"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a community where neighbors are quarreling, hating and lawing with each other. In home life there are angry words and bitter feelings and estrangements. There are lewd revelries and wanton pleasures. There are stealings and lyings, cheatings, fightings, swearings, drinking, chewing and smoking, slang phrases, etc. Such is a reproach, and thus we learn how righteousness exalts a nation and sin becomes ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... taken place at Cannes, when both the combatants perished after drinking an extraordinary quantity, may be strictly denominated a duel with deadly weapons. In the south of France, it is said, one person sometimes invites another to partake of absinthe by the slang phrase, "Take a shovelful of earth;" as if an American bar-room lounger, recognizing with grim humor the deadly quality of his liquor, should say, "Come and get measured for your coffin." The French expression has certainly, in view of Dr. Magnan's disclosures, a melancholy picturesqueness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... from the position of office boy to that of secretary for the Corrugated Iron Company. The story is full of humor and infectious American slang. ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... enough to see that we could learn their language more easily than they could learn ours. Occasionally, however, an Eskimo will startle all hands by rolling out an English phrase or sentence, and, like a parrot, he seems to have a special aptitude in picking up from the sailors phrases of slang ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... pulled up the lariat pin which held him out upon the prairie and scampered for home, and Billy and Davie Dunn, his chum, were forced to "hoof it," as the western slang goes, home. ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... by competent judges; but, quite the contrary—a sensible, well-informed, gentlemanly personage. But, then, he had no great friends, no patrician weaknesses; he knew nothing about racing, or betting, or opera-dancers, or slang in general. In short, he seemed flat and insipid to Bab, who had been compared to the beautiful Lady Mary Manvers by the soft and persuasive tongue of Lady Mary Manvers's dear friend. Yet, in her secret heart of hearts, Bab drew comparisons by no means disadvantageous to Edward Leslie. 'Yes,' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... "on his own hook," as people who speak slang say. There was no one to consult as to what he should do; and though this freedom was enjoyable in the full daylight, he began to feel lonesome as evening drew on. He found a good supper where he had found his dinner, then crept into a nice, thick ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... It is characteristic of Miss Royden that she should fasten on the real cause of this violence. "I don't like jargon," she said, "particularly the jargon of Christian Science and Theosophy. I love English literature too much for that; and I don't like slang, particularly slang of a brutal order; but I feel a deep sympathy with anybody who is trying, as Mr. Studdert-Kennedy is trying, to put life and power into institutionalism. It wants it so badly—oh, so very badly—life, life, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... circumstance may serve to give a notion Of the high talents of this new Vauban: But the town ditch below was deep as ocean, The rampart higher than you 'd wish to hang: But then there was a great want of precaution (Prithee, excuse this engineering slang), Nor work advanced, nor cover'd way was there, To hint at least 'Here is ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... he actually asked me to dine with him at his club, and I actually did; and actually he with me, at mine! And we spoke French all through dinner, and I taught him a lot of French school-boy slang, with which he was delighted. Then he came to see me in Barge Yard, and I even introduced him to my mother and sister, who couldn't help being charmed with him. He was fond of the best music only (he had no ear whatever, and didn't know a note), and only cared for old ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... with the beauty that comes of perfect health undisturbed by thoughts of the why and the wherefore, or by anticipations of a troublesome to-morrow. Yet to the casual observer who beholds this admirably decorated creature, her conversation is disappointing. She revels in slang. Catch-words and phrases which are not called vulgar only because the better classes use them, come trippingly, but never with a pleasant effect from her lips. Nor has she that sense of reticence which is said ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... excellent remarks. She dislikes the extravagances of the romantic school and sees the beauty of simplicity. 'Simplicity,' she writes, 'is the most difficult thing to secure in this world: it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.' She hated the slang and argot of Paris life, and loved the words used by the peasants in the provinces. 'The provinces,' she remarks, 'preserve the tradition of the original tongue and create but few new words. I feel much respect for the language of the peasantry; ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... precisely what it sees. To represent nature is the aim of all our best modern landscapists. Of course, no painting can give all that is in any scene, but every painter must select the means best adapted to convey the idea he has himself received. Now, in the ultra ideal school (to use a slang word which we detest) we recognize but little known to us in nature; and in the ultra matter-of-fact (pre-Raphaelite) school of this country, we find the same absence of abstract truth, together with a painful stiffness, and the want of a sense for beauty. We are not sufficiently ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "Bowery Tough,"' admitted Pinchas; and the table roared again, partly at the rapidity with which this linguistic genius had picked up the local slang. 'But as our pious lunatics think there are many meanings in every letter of the Torah,' went on the pleased poet, 'so there are meanings innumerable in every letter of my name. If I am playwright as well as poet, was ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... ordinary dialects of the country modified by an affected accentuation, by the introduction of a few cabalistic terms, and by the use of descriptive circumlocutions and figurative words in place of ordinary expressions, a slang, in short, such as rascals and pedants ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... turning a fierce sharp glance on me, said, "I'd rather you'd touch me with that hot poker there, sir, than hurl that hateful word at my ears. If there's a thing I hate the most, it's what cant—a vile modern slang—calls 'Progress.' You're just in the spot at this moment to mark one of its high successes. Do you know Spezia?" "Not in the least; never was here before." "Well, sir, I have known it, I'll not stop to count how many years; but ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... am looking for number nine and my four horses. Then I mean to invite you to my country house, to have a lot of "fat" girls to meet you who will talk slang at you, and one of them shall marry you—one whose father is a great newspaper man. And your new papa will start you in the business of making public opinion. You will play with that, too, but, then, you will be ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... with his new-found friends, unheeding for some moments their loose remarks and familiar banter. At length he shook off his abstraction, and surrendering himself to the coarse humours of his companions, soon eclipsed them all by the gusto of his slang and the mocking profligacy of his sentiments; for here he no longer played a part, or suppressed his grosser instincts. That uncurbed dominion of the senses, to which his very boyhood had abandoned itself, found a willing slave in the man. Even the talents themselves ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... talk, something in the strain in which he had spoken of his own peculiarities of habit and thinking upon the previous evening. He disposed of all classes and denominations of superstition with an easy sarcastic slang, which for me was so captivating, that I soon lost all reserve, and found myself listening and suggesting by turns—acquiescent and pleased—sometimes hazarding dissent; but whenever I did, foiled and floored by a few pointed satirical sentences, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Mother," Frank consoled her, "Alice and Dick will revel in these vulgar westernisms. See if they don't. Why Mother, it's by slang that a language is enriched, didn't ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... doorways with impatience; he discovered that he disliked her boy husband very much for hours at a time. He discovered that he was getting up at unearthly hours in order to have time, later in the morning, to go for a walk with Maisie Maidan. He discovered himself using little slang words that she used and attaching a sentimental value to those words. These, you understand, were discoveries that came so late that he could do nothing but drift. He was losing weight; his eyes were beginning to fall ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... most common of the many slang expressions used by their special enemies towards the police is "Copper"—i.e., he who cops the offending member. Strange as it may seem, handcuffs are by no means the invention of these times, which insist on making the life of ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... slang financial term for the office or business of an inferior class of stockbroker, who is not a member of an official exchange and conducts speculative operations for his clients, who deposit a margin or cover. The operations consist, as a rule, of a simple bet or wager between the broker ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... suspend in the gymnasium, like the pendulum of a clock (as may be seem on a fictile vase), to buffet to and fro with blows of the fist. The stuffed bag will represent the human head on the end of its trunk; and the word may have been a slang one of the day, or coined by the Asiatic Trimalchio, whose general language is filled with provincial patois. The translation would then be, in the familiar style of the original,—"The noddle makes ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... Stories was published, of which the Athenaeum said, "They are prose poems, carefully meditated, and exquisitely touched in by a teacher ready to sympathize with every joy and sorrow." The five stories are told in simple and clear language, and without slang, to which she heartily objects. For one so rich in imagination as Miss Ingelow, her prose is singularly free ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... about that, will you?" exclaimed Bobolink, who was given to certain harmless slang ways whenever he became in the least excited, as at present. "Now that you've been and gone and given me a pointer, I c'n just begin to get a line on a few of the questions he asked me. Well, I'm willing to leave it to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... and from there turned round. "So long!" he cried out cheerily, and she was surprised, for Varick seldom made use of any slang or colloquialism. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... which Charlotte Palmer had worked at school (chap, xxvi.); and of old remedies for the lost art of swooning, in the 'lavender drops' of chapter xxix. The mention of a dance as a 'little hop' in chapter ix. reads like a premature instance of middle Victorian slang. But nothing is new—even in a novel—and 'hop,' in this sense, is at least as old as ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... New. In the Old Testament is the Thirty-seventh Psalm with its oft-repeated "fret not." The word under that English phrase "fret not" is significant. It is so blunt as to sound almost like a bit of American slang. Literally it means "don't get hot." The New Testament has the sixth chapter of Matthew with Jesus' own words. One should be careful here to note the better reading of the revision. The old version says "take no thought," and that has been misunderstood by many who have not thought about ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... into the ground, and in its place they have lately set up 'pessimist,' which certainly has a threatening appearance. They don't know its meaning, and in their mouths it merely signifies that what a man says snakes them feel personally uncomfortable. The word has become a dusty rag of slang. The arrested burglar very likely calls the policeman a pessimist; and, speaking reverently and with no intention to shock you, the scribes and Pharisees would undoubtedly have called Christ a pessimist when He called them hypocrites, had they been ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... will recall to mind the shifts and devices of the 'Jovial Beggars;'—how easily a wooden leg was slipped off and turned into a bludgeon; how inscrutable were the disguises, and how copious and expressive the slang, of the mendicant crew. Coleridge has justly described 'The Beggar's Bush' as one of the most pleasant of Fletcher's comedies; and if the Spanish novelists do not greatly belie the roads of their land, the ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... to continue in his responsible office. A trait, after the manner of the find in the Lido, forces itself upon me here. It was to this man that some youthful colleagues in the hospital adapted the then popular slang of that day: "No Goethe has written that," "No Schiller composed ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... at the unbelievable glory and magnificence of M'sieur. A nice lad, John Dudley was, but no subtle enchanter; a stocky and well-set-up young man with a whole-souled, garrulous and breezy way, and a gift of slang and a brilliant grin. What called forth hero-worship towards him I never understood; but no more had I understood why Mildred Thornton, Colonel Thornton's young sister, my very beautiful cousin, should have selected him, from a large assortment of suitors, ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... it with sidus, star, as in considerare, to examine the stars with attention, hence, to look closely at. If this is so, the history of the transition in meaning is unknown. J. B. Greenough (Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, i. 96) has suggested that the word is a military slang term. According to this theory desiderare meant originally to miss a soldier from the ranks at roll-call, the root being that seen in sedere, to sit, sedes, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... unborn generations of men was the end; those plots for the relief of man's estate which had to be plotted, like murders and highway robberies, then, by bandits that had watch-words, and 'badges' and signals and private names, and a secret slang ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Chet," Laura observed soberly. "I think your slang is becoming atrocious. So Janet was ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... she was pretty and merry and kind; and, above all, she had mastered to perfection the rare art of letting children alone. If we kept ourselves tolerably clean, and refrained from quarrelling or talking slang, Aunt Olivia did not worry us. Aunt Janet, on the contrary, gave us so much good advice and was so constantly telling us to do this or not to do the other thing, that we could not remember half her instructions, and did ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to sneer shows wisdom, That a gibe outvalues a reason, That slang, such as thieves delight in, Is fit for the lips of the gentle, And rather a grace ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... scion of one of the oldest Spanish-California families, and in addition to his friendship for the editor it pleased him also to affect an intense admiration of American ways and habits, and even to combine the current California slang with his native precision of speech—and a certain ironical ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... the table, but it was not easy conversation to follow. It consisted mostly of what is known as "joshing," and involved acquaintance with intimate details of personalities and past events. Also, there was a great deal of slang used, which kept a stranger's wits on the jump. However, Montague concluded that all his deficiencies were made up for by his brother, whose sallies were the cause of the loudest laughter. Just now he seemed to the other more like the Oliver ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Dean Howells is a conspicuous example. Judging him by his novels alone it would be difficult to determine his rank; but judging him by his high aim and distinguished style (a style remarkable for its charm and purity in an age too much influenced by newspaper slang and smartness) he is certainly one of the best of our recent prose writers. Since his first modest volume appeared in 1860 he has published many poems, sketches of travel, appreciations of literature, parlor comedies, novels,—an immense variety of ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... in 1473 by Robert Woodlark, Chancellor of the University, and dedicated to "the glorious Virgin Martyr, St. Catherine of Alexandria." Undergraduate slang, alas! reduces all this to "Cat's." It was originally called St. Catherine's Hall, and is one of the smallest of the colleges. Although not claiming the strong ecclesiastical flavour of Corpus, it has educated ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... utterly irrepressible youth of this democratic world. If there was anything they did not know—well, they did not know it; if there was anything they could not do—their motto was: "Show me!" Jimmie, not having been to school, found himself having a hard time with their weird slang. When one of these fellows hailed you, "Hey, pimp!" it did not necessarily mean that he did not like you: when he greeted you, "Hey, sweetness!" it did not mean that he felt for you any over-powering affection. If he referred to his officer as ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the sound of approaching footsteps, it half raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the tarantula, which is extremely dreaded.—The Cape, by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... instruction is given, but with less special, though no slight attention to Latin and Greek, and more to mathematics and practical branches, even then he must acquire from one of the gymnasia the exemption-and-maturity-right. In the slang of student-life, the gymnasiast is styled a Frog, the school itself a Pond; between the time of his declaration of maturity and his reception as student, he is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... unknown President had just come in. Presently an unknown Ambassador arrived. Mexico got worse; would we not recognize Huerta? They send Carden. We had nothing to say about the tolls—simply asked for time. They were very friendly; but our slang phrase fits the situation—"nothin' doin'." They declined San Francisco[47]. Then presently they began to see some plan in Mexico; they began to see our attitude on the tolls; they began to understand ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... king of kings Agamemnon holds himself, from the day that I was seized with dread of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of Providence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse snorting in her sleep "like a whale," to use a slang expression, I have added a petition to the special litany which I address to Saint-Honore, my patron saint, to the effect that he would save me from indulging in this ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... "Fie, James, what slang! Indeed I don't wonder you affect to consult me, since it seems to me you will get your ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... enough, they appeared to be a thoroughly "bad lot:" low, ruffianly-looking men in their outward semblance, and—judging from their conversation, much of which, however, I failed to understand from their liberal use of what is now termed "slang"—utterly given over to the indulgence of the lowest and most degrading forms of vice, scoffing at all things pure and holy, and luxuriating in the recital of deeds of all manner of ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... sell, or fail to sell, postal-cards. It is another aspect of the labor problem, so many-faced in our time. Would it be better that they should take to open mendicancy, or try to win the soft American heart with such acquired slang as "Skiddoo to twenty-three"? One who had no postal-cards had English enough to say he would go away for a penny; it was his price, and I did not see how he could take less; when he was reproached by a citizen of uncommon austerity for his shameless annoyance of strangers, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... their unfortunate victims are dwellers in the borderlands. Mild forms of these types of degeneration are very abundant. The effeminate, cigarette-smoking, soda-drinking young man of the comic weeklies, and the loud, horsy, slang-using, vulgar, masculine young woman are ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... of the treasury." On the following evening Lord Durham, son-in-law of the premier, assuming that he was the party pointed at, attacked what he called "the bishop's gross and virulent invective—his malignant, calumnious, and false insinuations—his well-known powers of pamphleteering slang." Here the noble lord was called to order, and the Earl of Winchelsea moved that the words "false insinuations" and "pamphleteering slang" should be taken down. After some observations from Earl Grey, Lord Holland, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... whose scoldings had any effect. She listened to him graciously. This child of ten years of age, precocious and vicious, coquetted with him as if she had been a grown woman. He finally assumed the care of her education. He taught her to dance and to talk slang! ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... I get you; but that's only slang. You have been here long enough, I should guess from your talk, to get on to our American guff. Well, we're glad to know ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... enough." Martha reddened and patted his arm, looking pleased. Neither of them had talked that way, even in the old days, but the out-dated slang brought back memories—school parties, dances at the Rocketport Club, the early years of the war when Donegal had jockeyed an R-43 fighter in the close-space assaults against the Soviet satellite project. The memories ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... sling at each other across a dinner-table; the English, though without a trace of foreign accent, yet of one who has spent a lifetime in alien lands and has not met his own tongue save on the printed page; of one, therefore, who not being sure of the shade of slang admissible in polite circles, carefully and almost painfully ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... you like him, Willie," said Mrs Willders, who was busy patching the knees of a pair of small unmentionables; "but I wish, dear, that you would not use slang in your speech, and remember that fellow is not spelt with an e-r at the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... created Granger for a fisher of men; greed had sent him into the South Florida land business. His bland self-possession, his impressive physique, his confidence-winning voice and bearing constituted a profitable stock in trade. In the slang of his craft—shall we say "graft"?—he "played the church game strong." Under the sway of his hypnotic personality God-fearing, bank-fearing old couples brought forth hidden wealth to place in his dexterous hands; school-teachers wrecked their savings to invest with Granger. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... smugglers and owlers who had used the Woolpack as their headquarters long ago, riding by moonlight to the cross-roads, with their mouths full of slang—cant talk of "mackerel" and "fencing" and ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... [135] Apparently soldiers' slang. Probably at some period an officer had bribed his men under the pretence of making special grants for the purchase of nails for ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... stereotyped in modern slang, and yet the idea could not but have existed under other words in the days of those flush individuals, Midas and Croesus. The first of these moneyed gentlemen found gold too plenty for comfort, while the latter, by his unfortunate end, proved that even ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Bucharest) I felt bound to agree with them. For if only one-half of the tales which I heard concerning the gay doings of the elite here were true, then must the wicked little Roumanian capital "take" (to use a slang expression) "a back seat." Apparently this state of affairs has existed for some time, for when Admiral Melville, of the Jeannette, was here twenty years ago, searching the coast for his unfortunate shipmates, he attended a reception given on New Year's ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... to carve out her devious peculiar patterns! An Apache Indian, besmeared with brilliant greases and smelling of the water that never freezes, an understudy to Cupid? Fudge! you will say, or Pshaw! or whatever slang phrase is handy and, prevalent at the moment ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... it yourselves," said Allie doubtfully. "I don't half like it; and if Howard won't help meet him, he ought to keep clear out of the way. But there's one thing about it, boys, you must, you really must, stop talking so much slang. It's bad enough with us girls, and I'm getting to use it as much as you do; but you'll scare Charlie to pieces if you talk ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... up his attitude, less and less like Victor. But it is not to be presumed that he was sinking into mental nothingness. He was not perhaps quite so refined in his language as he might have been, he used slang, and sometimes was inclined to hang his hat on the floor and talk back. He was rather untidy in his dress. But certain compensating qualities of the highest value were appearing in Tim. He had gathered to ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... of the window-frame—for although I was tall, he was a son of Anak—with that air which, never vaunting strength, always made you aware of its repression. I could fancy hearing Mrs. Montresor say, "That air of his! it always fetches women!" for she loved a little slang, by some antipodal attraction of her refinement, and I instinctively stiffened myself, determined it should never fetch me. And here he was calling his allies, the spirits and powers of the dark and terrible mountain heights and depths, and openly giving battle. I don't know why ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... the same time. All the robbers are eager to see what Juan's scheme was. When they find out what Juan has done, and see the holes in the bottom of all the pots, they cannot help laughing. The captain, however, addresses Juan with all the epithets found in a common slang dictionary. The captain now decides never to let Juan stay in the house alone, and from that time on takes him with them ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... her "beach" hat at the most provocative angle, and she knew just when to let Bud catch a slow, sidelong glance—of the kind that is supposed to set a man's heart to syncopatic behavior. She did not do it too often. She did not powder too much, and she had the latest slang at her pink tongue's tip and was yet moderate ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... threes the late horses arrived swaddled in cloths, and surrounded by the usual crowd of bow-legged grooms and diminutive jockeys; while the air reeked with the smell of the stable and the oaths and slang of the men. ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... Realism, before she had put on her capital letter, had divined this near-at-hand truth along with the rest. Lowell, almost the greatest and finest realist who ever wrought in verse, showed us that Elizabeth was still Queen where he heard Yankee farmers talk. One need not invite slang into the company of its betters, though perhaps slang has been dropping its "s" and becoming language ever since the world began, and is certainly sometimes delightful and forcible beyond the reach of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... returns and messages from the other world. Geographically the most favoured stations for wireless heavenly connections seem to be Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles, California. The adherents of this underworld philosophy have a slang of their own, and the result is that their letters, while they spring from the deepest emotions, sound as if they were copied from the same sample book. The better style begins about like this: "Knowing that you are intensely interested in things psychological, I beg to enclose ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... allusion to this tree-climbing episode in his martial career, which, as it happened, had taken place in full view of his retainers, among whom it remained the greatest of jokes. Indeed, he wanted to kill a man, the wag of the party, who gave him a slang name ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... boyish chap, slightly stooped, exceedingly neat, black-haired, and of medium height. He was like Beth only in a "family" manner. His nose was a trifle large for his face, but something in his modest, good-natured way, coupled to his earnest delivery of slang in all his conversation, lent him a certain charm that no ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... But the motive may be worthy, for all that. You are not the only one involved. People who would pass for better than their neighbors will never believe any good purpose in one who does not choose to talk their slang." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... am anxious to establish once and for all, both by plano-inductive and precoordinate systems of logic, the Status of Slang. ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... kitchen, laundry, and sewing-room; nor are you unprofitable because you do not now earn the so many dollars a week you will sometime gain. There is large hope of you, even when you forget yourselves in the use of fashionable slang, because your minds and hearts are open to receive kind warnings, and to learn to despise such terms as mar the beauty of easy, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... that you will never use a foreign word when you can give its meaning in English. And also determine now, definitely, that no matter how popular slang becomes in the less refined circles of society, you will never use it because you know that it is the badge of vulgarity. There is nothing quite as beautiful as good, simple English, when ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... to Cherry as the watchwords of a wrangling match. Fulbert, meantime, made no secret of his contempt for both brothers as mere choristers instead of schoolboys, and exalted himself whenever he detected their ignorance of any choice morceau of slang; while their superior knowledge on any other point was viewed as showing the new-fangled ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lost, it is disastrous. The old feudal distinctions are still perpetuated; the "man" still speaks his "plain Anglo-Saxon," and the "gentleman" still speaks his refined Latinized speech. In every language, it is true, there are social distinctions in speech, and every language has its slang. But in English these distinctions are perpetuated in the very structure of the language. Elsewhere the working-class speak—with a little difference in the quality—a language needing no substantial transformation to become the language ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Poppy straw concentrate is the alkaloid derived from the mature, dried opium poppy. Qat (kat, khat) is a stimulant from the buds or leaves of Catha edulis that is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), phenmetrazine ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... upon the marvellous progress of Scientific Inventions, hailing from the keen-brained West, you could condone the degradation of the English language in the mouths of Shakespeare's countrymen and countrywomen by the use of American slang phrases, common, vulgar, coarse, alternating with choice expressions culled from the vocabulary of the East ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... say, I've chucked some things, An' learned a whole lot more to fill the space. I've slung all slang; crook words 'ave taken wings, An' I 'ave learned to entertain with grace. But when ole Missus Flood comes round our place I don't object to 'er, for all 'er sighs; Becos I likes 'er ways, I likes 'er face, An', most uv all, she ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... Late Latin slang for hirsuta, and always used of nasty places or nasty people; it shall not stay. The species shall be our Viola Seclusa,—Monk's violet—meaning the kind of monk who leads a rough life like Elijah's, or the Baptist's, or Esau's—in another kind. This violet is one of ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... go out to Belgium and get some good 'stuff.' [Stuff, let me say, is the technical or slang term for film pictures.] How would ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... "His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... slang, so fresh and in such variety. So different from your heavy British slang, in which everything approaching the superlative must be one of three things, 'ripping,' with very distinct articulation on the double p, or 'top hole,' or 'awfully jolly.' More recently, ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... He is, as his official expositor, the late Mr. Alfred Hodder, says, "a typical American of the new time." No old-fashioned Democrat would have smoked cigarettes, tossed dice in public for drinks, and "handed out" slang to his constituents; and his unconventionally in these respects is merely an occasional expression of a novel, individual, and refreshing point of view. Mr. Jerome alone among American politicians has made a specialty of plain speaking. He has revolted against the tradition in our politics ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... answered, "I can't make it all out—" she smiled at him—"but I think you are right in saying that it is all O.K." He laughed, and stretched out his long legs comfortably. "You've got the idea. That's the way to get the good of traveling and seeing other kinds of folks. You learn my queer slang words, and I'll ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... goodness to tell me why I was a jolly fool, and so green, as you call it. Pity people can't teach you foreigners something better than slang. ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... hot weather, discomfort, parting, and death. That smell in our nostrils, and Adam's servant in waiting, we naturally fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay window overlooking the park, where they were carting the last of the hay. When twilight fell we would not have candles, but waited for the ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... other terms in common use too plain to need explanation, and there are a good many slang phrases to be found in newspaper descriptions of runs, which are both vulgar and unnecessary. One of the finest descriptions of a fox-hunt ever written is to be found in the account of Jorrocks' day with the "Old Customer," disfigured, unfortunately, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... remember you!" she cried out. "How delightful! I don't see how she ever got onto you"—she made the slang her own—"in the first place, and she must have worked hard to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had swept my memory back to civilization and drawn me from my Golden Bed. O Lalala had all the slang of poker—the poker of the waterfronts of San Francisco and of Shanghai—and evidently he had already taught his eager ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... highly spoken of by those who knew him best. That a journal does not always reflect the editor is as much the fault of society as of the man. So long as the public will pay for gross personalities, obscenity, and slang, decent journals will be outbidden in the market. The fact that the La Crosse Democrat found a ready sale in all parts of the country showed that Mr. Pomeroy fairly reflected the popular taste. While multitudes turned up the whites of their eyes and denounced him in ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... induce a jeweller to purchase them, but on the contrary make him regard the man as a fool, deceived with bits of coloured glass for rubies and sapphires. Major Marvel was not of such. He knew nothing of the slang of the Pharisees, knew little of the language of either the saints or the prophets, had, like most Christians, many worldly ways of looking at things, and yet I think our Lord would have said there ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... himself with the infinitely dignified string-quartet, makes it do light and acrobatic things. There is one interlude of "Petruchka" that is written for snare-drums alone. His work is incrusted with cheap waltzes and barrel-organ tunes. It is gamy and racy in style; full of musical slang. He makes the orchestra imitate the quavering of an old hurdy-gurdy. Of late he has written a ballet for eight clowns. And he is reported to have said, "I should like to bring it about that music be performed in street-cars, while people get out and ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... mothers prematurely aged and neglectful of their coiffure and shoe-heels; simpering maidenhood, acid maidenhood, sophisticated maidenhood; shirt-waisted manhood, flippant manhood, full of strange slang and double negatives unresponsively suspicious manhood, and manhood disillusioned, prematurely tired, burnt out with the weariness of ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... a gilt goblet; and, without the least appearance of effort, working hard to captivate those who were to be won by bold smiles and arch glances. She displayed her person less freely than her colleagues, being, not more modest, but more skilful in the art of seduction. The slang that served for dialogue in her part was delivered in all sorts of intonations, now demure and mischievous, anon strident and mock ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... latest American? I wish you'd find native slang; we used in my day; but I'll tell you why. It's because she's keeping him on till she sees what Eugene'll do. ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... neckcloths, and anxious that their hair shall be parted straight behind. I see them all wear the same tie, the same trowsers, the same boots. I hear them all say the same thing, and dance with the same partners in the same way. I see them go to Europe and return—I hear them talk slang to show that they have exhausted human life in foreign parts and observe them demean themselves according to their idea of the English nobleman. I watch them go in strongly for being "manly," and "smashing the spoonies"—asserting intimacies with certain uncertain ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis |
