"Vernacular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resembles in appearance the two species already described. Blanford speaks of its call as a fine melodious whistle. I would not describe the note as a whistle. To me it sounds like wherefore, wherefore, impressively and sonorously intoned. The vernacular names Boukotako and Kyphulpakka are onomatopoetic, as is Broken Pekoe Bird, by which name the species ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... his parish school (in many such schools he might have acquired Latin and Greek; in fact he did not), to a tutor who read with him some English and French; and he knew a modernised version of Blind Harry's Wallace; Locke's Essay; The Spectator, novels of the day, and vernacular Scots poets of his century, with a world of old Scots songs. These things, and such as these, were Burns's given literary materials. He used them in the only way open to him, in poems written for a rural audience, and published for an Edinburgh public. No classical, no theatrical materials were ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... the forest, they met Athelstane the Thane powdering along the road in the direction of Rotherwood on his great dray-horse of a charger. "Good-by, good luck to you, old brick," cried the Prince, using the vernacular Saxon. "Pitch into those Frenchmen; give it 'em over the face and eyes; and I'll stop at home and take care ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... none too well loved by the greater part of the community, men who, like Quinnion, had served time in jail or penitentiary. Black Steve, who was both proprietor and bartender, and who looked like a low-class Italian, though he spoke the vernacular of the country, was the god of the "dago" quarter, the friend of those who had gotten entangled with the law. Only last year he had killed his man in his own saloon, then gone clear, through the ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... they received here gave them the impetus to go elsewhere, and thus brought them fame and fortune." Whatever foundation there may be for these jibes, they are in themselves a sufficient evidence that Chicago is alive to her opportunities and responsibilities. She is, in her own vernacular, "making, culture hum." Mr. Fuller, I understand, reproached her with her stockyards—an injustice which even Mr. Bernard Shaw would scarcely have committed. Is it the fault of Chicago that the world is carnivorous? Was not "Nature red ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... temporal, and has exhorted the clergy and nobles to employ care and diligence thereon, a fact corroborated by Mary of Guise herself, in a paper, soon to be quoted, of July 1559. {88c} They ask, as they have the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular, for common prayers in the same. They wish for freedom to interpret and discuss the Bible "in our conventions," and that Baptism and the Communion may be done in Scots, and they demand the reform of the detestable ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... the palace were having a good time, and were gaily engaged in sowing the whirlwind, with a sublime disregard for the storm, which it would be theirs to reap, when the King returned to punish. As the vernacular proverb has it, the cat and the roast, the tinder and the spark, and a boy and a girl are ill to keep asunder; and consequently my friends about the palace were often in trouble, by reason of their love affairs, even when the King was at hand; and on his return, after he ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... little better acquainted with Mrs. Sewell, she dropped the genteel elongation of her final syllables, and used such vernacular forms of speech as came first to her. The name of 'Manda Grier seemed to come in at every fourth word with her, and she tired Mrs. Sewell with visits which she appeared unable to bring to a ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... of this in the life of Prince Henry; at present there is only space to notice the general fact. The other lines of John's home government—his reform of criminal procedure, his sanction of the vernacular in legal and official business in place of Latin, his attempt to publish the first collection of Portuguese laws, his settlement of the Court in the true national capital of Lisbon—are only to be linked with the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... the sunshine, the salt air, the savour of the boats and the nets, the limestone cliffs of Gallantry Bower rising steep and white at the head of the village street, with the brilliant sea at the foot; the walks down by the quay pool (not key pool, you understand, but quaay puul in the vernacular), the sails in a good old herring-boat called the Lorna Doone, for we are in ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Both of these men were members of the Confraternita de' Neri, who assumed the duty of comforting condemned prisoners with spiritual counsel, prayer, and exhortation. The narrative, dictated in the choicest vernacular Tuscan, by an artist whose charity and beauty of soul transpire in every line in contrast with the fiercer fortitude of Boscoli, is one of the most valuable original documents for this period which we possess.[4] What is most striking ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... mere jargon; not considering how extravagant a surmise it would be, that a people rude, uncivilized, and separated hundreds of miles from each other, have invented a language. Others who are better informed on the subject, allow that the language brought into Europe with the Gypsies, was really vernacular, of some country; but suppose it is so disguised and corrupted, partly by design, and partly by adventitious events, through length of time, and the continued wandering of these people, that it must be considered a new language, and now used ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... regular use limited to literate minority), Mende (principal vernacular in the south), Temne (principal vernacular in the north), Krio (the language of the re-settled ex-slave population of the Freetown area and ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... the demon, "it would become me to do so, seeing that I have his soul here in my pocket. Thou wilt not expect me to employ the language of the Church. Nathless, I see not wherefore the vernacular ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Kewat. As the village is no doubt named Nonia or Nunia after them, we thus have an instance of all the three designations being applied to the same set of persons. The Murhas say that they came into Narsinghpur from Rewah, and they still speak the Bagheli dialect, though the current vernacular of the locality is Bundeli. The Binds themselves derive their name from the Vindhya (Bindhya) hills. [285] They relate that a traveller passing by the Vindhya hills heard a strange flute-like sound coming out of a clump of bamboos. He ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... detectives are employed is not in the detection of crime and criminals, but in simply watching people, following them, and reporting as accurately as possible their movements. These functions are known in the vernacular as spotting, locating, and trailing. It requires patience, some powers of observation, and occasionally a little ingenuity. The real detective under such circumstances is the man to whom they hand in their reports. Yet much of the most dramatic and valuable work that is done involves no ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... having lost all hope of a return to Florence, though he retained the longing for it, dwelt in Ravenna for a number of years, under the protection of its gracious lord. And here by his teachings he trained many scholars in poetry, especially in the vernacular, which vernacular to my thinking he first exalted and brought into repute amongst us Italians no otherwise than did Homer his amongst the Greeks or Virgil his amongst the Latins. Before him, though it is ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the vernacular," explained Robert with grave mendacity, "is the cake! I have often spoken to you, Miss Oldham, of 'the cake.' Of course, it has also ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... glories to the sun. He has "no figures nor no fantasies, which busy passion draws in the brains of men:" neither the gorgeous machinery of mythologic lore, nor the splendid colours of poetic diction. His style is vernacular: he delivers household truths. He sees nothing loftier than human hopes; nothing deeper than the human heart. This he probes, this he tampers with, this he poises, with all its incalculable weight of thought and feeling, in his ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... every reading lesson, without which there can be no serious teaching of the vernacular. By their means the teacher enters into communication with his pupils; he gets them to speak, he corrects their errors, trains their reason, and forms their taste. It has been said that a teacher able to explain selections in prose and poetry "holds his class in the hollow of his hand." ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... also are primitive words, and may be considered as a part of our vernacular language. They are of equal antiquity with ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... crossing in the world could have accounted for his character; that came straight from the Devil, his master. Gulo, however, was not a cross. He was himself, Gulo, the wolverine, alias glutton, alias carcajou, alias quick-hatch, alias fjeldfras in the vernacular, or, officially, Gulo luscus. But, by whatever name you called him, he did not smell sweet; and his character, too, was of a bad odor. A great man once said that he was like a bear cub with a superadded tail; but that great man cannot have seen his face. If he ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... and fragrant flower. It is used in making garlands and other female ornaments. Krishna is said to have fascinated the milkmaids of Brindabun by playing on his celebrated flute under a Baku'la tree on the banks of the Jumna, which is, therefore, invariably alluded to in all the Sanscrit and vernacular poems relating to his amours ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... on the Italian language. He wrote the Divine Comedy, not in Latin, but in the vernacular Italian as spoken in Florence. The popularity of this work helped to give currency to the Florentine dialect, and in time it became the literary language of Italy. Italian was the first of the Romance tongues to ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... be published at the time of your marriage, in all the English and vernacular printed sheets throughout India, specifically as a scientist whose research will take ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... his undeniable cleverness and the stores of knowledge he had already acquired needed somewhat more of the restraint of tact than his character at that time supplied. People occasionally called him a prig; now and then he received what the vernacular of youth terms 'a sitting upon.' The saving feature of his condition was that he allowed himself to be sat upon gracefully; a snub well administered to him was sure of its full artistic, and did not fail in its moral, effect: there was no vulgar insolence in the young fellow. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... and insignificant similarity of themes is a fault of the work and of the style, ever in high disdain of vernacular harmony, refreshing to be sure, in its saucy audacity, and anon enchanting with a ring of new, fiery chord. As the sonorous theme sings in muted brass, picking strings mockingly play quicker fragments, infecting the rest with frivolous retorts, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... frankly contemptuous. "All you English are mad," he said in the vernacular. "If she die not to-day, she will die to-morrow. And already there are too many ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... (yid'-ish), Yid. Judeo-German, the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe. The basis is an archaic form of German, on which are grafted many words of Hebrew origin, and words from the vernacular ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... exclaimed, in her New England vernacular. "I guess by the looks o' your eyes they didn't turn out ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... haven't made yourself quite clear to me. If I understand you, the Holy Ghost will act by an infusion into us. He will transmute us, renovate our souls by a sort of 'passive purgation'—to drop into the theological vernacular." ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... another, and "Dr. B—tly" another. One of the most eloquent moments in the Comment occurs near the end in a paragraph on what the author conceives to be the follies of the historical method. The use of the slight vernacular poem to parody the Bentleyan kind of classical scholarship was to be tried by Addison himself in Spectator 470 (August 29, 1712) and had a French counterpart in the Chef d'oeuvre d'un inconnu, 1714. A later example was executed by Defoe's ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... open windows of the house. The hospitality was graceful, there was no profound talk but only pleasant chatter. The daughters were glad to have a chance to try their English and I was glad for the moment to slip out of the foreign bond and disport myself for their benefit in my vernacular, but the Professor needed no practice. His English was quite adequate, as, on the other hand, the German of Bancroft ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the choice examples set before them, with swifter movements and with richer results than they could ever have attained, if not thus encouraged. Proverbial axioms flourish copiously in the idiomatic ground and vernacular climate of unlearned, undisciplined, unreflective minds, as thistles on the highway where every ass may gather them. But precious maxims, those "short sentences drawn from a long experience," as Cervantes calls them, are found mostly in the writings of the greatest geniuses, Solomon, Aristotle, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... one may look down the shaded length of the main street, dignified by many an old-fashioned house, to The Bow, an irregular peninsula extending far into the lake and containing some two hundred acres. This estate is the ancestral home of the Champneys, known as Champ-au-Haut, in the vernacular "Champo." At The Bow the highway turns suddenly, crosses a bridge over the Rothel and curves with the curving pine-fringed shores of the lake along the base of the mountain until it climbs the steep ascent that leads to Googe's ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... as in all the ancient voyages and travels, the names of persons, places, and things, are generally given in an extremely vicious orthography, often almost utterly unintelligible, as taken down orally, according to the vernacular modes of the respective writers, without any intimate knowledge of the native language, or the employment of any fixed general standard. To avoid the multiplication of notes, we have endeavoured to supply this defect, by subjoining those names ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... janitor into the room was neither the one nor the other, but a weazened white-faced Londoner, with a shrewd eye and the false, cringing smile of a small shopkeeper. He explained in the strident vernacular of the Cockney that his name was Henry Hobbs—"Enery Obbs" was his own version of it—and he kept a pawnbroker's shop in the Caledonian Road. It was his intention to have called at Scotland Yard earlier, he explained, but his arrangements had been upset by a domestic event ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... worthy of notice is the Cavia australis, called cui in the vernacular from its voice: a timid, social, mouse-coloured little creature, with a low gurgling language, like running babbling waters; in habits resembling its domestic pied relation the guinea pig. It loves to run on clean ground, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... regard with affectionate veneration the life-work of the Reformers, and the theology of the Reformation. Of a later date, and in our own vernacular, we have inherited from the Puritans an indigenous theology, great in quantity and precious in kind,—a legacy that has enriched our age more, perhaps, than the age is altogether willing to acknowledge. At various periods from the time of the Puritans to ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Rashi introduced no innovation. His predecessors, especially his masters, had already made use of them, perhaps in imitation of the Christian commentators, who likewise inserted words of the vernacular in their Latin explanations. The Latin - speaking clergy were often forced to employ the common speech for instructing the people; and in the eleventh century beginnings were made in the translation of the Old ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... you are obliged to pass in the vernacular, Wilson. So you need not take any credit to yourself on ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... laborers on the levee converse in a hybrid language. In the French quarter, every thing is French. The signs on the shops and the street corners, the conversation of the inhabitants and the shouts of the boys who play on the sidewalks, are in the vernacular of La Belle France. In Jackson Square, notices to warn visitors not to disturb the shrubbery, are posted in two languages, the French being first. On one poster I saw the sentence: "Ne touche pas a les fleurs," followed by the literal translation into English: "Don't touch to the flowers." ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... to see through the open door an Igorot boy, stark naked save gee-string and a little open coat, passing the plate. Father Clapp has been here seven years, has compiled a Bontok-English Dictionary, and translated the Gospel of Saint Mark into the vernacular. As already said, he has a school, a sort of hospital; is building a stone church; is full of his work, and deserves the warmest support. It must be very hard to get at what is going on behind the eyes of his native parishioners. For example, shortly before our arrival, a ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... vernacular, and Steve, rising slowly from the ground, and allowing Tige to make friendly acquaintance with ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... greatest change of all lay there in his eyes. Their flaring antagonism had burnt itself out. And when Hogarty spoke it was once more in his smoothly perfect, delightfully measured, best professor-of-English style, for all that his opening remark was couched in the vernacular. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... unprogressive and unpractical. Plato is to him the 'exhaustive generalizer,' beyond whom it is folly to aspire, and by whose stature he measures the nations. Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, Bruno, are only brisk young men translating into the vernacular wittily his good things. St. Augustine, Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg also 'say after him.' Emerson either addresses men whose ignorance he greatly exaggerates, or else the ideal men of some centuries hence. His mission is to the Past or the Future, not to the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... work that has been done. When pruning, for instance, the duffadar should move from one end of the line to the other examining as he goes the trees just finished by the people. It is hardly necessary to say that a fluent command of the vernacular is of the utmost, or I may say, of the most indispensable importance, for, as an old planter once said to me, "A native thinks that a European who can't speak the language is a perfect fool." The reader will find ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... already observed that Naples was a Greek colony, and consequently Greek appears to have continued the vernacular tongue.] ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... century saw it finally conquer the system that for two thousand years had dominated the arithmetic of business. Not a little of the success of the new plan was due to Luther's demand that all learning should go into the vernacular.[606] ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... approach to it is Dios macbayat); and although this may, at first sight, appear to be an insignificant fact, I think, nevertheless, a great deal may be deduced from it, for the deficiency of the word in the Visaya vernacular denotes a deficiency of the idea ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... friend under like circumstances. This is the only excuse that can be offered for him. It was true that Payne regarded himself as a certainty for his colours, as far as anything can be considered certain in this vale of sorrow. But to accuse him of trading on this, and, to use the vernacular, of putting on side, was unjust to ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Artemus Ward and Bret Harte, he first found free play for his comic intransigeance in the broad freedom of the journal for the masses. Brilliant as he was, Artemus Ward seemed most effective only when he spoke in weird vernacular through the grotesque mouthpiece of his own invention. Bret Harte sacrificed more and more of the native flavour of his genius in his progressive preoccupation with the more sophisticated refinements of the purely literary. Mark Twain never lost the ruddy glow of his first ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... of youth when flight from danger seems the only solution. To wreck the lives of others in order to secure her own peace of mind would make her both ridiculous and contemptible in her own eyes, and she had yet to despise herself. She would "stick it out," "see it through," to quote the vernacular of these curious American novels she had been reading; trusting that she had merely been suffering from a flurry of the senses . . . not so remarkable ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Willet, called the Great Bear by the Iroquois, had not spent his whole life in the woods and that when the time came he could tell a tale. There was always the fact that Willet spoke excellent English, so unlike the vernacular of ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... again. "Springes to catch woodcock!" he said to himself, quoting Shakespeare, then went on to reflect in his own vernacular: "The chap is trying to bribe me, confound him! Well, here goes!" Thereupon he said aloud, for they were approaching the station: "If you really would like my company on the way to town I'd be glad to ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... from her the boon of colors gay that he may carry them to victory and receive from her hands a wreath therefor?" Again the Knight of the Cumberland seemed not to know that the Hon. Sam's winged words were meant for him, so the statesman translated them into a mutual vernacular. ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... this just because he had been assured that he need not really change any of his previous beliefs in order to ally himself with a Church that had better architecture and a more artistic ceremonial, and locally a higher social standing. When Anglicans or the Eastern Orthodox come to believe that a vernacular liturgy and a married priesthood and provincial autonomy are of less importance than Catholic unity, and when Roman Catholics can see that the same is of greater moment than a rigid preservation of Renaissance centralization and a cold "non possumus" ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... was low and sepulchral, but either the ghostly apparition that uttered the command had slipped up on its vernacular, or it was the spirit of a bandit. Some demand of the kind was, however, urgently necessary, for George did not, as formerly, show a desire to flee; his belligerent attitude suggested fight and he was a husky specimen with a handy club. Even though he might have suffered a qualm ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the Monastery of Santa Fiora wisely and well. He was devout, and loved long meditations and long prayers; sometimes he had ecstasies. After the example of his spiritual father, St. Francis, he composed songs in the vernacular tongue in celebration of perfect love, which is the love of God. And these exercises were without fault whether of metre or of meaning, for had he not studied the seven liberal Arts ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... of the relative importance of a language as a literary medium is a question of how many people want to read it. There are two classes of these: those to whom it is vernacular, and those who learn it in addition to their own language. The latter class is of the greater importance in proportion to its numbers; a man who has education enough to acquire a foreign language is pretty sure to use it, while many ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... into the American vernacular was quite lost upon the Princess Kalora, who was sitting very still and gazing in a most disconsolate manner at ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... rightfully on Ben Davis, and Ben Davis must buy them. Furthermore, all drinks and general treats that Daylight was guilty of ought to be paid by the house, for Daylight brought much custom to it whenever he made a night. Bettles was the spokesman, and his argument, tersely and offensively vernacular, was unanimously applauded. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Marion Hayden's in the evenings, and from things he let fall, Clayton gathered that the irresponsible group which centered about Marion was, in the boy's own vernacular, rather "shot to pieces." Tommy Hale had gone to England to join the Royal Flying Corps. One or two of them were in Canada, trying to enlist there, and one evening Graham brought home to dinner an inordinately tall ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... interlarding his picture of a French incident with the occasional interjection of Parlez-vous Francais? Yet the comic writers of Paris imagine that they show wit when they pepper their comments with disjointed, irrelevant, and misspelt ejaculations in our vernacular. We have a friend here (we have made dozens) who has a cat she calls To-be—the godfather being 'To-be or not to be! 'All right' appears daily as a witticism; 'Oh, yes!' serves for the thousandth time as a touch of humour. The reason ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... might have expected our train to purl, in default of a stream to perform the part, and I can truly say of it that it arrived with us in a mood so pastoral that I still cannot understand why we did not ask for a fly at the station in a couplet out of Pope. We got the fly easily enough in our prose vernacular, and the driver hid his surprise at our taking it for the little distance to the palace, which it would have been so much pleasanter ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... this tale, I could wish for a pen supernally dipped, or for a metaphysician's plating to my vernacular, or for the linguistic patois of that land off somewhere to the west of Life. Or maybe just a neurologist's chart of Hester's nerve history ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... teasingly, and unconsciously slipped into the vernacular as she returned, "Did you kids think ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... some of his later vernacular poems, approaches the character of the less-cultured broadside literature. To the critical mind it is somewhat amusing to note the enthusiasm with which the modern Dissenting and Puritan class contemplates the ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... both clumsy and introduces the quaint and unauthorized image of a pig, but it is unmistakably vivid. Pope is equally troubled when he has to deal with Homer's downright vernacular. He sometimes ventures apologetically to give the original word. He allows Achilles to speak pretty vigorously to Agamemnon in ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... to identify me in case I get into a scrape with the 'bobbies.'" This last I said with a thrill; truly, I was gripping hold of the vernacular. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... yet defending them with the scornful fierceness of one who hated their oppressors more; a man honest and of statesmanlike mind, who lent himself to the basest services of party politics for purely selfish ends; a poet whose predominant faculty was that of disidealizing; a master of vernacular style, in whose works an Irish editor finds hundreds of faults of English to correct; strangest of all, a middle-aged clergyman of brutal coarseness, who could inspire two young, beautiful, and clever women, the one with ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... cogent and consummate technique? Did he for a single instant imagine himself the inspired reformer of public morality? Did he believe that his style was elegant and polished? Indeed, he must have effected an appreciable refinement of the vernacular of his age to produce his lively verse, but without losing the robust vitality of "Volkswitz." Or is it true that nothing further than amusement lay within ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... your own has said, Jefferson was here using the old vernacular of English aspirations after a free, manly, and well-ordered political life—a vernacular rich in stately tradition and noble phrase, to be found in a score of a thousand of champions in many camps—in Buchanan, Milton, Hooker, Locke, Jeremy Taylor, Roger Williams, and many ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the age; and, as regards the two universities, and the enormous responsibility they undertake for the books which they sanction by their official examinations for degrees, the name of Paley is their great opprobrium. But, on the other hand, for style, Paley is a master. Homely, racy, vernacular English, the rustic vigor of a style which intentionally foregoes the graces of polish on the one hand, and of scholastic precision on the other—that quality of merit has never been attained in a degree so eminent. This ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... became acquainted with Eliza Gurnsey. I could hardly help it, for she lived in the hotel where I stopped, and although she was full thirty-five years old, she was altogether the most attractive woman in the house. She was agreeable, good-looking, intelligent, and what the vernacular calls "smart." At all events, she was much too smart for me, as ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... a number of exogamous septs or clans which serve as a table of affinities in regulating marriage. The vernacular term for these is kul. Some of the septs are named after natural objects or animals, others from titles or nicknames borne by the reputed founder of the group, or from some other caste to which he may have belonged, while others again are derived ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... open. A lottery with 1500 square miles of territory as the sweepstakes and 100,000 people playing its wheel of fortune. Trying to describe its size and sweep and significance, I find myself, in the vernacular ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... classic. It was only the rich glow of exercise and the jaunty gypsy hat that had given the first impression of something like beauty. In her right hand, which was ungloved, she daintily held, by its short stem, a chestnut burr which the squirrel in its alarm had dropped, and now, in its own shrill vernacular, was scolding about so vociferously. She was glancing around for some means to break it open, and Gregory had scarcely time to notice her fine dark eyes, when, as if remembering the rock on which he had been sitting, she advanced toward ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... thought Raven, returning to the Charlottian vernacular, "very small potatoes and few ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... name by which the University of Cambridge, Eng., was formerly known. At present it is sometimes designated by this title in poetry, and in addresses written in other tongues than the vernacular. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... great friends. It was a pretty sight seeing the fearless small boy in his white suit, bare legs, and little sun-helmet, standing in front of the great beast who could have crushed him to a wafer in one second, and ordering him in the vernacular, with his shrill child's voice, to kneel. It was a more curious sight seeing the huge animal at once obey his little mentor, and, struggling with the infirmities and rheumatic joints of old age (to which, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... it reaches the reign of Alfred that the chronicle suddenly widens into the vigorous narrative, full of life and originality, that marks the gift of a new power to the English tongue. Varying as it does from age to age in historic value, it remains the first vernacular history of any Teutonic people, and, save for the Gothic translations of Ulfilas, the earliest and most ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Far away in that bearing. This term, as down west, &c., is an Americanism, recently adopted into our vernacular. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Chasid, which in the vernacular is a saint, but in the actual a member of the sect of the Chasidim whose centre is Galicia. In the eighteenth century Israel Baal Shem, "the Master of the Name," retired to the mountains to meditate on philosophical truths. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and chain, and was, therefore, not available to play the part of interpreter, it became necessary for Butler to secure the services of a man who understood enough English to translate his orders into the vernacular; and because this unfortunate fellow was necessarily always at Butler's elbow, he became the scapegoat upon whose unhappy head the sins and shortcomings of the others were visited in the form of perpetual virulent abuse, until the man's life positively became a burden to him, to such an extent, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... to preach from notes. I understood one word—the name of God; but the preacher managed his voice with taste, used rare and expressive gestures, and made a strong impression of sincerity. The plain service, the vernacular Bible, the hymn-tunes mostly on an English pattern—'God save the Queen,' I was informed, a special favourite,—all, save some paper flowers upon the altar, seemed not merely but austerely Protestant. It is thus the Catholics have met their ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these Slavonic translations of the Scriptures, the Church Services, and other books, and the preachers in the vernacular for the infant Russian nation? The books had been translated about one hundred and twenty-five years previously, for the benefit of a small Slavonic tribe, the Moravians. This tribe had been baptized by German ecclesiastics, whose books and speech, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... ordinary education than Latin or French. Therefore it would be mere affectation to copy the later orthography of Chaucer, or to interlard one's sentences with obsolete words. The only course seems to be a fair translation of the vernacular of the period of the tale into our own everyday English. The Author anticipated this objection in the preface to his earlier volume. He repeats his answer for those who may not have seen the former book. A similar rule has guided him in the orthography of proper ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... exclaimed, and then, in the vernacular of the great apes which constant association with the anthropoids had rendered the common language of the Oparians: "You have come back to me! La has ignored the mandates of her religion, waiting, always waiting for Tarzan—for her Tarzan. She has taken no mate, for in all the world ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... despising the queernesses of the other, but of them all I found the Pocket Hunter most acceptable for his clean, companionable talk. There was more color to his reminiscences than the faded sandy old miners "kyoteing," that is, tunneling like a coyote (kyote in the vernacular) in the core of a lonesome hill. Such a one has found, perhaps, a body of tolerable ore in a poor lead,—remember that I can never be depended on to get the terms right,—and followed it into the heart ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... in which these stories are presented is the language in which they were collected and written down,—English. Perhaps no apology is required for not printing the vernacular herewith; nevertheless an explanation might be made. In the first place, the object in recording these tales has been a literary one, not a linguistic one. In the second place, the number of distinctly different languages represented by the originals might be baffling even to ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... ower many novels,' said the doctor, lapsing into the vernacular. 'Well, your notion is not unthinkable, nor pheesically impossible. She's a queer one, Jean Bower, that waked the corpse, sure enough. However, you'll soon be on the spot, and can examine the case for yourself. Mr. Logan has no idea but that the body was stolen for purposes of blackmail.' He ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... lads,' said he, 'have at them in the morning with heavy hands and light consciences.' He then kindly greeted Mac-Ivor and Waverley, who requested to know his opinion of their situation. Why, you know Tacitus saith, "In rebus bellicis maxime dominalur Fortuna," which is equiponderate with our vernacular adage, "Luck can maist in the mellee." But credit me, gentlemen, yon man is not a deacon o' his craft. He damps the spirits of the poor lads he commands by keeping them on the defensive, whilk of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... this projectile power, Might land on Ilion's highest tower, All safe and sound, in battle array, With howitzers prepared to play, And muskets to the muzzles rammed;— Why, the town would be utterly smashed and jammed, And positively, as the phrase is Vernacular, be "sent ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... possession of the gifts of Aphrodite. For a woman can never be truly beautiful who does not possess intelligence. It is a matter of the utmost indifference to me what studies my ideal has pursued. She may be a panglot or she may scarcely know her vernacular. If she speak French and German and read Latin and Greek, it is well. If she know conics and curves it is well; if she be able to integrate the vanishing function of a quivering infinitesimal, it is well; if from a disintegrating track which ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... earliest topographical survey with which we are acquainted was Icelandic; the cosmogony of the Odin religion was formulated, and its doctrinal traditions and ritual reduced to a system, by Icelandic archaeologists; and the first historical composition ever written by any European in the vernacular, was the product of Icelandic genius. The title of this important work is "The Heimskringla," or world-circle, [Footnote: So called because Heimskringla (world-circle) is the first word in the opening sentence of the manuscript which catches the eye.] and its author was—Snorro ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... claims to the public favour and attention; he was an illiterate old steward, whose partiality to the family, in which he was bred and born, must be obvious to the reader. He tells the history of the Rackrent family in his vernacular idiom, and in the full confidence that Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy Rackrent's affairs will be as interesting to all the world as they were to himself. Those who were acquainted with the manners of a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... a place sacred to the Muse; she inspired (really to a considerable extent) Tennant's vernacular poem "Anster Fair"; and I have there waited upon her myself with much devotion. This was when I came as a young man to glean engineering experience from the building of the breakwater. What I gleaned, I am sure I do not know; but indeed I had already my own private ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most interesting of Aelfric's writings is his Colloquium, designed to teach Latin in the monastery at Winchester. The pupils were required to learn the Latin translation of his dialogues in the Anglo-Saxon vernacular. Some of these dialogues are today valuable illustrations of the social and industrial life of the time. The following is part of the conversation between the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... English love the Bible, and Handel knew well how to wed its beautiful words to noble music. He was happy in having at his command the magnificent prose of the Bible and the magnificent verses of Milton. I, too, am fascinated by the noble language of the Scriptures, and I have used it both in the vernacular and in the sounding Latin of the Vulgate. And I am haunted even now by the words of one of the Psalms which seem to call for an appropriate setting. ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... barefoot, and even now tended their own cow, as an all but inconceivable absurdity; and he resented, more than he could have thought possible, the entertainment of such a degrading idea in the mind of Mrs. Glasford. Indignation prevented him from replying; while she went on, getting more vernacular as she proceeded. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... intended to survey and illustrate the development of the vernacular literatures of mediaeval and Europe; and for that purpose it is unnecessary to busy ourselves with more than a part of the Latin writing which, in a steadily decreasing but—until the end of the last century—an always considerable ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in Jowett's translation of Plato—which is as modern in feeling and phrase as anything done in Boston—in the naif and direct Herodotus, and, above all, in the King James vernacular translation of the Bible, which is the great text-book of all ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... advantage in the character of its population. And in addition to these we have the undoubted and constantly increasing supremacy of the English language. Just as during the Middle Ages Latin was the vernacular of the learned classes, and as to-day French is the language of diplomacy in Europe, so is English the common tongue in all the commercial localities of the globe. With English a man can commit himself to foreign travel anywhere, ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various |
