"Inflection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inflection of tone, as if the fact designated was one that would please her; and his swarthy, seamy face expanded into a good-humored, meaning smile. Then without any particular rudeness he pushed her back from the door, into the cabin, and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... forcible of talkers. Like the Monsignore in Lothair he can 'sparkle with anecdote and blaze with repartee,' and when he deals in criticism the edge of his sword is mercilessly whetted against pretension and vanity. The inflection of his voice, the flash of his eye, the pose of his head, the action of his hand, all lend their special emphasis to the condemnation." The mental quality which most impressed Mr W.M. Rossetti in his communications with ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Beau Brummels of pre-telephonic days. Who, for instance, until the arrival of the telephone girl, appreciated the difference between "Who are you?" and "Who is this?" Or who else has so impressed upon us the value of the rising inflection, as a gentler habit of speech? This propaganda of politeness has gone so far that to-day the man who is profane or abusive at the telephone, is cut off from the use of it. He is cast out as ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... Glistonbury, with the same inflection of voice, and the same bridling and smiling. "Very different," continued her ladyship, "very different from what you have been accustomed to see on some ladies' tables, no doubt, Mr. Vivian! Without mentioning names, or alluding ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... half-expectant, and half-careless. There was something almost insolent in its assumption of superiority, which was borne out by the little defiant tapping of two long white fingers upon the arm of the carved chair. And yet, with the rising inflection of the monosyllable there went a raising of the brows, a sidelong glance of the eyes, a slowly wreathing smile that curved the fresh lips just enough to unmask two perfect teeth, all of which lent to the voice a meaning, a familiarity, a pliant possibility of favourable interpretation, fit rather ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... more satisfactory to watch my companion, as he told me the names of the Tories who followed in Colden's wake, and commented on their characters. I do not recall them, but I remember every line of Philip Schuyler's face, and every inflection of his voice. He was then not quite forty years of age, almost of my stature—that is to say, a tall man. He held himself very erect, giving strangers the impression of a haughty air, which his dark face and eyes, and ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... brought you some jelly," resumed Pollyanna; "—calf's-foot. I hope you like it?" There was a rising inflection ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... failing a brick wall to knock our heads against, we started in search of one. Now does not that apply to those who go out into the world—to the other end of the world—instead of remaining peacefully at home?" she added, a sly sort of "I-have-you-there" inflection in ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... "buffer," more than he could stand—or, rather, sit. Leaped to feet, and, with thrilling energy, repudiated gross imputation. Prince ARTHUR taken aback; hadn't meant anything particular. To call a thing or a person a buffer not necessarily a term of opprobrium. Everything depends on inflection of tone. Suppose, now, leaning across the table, he had addressed Mr. G. as "old buffer," that would perhaps have been a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... what a fascination she felt for everything that concerned Miss Elton. Every act, every garment, every inflection of the girl she hated most was interesting to her. She watched Madeline like a cat, and disliked her ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... measure, the young girl listened with her head lowered, vainly trying to find words to express the feelings which disturbed her; but M. Gustave, misunderstanding her silence, and congratulating himself upon the effect he had produced, grew bolder, and with the tenderest and most impassioned inflection he could impart to his voice, continued: "Who could fail to be impressed as I have been? How could one behold, without rapturous admiration, such beautiful eyes, such glorious black hair, such smiling lips, such a graceful mien, such wonderful ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... faint inflection of the last words had their intended effect. Roy's face fell. "O-oh, I see. But you've always been my sort of sister. Thea would understand. And nowadays girls do ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... spare us the discomfort of repentance by teaching us to declare with a new inflection, "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves," forget that there is another side to this argument. It is, of course, very alluring to be told that we are not really blameworthy for acts which hitherto we have ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... good ladies of Monastier; it seemed to them frolicsome and racy, like a page of Pickwick; and they all got it carefully by heart, as a stand-by, I presume, for winter evenings. I have tried it since then with every sort of accent and inflection, but I seem to lack the sense ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evening arose from a delicate observance of etiquette on the part of the ambassador. After carrying us to his box, which was close to that of the Royal Family, in order that we might see the members of it properly, he retired with Lord Byron to another box, an inflection of manners to propriety in the best possible taste—for the ambassador was doubtless aware that his Lordship's rank would be known to the audience, and I conceive that this little arrangement was adopted to make his person also known, by showing ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... and fields. There are rarer singers, and birds of more brilliant plumage, but he is the constant quantity. His notes may not rival those mellow, brief ones of the blue-birds in early spring, so sweet in their quaint inflection, which suggest all hope, and are so striking because heard while snow may be yet upon the ground; he may not have the wild abandon of the bobolink with that tinkle and gurgle and thrill; he is no pretentious songster, like a score of other birds, but he is a great part ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... is lacking is sentence accent and variety in the inflection of phrases. Miss Keller pronounces each word as a foreigner does when he is still labouring with the elements of a sentence, or as children sometimes read in school when they have to pick out ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... curvature, curvity[obs3], curvation[obs3]; incurvature[obs3], incurvity|; incurvation[obs3]; bend; flexure, flexion, flection[obs3]; conflexure|; crook, hook, bought, bending; deflection, deflexion[obs3]; inflection, inflexion[obs3]; concameration[obs3]; arcuation[obs3], devexity|, turn, deviation, detour, sweep; curl, curling; bough; recurvity[obs3], recurvation[obs3]; sinuosity &c. 248. kink. carve, arc, arch, arcade, vault, bow, crescent, half-moon, lunule[obs3], horseshoe, loop, crane neck; parabola, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the mustard," he murmured sotto voce, "and there goes another bright day-dream." Unknown to himself, he spoke directly into the transmitter, and Shirley, clinging half hopefully to the receiver at the other end of the wire, heard him— caught every inflection of the words, commonplace enough, but freighted with the pathos of Bryce's ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... long, musical name, without missing a syllable, and with a certain approving inflection which evidently had an ingratiating effect upon the many-syllabled aristocrat; for he lifted his carefully gloved hand and passed it gently ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... Inflection. Change in the form of a word to show a modification or shade of meaning. At a very early period in our language there was a separate form for practically every modification. Although separate forms are now less numerous, inflection is still a convenient term in grammar. ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... surprise the guard smiled graciously, and putting on a modest air replied: "Palatinski niet, paruski (I do not speak Latin, I speak only Russian)," and the more I repeated "palatinski," putting the inflection now on one syllable, then on the other, to make him understand, the more flattered the man seemed to be, and modestly ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... retained, and are amply sufficient for drill in articulation, inflection, etc. The additional exercises on these subjects, formerly inserted between the lessons, have been omitted to make room for other valuable features of the ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ungraceful elision" of the possessive inflection, as Mason calls it. Cf. Dryden, Hind and Panther, iii.: "Affected Kindness with ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... log bridge below," replied Kathleen. She added: "Duane left us half an hour ago. Wasn't it half an hour ago, Scott?" with a rising inflection that conveyed something of warning, something of an appeal. But on Scott's face the sullen disconcerted expression had not entirely faded, and his sister inspected him curiously. Then without knowing why, exactly, she turned and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the long response. "Well," I must begin, in a doubtful drawl, every word and changing inflection his own, as I had been taught, "I wouldn't go quite t' the length o' that. Ol' Nicholas Top wouldn't claim it hisself. Ol' Nicholas Top on'y claims that he's good at standin' by. His cronies do 'low that he can't be beat at it by ar a man in Newf'un'land; but Nicholas wouldn't go t' the ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... dialogue, they should try to fathom the speech; that is, they should form a mind's eye picture of what the line conveys to the audience. That is how I teach them to study. They read a sentence. A sentence is supposed to express a complete thought. They must get the proper inflection by reading it out loud. No method of expression is brought into play yet. By that I mean no pantomimic by-play or facial expression. They are only reading at first. In most of the amateur shows, the players never do anything else ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... loud, stereotyped tone, giving the last word a strong upward inflection, suggestive of a final ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... coax my mule with some words which perhaps are not in the Sabbath School books, and to emphasize them with the rising and falling inflection of the stick across his back; but still he moved not. Then all at once my conscience smote me. I thought perhaps the faithful beast might be sick. My mind reverted to Balaam, whose beast spoke to him when he had smitten him but three times ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... replied one of the mounted artillerymen, with a negative inflection. "You'll get a hell of a long ways without us. If you doughboys start anything without the artillery, you'll see Berlin through the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... the discovery that it is a link between the geese and swans, but is more goose than swan. It is a beautiful white bird, with bright red bill and legs, the wings tipped with black; and has a loud musical cry of three notes, the last prolonged note with a falling inflection. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... delivered with a mocking inflection, fanned to sudden laughter chuckles that the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... having uttered the foregoing without pause or inflection of voice from beginning to end, came to an abrupt stop. Whether from want of breath or ideas it is difficult to say; ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the sweet accents of love, it may lure us from paths of rectitude to shameful ignominy and wreck our life with sorrow and remorse, or it may spur us on in noblest efforts to acquire glory and honor, here or hereafter. According to the inflection of the voice a word may strike terror into the bravest heart or lull a timid child to peaceful slumber. The word of an agitator may rouse the passions of a mob and impel it to awful bloodshed, as in the French Revolution, where dictatorial mandates of mob-rule killed and exiled at pleasure, or, ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... with Patience deeply occupied with tumultuous reflections, not seeing the beauties of Millville which, but a short time before, he had been enthusiastically celebrating. He was, in fact, a young man walking in a dream. Every word the girl had uttered, every inflection of her voice, the involuntary confession of affection won from her by his own no less sudden avowal of love, projected themselves against his excited mind with all the vividness of kinetoscope pictures. He was very happy with these reflections that come to the youth in ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... inflection spoils the whole with doubt, One trivial letter ruins all, left out; A knot can change a felon into clay, A not will save him, spelt without the k; The smallest word has some unguarded spot, And danger lurks in i ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Indeed, the inflection of her voice held something in it that was nearly caressing. Kid Follansbee had long admired her, but of late he had been quite hopeless. He had observed the favor in which Ennis had seemed to stand before the girl, and had perhaps been rather jealous. It was pleasant to be spoken ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... "Slave Songs of the United States" may be found an exposition of Daddy Jack's dialect as complete as any that can be given here. A key to the dialect may be given very briefly. The vocabulary is not an extensive one—more depending upon the manner, the form of expression, and the inflection, than upon the words employed. It is thus an admirable vehicle for story-telling. It recognizes no gender, and scorns the use of the plural number except accidentally. "'E" stands for "he" "she" or "it," and "dem" may allude to one thing, or may include a thousand. The dialect is laconic ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... finished. We all waited in silence for a long time; at length a middle-aged man, with a broad-brimmed hat, arose and responded in a sing-song tone: "All I have to say is, if a hen can crow, let her crow," emphasizing "crow" with an upward inflection on several notes of the gamut. The meeting adjourned with mingled feelings of surprise and merriment. I confess that I felt somewhat chagrined in having what I considered my unanswerable arguments so summarily disposed of, and the serious impression I had made on the audience so speedily dissipated. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... sat with her back to it, smiled in enjoying recognition of the thin, high academic note, the prim finish of the inflection. It reminded her of a man she knew who ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... orators; they are born without bashfulness; they are taught to speak pieces in school from their childhood; they pronounce each word distinctly; they use correctly the rising inflection and the falling inflection. Moreover, they are always in deadly earnest; there is another miserable world awaiting their arrival. Their humorists are the most unhappy of men. You may smile when you read their ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... we can make up a party—if you," he added with a perfectly new inflection in his voice, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... you one more—and then I quit," said Pete. For Pete began to realize that Brevoort's manner was slowly changing. Outwardly he was the same slow-speaking Texan, but his voice had taken on a curious inflection of recklessness which Pete attributed to the few but generous drinks of whiskey the Texan had taken. And Pete knew what whiskey could do to a man. He had learned enough about that when with the horse-trader. Moreover, Pete considered it a sort of weakness—to indulge ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... with a rising inflection that stung. The younger man made no reply and favored the speaker with a ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... quick for him, and this reply held him in puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest inflection of sadness in her voice: "Before we bid each other goodbye, I want at least to thank you for having once thought ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... of His bearing. Matchless the mingled strength and beauty of His life, yet gentleness was the flower and fruitage of it all. For in Him the lion and the lamb dwelt together. Oak and rock were there, and also vine and flower. Weakness is always rough. Only giants can be gentle. Tenderness is an inflection of strength. No error can be greater than to suppose that gentleness is mere absence of vigor. Weakness totters and tugs at its burden. When the dwarf that attended Ivanhoe at the tournament lifted the bleeding sufferer he staggered under his heavy burden. Weakness made him stumble and caused ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... stylish store where she works, Case and Rosenstein's. And Gladys, she's awfully stylish, too. She looks as if she'd just stepped out of a fashion plate." And something in her inflection suggested even to Peggy that from Rosetta Muriel's standpoint, she had failed to live up to her opportunities. Certainly in a gingham frock two seasons old, and faded by frequent washings, Peggy did not remotely suggest those large-eyed ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... echoed; and the inflection of the pronoun might have flattered him had he not reflected that it was impossible she could have understood his allusion. And now she bethought her that she had not thanked him—and the debt was a heavy one. He had come to her aid in an hour when hope seemed dead. He had come single-handed—save ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Instead of having our attention taken up with thinking of the proper endings, we are left free to attend to the thought rather than to the vehicle of its expression. Although our pronouns are still declined, the sole inflection of our nouns, with the exception of a few like ox, oxen, or mouse, mice, is the addition of 's, s, or es for the possessive and the plural. Modern German, on the other hand, still retains these troublesome case endings. How did English have the good ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... ie nay gow ge ait che gah, "they have put the sand over him" is a common expression among the Indians to indicate that a man is dead and buried. Another mode, delicate and refined in its character, is to suffix the inflection for perfect past tense, bun, to a man's name. Thus Washington e bun would indicate ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... one y'ar ago, Bas," came the even and implacable inflection of the other, "thet us two stud up hyar tergither, an' a heap hes done come ter pass since then—don't ye want ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... one of Carl Maria Von Weber's exquisite flights of song, is like no other in its intimate interpretation of the prayerful words. We hear Luther's "bird in the heart" singing softly in every inflection of the tender melody as it glides on. The tune, arranged by Joseph Holbrook, is from an opera—the overture to Weber's Der Freischutz—but one feels that the gentle musician when he wrote it must have caught an inspiration of divine ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... with her already?' he asked himself. His spirit seemed imprisoned within a circle in which the phantoms of all his sensations in presence of this woman surged and wheeled around him. Suddenly there would emerge from this tangle of memory, with singular precision, some phrase of hers, an inflection of her voice, an attitude, a glance, the seat where they had sat, the finale of the Beethoven sonata, a burst of melody from Mary Dyce, the face of the footman who had held back the portiere—anything that happened ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... was the second time within twelve hours that a girl had told him that—in those very words, with that same disdainful tone. Why, if he were to shut his eyes he felt sure he could imagine it to be the very voice inflection used by his Fog Lady when delivering the same sentence of exile. Again he ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... pair were exceedingly talkative at first, uttering not only the usual musical three-syllable warble or call, which Lanier aptly calls the "heavenly word," but often soft twittering prattle, of varying inflection and irregular length, which was certainly the most interesting bird-talk I ever heard. When they could not see me they indulged in it more freely, with changing tones at different times, and after they ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... me to say at once 'nay'; for that would end at once for me these supreme moments in thy presence; however, I will repeat the adverb of negation with a rising inflection that thou mayst ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... and told her story quickly and clearly, without a quiver or an inflection of pain in her voice. It was necessary, for the Mother did not know it all, and listened with concentrated attention. But before it was ended she had made up her mind what ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... of the Prince's ball in Cinderella—these when perceived distinctly are intelligible, and when perceived delightfully are beautiful. Language is a kind of music, too; the mode of speaking, the sound of letters, the inflection of the voice—all are elements of beauty. But this material beauty is tied up in close association with things "eye hath not seen nor ear heard," the moral beauty of the good and the message of the true. The industry of the little Elves reflects the worth of honest effort of the two aged peasants, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... Countess, with a heart-rending inflection in her voice. She drew a chair to the table as if to strengthen her illusions and realize ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Pole, and offered him some of my own tobacco. He did not fail to take it, but at the same time I heard him sizzle out "Zhid" from between his tightly closed lips. I looked at him in amazement: how on earth could he guess I was a Jew, when I spoke my Russian with the right accent and inflection, while his was lame, broken, and half mixed with Polish? That was a riddle to me. But I had no time to puzzle it out, and I forgot it on ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... a day." Champney made this assertion with a hyper-sentimental inflection of voice, and, lifting the flower to his nose, drew ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... forgotten,' she said, with a beautiful inflection and a bending of the head, 'that I promised to thank you the next time we met for what you did for me. Let me thank you now. Tell me ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... Brigham felt a creep as of some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of his voice. She ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... trigeneric inflexions, Definite and Indefinite, Strong and Weak, just like that which makes the beginner's despair in German."[404] Verbs were conjugated without auxiliaries; and as there was no particular inflection to indicate the future, the present was used instead, a very indifferent substitute, which did not contribute much to the clearness of the phrase. Degrees of comparison in the adjectives were marked, not by adverbs, as in French, but by differences in the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... footing. Here, in distress that was consternation, and in fear that was panic, excitedly bobbed up and down a cowboy in bearskin chaps, vacuously repeating the exclamation, "Oh God! Oh God!"—the first division of it rising in inflection, the second division inflected fallingly with despair. On the edge of the farther side, facing him, in bathing suits, legs dangling toward the water, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... indignantly; "you would always be better than other people, Miss Ruth—you and Carrie—oh, why are you both so good?" with a despairing inflection in my voice. "How you must both ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... herself. She only felt a slight shock, such as a word or a look from one we love too often gives us,—such as a child's trivial gesture or movement makes a parent feel,—that impalpable something which in the slightest possible inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes leave a sting behind it, even in a trusting heart. This was all. But it was true that what she saw meant a great deal. It meant the dawning in Myrtle Hazard of one of her as yet unlived secondary lives. Bathsheba's virgin perceptions ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Father of us all are compared, the one with the other. Of all human affections, this, the first that takes root in the infant's heart, is the last to die out under the blighting influence of vice, the deadening blows of time. "My Mother" is spoken by the world-hardened citizen with a gentler inflection,—a reverential cadence, as if the inner man stood with uncovered head ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... inflection, the nature of a query, and for the first time Heinrich von Richenbach ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... used in place of his own name. Inflection of verbs appears, but the infinitive is generally used for imperative; regular and irregular verbs begin to be distinguished (171). Desire expressed by infinitive. Numbering active; numerals confounded. Eight hundred and seventy-eighth day, nine-pins counted "one, one, one," etc. (172). Questioning ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Poetical I am going on to"—Bruce stopped to gather strength to project the word with the large and cadenced inflection he had enjoyed in the hill farm people,—"going on ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... lady. If in Paris, she differs from the Parisiennes only in the greater delicacy of her lithe beauty, her innocence which is not ignorance, and her French pronunciation; if in London, she differs from English girls only in the matter of rosy cheeks and the rising inflection. Should none of these fortunate transplantings befall her, she always merits them by adorning with grace and industry and intelligence the narrower sphere to which destiny ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... exclaimed, the moment he saw her, "is it thou? Welcome, descendant of a line of kings. Would'st like some cider?" He spoke the word "cider" like the Indians, with a rising inflection on the last syllable. It was an offer no Indian could resist, and the squaw answered simply in the affirmative. From a pitcher of the grateful beverage, which shortly before had been brought into the room, and which, indeed, suggested the offer, the doctor filled ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Oscillator," explained Dr. Shalt. "It's sensitive to the slightest tonal inflection. We use it to measure the pitch and volume of ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... repeated with a strong, rising inflection on the "los." And at that he drew his overcoat, which apparently had been thrown across his shoulders, high above his head and down over it, as if he were cold. I can see the silhouette of that coat ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... was a pretty inflection—the rising inflection of great surprise. Her eyes, glowing of merriment, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... dull if you read much at a time, as the later Kerry essays do not, but nothing that he has written recalls so completely to my senses the man as he was in daily life; and as I read, there are moments when every line of his face, every inflection of his voice, grows so clear in memory that I cannot realize that he is dead. He was no nearer when we walked and talked than now while I read these unarranged, unspeculating pages, wherein the only life he loved with his whole heart reflects itself as in the still water of a pool. ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... me, Fred,—not in that way," and his voice had the full, throbbing inflection of a great joy. "We are friends, such as a man and a woman can truly be. Do you not understand that some people are so alike they run in parallels? there are no angles to create the intense friction of love, they are so evenly balanced that there is no desire for possessorship, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... with a warning cantankerous inflection, firmly and almost brutally reproving this conversational delinquency of George's. "Rule it out, young man! We don't want any of that sort of mountebanking in England. We know ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... began in an emotionless inflection which fell in startling contrast with the surcharged vehemence of the other. Then he halted in the midst of his sentence as Karyl wheeled passionately to ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... absence of either tone or colour. Of course the historical nature of his subject precluded the dramatic suggestion to be looked for in the Pickwick trial, thus rendering comparison inapposite. Nevertheless one was bound to contrast them. Thackeray's features were impassive, and his voice knew no inflection. But his elocution in other respects was perfect, admirably distinct and impressive from its complete obliteration ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... habit of talking much about the things you see." She put it in the form of a statement, but the rising inflection indicated ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... find no spelling to reproduce that combination of guttural and aspirate and the inimitable inflection of voice. It is so delightful that I ask him again, and again the answer comes with even more emphasis upon guttural and aspirate, and an ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor
... continued Gabriel, his voice falling into a softer inflection, "there are always in gatherings such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... or word preceding the command Halt should always be given with a rising inflection in order to prepare the ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... poky little hole at eighteen pounds a year? What do you think I can do with myself all day in Trafalgar-road? Why, nothing. There's no room even for a piano, and so my fingers are stiffening every day. It's not life at all. Naturally, it's a great privilege," she pursued, with a vicious inflection that reminded him perfectly of Susan, "for a girl like me to live with an old man like you, all alone, with one servant and no sitting-room. But some privileges cost too dear. The fact is, you never think of me ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... speak of anything that has pleased you one will, with a gay rising inflection of the voice and a smile, say: "Ah! c'est gai la-bas—and monsieur was well amused while in that beautiful country?" "ah!—tiens! c'est gentil ca!" they will exclaim, as you enthusiastically continue to explain. ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... Millar, with an obstinate inflection of her voice which said, "I am of my own opinion still." She illustrated this by adding, in an undertone, "They were ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... without knowing why. I have to feel my way still. I can't account for the change that's come over them. For four years now they've been at us to let their wings grow again. And for four years we've been saying no in every possible tone of voice and with every possible inflection. I've had no idea that Peachy would ever get over it. My God, you fellows have no idea what I've been through with her in regard to this question of flying. Why, one night three months ago, she had an awful attack of hysteria because I told her I'd have ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... said. "Variable and unrelated definitions, undetectable shades of inflection—and sometimes a language that has no discernibly separate words. The Singer brothers of Ship Eight ran into the latter. We've given them up ...
— Cry from a Far Planet • Tom Godwin
... song ceases to be intelligible, it is nearly always altered by the people, with the end of approximating it to the sounds farmliar and significant to their ears. Is it not also to be feared that in this case the editor, in entire good faith, may lend some slight inflection to the text, so as to find in it the sense that he desires, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... this broad new thoroughfare there were only buildings of recent erection. Still, the wave of the cabman's whip became more pronounced and his voice rose to a higher key, with a somewhat ironical inflection, when he gave the name of a huge and still chalky pile on his left, a gigantic erection of stone, overladen with sculptured ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... emotion be so tenuous as almost to defy verbal expression, for the most part we ally words and music. The timbre of a voice, singing tones without words, might carry a message to the sensitive, just as the inflection of a voice may be exquisite joy or suffering to a lover: but it would be insufficient to move the average hearer to any response. The reason is that there is always a dual process at work in mind: there is the sense-perception of the actual sound, and a brain-recognition ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... of the child bred beyond the Tweed proclaims him a veritable Scot. Again, some people are apt to adopt a somewhat peremptory tone in addressing little children. Often they do not trouble to give to their voices that polite or deferential inflection which they habitually use when speaking to older people. Listen to a party of nurses in the Park addressing their charges. As if they knew that their commands have small chance of being obeyed, they shout them with incisive force. "Come along at once ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... and the impossibility of an election. Besides, if chosen, he said, he would be as powerless as Johnson, a situation that "would put him in his grave in less than a year."[1174] In the whole convention there was not a man who could truthfully say that the Governor, by look, or gesture, or inflection of voice, had encouraged the hope of a change of mind. Within forty-eight hours every Democrat of influence had sounded him and gone away sorrowful. Now, when order was restored, he declined again. His expressions of gratitude seemed only to make the declaration stronger. "I do not ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... perhaps, some inflection in the woman's voice that might have made known, or at least awakened, the suspicion of some latent hope or intention, had the captain's ear been fine enough to detect it. There might have been something in the little convent girl's face, had his eye been more ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... quality of the Irish and at the same time compress within the compass of the Irish measure such an analytic language as English, which has to express by means of auxiliaries what is accomplished in Early Irish by inflection. But I hope to have accomplished the main object of distinguishing the verse from the prose without sacrifice of the thought by the simple device of turning the verse-passages into lines of the same syllabic length as those of the original—which is most ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... only the faintest suggestion of the derisive inflection. After all, it might have been but a mannerism. The man had such a mild face and such ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... cruel sneer in the man's eyes, a mocking inflection in his voice, that sent a thrill of cold horror through Cuthbert's veins. He was absolutely powerless in that merciless clasp. He felt the strength leaving his limbs and his head turning giddy. He only just ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Century; where they fill a languid interval between two winds of inspiration—the Italian dying down with Milton and the French following at the heels of the restored Royalists. For convenience, again, I have set myself certain rules of spelling. In the very earliest poems inflection and spelling are structural, and to modernize is to destroy. But as old inflections fade into modern the old spelling becomes less and less vital, and has been brought (not, I hope, too abruptly) into line with that sanctioned by use and familiar. To do this seemed wiser ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... and low. The little maid always amused her. There was something cheerful in the queer little scolding sentences, spoken with a rising inflection on almost every word, musical and yet always seeming to protest gently ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... Cottage, and tea was coming in. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than the two sisters presented. They were the daughters of a peer belonging to what a well-known frequenter of great houses and great families before the war used to call "the inferior aristocracy"—with an inflection of voice caught no doubt from the great families themselves. Yet their father had been an Earl, the second of his name, and was himself the son of a meteoric personage of mid-Victorian days—parliamentary lawyer, peer, and Governor of an Indian Presidency, who had earned his final step ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... could judge by the inflection of his voice his sorrow was genuine. "I'll be with you in ten minutes—he's ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... within the chamber, and to which we of the biped race attach so awful an importance, lay a large gray cat, curled in a ball, and dozing with half-shut eyes, and ears that now and then denoted, by a gentle inflection, the jar of a louder or nearer sound than usual upon her lethargic senses. The dying woman did not at first attend to the entrance either of Dummie or the female at the foot of the bed, but she turned herself round ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Fores, what do you mean by talking to me like that?" But she raised her eyes and her crimson cheeks for one timid instant, and dropped them. His voice had overcome her. With a single phrase, with a mere inflection, he had changed the key of the interview. And the glance at him had exposed her to the appeal of his face, more powerful than ten thousand logical arguments and warnings. His face proved that he was a sympathetic, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... then, with a curious inflection of her voice, as though she were not quite certain of the tone she wished to strike, whether ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... thoughts were never so complicated. With him, it was either, "She loves me," or, "She does not;" he never tormented himself, after the fashion of women, by wondering what this look meant, or that inflection, and fearing that the innermost recesses of his mind might be guessed from a ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... such secluded places. It would seem that his name is a misnomer—at least, in a good many instances." Several times I stopped to listen more intently to the rolling ditty. "There's something odd about that wren's song," I repeated. "Does the house wren always close its song with the rising inflection, as if ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... voiceless significance, the inflection which Philip gave to it as he gazed at Pierre, stood for the one tremendous question which, for a space, possessed the mind of each. Pierre shrugged his shoulders. He could not answer it. And as he shrugged his shoulders he shivered, and at a sudden blast of the wind against the cabin door ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... watched the affair with amusement, although Mr. Clark's friends adopted an inflection of voice in speaking to him which reminded him strongly of funerals. Mr. Tucker's week was up, but the landlord of the George was responsible for the statement that he had ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... conversational lesson on some animal. Lessons are sometimes given on cats. As an element in a reading lesson—to arouse interest—to hold the attention—to secure correct emphasis and inflection—to make sure of the reading being good: such work is appropriate. But let us see what the effect upon the pupil is as regards the knowledge he gains of the cat, and the effect upon his habits of thought and study. The student gives ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... the lovely Madame Jenkins, with a very marked inflection of respect for that personage out of the Thousand and One Nights, of whom all Paris had been talking for a month; then, after a moment's hesitation, she whispered between the heavy hangings, very softly, very lovingly, for the doctor's ear alone: "Be sure and not ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... whose soft inflection had always thrilled him, but never as it did now as, turning the handle, he entered his ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... are likely to be much more careful in giving advice about characterization. They insert a large number of stage directions covering this matter. Speed of delivery, tone and inflection, as well as underlying feeling and emotion are ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... beloved. Taking their source and their element from the soul itself, the vibrations of the air, charged with passion, put our hearts so powerfully into communion, carrying thought between them so lucidly, and being, above all, so incapable of falsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is often a revelation. What enchantments the intonations of a tender voice can bestow upon the heart of a poet! What ideas they awaken! What freshness they shed there! Love is in the voice before the glance avows it. Auguste, poet after the manner of lovers (there are poets who feel, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Field!" a voice behind him cried. "What are those cryptic rites that you're performing? What on earth are you bowing into a hairdresser's window for?"—a smooth, melodious voice, tinged by an inflection that was ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... came out of the distance and surveyed him, coldly curious. "I thought so," he said, and in his voice was an odd inflection as of one who checks a laugh at an ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... state were only known by those who lived in close and constant intercourse with one another. Hansie therefore knew, by an inflection in her mother's voice, that something out of the way had ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... of that hamlet Mr. Butler inquired his way by the simple expedient of shouting "Tavora?" with a strong interrogative inflection. The vintner made it plain by gestures—accompanied by a rattling musketry of incomprehensible speech that their way lay straight ahead. And straight ahead they went, following that mule track for some five or six miles until it began to slope gently towards the plain again. Below them they ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... nothing," retorted Mr. Connors, flushing a little. "But, for God's sake, are you going to sit here like a wart on a dead dog an' wait for 'em?" he demanded with a rising inflection. "Do you reckon yo're running a dance, or a party, or ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... to receive you," he said. "It will be among the most memorable incidents of my reign that I welcome to my Court the first visitor from another world, or," he added, after a sudden pause, and with an inflection of unmistakable irony in his tone, "the first who has descended to our world from a height to which no balloon could reach and at ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... ears, imparting excessively mysterious information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... coherence—scattered fragments of it were flashed before him fitfully, in swift disorder. If he would attempt to seize upon one of those fragments, to detain and fix it, for consideration—a speech of hers, a look, an inflection—then the whole experience suddenly lost its outlines, his recollection of it became a jumble, and he was left, as ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... do you?" he asked, a little doubtfully, picking up one of the phonographic cylinders. I shook my head. As though I could have forgotten the smallest inflection of ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... other one said, "Ah, mon vieux!" You know the inflection they give this expression, particularly when it means, "This is something wonderful!" He added that they had seen the combat and my fall, and little expected to find the pilot living, to say nothing of speaking. ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... we fear the Change?" he answered her unspoken question, calm serenity in every inflection of his quiet voice. "The life-principle is unknowable to the finite mind, as is the All-Controlling Force. But even though we know nothing of the sublime goal toward which it is tending, any person ripe for the Change can, and of course does, liberate the life-principle ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... heart seemed to stop still. She heard a voice, familiar in a sense, and yet so unlike the voice of which she had once known every inflection. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... "I thought the nasal inflection made it more forceful, so I said, 'No, I won't haul no rubbish for no dollar and a half, and you can tell ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... piece? On this point there is a wide difference of opinion among writers on elocution. On the one hand there are those who contend that, in the delivery of every sentence, the application of emphasis, pause, pitch, inflection, &c., should be governed by definite rules. In accordance with this theory, they have formed complex systems of elocutionary rules, for the guidance of pupils in reading aloud and in declamation. On the other hand, there are authorities of eminence, who regard all specific rules for the management ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... to every inflection of voice, told him at once of the pain she suffered. He drew from her by degrees the confession of the injury she had sustained; but the generous girl did not tell him it had been incurred solely in his protection. ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accounts to her mother, doubtless, of all your comings and goings. She looks upon you as a tyrant, and a disreputable person, too. She has been taught to hate you, and she carries out the teaching—oh, I can see it in every line of her face, every inflection of her voice: she has been taught to loathe you, my poor, misjudged friend, and she does not ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... God! be good and merciful to my mother, my grandmother, to me—and above all, O God, to my unfortunate father." He pronounced these words with childish haste, but under a serious look from his mother, he repeated them immediately, with some emotion, as a child who repeats the inflection of a voice which has been ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... she doesn't," replied Aunt Hannah, with a curious inflection. "But don't you see, William, that all this isn't going to quite do? Billy's ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... sucklings learned to connect this sound with food and comfort, and at once turned to the spot from which it proceeded. Later, when the same note was used as a call, they recognised that its meaning was varied; in turn it became, with subtle differences of inflection, an entreaty, a command, and a warning that it would be folly to ignore; but, whatever it might indicate, they instinctively remembered its first happy associations, and hurried to their mother's side. Hardly ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Inflection Defined Number The Formation of Plurals Compound Nouns Case The Formation of the ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... with closed eyes, heads on one side and hands crossed over their breasts, and he begins to "line out," dividing the words rhythmically into spondaic measure, with the accent strongly on every second syllable and the falling inflection invariably on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... his questions into Joe's face, faster and faster. His voice was shaded now with the inflection of accusation, now discredit; now it rose to the pitch of condemnation, now it sank to a hoarse whisper of horror as he dwelt upon the scene in Isom Chase's kitchen, the body of old Isom stretched in its ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... is written, the reader must group the words together in the way intended by the writer; and in doing this he can receive assistance in various ways. Partly by the inflection of the words; partly by their arrangement; partly also by punctuation. As to inflection, we see in Latin an adjective and a substantive standing together, yet differing in gender, in number, or in case; and we know ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... him for having come to Paris; she knew that it was in her interest that he had come, but an instinct stronger than her will forced her to continue improvising the words of her part, and it was her pleasure to provide it with suitable gesture, expression of face, and inflection of voice. She could hear the fiddles in the ball- room, and wished the wall away, and the company ranged behind a curtain. And, as these desires crossed her mind, she pitied poor Harold with his one idea, 'how he may serve me.' When ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... a High School Girl's Racin' Team, an' you know what girls is for gettin' speed out of a dog. 'You poor tired little doggie, you can stop right here an' rest if you want to; I don't care if they do get ahead of us,'" and Danny finished his remarks in the high falsetto and mincing inflection he attributed to the youthful members of a sex that in his opinion, as well as in George's, has no right to engage in the ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... rounded arch was bent according to the same inflection. The two semicircles could have fitted one into the other, both very narrow, both a little long-shaped and oval and of a restricted radius which was the ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... this next lot'll tempt you, I'm sure! Lot 33, a magnificent and very finely executed dramatic group out of the "Merchant of Venice," Othello in the act of smothering Desdemona, both nearly life-size. (Assist., with a sardonic inflection. "Group 'ere, Gen'lm'n!") What shall we say for this great work by ROCCOCIPPI, Gentlemen? A hundred guineas, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... recitative it is, after all. Don't tell me of your soft Etruscan, your plethoric. Hoch-Deutsch, your flattering French. To woo and win the girl of your heart, give me a rich brogue and the least taste in life of blarney! There's nothing like it, believe me,—every inflection of your voice suggesting some tender pressure of her soft hand or taper waist, every cadence falling on her gentle heart like a sea-breeze on a burning coast, or a soft sirocco over a rose-tree. And then, think, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... vicious, face of the unfortunate waif. Something drew her sympathy toward him, and she pitied him for the mother whom he had never known. In the adjoining room she could hear the voices of her own "childer," with their cultured inflection and language, which was theirs by inheritance and as unconsciously as were "Bony's" harsh tones ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... full of changes; unlike the notes from a musical instrument, there is no uniformity in it; the rise and fall of inflection, the varying sound of the vowels and consonants, the combinations of words and syllables—each produces a different vibration and different tone. To devise an instrument that would receive all these varying tones and inflections ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... the same when she spent a month in France with the Baroness de Hautenoblesse," continued Salemina. "When she returned to America it is no flattery to say that in dress, attitude, inflection, manner, she was a thorough Parisienne. There was an elegant superficiality and a superficial elegance about her that I can never forget, nor yet her extraordinary volubility in a foreign language,—the fluency with which she expressed her inmost soul on all ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... been for the expression, "My little gentleman," which quarrelled with her seeming identity. Oh no!—if he rubbed away hard enough at those eyes with his nightgown-sleeve, this little matter would right itself. Of course, Mrs. Picture would have called him Doyvy, or the name he gave that inflection to. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... looked doubtful; but the inflection of breeding in his voice, the wholesome, lean face and humorous eyes, reassured her. A smile hovered about ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... red creeping up under his dark skin. He smothered the retort on his lips, however, and when he did speak it was with entire control, though there was, nevertheless, an uncompromising quality in his inflection which for the moment silenced his sister as if he had laid his hand ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... their natural order of sequence. When, through the development of the sentence, all the offices of the different parts of speech are mastered, the most natural thing is to continue the work of classification and subdivide the parts of speech. The inflection of words, being distinct from their classification, makes a separate division of the work. If the chief end of grammar were to enable one to parse, we should not here depart from ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... community at large will materially serve the needs of this group of personages, only in so far as it may afford them a larger volume or a wider scope for what has in latterday colloquial phrase been called "graft." These personages are, of course, not to be spoken of with disrespect or with the slightest inflection of discourtesy. They are all honorable men. Indeed they afford the conventional pattern of human dignity and meritorious achievement, and the "Fountain of Honor" is found among them. The point of the argument is only that their material or other self-regarding interests ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... angrily, and for an instant felt the impulse rise within him which prompted him to tell her that it was not only by the employment of means so tame and common- place that he designed to realize the cherished vision of his ambition. But he checked it instantly, and only said, with the reverential inflection which his voice never failed to take when he addressed his mother, "What, then, would you advise me to try, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... woman who harps upon her ailments, who appears at the breakfast table with a depressed and melancholy visage, who regales us with an account of how poorly she slept, the nightmares she experienced, the pain she suffers, and who puts into her inflection the poison of self-pity is an emissary of Satan. I have seen a whole family's happiness for the day destroyed by the meaningless ranting of a hysterical woman. Life is hard enough for all, for each of us to at least ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... in the purely comic is wide; with an inflection of the voice, a bend of that curious long thin body which seems to be embodied gesture, she can suggest, she can portray, the humour that is dry, ironical, coarse (I will admit), unctuous even. Her voice can be sweet or harsh; it can chirp, lilt, chuckle, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... move either forward or back. His voice was again a surprise. Absolute total clarity, almost without inflection as if the words reached the mind without needing a voice. "If you're going to throw me out, this is the best time to do it." Dark brown skin of one of the dark races, jet black straight hair, a dark pair of eyes that were merry and watchful and had the impact ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... observation of order. Whilst Mr. Gladstone and other members of old standing were content to preface their speeches with the monosyllable "Sir," nothing less than "Mr. Speaker, sir," would satisfy Mr. Biggar. No one who has not heard the inflection of tone with which this was uttered, nor seen the oratorical sweep of the hand that launched it on its course, can realize how much of combined deference and authority the phrase is capable of. Mr. Biggar, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... been there?" Though it was the simplest question, John's sudden look at her, and the soft inflection of his ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... eyes as he raised his head her own widened, and she withdrew from him imperceptibly, dismissing him with a mere inflection. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... made an important discovery, while I took my case out and lit a cigarette I did not want to smoke. We left the matter there. I went out of the room before further explanation could cause tension. Disagreements grow into discord from such tiny things—wrong adjectives, or a chance inflection of the voice. Frances had a right to her views of life as much as I had. At least, I reflected comfortably, we had separated upon an agreement this time, recognized ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... and numerous other radical elements, if low-toned, refer to past time, if high-toned, to the future. Another type of function is illustrated by the Takelma forms hel "song," with falling pitch, but hel "sing!" with a rising inflection; parallel to these forms are sel (falling) "black paint," sel (rising) "paint it!" All in all it is clear that pitch accent, like stress and vocalic or consonantal modifications, is far less infrequently employed as ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Then with a sudden animation, "I know what to do, I shall tell grandmother about Dora's marriage. It is all plain enough now. Good night, Ruth." And this good night, though dropping sweetly into the minor third, had yet on its final inflection something of the pleasant hopefulness of its major key—it ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... easy-chair and confronted him. The firelight played upon her red-gold hair, and surprise had driven the weariness from her face. Against the black oak of the chimneypiece she had almost the appearance of a framed cameo. Her voice was quite steady, although its inflection betrayed some indignation. ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their clothes, but only as such differences would be apparent in real life. Indeed, the aim today is to mimic reality in externals, precisely as the real characters themselves are impersonated in every shade of thought and artistic inflection of speech. There are, to be sure, exceptions to ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... She had a peculiarly sweet, soft voice, that somehow matched the sweetness and softness of the long, straight-lashed eyes under the low, level brows, so delicately yet clearly pencilled. Max guessed at first that she was English; then from some slight inflection of tone, wondered if she were Irish instead. It was a name which sounded like "Sidi-bel-Abbes" that made the girl start and blush, and turn to her neighbour with sudden interest. Again and again they mentioned "Sidi-bel-Abbes," which meant nothing for Max ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson |
