"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bombinating mellifluously in a void. The precision of logic was in them. The precision of even tempers. The precision of aloof eyes fastened upon finalities. Theoretical radicals. Theoretical conservatives. Theoretical philosophers. Any appellation preceded by the adjective theoretical fitted them snugly. Of contact with the hurdy-gurdy of existence which he as a journalist felt under the ideas of the day, there was none. Life in the minds of the intellectual staff of the New Opinion smoothed ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... The adjective "mystical" is technically applied, most often. to states that are of brief duration. Of course such hours of rapture as the last two persons describe are mystical experiences, of which in a later lecture I shall have much to say. Meanwhile ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Gyles Goosecappe? I assure your soule, they are as subtill with their suters, or loves, as the latine Dialect, where the nominative Case, and the Verbe, the Substantive, and the Adjective, the Verbe, and the [ad]Verbe, stand as far a sunder, as if they were perfect strangers one to another, and you shall hardly find them out; but then learne to Conster, and perse them, and you shall find them prepared and acquainted, and agree together ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... Greeks of the historical period Viewed these imposing structures with as much astonishment as do we, and attributed them (of at least those in Argohs) to the Cyclopes, a mythical folk, conceived in this connection as masons of superhuman strength. Hence the adjective Cyclopian or Cyclopean, whose meaning varies unfortunately in modern usage, but which is best restricted to walls of the Tirynthian type; that is to say, walls built of large blocks not accurately fitted together, the interstices being filled with small ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... was Anderida, that is, the Holy Oak; from dar, oak (Sanskrit, daru, a tree), and da, good. It is worth remarking that this idea survives in the personal name, Holyoak; for who ever heard of "Holyelm," or "Holyash," or a similar form compounded of the adjective and the name of any other tree than the oak. If there is an exception it is in the name of the holly. The Cornish Celtic word for holly was Celyn, from Celli (or Kelli), a grove; literally a grove-one; so that the holly was probably planted as a grove or screen round the sacred ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... adapted to the intrinsic nature of the pianoforte, and hence fail to arouse the enthusiasm of those whose taste has been formed by the works of Chopin and Schumann. It was no doubt an instinctive antipathy to Beethoven's unpianistic style (if the adjective be permissible), which prevented Chopin from admiring Beethoven as deeply as he did some other composers, whom he would have admitted to be his inferiors. And Beethoven himself does not seem to have regarded his pianoforte works ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... crisp as autumn ice and bitter as gallberries. Colonel Clark had no respect whatever for Hamilton, to whom he had applied the imperishable adjective "hair-buyer General." On the other hand Governor Hamilton, who felt keenly the disgrace of having to equalize himself officially and discuss terms of surrender with a rough backwoodsman, could not conceal his ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Agreement with Antecedents Person Gender Rules Governing Gender Number Compound Antecedents Relative Interrogative Case Forms Rules Governing Use of Cases Compound Personal Compound Relative Adjective Miscellaneous Cautions ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... original, there is an agreement not only in the sense but in the expression, it being the same Greek adjective which is rendered "strait" in the Acts, and "exact" ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... a, atl, which signifies water, war, and the top of the head. (Molina, Vocab. en lengua mexicana y castellana, etc.) From this comes a series of words, such as atlan, on the border of or amid the water, from which we have the adjective Atlantic. We have also atlaca, to combat or be in agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart from the water, and in the preterit makes atlaz. A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... metre of Locksley Hall without its music, merely its fine madness and not its fine magic. Still, elsewhere there is good work, and Caliban in East London has a great deal of power in it, though we do not like the adjective 'knockery' even ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... sounds, as a ship out of soundings, Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings, Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle, Deaf to even the definite article— No verbal message was worth a pin, Though you hired an earwig to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... words is sometimes linked by syllables of no particular significance. Strictly speaking, the Indian tongues consist only of the verb, which may be said to absorb all the other parts of speech. Declensions, articles, and cases are deficient; the adjective has a verbal termination; the idea expressed by the noun takes a verbal form; every thing is conjugated, nothing declined. The conjugation changes with every slight variation in the action spoken of. For instance, the same word will not express two similar actions performed, the ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... thought to pique him with this adjective, she was disarmed by the heartiness of his admission, "As green as grass! But I'd like to help you all the same, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... successful in sticking the epithet "wanton" to Ganymede, that even Mr. Dyce, with his clear sight, did not see that the very word he wanted was the next word before him. It puts one in mind of a man looking for his spectacles who has them already across his nose. "Wanton" is a noun as well as an adjective; and, to prevent it from being mistaken for an epithet applied to Ganymede, it will in future be necessary to place after it a comma, when the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... from the late premier, I suppose. He merely forgot an adjective—it is cheap bread that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... time that Darwin's views were first made public, many thought that they were subversive of Christianity, so, even now, some whose acquaintance with the problem and its history is of a superficial character, are inclined when they see the word creation, even with the qualifying adjective "special" prefixed to it, used in contradistinction to evolution, to imagine that the theory of creation, and of course of a Creator, must fall to the ground if evolution should be proved to be the true explanation of ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... sneer is intended in this adjective. Except in one or two of the personages of Les Egarements, Crebillon's intended gentlemen are nearly always well-bred, however ill-moralled they may be, and his ladies (with the same caution) are ladies. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... thirty-seven years from Waterloo, and my remembrances upon this subject go back to a period lying much behind that great era), I used to be annoyed and irritated by the false interpretation given to the Greek word aion, and given necessarily, therefore, to the adjective aionios as its immediate derivative. It was not so much the falsehood of this interpretation, as the narrowness of that falsehood, which disturbed me. There was a glimmer of truth in it; and precisely that ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... not. He did not know what he felt. He wondered, as he looked, if she were one of "the multitude," and then the fragment of a text slipped through his brain: "The Friend of publicans and sinners." "The Friend": the little adjective struck him as never before. Had they ever had another? He frowned to himself at the thought, and could not help wondering vaguely what his Vicar or the Canon would have done in Travalini's. Then he wondered instantly ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... to Whitmonby and Dacier amid the ejaculations, and whispered: 'A lady's way of telling the story!—and excuseable to her:—she had to Jonah the adjective. What the poor fellow said was—' He murmured the sixty-pounder adjective, as in the belly of the whale, to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... we poets! The "language of Love" Is a phrase we employ full oft; But whenever we do, we prefix thereto, You've noticed, the adjective "soft." ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... snoopin' and snoodgin'. Oh, yes, you want to know WHY I've got an extry copy-book and another 'Rithmetic, Miss Curiosity. Well, what would you give to know? Want to see if they're PRETTY" (with infinite scorn at the adjective). "No, they ain't PRETTY. That's all you girls think about—what's PRETTY and what's curious! Quit now! Come! Don't ye see teacher lookin' ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... Los Angeles newspaper devoted a whole page to the coming event. Adjective was piled on adjective, split infinitive on split infinitive. The dinner was to be given in the ballroom of the hotel.... The bank accounts of the assembled guests would total $400,000,000.... The terrapin had been specially imported from Baltimore.... ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, or Wallis ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... who had preceded him avoided, but which constantly manifested itself in the richer manner of his own contemporaries—the abuse of treating the uninflected English language as if it were an inflected language, in which variations and distinctions of case and gender and number help to connect adjective with substantive, and relative with antecedent. Sometimes, though less often, he distorts the natural order of the English in order to secure the Latin desideratum of finishing with the most emphatic and important words of the clause. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... corrected her. "Father Ricardo always says: 'Heaven, for some great inscrutable purpose, has mercifully vouchsafed this wondrous power to us, poor'—or humble or unworthy; the first adjective of that kind he can catch—'priests.' I like the short way ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... strictly conform to the laws we find established. Your correspondents C.B. and A.E.B. (Vol. ii., p. 23.) seem to me strangely to misconceive the real point at issue between us. To a question by the latter, why I should attempt to derive "News" indirectly from a German adjective, I answer, because in its transformation into a German noun declined as an adjective, it gives the form which I contend no English process will give. The rule your correspondents deduce from this, neither of them, it appears, can understand. As I am not certain that their ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... the price of entry. Indeed no such performance had ever before been seen in the whole history of popular amusement. And in describing the affair the next morning as "unique" the Birmingham Daily Post for once used that adjective with absolute correctness. The policemen tried again and yet again. They got within feet, within inches, of their prey, only to be dragged away by the mysterious protector of militant maidens—centrifugal force. Probably never before in the annals of the struggle for political freedom ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... principle which is indifferentiable is this "I am that I am" and the manifold modes of manifestation can only exist in reference to it. The eternal ignorance consists in this, that as there is but one substantive, but numberless adjectives, each adjective is capable of designating the All. Viewed in time the most permanent object or mood of the great knower at any moment represents the knower, and in a sense binds it with limitations. In fact, time itself is one of these infinite moods, and so is space. The only progress in Nature is the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... sun is a body shining. But in these cases the words 'metal' and 'body' are unmistakable tautology, since 'metal' is implied in gold and 'body' in sun. But, as we have seen, any of these kinds of word, substantive, adjective, or participle, may occur syncategorematically in connection with others to ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... concerned; in a word, classic, romantic, impressionistic art is doomed; only symbolism will endure; for symbolism only is there a future. Signor Marinetti, who coined the hideous word, "Futurism," goes still further. Literature, too, must throw off the yoke of syntax. The adjective must be abolished, the verb of the infinite should be always employed; the adverb must follow the adjective; every substantive should have its double; away with punctuation; you must "orchestrate" your language (this outrivals Rene Ghil); ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... always a favorite game when a party has reached its frivolous mood. The method of playing is this: Sheets of paper and pencils are handed round, and every one writes at the head (1) an adjective suitable to be applied to a man, such as "Handsome." This word is then folded over so that it cannot be read, and each paper is passed on to the next person. The name of a man (2) is then written, either some one you know, or a public person, such as the president or Mr. Carnegie. This in turn is ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... go to sleep, and now and then Jacky complains of being "skeezed." More room is made for him. Presently Tommy says: "Mother! listen to them (adjective) little possums. I'd like to ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... glow and warmth and deep texture of a famous picture, and what you write will mean something to those who know the master's work; you may even conjure up an image before untutored eyes. But neither minute description nor well-turned phrase, neither sensuous adjective nor spiritual smile can tell half the truth of ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... China; but he must do it. He represents the vast majority of mankind. To surrender would be far worse than physical death. There is no way out unless the white world gives up such insult as its modern use of the adjective "yellow" indicates, or its connotation of "chink" and "nigger" implies; either it gives up the plan of color serfdom which its use of the other adjective "white" implies, as indicating everything decent and every part ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... de Bohun. While, if he holds that kind hearts are more than coronets, he has an alternative descent from some medieval le bon. This adjective, used as a personal name, gave also Bunn and Bunce; for the spelling of the latter name cf. Dance for Dans, and Pearce for Piers, the nominative of Pierre (Alternative Origins, Chapter I), which also survives in Pears and Pearson. Swain may go back ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... it is interesting to notice the more assertive standpoint lately adopted by the charming Mexican poet, Luis G. Urbina, in his recent "La Vida Literaria de Mexico," where, without undue national pride he claims the right to use the adjective Mexican in qualifying the letters of his remarkable country. Urbina shows that different physiological and psychological types have been produced in his part of the New World; why, then, should the changes stop there? Nor have they ceased at that point, as Senor Urbina's delightful and ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... as in the above examples, although exceptions will be found, e.g., when the adjective recalls to our mind a quality which is already known to belong to it, it generally ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... was not being turned into a howling wilderness; and she observed, as is often done so astutely, that "when you do find a neat, capable, colored help, it's as good help as you can have." Which you may notice is just as true without the third adjective as with. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... laughing as I looked up on him, "shall be the 'Annals of Cicely' over again; wherewith I thought thou wert not compatient." [Pleased, satisfied; the adjective of compassion.] ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... her "Patty," or "Pat," both of which names were in use at the French convent school she has lately left. But I think she will have to be "Patsey" for me, as to my mind it's more endearing. And "endearing" is a particularly suitable adjective for her. Constantly, when looking at the creature, I find myself wanting to hum, "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms," etc. There are simply crowds of them—charms, I mean. Big blue eyes under those eyelashes, and above them, too, for the under lashes are a special feature; clouds ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... The word furu in the third line is made to do double duty,—as the adjective, furu[i], "ancient"; and as the verb furu, "to shake." The old term nama-kuhi (lit., "raw head") means a human head, freshly-severed, from which the blood is ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... English language, the Daisy has had little influence, though some have derived "lackadaisy" and "lackadaisical" from the Daisy, but there is, certainly, no connection between the words. Daisy, however, was (and, perhaps, still is) a provincial adjective in the eastern counties. A writer in "Notes and Queries" (2nd Series, ix. 261) says that Samuel Parkis, in a letter to George Chalmers, dated February 16, 1799, notices the following provincialisms: "Daisy: remarkable, extraordinary excellent, as 'She's a Daisy lass to work,' ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... remarked her shining brown hair. It frizzled like a furze-bush about her tiny face, and curled over her forehead. Her white even teeth showed prettily between her lips. She was not without points, but notwithstanding these it could not be said that she deserved the adjective pretty; and he was already convinced that it was not good looks that prejudiced her in Father Peter's eyes. Nor was the excuse that her singing attracted too much attention an honest one. What Father Peter did not like ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... or "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?" "Oh, against all rule, my lord, most ungrammatically! Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus—stopping as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice a dozen times, three seconds, and ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... rises from one to two feet high in the woods throughout a southerly and westerly range. As several other skullcaps have distinctly saw-edged leaves, this plant might have been given a more distinctive adjective, thinks one who did not have the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... term Hindustani not only survives, but survives in a variety of significations. The word is an adjective, pertaining to Hindustan, and in English it has become the name either of the people of Hindustan or of their language. It is in the latter sense that the name is particularly confusing. The way out of the difficulty lies in first associating ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... and rubbing it into a polish with a cocoanut shell, suddenly rose to her feet and kissed her hand to me with a grace worthy of a duchess. Somewhat startled at this unexpected salutation from the fairer, or the softer sex—I am in some doubt as to the proper adjective in this case—I gazed rather blankly at her without replying; but she dropped on her knees again and went on with her work, satisfied doubtless that she at least knew the proprieties. It is this submissive respectfulness of the blacks that makes it pleasant living among ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... English language—more favourable to narrative poetry at least—than that which has been commonly termed heroic verse,"[363] and he proceeded to show that the first half-dozen lines of Pope's Iliad were each "bolstered out" with a superfluous adjective. "The case is different in descriptive poetry," he added, "because there epithets, if they are happily selected, are rather to be sought after than avoided.... But if in narrative you are frequently compelled to tag your substantives with adjectives, ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... seek Father, with whom I found him an hour later in the great chamber, and both right deep in public matter, whereof I do love to hear them talk at times, but Milly and Edith be no wise compatient [the lost adjective of compassion] therewith. Anstace came with me to our chamber, and said she had ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... The title of the work, in manuscript, from which the grammatical notices have been elaborated is Arte y Vocabulario de la lingua Dohema, Heve Eudeva; the adjective termination of the last and first name being evidently Spanish, as is also the plural terminations used elsewhere in some of the modifications of those words. We have only the definition of Heve with certainty given as "people;" to the word "nation" in the vocabulary, there being attached ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... would be "newes," thus spelt and probably pronounced the same as in England. That the word is not derived from the English adjective "new"—that it is not of English manufacture at all—I feel well assured: in that case the "s" would be the sign of the plural: and we should have, as the Germans have, either extant or obsolete, also "the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... imagination, in the metaphorical faculty, or whatever else we may choose to call it. Nor did he perceive or describe visible things, visible effects, in their own unmetaphorical shapes and colours: not a line of description, not an adjective can be found in his works except such as may be absolutely indispensable for topographical or similar intelligibility; Alfieri obviously cared as little for beautiful sights as for beautiful sound. This being the case, everything that we might call distinctly poetical, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... our first Sunday we attended the Free Kirk in the morning, and the Established in the evening. The bonnets of the Free Kirk were so much the more elegant that we said to one another, "This is evidently the church of society, though the adjective 'Free' should by rights attract the masses." On the second Sunday we reversed the order of things, and found the Established bonnet much finer than the Free bonnets, which was a source of mystification to us, until we discovered that it was a question of morning or evening service, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... T. and Ram.) is in the Crusca Italian transformed into an adjective, "vaselle vernicate d'oro," and both Marsden and Pauthier have substantially adopted the same interpretation, which seems to me in contradiction with the text. In Pauthier's text the word is vernigal, pl. vernigaux, which he explains, I know not on ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... at once to lean upon existences and to imitate the structure of things. We distinguish the parts of speech, for instance, in subservience to distinctions which we make in ideas. The feeling or quality represented by an adjective, the relation indicated by a verb, the substance or concretion of qualities designated by a noun, are diversities growing up in experience, by no means attributable to the mere play of sound. The parts of speech are therefore representative. Their inflection is representative too, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... comprehend where the difficulty lay! So wags the world. Tempora mutantur—excuse me for quoting the Etruscan. What would we do without the Atalantic telegraph? (Pundit says Atlantic was the ancient adjective.) We lay to a few minutes to ask the cutter some questions, and learned, among other glorious news, that civil war is raging in Africa, while the plague is doing its good work beautifully both in Yurope and Ayesher. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... been that, and in the recent past he had managed to acquire a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth half-way across his cheek. Even when his face was in repose he had an odd expression; and when, as he chanced to do now, he smiled, odd became a mild adjective, quite inadequate for purposes of description. It was not an unpleasant face, however. Unquestionably genial, indeed. There was something in it that had a quality of ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... words as "the castled crag" in relation to the Rhine, since no commonplace mind of the present day acquainted with his works but has fallen back on "the castled crag" to describe Drachenfels or Marksburg or Rheinfels, because, forsooth, its own English is too limited to supply a better adjective. So it is that conventional and inadequate English is perpetuated and individual force and expression are lost because people accept the ideas of others and will not seek language ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... essence of hundreds of pages always employed to establish the setting, to sketch the characters, and to pile up observations and minute details. Then the chosen words would be so unexchangeable that they would do duty for many others, the adjective placed in such an ingenious and definite fashion that it could not be displaced, opening such perspectives that the reader could dream for whole weeks on its sense at once precise and complex, could record the present, reconstruct ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... a copula, a bridge, a link, a word connecting sentences? That is undoubtedly its use, but what is its origin?" Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this question satisfactorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians, "familiar as his garter," when he said, "It is the common pronoun, adjective, or participle, that, with the noun, thing or proposition, implied, and the particular example following it." So he thought, and so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and writers upon grammar. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... softening adjective, "I have learnt with pain and indignation that you have dishonoured yourself again by breaking the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics. With still greater pain and indignation do I learn that your name has become in a few short days a byword, that you have discarded the weapon of false, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... reforming association arise, I beg to recommend to its attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective New prefixed to them, and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the country. I am for none of these second-hand appellations, that stamp us a second-hand people, and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the end of time. Odds my life! Mr. Editor, I hope and trust we are ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... [Greek: Holoitrochous].] A word borrowed from Homer, signifying properly a round stone fit for rolling, or a stone that has been made round by rolling, as a pebble in the sea. It was originally an adjective, with [Greek: petros] understood. Most critics suppose it to be from [Greek: holos] and [Greek: trecho], totus teres atque rotundus. Liddell and Scott derive it from [Greek: eilo], volvo. ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... Article, The Noun or Substantive, The Pronoun, The Adjective, The Verb, The Adverb, The Preposition, ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... by all these earlier pictures is their artlessness and often their absolute ugliness. Quaint is the highest adjective that fits them. In books of the later period not a few blocks of earlier date and of really fine design reappear; but in the chap-books quite 'prentice hands would seem to have been employed, and the result ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... sonny,' said he, in response to my salutation. 'Take care of your ——y self.' (His favourite adjective had long ceased to have any meaning whatever for this good fellow. He now used it even as some ladies use inverted commas, or other commas, in writing. And sometimes, when he had occasion to use a word as long as, say, 'impossible,' he would actually ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... between two spurs, at the head of a blind gully behind Mount Buckaroo, where there was a more or less dusty patch, barely defined even in broad daylight by a spidery dog-legged fence on three sides, and a thin "two-rail" (dignified with the adjective "split-rail"—though rails and posts were mostly of saplings split in halves) running along the frontage. In about the middle of it a little slab hut, overshadowed by a big stringy-bark shed, was pointed out ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... An adjective is a word used to qualify, limit, or define a noun, or a word or phrase which has the value of a noun. Nouns are ordinarily very general and indefinite in meaning, for example, man conveys only a very general idea. To make that idea definite ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... these exegetical commentaries, the Northern reader probably needs to be informed that the phrase "peerten up" means substantially 'to spur up', and is an active form of the adjective "peert" (probably a corruption of 'pert'), which is so common in the South, and which has much the signification of "smart" in New England, as e.g., a "peert" horse, in antithesis to a "sorry" — i.e., poor, mean, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... haven't any more ideas of grammar than a broomstick. You know I called 'cat' a conjunction the other day. Now, you shall help me in grammar, for I'm blessed if I know whether I'm a noun or an adjective, and I'll pay a dollar towards ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... they take under the sun. As it was—having with all his three livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own—he remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not making any merit of that renunciation, but ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... adder should be nadder (A.-S. nddre). An amusing confusion has arisen in respect to the Ridings of Yorkshire, of which there are three. The word should be triding, but the t has got lost in the adjective, as West Triding became West Riding. The origin of the word has thus been quite lost sight of, and at the first organisation of the Province of Upper Canada, in 1798, the county of Lincoln was divided into four ridings and the county of York into ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... terms Trachytic porphyry, Trachytic tuff, etc., merely refer to the same rock under different conditions of mechanical aggregation or crystalline development which would be more correctly expressed by the use of the adjective, as porphyritic trachyte, etc., but as these terms are so commonly employed it is considered advisable to direct the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... At that unhappy adjective, Sampson jumped up, cast away his patient's hand, forgot her existence—she was but a charming individual—and galloped ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... she conscientiously say, "the celebrated Dr. Eynhardt." He had no military title, and to introduce him as "the handsome Dr. Eynhardt" would hardly do. Fortunately she had no need to mention the latter adjective. The ladies observed without further assistance how remarkably handsome this gentleman was with his girlish complexion, silky, raven-black hair and beard, and lustrous dark eyes. Charming lips drew him constantly ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... woman's bairn, Maggie?" answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a noun and then an adjective that crosses out the noun. An adjective qualifies, it cannot contradict. Don't say, "Give me a patriotism that is free from all boundaries." It is like saying, "Give me a pork pie with no pork in it." Don't say, "I look forward to that larger religion that shall have no special dogmas." ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... independence, indomitable will, and never-ceasing purpose to "get on," which is a characteristic of the New England women, and which may be summed up in the expressive adjective "capable." Armed with this power, she cheerfully teaches school, makes dresses, binds books, or "keeps house," considering no honest work degrading, and proving herself ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... 8vo. containing 500 pages, on the Superstitions, Ghosts, Legends, &c. of all parts of the principality, to be delivered before February 3, 1831. Now when the limited period proposed for the collection of 500 pages of matter, and the above little adjective all is considered, it must appear obvious that such an Herculean labour is not capable of being accomplished by one individual alone.—Imagining it, therefore, to be a matter of impossibility to perform what the very reverend gentleman requires, I cannot consistently with propriety ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... Figurae Dictionis') the fallacy built on the grammatical structure of language, from men's usually taking for granted that paronymous (or conjugate) words, i.e., those belonging to each other, as the substantive, adjective, verb, etc., of the same root, have a precisely corresponding meaning; which is by no means universally the case. Such a fallacy could not indeed be even exhibited in strict logical form, which would ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Dalrymple bit her lip but she returned his gaze steadily enough. "The adjective is somewhat strong. Perhaps I might have done what you say, a little bit—for which," with an accent of self-scorn, "I am sorry, as I have ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... formerly no distinction between the verbal adjective and the present participle; but the Academy lays down one not very easy ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... of philosophy and politics. Whatever their value, De Quincey has of course no claim to be an originator. He not only had not strength to stand alone, but he belonged to a peculiar side-current of English thought. He was the adjective of which Coleridge was the substantive; and if Coleridge himself was an unsatisfactory and imperfect thinker, his imperfections are greatly increased in his friend and disciple. He shared that belief which some people have not yet abandoned, that the answer to all our perplexities ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... doorway and eyed Dane, Ali, and Rip with mock severity. "You're baaaad boys," he told them with a shake of the head and a drawl of the adjective. "You've been demoted ten files ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... the space between the bowed heads of the others, where, by the way, there must have been some blue fire playing: "Comrades, we must not follow the advice of our brother Poivre there. Delay with us is dangerous. Every day makes it more likely that these soldiers,"—there was an adjective prefixed, a favourite one, applied by him to almost everything—"will find out what we are planning. The dark nights, now there is no moon, will favour us when once we get away. Now or never is the word. The men in all the other yards are waiting for the red flag to be hoisted ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... orders, Miss Baylis, who was only too delighted to shine so advantageously in her superior's eyes, had scuttled away, issuing as she went, the order to close all outer doors and guard them, allowing no one to pass through. Guileless souls both hers and Miss Woodhull's, though another adjective might possibly be more apt. The house had a few windows ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a diminuendo in the repeated adjective that told Palmerston the speaker was moving toward the house; and it was from that direction that he heard Mrs. Dysart, a little later, assuring her visitor, in a high, depressed voice, that she hadn't found the country yet that would support anybody without elbow-grease, ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... formula—"always being begotten, and as instantly perishing, in order to be rebegotten perpetually." They showed a real disbelief in our English statement "begotten, not made." I overruled the objection, that in the Greek it was not a participle, but a verbal adjective; for it was manifest to me, that a religion which could not be proclaimed in English could not be true; and the very idea of a Creed announcing that Christ was "not begotten, yet begettive," roused in me an unspeakable loathing. Yet surely ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... in the most foolish and illogical manner. Fancy having orthodox unorthodox words! I remember one day getting into a third-class smoking carriage on the Metropolitan Railway about one o'clock, and finding it full of rough working men. Everything they said was seasoned with one incredibly stupid adjective, and no doubt they thought they were very desperate characters. At last I asked them not to say that word again. One forthwith asked me 'What the ——'—I really cannot quote these puerilities—'what the idiotic cliche that mattered to me?' So I looked at him quietly over my glasses, and ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... everything and much more, went straight to her son's room, and, in a calm rage, woke him up, and poured into his unwilling ears a torrent of mingled fact and fiction, wherein floated side by side with Letty's name every bad adjective she could bring the lips of propriety to utter. Before he quite came to himself the news had well-nigh driven him mad. There stood his mother, dashing her cold hailstorm of contemptuous wrath on the girl he loved, whom he had gone to bed believing the sweetest creature in creation, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... the Grenadines noun: Saint Vincentian(s) or Vincentian(s) adjective: Saint Vincentian ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... something essentially safe and wholesome? You should have heard how Sir Deryck jumped at you, as soon as your name was mentioned, tentatively, as my possible correspondent. I had barely whispered it, when he leapt, and clinched the matter. I believe "wholesome" was an adjective mentioned. I hope you do not mind, dear Jane. I must confess, I would sooner be macaroons or oyster-patties, even at the risk of giving my friends occasional indigestion. But then I have never gone in for the role of being helpful, in which you excel. Not that it is a "role" with you, dear Jane. ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... in the Latin, the substantive deliciae, delight, pleasure, enjoyment; and the adjective (derived from the same root, and guiding us to the original meaning of the substantive) delicatus, which amongst other meanings, has that of tender, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... Poultry. Poussiren - To court. Pretzel,(Ger.) - A kind of fancy bread, twist or the like. Prezackly - Pre(cisely), exactly. Protocollirt, protocolliren - To register, record. Pully, i.e., Bully - An Americanism, adjective. Fine, capital. A slang word, used in the same manner as the English used the word crack; as, "a bully horse," "a bully picture." Pumpernickel - A heavy, hard sort of rye-bread, made in Westphalia. Put der Konig troo - To put through, (Amer.), ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... more interested in him. It is not, I am sure, his—do you know any noun corresponding to the adjective "handsome"? One does not like to say "beauty" when speaking of a man. He is handsome enough, heaven knows; I should not even care to trust you with him—faithful of all possible wives that you are— when he looks his ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... exercises Letters, sounds of Like Manner of meaning of words Moods Signs of Subjunctive Nouns Gender of Person of Number of Case of Orthography Rules of Parsing Participles Poetry transposed Prepositions Pronouns Personal Compound personal Adjective Relative Pronunciation Prosody Provincialisms Punctuation Rhetoric Rules of syntax Sentences, definitions of simple and compound Transposition of Standard of grammatical accuracy Syntax To Tenses Signs of the The That Terminations ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... and a little deserted, as though the heart of the Russian public had not, as yet, quite found its way there. I think "guileless" was the adjective that came to my mind, and certainly Burrows, the head of the place—a large, red-faced, smiling man with glasses—seemed to me altogether too cheerful and pleased with life to penetrate the wicked ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... universal faith in the trivial nature of my employments, to know that every one imagined themselves to be seriously occupied, while I was merely a girl—there is no common denominator for the qualifying adjective—who roamed about idly with a dog, and that no one dreamed that we had thus come to be potentially among the richest dogs and ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... ignorance. They cannot conceive of malice aforethought. We are forbidden, for example, to use the word "phenomenal" in the sense of "extraordinary." But, with Mr. Crummles's Infant Phenomenon in everybody's mind, can we expect the adjective to shake off the old ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... not a new adjective. But it needs a new definition, and the complement of a corresponding noun. I would fain set down on paper some observations and reflections which may serve to make its meaning clear, and render due praise to that most excellent quality in man ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... contemporaries of whom we have chance glimpses in letters and suchlike documents, were it not that he happened to be the first man of affairs in England to imitate the "Republic" of Plato. By that chance it fell to him to give the world a noun and an adjective of abuse, "Utopian," and to record how under the stimulus of Plato's releasing influence the opening problems of our modern world presented themselves to the English mind of his time. For the most part the problems that ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... West, and had never seen a larger town than Santa Fe or a bigger body of water than the Pecos in flood. Some of them went by their own name; some had changed their names; and yet others possessed but half a name, colored by some adjective, like Cherokee Bill, Happy Jack of Arizona, Smoky Moore, the bronco-buster, so named because cowboys often call vicious horses "smoky" horses, and Rattlesnake Pete, who had lived among the Moquis and taken part in the snake-dances. Some were professional gamblers, and, on the other hand, no less ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... dear. It's only an old saying about sailors. The children do it for fun when we're becalmed sometimes. Well, there's no signs of it yet. I'll tell you what I'll do, children. While you're whistling up the wind, I'll write an adjective story ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... the Court before which his Amelia stood her trial, he describes himself as an 'old gentleman.' The adjective seems hardly applicable to a man of forty five; but, to quote again from Mr Austin Dobson, "however it may have chanced, whether from failing health or otherwise, the Fielding of Amelia is suddenly a far older man than the Fielding of Tom Jones. The ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... very singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Ladies'-Tresses, Uvularia with Bellwort and Strawbell, Potentilla with Cinquefoil, and Sanguinaria with Bloodroot. Hepatica may be bad, but Liverleaf is worse. The pretty name of May-flower is not so popular, after all, as that of Trailing-Arbutus, where the graceful and appropriate adjective redeems the substantive, which happens to be Latin and incorrect at the same time. It does seem a waste of time to say Chrysanthemum leucanthemum instead of Whiteweed; though, if the long scientific name were an incantation to banish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... IV. 5. 15. Deussen, Max Muller and Roer have all misinterpreted this passage; asito has been interpreted as an adjective or participle, though no evidence has ever been adduced; it is evidently the ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... one, "I'm a tramp printer!" And he flung forth the adjective as though it were a title ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... words which Carlingford would have been horrified to hear, and grasped Mrs Smith's shoulder with a closer pressure. "What did she tell you?" said the doctor. "Let me have it word for word. Did she say she was going away?—did she speak of this—this—fellow?" exclaimed the doctor, with an adjective over which charity drops a tear. "Can't you tell me without any ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... is the word Pausanias uses, of the cup in the hand of Dionysus—the wood was plated with gold. Liddell and Scott definition of the adjective chryseos: "golden, of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... signification,—a literal and narrow meaning, and a general and rather undefined application. It signifies not only physical remedies and the art of using them, but second-sight, prophecy, and preternatural power. As an adjective, it embraces the idea of supernatural as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... in our language which are singular and yet sound plural, such as politics and whereabouts; there are words which are plural and yet sound singular, such as Brigham Young, and there are words which convey their exact significance by their very sound. They need no word-chandlers, no adjective-smiths to dress them up in the fine feathers of fancy phrasing. They stand on their own merits. You think of one such word—a short, sweet word of but four letters. You speak ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... adverb instead of an adjective. Thus on page 332, speaking of a tame frog on the bar ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... endeavouring to protect her. At the moment when he comes into this story (as a mere passing event we shall soon forget without regret) he is engaged in the fulfilment of a previous promise to his unhappy wife—a promise we cannot transcribe literally, because of the free employment of a popular adjective (supposed to be a corruption of "by Our Lady") before or after any part of speech whatever, as an expletive to drive home meaning to reluctant minds. It is an expression unwelcome on the drawing-room ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... went down together. At the pawnbroker's shop, too, I began to be very well known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar relish in these meals ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... evenin' to settle with you. But never mind, we can do it now. Judson's havin' one of his M. E. quarterly conferences up at the Whately house and we are free to talk this out. You say I'm a contemptible spy. Lettie, we're a pair of 'em, so we'll lave off the adjective or adverb, which ever it is, that does that for names of 'persons, places, and things that can be known or mentioned.' Some of 'em that can be known, can't aven be mentioned, though. Where were you, Lettie, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... lawyer, she had a conscience. She had looked forward to taking students, but they were all to have been Portias, every woman Jane of them; and before her own learning was fairly dry (which I think an eminently proper adjective to describe legal learning) there appeared to her an obviously crack-brained old party in an india-rubber cloak, who kept a candy-store and wanted her daughter to become a lawyer. No wonder Mrs. Tarbell was embarrassed. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... to be regarded as settled by M. Renan's practical surrender of the adverse case." I thought I knew M. Renan's works pretty well, but I have contrived to miss this "practical" (I wish Dr. Wace had defined the scope of that useful adjective) surrender. However, as Dr. Wace can find no difficulty in pointing out the passage of M. Renan's writings, by which he feels justified in making his statement, I shall wait for further enlightenment, contenting myself, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Certainly not Roman Catholicism, though Jonson was a Catholic. Herrick uses the noun and its adjective rather curiously of the dead: cp. 82, "To the reverend shade of his religious Father," and 138, "When thou shalt laugh at my religious dust". There may be something of this use here, or we may refer to his ancient cult of Jonson. But the use of the phrase in 870 makes ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... "H'm, the adjective appears to be an afterthought," grumbled the bachelor; then, when she merely laughed teasingly after the manner of ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... cutting the few drops of extract thus obtained with alcohol. "She could do more different things," says the author, "and finish them all in a greater degree of perfection than any other woman I have ever known. If I were limited to one adjective in describing her, 'capable' would ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... at the maiden, and reflected that while the term "slate" might be perfectly correct, the adjective seemed a bit over-enthusiastic. She was decidely soiled, this quintessence of a quintette of advertisements. I said nothing, anxious not to dampen ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various |
