.M. This was what Ben Jonson was meaning by attainment of majority at six o'clock, and not, as PROFESSOR ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... he said, growing a little less idiomatic in his English as his excitement mounted, "he met a young girl, a child, when he was still not a man's full age. It was in the country, in the mountains of America, and—he loved her. Both were very poor; he, a student, earning the means ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... domestic life in France, translated by MATILDA M. HAYS. It is a tale of quiet, exquisite beauty, free from the morbid sentiment which abounds in the fictitious works of the modern French school, and rendered into graceful, idiomatic English ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... this party, at least," laughed Waring, mischievously making the most of her idiomatic query. "Your driver is more cochon than cocher, and if he drowns in that mud 'twill only serve him right. Like your famous compatriot, he'll have a chance to say, 'I will drown, and no one shall help me,' for all I care. The brute! Allons! I will drive you to bonne maman's ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... him, a few days later, he must have been struck by the sudden warmth of my friendship—the quick idiomatic cordiality of my French to him. This mutual friendship of ours lasted till his death in '88. And so did ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... as if seeking a key to relationship. Josef smiled. The latter's exultation was that of one enjoying a possible misconstruction which might attend a literal interpretation of what he knew was idiomatic. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... have against Mr. Long is, that he is not quite idiomatic and simple enough. It is a little formal, at least, if not pedantic, to say Ethic and Dialectic, instead of Ethics and Dialectics, and to say "Hellenes and Romans" instead of "Greeks and Romans." And why, too,—the name of Antoninus being preoccupied ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... note. The ellipsis may be supplied thus: he meditated an invasion of Brit. and would have invaded it, had he not been velox ingenio, etc. But in idiomatic Eng. nibut. Of course fuisset is to be supplied with velox ingenio and mobilis poenitentiae. Al. poenitentia. But contrary to the MSS. Mobilis agrees with poenitentiae (cf. Liv. 31, 32: celerem poenitentiam), which is a qualifying gen. Gr. 211. R. 6. Lit. of repentance easy to ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... spring from the character of the people of whom and for whom they were written must depend, for their recognition, on the sympathetic insight of the reader. We can only promise him the utmost fidelity in the translation, having taken no other liberty than the substitution of common idiomatic phrases, peculiar to our language, for corresponding phrases in the other. The original metre, in every instance, has been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Suddenly he noticed a set of flags, those of America, Germany, and England, twined together and mingling their colours in friendly harmony. He walked over, gathered the combined flags in his hand, and turning to the Admiral exclaimed in idiomatic American: "See here, Admiral; that is exactly as it should be, and is what I am ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... interest and ability.... Mr. Worsaae's book is in all ways a valuable addition to our literature.... Mr. Thoms has executed the translation in flowing and idiomatic English, and has appended many curious and interesting notes and observations of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... He was German, and didn't care who knew it. He was unlike the man who had disguised himself as an English officer, at the house of the heliograph, but had betrayed himself and set this whole train of adventure going by his single slip and fall from idiomatic English that Harry Fleming's ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... the first, and is both mediate and immediate. As Luther's Bible was written in the language of the common people, so Hegel seems to have thought that he gave his philosophy a truly German character by the use of idiomatic German words. But it may be doubted whether the attempt has been successful. First because such words as 'in sich seyn,' 'an sich seyn,' 'an und fur sich seyn,' though the simplest combinations of nouns ...
— Sophist • Plato
... syntax of sentence. In regard to the first, Browne Latinises somewhat more than Jeremy Taylor, hardly at all more than Milton, though he does not, like Milton, contrast and relieve his Latinisms by indulgence in vernacular terms of the most idiomatic kind; and he is conspicuously free from the great fault both of Milton and of Taylor—the clumsy conglomeration of clauses which turns a sentence into a paragraph, and makes a badly ordered paragraph of it after all. Browne's sentences, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... over the land and beyond it till they filled volumes; no preacher of the time had such an audience, and none such a wide popularity; he preached the old Puritan gospel, but it was presented in such a form and in such simple, idiomatic phrase, as to commend it as no less a gospel to his own generation: besides his sermons as published, other works were also widely circulated; special mention may be made of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Commenced actor, commenced author, commenced tinker, commenced tailor, commenced candlestick-maker:—Elegant phraseology, though we venture to think, hardly idiomatic or logical, which came into vogue in England in the early part of the last century, and which, as it is never uttered here by cultivated people, it may be proper to remark, is there used by the best writers. Akin to it is another mode of expression ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... say that by upholding the independence of the national thought, whilst he enriched it with the best treasure of other lands, he realised the ideal of the historian. He became more German in extreme old age, and less impressive in his idiomatic French and English than in his own language. The lamentations of men he thought good judges, Mazade and Taine, and the first of literary critics, Montegut, diluted somewhat his admiration for the country of St. Bernard and Bossuet. In spite of politics, his feeling ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... beach below him. He looked down mechanically, but for a moment saw no one. Then, deep in the shadow of the wall, he descried two figures walking slowly side by side. One was a man and the other a woman. They were talking in a French so rapid and idiomatic that Rushford could distinguish no word of it, except that the man addressed ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... and Popular Quotations, which are in constant use; taken from the Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Greek languages, (also including a complete collection of Law Maxims) translated into English, with illustrations, historical and idiomatic. Third American edition, corrected, with copious ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... the humbler orders, returning home in the evening, and his thoughts upon things not without their importance, to find repeatedly the guardian of his household beastly drunk, and destructive.' Colney made the case quite intelligible to the magistrate; who gravely robed a strain of the idiomatic in the officially awful, to keep in tune with his delinquent. No serious harm had been done to the woman. Skepsey was admonished and released. His wife expressed her willingness to forgive him, now he had got his lesson; and she hoped he would understand, that there was no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thou wilt, burden thy mind (i.e. give thyself the trouble, kellifi khatiraki,) and with us [is] a China dish; rise and come to me with it." Kellifi (fem.) khatiraki is an idiomatic expression equivalent to the French, "donnez-vous (or prenez) la peine" and must be taken in connection with what follows, i.e. give yourself the trouble to rise and bring me, etc. (prenez la peine de vous lever et de m'apporter, etc.). Burton, "Whereupon, an-thou please, compose ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... Madame DUDEVANT'S writings is now at its zenith, and the present volume is a very welcome addition to those already so well set forth by Messrs. ROBERTS. It has been translated into excellent idiomatic ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... began speaking, Suzon's fingers stole to his on the counter and pressed them quickly. He made no response; he was scarcely aware of it. He was in a kind of dream. In an even, conversational tone, in French at once idiomatic and very ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... treated in the same way, the pupils translating the words previously given and the instructor giving the meaning of the new words only. Then making use of the first idiomatic expression "il y avait," an explanation is given, showing how it can be changed into the interrogative form "y avait-il?" and the pupils are questioned rapidly as follows, using only the ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber
... receive much commendation from military men, and for them it is now specially issued in its present form. For the general public it may be as well to add that, where translations are appended to the French phrases, those translations usually follow the idiomatic and particular meaning attached to these expressions in the argot of the Army of Algeria, and not the correct or literal one given to such words or sentences in ordinary ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... laborious and difficult. Luther's complaints concerning the seriousness of his task in attempting to teach the patriarch Job to speak idiomatic German might doubtless have found an echo in the experience of this corps of scholars in forcing Luther into idiomatic English. We are confident, however, that, as in Luther's case, so also here, the general verdict of readers will be ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... are confined chiefly to verbal criticism, and prove, in many instances, that he had not yet quite formed his taste to that idiomatic English, which was afterwards one of the great charms of his own dramatic style. For instance, he objects to the following phrases:— "Then I fell to my task again."—"These things come, with time, to be habitual."—"By which these people come to be either scattered or destroyed."—"Which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... remarked, in a pleasant Scotch accent, that: Did they know it was very extraordinary how clear the morning was, so free from clouds and mist and fog? The young man in evening dress fluently agreed to the facts, and suggested, in idiomatic French-English, that one comprehended that the bed was an insult to one's higher nature and an ingratitude to their gracious hostess, who had spread out this lovely garden and walks for their pleasure; that nothing was more beautiful than the dew sparkling on the rose, or the ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... and, in the translation of the letters of Nestorians, it has not been deemed essential to follow slavishly every Syriac idiom, for, instead of these letters owing their interest, as some have supposed, to their translators, they may have sometimes rather suffered from renderings needlessly idiomatic. ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... aright. A wind of caprice had carried him and her into Font Abbey; another such wind was carrying them out. No event had happened. Mr. and Miss Fountain had been seen more than once in the village of late. "They have dropped us, and thank Heaven!" said Eve, in her idiomatic way. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... sneer—wide lips compressed with a false smile, and a leaden shadow mottling all. Such was the countenance of the lady who only a minute or two before had been smiling and murmuring over the stile so amiably with her idiomatic 'blarney,' as the Irish call that ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... self-conscious or gauche. In the development of some great writers the change from unsureness and vulgarity to the mastery of mature years can be traced: Dickens is one such. But nothing of the sort can be found in Austen. She has in "Northanger Abbey" and "Pride and Prejudice"—early works—a power in idiomatic English which enables her reader to see her thought through its limpid medium of language, giving, it may be, as little attention to the form of expression as a man uninstructed in the niceties ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... admission that despite unseemly tendencies, there is evident originality and even genius in the pages of this unusual book. In a comparatively temperate review, August 4, 1860, the Cosmopolite, of Boston, while deploring that nature is treated here without fig-leaves, declares the style wonderfully idiomatic and graphic, adding: "In his frenzy, in the fire of his inspiration, are fused and poured out together elements hitherto considered antagonistic in poetry—passion, arrogance, animality, philosophy, brag, humility, rowdyism, spirituality, laughter, tears, together with the most ardent and tender ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... accidentally omitted the '@' in front of 'F^B', which as anyone can see is clearly the {Wrong Thing}. It worked fine the second time. There is no space to describe all the features of TECO, but it may be of interest that '^P' means 'sort' and 'J' is an idiomatic series of commands for 'do once ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the revision and editing, and not to the translators, for every good translation must be fluent and idiomatic, to secure which is the most difficult task. Pastor Gohdes also rendered valuable help in the final revision of parts. The translation of the analyses is by ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... add that the translation is, perhaps, not always idiomatic, though in this matter I have availed myself of some valuable assistance, for which ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... is not without merit in the details and examples of English construction. But its fault even in that part is that he confounds the genius of the English language, making it periphrastic and literal, instead of elliptical and idiomatic. According to Mr. Murray, hardly any of our best writers ever wrote a ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where these laws govern. The translation of Plutarch gets its excellence by being translation on translation. There never was a time when there was none. All the truly idiomatic and national phrases are kept, and all others successively picked out, and thrown away. Something like the same process had gone on, long before, with the originals of these books. The world takes liberties with world-books. Vedas,[586] AEsop's ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his education, even his native land—assisted the impression which his peculiarities were calculated to make. He was evidently not a New-Englander, nor a native of any part of these Western shores. His speech was apt to be oddly and uncouthly idiomatic, and even when classical in its form was emitted with a strange, rough depth of utterance, that came from recesses of the lungs which we Yankees seldom put to any use. In person, he did not look like one of us; a broad, rather short personage, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... And presently the carriage windows seized hold upon them and the young man was forgotten. It made them feel that they were doing an educated sort of thing to travel through a country whose commonest advertisements were in idiomatic French, and Miss Winchelsea made unpatriotic comparisons because there were weedy little sign-board advertisements by the rail side instead of the broad hoardings that deface the landscape in our land. But the north of France is really uninteresting country, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... principle that a translation must reproduce the exact thought of a language, that idiomatic utterances of the one language must be replaced by similar utterances in the other, and that the genius of both the language from which and the one into which the translation is made must be observed by the translator, Luther has every rhetoric and grammar on ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... La Cica, as he afterward confessed, had given him a taste for foreign ladies. He carried on little conversations with the Senorita in broken English. The Senorita's English was pretty, but not very idiomatic. The Senator imitated her English remarkably well, and no doubt did it out of compliment. He also astonished the company by speaking at the very top of a voice whose ordinary tone was far ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... the nature of the great contest in language between the conventional and the idiomatic. Idioms are just what their name implies. They are the commonalty of language,—private, proletarian words, who do the work, "dum alteri tulerunt honores." They come to us from all handiworks and callings, where you will always find them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... intercourse and of intellectual cultivation; even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand without injuring individual ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... represents the high-water mark of classical translation, has given us the following reminders: "An English translation ought to be idiomatic and interesting, not only to the scholar, but also to the unlearned reader. It should read as an original work, and should also be the most faithful transcript which can be made of the language from which the translation is taken, consistently with the first requirement of all, that it be English. ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... hinted, we find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendor from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... among his rivals was esteemed as the most perfect model of political writing. He was a strong party-writer on the government side, for Charles the Second, and the compositions of the author seem to us coarse, yet they contain much idiomatic expression. His AEsop's Fables are a curious specimen of familiar style. Queen Mary showed a due contempt of him, after the Revolution, by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... make it quite clear, once for all, that Comparative Philology was totally distinct from ordinary Philology, that it treats language not as a vehicle of literature, but for its own sake; that it wants to explain the origin and development far more than the idiomatic use of words, and that for all these purposes it must adopt a strictly inductive method. Many of these views which, when I delivered my first lectures, met with very determined opposition, are now generally ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... me quitaba a m esa nia; there are two idiomatic uses in this phrase: 1. cualquiera in an ironic sense nadie (a frequent use); 2. quitaba quitara, a substitution of tense often found in the main clause of a contrary to fact, or less vivid ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... inveterate adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in the old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in the imperious tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the resolute gestures of his large, red, sunburnt hands, with an old betrothal ring ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... him up," in Dade's idiomatic phraseology—and knew that his vicious impulses were surface ones that had been acquired and not inherited, as he had thought. And he was ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... answer them satisfactorily. Suppose the first language spoken is French. As many of the plenipotentiaries do not understand it, they cannot be blamed for relaxing attention while it is being employed, and keeping up a desultory conversation among themselves in idiomatic English, which forms a running bass accompaniment to the voice, often finely modulated, of the orator. Owing to this embarrassing language difficulty, as soon as a delegate pauses to take his breath, his arguments and appeals are done by M. Mantoux into English, and then it is ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... only its peculiar proverbs, sayings, and catch-words, but also idiomatic phrases which constitute a characteristic chiaroscuro, if not colour. The Gipsies in England have of course borrowed much from the Gorgios, but now and then something of their own appears. In illustration of all this, I give the following expressions ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... of the book were German proverbs and "Idiomatic Phrases," by which latter would appear to be meant in all languages, "phrases for the use of idiots":—"A sparrow in the hand is better than a pigeon on the roof."—"Time brings roses."—"The eagle does not catch ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... sundry technicalities; but in vain have I submitted these terms of a strange dialect to the strictest etymological research. In vain have I conversed upon this subject with the most intelligent dry-goods dealers. In learning the few idiomatic phrases they employ, I have experienced only the satisfaction which young students in Greek literature feel, when they have, with infinite labor, mastered the alphabet of that ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... little, if anything, of the kind. But I may add that recently there have been some symptoms of change on their part. One of the most admirable speeches during the Peace Conference at The Hague was made by a young and very attractive Chinese attach. It was in idiomatic French; nothing could be more admirable either as regarded matter or manner; and many of the older members of the conference came afterward to congratulate him upon it. The ability shown by the Chinese Minister Wu at Washington would ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... has the word for to laugh," a construction bearing a suspicious resemblance to "Il a le mot pour rire." "He do the devil at four" has no reference to an artful scheme for circumventing the Archfiend at a stated hour, but is merely a simulacrum of the well-known gallic idiomatic expression "Il fait le diable a quatre." Truly this is excellent fooling; Punch in his wildest humour, backed by the whole colony of Leicester Square, could not produce funnier English. "He burns one's ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... people to express themselves in ordinary, everyday language, in a proper manner. Some broad rules are laid down, the observance of which will enable the reader to keep within the pale of propriety in oral and written language. Many idiomatic words and expressions, peculiar to the language, have been given, besides which a number of the common mistakes and pitfalls have been placed before the reader so that he may know ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... Greek Testament: with a critically-revised Text; a Digest of Various Readings; Marginal References to Verbal and Idiomatic Usage; Prolegomena; and a Critical and Exegetical Commentary. For the Use of Theological Students and Ministers. By Henry Alford, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Vol. I., containing the Four Gospels. 944 pages, 8vo, Cloth, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... originality which nothing in any literature approaches, whether for degree or kind of excellence, except the most felicitous papers of Addison, such as those on Sir Roger de Coverley, and some others in the same vein of composition. They resemble Addison's papers also in the diction, which is natural and idiomatic even to carelessness. They are equally faithful to the truth of nature; and in this only they differ remarkably—that the sketches of Elia reflect the stamp and impress of the writer's own character, whereas in all those of Addison the personal peculiarities of the delineator ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... also that constant dwelling upon such models of simple, pure, idiomatic English is the easiest and on all accounts the best way for children to acquire a mastery ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... work, Bismarck is following the psychic necessities of his character; is acting in a very personal way, upheld always by the soldier's virtue, ambition. There is also a large element of self-love. His idiomatic lust for control is to be accepted as a root-fact of his peculiar type of being. And while on the whole his ambition is exercised for the good of his country, herein he is acting, in addition, under the ardent appetite, in his case a passion, to dominate millions of lives; urged not ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... college for three months in order that we might "reconsider our opinions", so that possibly we might "be led by Divine guidance to such views as would be compatible with the retention of our present position". Idiomatic English was clearly not a strong point with the council. Of course we refused. If we had consented it might have been reasonably concluded that we had taken very little trouble with our "views". Again we asked for compliance with our ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... otherwise, that ever Ireland produced. What rendered this, besides, of such peculiar advantage to me in after life, as a literary man, was, that I heard them as often in the Irish language as in the English, if not oftener, in circumstance which enabled me in my writings to transfer the genius, the idiomatic peculiarity and conversational spirit of the one language into the other, precisely as the people themselves do in their dialogue, whenever the heart or imagination happens to be moved by ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... above, I was thinking rather of the mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as brahman, atman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that brahman, neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... all the advantages of her grown-up mind and rapidity of perception to keep her sufficiently beforehand with Sarah, whenever subjects went deep or far. If she pronounced like a native, and knew what was idiomatic, Sarah, with her clumsy pronunciation, had further insight into grammar, and asked perplexing questions; if she played admirably and with facility, Sarah could puzzle her with the science of music; if her drawing were ever so effective and graceful, Sarah's less sightly productions ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... less agile natures to follow the tracks of light and emulate the choice examples set before them, with swifter movements and with richer results than they could ever have attained, if not thus encouraged. Proverbial axioms flourish copiously in the idiomatic ground and vernacular climate of unlearned, undisciplined, unreflective minds, as thistles on the highway where every ass may gather them. But precious maxims, those "short sentences drawn from a long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... untutored reading of Greek and Latin. It was no tale of Homeric blows and knocks, Argonautic voyaging, or Theban family woe that inflamed their imaginations and spurred them onward. They were plodding away at the Greek Testament, immersed in a chapter of the idiomatic and difficult Epistle to ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... modest and fair account of Bailey's work. The chief peculiarity of his version is its reproduction of the idiomatic and proverbial Latinisms, and generally of the classical phrases and allusions in which Erasmus abounds, in corresponding or analogous English forms. Bailey had acquired, perhaps from his lexicographical studies, a great command ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Apart from a little Latin, a considerable training in writing the English language, and a great deal of miscellaneous reading of an extremely light variety, I really had no culture at all. I could not speak an idiomatic sentence in French or German; I had the vaguest ideas about applied mechanics and science; and no thorough knowledge about anything; but I was supposed to be an educated man, and on this stock in trade I have done business ever since—with, ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... in, he walked a step or two farther on, as if not noticing to what place I had brought him. Then he drew himself up short, and gazed around him for a moment. "Ha, the Anglais," he said—and I may mention in passing that his English, in spite of a slight southern accent, was idiomatic and excellent. "It is here, then; it is here!" He was addressing ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... robbed of the thought and beauty of his smooth diction, and gives but imperfect meaning and interpretation to many idiomatic expressions. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... seniors. Why, then, should they find such difficulty in writing it? When you listen to the animated talk of a bright school-boy or college student, full of a subject which really interests him, you say at once that such command of racy and idiomatic English words must of course be exhibited in his "compositions" or his "themes"; but when the latter are examined, they are commonly found to be feeble and lifeless, with hardly a thought or a word which bears any stamp of freshness or originality, and which are ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster |
