"Idiomatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to add that the translation is, perhaps, not always idiomatic, though in this matter I have availed myself of some valuable assistance, for which I feel ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... of Salamanca. He was a friend of most of the important writers of his time and composed interesting prose satires; his verse (Noches lugubres, etc.) is not remarkable. FRAY DIEGO GONZALEZ (1733-1794) is one of the masters of page xxx idiomatic Castilian in the century. He admired Luis de Leon and imitated him in paraphrases of the Psalms. The volume of his verse is small but unsurpassed in surety of taste and evenness of finish. The Murcielago alevoso has passed into many editions and become a favorite in Spain. ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... "So, an thou wilt, burden thy mind (i.e. give thyself the trouble, kellifi khatiraki,) and with us [is] a China dish; rise and come to me with it." Kellifi (fem.) khatiraki is an idiomatic expression equivalent to the French, "donnez-vous (or prenez) la peine" and must be taken in connection with what follows, i.e. give yourself the trouble to rise and bring me, etc. (prenez la peine de vous lever et de m'apporter, etc.). Burton, "Whereupon, ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... dilated. Was ever fate less perverse ? Partly in wretched French to the officer and partly in idiomatic English to the dragoman, he proclaimed his fiery desire to accompany the expedition. The officer immediately beamed upon him. In fact, he was delighted. The dragoman had naturally told him many falsehoods concerning Coleman, incidentally referring to himself more as ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... commentary the student should underline in the text the idiomatic expressions here indicated, including those to which he is referred back in the Reviews. As irregular verb-forms are introduced with special frequency, it would be well to keep the list of irregular verbs at hand for reference. The ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... greater part of his life in a colony is so accustomed to it, that he becomes quite enamoured of it, and wrapping himself up in it as a cloak, stalks abroad the "observed of all observers." I could undervalue this species of writing if I thought proper, affect a contempt for idiomatic humour, or hint at the employment being inconsistent with the grave discharge of important official duties, which are so distressingly onerous, as not to leave me a moment for recreation; but these airs, though dignified, will unfortunately not avail ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... interest and ability.... Mr. Worsaae's book is in all ways a valuable addition to our literature.... Mr. Thoms has executed the translation in flowing and idiomatic English, and has appended many curious and interesting notes ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... vers d'occasion should' (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... cry that the literature of our country is only a continuation of that of Europe, had resolved to prove, by vigorous effort, that it is possible to set forth, not merely the incidents of our industrial life in many grades, in its purely idiomatic force, but to make the world realize that in it vibrate and struggle outward those aspirations, germs of culture and reforms which we seldom reflect on as forming a part of the inner-being of our very practical fellow-citizens. The work has two characteristics,—it ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... extended their audio-appendages and retractile fingers and accorded him a round of applause. He extended his own "hands" and held them up for silence, then, retracting them again, he seated himself before the little lectern and began his report, the idiomatic ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... Sullivan and her pupil were working at Helen's home in Tuscumbia, and to good purpose, for by spring Helen had learned to write idiomatic English. After May, 1889, I find almost no inaccuracies, except some evident slips of the pencil. She uses words precisely and makes ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Testament. With a Critically Revised Text; a Digest of Various Readings; Marginal References to Verbal and Idiomatic Usage; Prolegomena; and a Critical and Exegetical Commentary. For the Use of Theological Students and Ministers. By Henry Alford, B.D., Minister of Quebec Chapel, London, and Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In Four Volumes. Vol. I. Containing the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... yet she made a cheerful noise, and her company was liked; and her friendly little gesticulation, and her turning up of the eyes, and her smiles and sighs, and her 'whisht a bit,' and her 'faith and troth now,' and 'whisper,' and all the rest of her little budget of idiomatic expletives, made the people somehow, along with her sterling qualities, fonder of her than perhaps, having her always at hand, they ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the narrative style, as being much better suited to the tastes and capacities of my colored readers, and I have used simple and plain English language, discarding the idiomatic and provincial language of the southern slaves and ignorant whites, expecting thereby to help educate the blacks in ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... modernize. This rendering, therefore, is not an artificial, pseudo-antique hybrid, but frankly endeavors to convey its original to modern readers in idiomatic modern literary English, devoid of any conscious mannerisms whatsoever. The writer has aimed at the utmost literal fidelity consistent with the observance of all the usages of current standard English; he has not attempted, however, to convert the explosive appositions, ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... is faulty, robbed of the thought and beauty of his smooth diction, and gives but imperfect meaning and interpretation to many idiomatic expressions. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... that of all other peoples. What style is to the man, that is idiom to the race. It is the crystalization in verbal forms of peculiarities of race temperament—- perhaps even of race eccentricities . . . . . English which is not idiomatic becomes at once formal and lifeless, as if the tongue were already dead and its remains embalmed in those honorable sepulchres, the philological dictionaries. On the other hand, English which goes too far, and fails of a delicate ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... he would learn to express with energy his indignation at meanness, feebleness, wrong, and tyranny, while from the lyric poets he would learn the language suitable to every genial feeling and impulse of the human heart. And in reciting or singing all these, how would his power of terse, idiomatic expression, his sense of poetic beauty and his ear for rhythm and music be developed! With what a treasure of examples of every virtue and vice, and with what a fund of epigrammatic expression would his memory be furnished! ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Adams," she said, in idiomatic English, "you have candid eyes. You make me feel like telling stories when you gaze at me so appealingly. Don't be shocked"—the girl had coloured—"perhaps I shall, after ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... be due to the revision and editing, and not to the translators, for every good translation must be fluent and idiomatic, to secure which is the most difficult task. Pastor Gohdes also rendered valuable help in the final revision of parts. The translation of the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... m esa nia; there are two idiomatic uses in this phrase: 1. cualquiera in an ironic sense nadie (a frequent use); 2. quitaba quitara, a substitution of tense often found in the main clause of a contrary to fact, or less vivid ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... [Footnote 27: The idiomatic passages "aohe puko momona o Kohala," etc., and (on page 387) "e huna oukou i ko oukou mau maka i ke aouli" are ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... conversation between mistress and dog has turned on the spelling of a word it has been necessary to give the entire sentence in German. There are also some quaint remarks of which I have been loth to omit the original, these being sure to appeal to anyone acquainted with idiomatic German. ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... A wind of caprice had carried him and her into Font Abbey; another such wind was carrying them out. No event had happened. Mr. and Miss Fountain had been seen more than once in the village of late. "They have dropped us, and thank Heaven!" said Eve, in her idiomatic way. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... their mutual transactions. The completion of that was reached when they took the profits and divided them. It might include the mutual reckoning of profit and loss. The phrase "from mouth to interest" is very idiomatic. The "mouth," or verbal relationships, included all they said, the terms they agreed upon. The word "interest" here replaces the more usual "gold;" both mean the "profit," or the balance due to each. Usually we have the words "is complete," the idea being ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... the first place, it is in every respect different from all others which I have studied, with perhaps the exception of the Turkish, to which it seems to bear some remote resemblance in syntax, though none in words. In the second place, it abounds with idiomatic phrases, which can only be learnt by habit, and to the understanding of which a Dictionary is of little or no use, the words separately having either no meaning or a meaning quite distinct from that which they possess when thus conjoined. And thirdly the helps afforded ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... as it is awkward. Tytler laid down his "Principles of Translation" in 1791—and a majority of translators are still unaware of their existence. Yet it ought to seem self-evident to every thinking mind that idiomatic equivalence, not verbal identity, must form the basis of a good and faithful translation. When an English mother uses "you" to her child, she establishes thereby the only rational equivalent for the "du" used under similar circumstances ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... deserve to be abroad. As works of invention, they rank, among their author's productions, next after Don Quixote; in correctness and grace of style they stand before it.... They are all fresh from the racy soil of the national character, as that character is found in Andalusia, and are written with an idiomatic richness, a spirit, and a grace, which, though they are the oldest tales of their class in Spain, have left them ever ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... effective command of both languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the difficulties can have ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... his hand: he cannot however help observing, that a person who would translate the Visions of Quevedo, and certain other writings of his, should be something more than a fair Spanish scholar, and a good master of the language into which he would render them, as they abound not only with idiomatic phrases, but terms of cant or Germania, which are as unintelligible as Greek or Arabic to the greater part of ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... the two methods of reckoning time continued for a long time to exist contemporaneously. Hence it became necessary to distinguish one from the other by name, and thus the notation from midnight gave rise, as I have remarked in one of my papers on Chaucer, to the English idiomatic phrase "of the clock;" or the reckoning of the clock, commencing at midnight, as distinguished from Roman equinoctial hours, commencing at six o'clock A.M. This was what Ben Jonson was meaning by attainment of majority at six o'clock, and not, as PROFESSOR ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... is ambiguous; inasmuch as him may mean either the person who strikes or some one else. In order to be clear we add the word self when the idea is reflective. He strikes himself is, at once idiomatic ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... author, commenced tinker, commenced tailor, commenced candlestick-maker:—Elegant phraseology, though we venture to think, hardly idiomatic or logical, which came into vogue in England in the early part of the last century, and which, as it is never uttered here by cultivated people, it may be proper to remark, is there used by the best writers. Akin to it is another mode of expression as commonly met with in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... rivals was esteemed as the most perfect model of political writing. He was a strong party-writer on the government side, for Charles the Second, and the compositions of the author seem to us coarse, yet they contain much idiomatic expression. His AEsop's Fables are a curious specimen of familiar style. Queen Mary showed a due contempt of him, after the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... je crois bien: on l'entendait d'une lieue, 'I should rather think it was talking, you could hear it a mile off.' The sentence is elliptical, vous demandez being understood before s'il. Note the idiomatic use of bien, and cf. je le veux bien, 'I am perfectly willing'; voulez-vous bien vous en aller, 'won't you go away!' je donnerais bien un franc, 'I shouldn't mind ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... its idiomatic structure definite articles and indefinite, as in Latin? Some think that it has, others that it has not. They did not venture ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... of the school curriculum, Shakespeare in his writings openly acknowledged his acquaintance. In 'Henry V' the dialogue in many scenes is carried on in French, which is grammatically accurate if not idiomatic. In the mouth of his schoolmasters, Holofernes in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and Sir Hugh Evans in 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' Shakespeare placed Latin phrases drawn directly from Lily's grammar, from ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... one of the most beautiful of Canon Bright's liturgical compositions, the Collect beginning, "O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment and light riseth up in darkness for the godly." Of this exquisite piece of idiomatic English, the reviewer allows himself to speak as being "a very poor composition, defective ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... and scholarlike correctness mark the style of George Eliot. Her vocabulary, though large, is too full of abstract and scientific terms to permit of great flexibility and idiomatic purity of English. She is master of powerful figures of speech, original, epigrammatic turns of expression, and, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... when he shook hands, and the broad, humorous smile, had not changed as the years passed him on from success to success. Mrs. Hitchcock still slurred the present participle and indulged in other idiomatic freedoms that endeared her to Sommers. These two, plainly, were not of the generation that is tainted by ambition. Their story was too well known, from the boarding-house struggle to this sprawling stone house, to be worth the varnishing. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... sole rule, if he will attend to it, governs in a paramount sense the total possibilities and compass of pronunciation. A very famous line of Horace states it. What line? What is the supreme law in every language for correct pronunciation no less than for idiomatic propriety? ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... genius in the pages of this unusual book. In a comparatively temperate review, August 4, 1860, the Cosmopolite, of Boston, while deploring that nature is treated here without fig-leaves, declares the style wonderfully idiomatic and graphic, adding: "In his frenzy, in the fire of his inspiration, are fused and poured out together elements hitherto considered antagonistic in poetry—passion, arrogance, animality, philosophy, brag, humility, rowdyism, ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... popularity of this work attested by these reprintings was thoroughly deserved, for North's Plutarch is among the richest and freshest monuments of Elizabethan prose literature, and, apart altogether from the use made of it by Shakespeare, is in itself an invaluable repertory of honest, manly, idiomatic English. No abstract of the Plutarchian matter need be given here, as all the more important passages drawn upon for the play are quoted in the footnotes to the text. These will show that in most of the leading incidents ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... he carry you well," replied the Indian, whose language was a little idiomatic, notwithstanding ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... abounds in mythological names and terms, as well as in idiomatic expressions, and the preparation of the explanatory notes has therefore been a perplexing task. A fairly complete statement under each mythological reference would in the aggregate reach the proportions of a treatise on Norse mythology, but the limitations of space made such elaboration impossible. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... published Fadette, a new story by GEORGE SAND, illustrative of domestic life in France, translated by MATILDA M. HAYS. It is a tale of quiet, exquisite beauty, free from the morbid sentiment which abounds in the fictitious works of the modern French school, and rendered into graceful, idiomatic English by ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... him coldly. "And you think me incapable of keeping your secret, ah, gimmick, I believe is the idiomatic term you used." ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... apeirit in sadd dunn, som in grasse-grein, som in sea-grein, and some in yallow." Archbishop Harsnet, in his admirable Declaration of Popish Impostures, under the pretence of casting out Devils, 1605, 4to, a work unsurpassed for rich humour and caustic wit, clothed in good old idiomatic English, has a chapter "on the strange names of these devils," in which he observes, (p. 46,) "It is not amiss that you be acquainted with these extravagant names of devils, least meeting them otherwise ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Punch suspects that the above edifying and idiomatic homily was intended for some sporting contemporary, but, with his accustomed courtesy, he gives it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... and this in complete version, with a translation, has been printed by Pryce and Davies Gilbert. A note in Pryce says that Tonkin had it from Lhuyd and again from Gwavas, whose is the translation. It is in idiomatic late Cornish, ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... The idiomatic expressions in this dialect are numerous, many will be found in the Glossary; the following may be mentioned. I'd 'sley do it, for I would as lief do it. I have occasionally in the Glossary suggested the etymology of some words; ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... literalism, for it is often the case that the closest literalist is the worst translator. It is often impossible to render the thoughts expressed in the peculiar idioms of one tongue into exactly corresponding idioms of another. There are idiomatic forms, especially in the Greek, which have no precisely correspondent forms in the English, and yet these are not unfrequently the most forcible expressions of any to be found in the original; any attempt to render these literally must be abortive; and a literal rendering, or as nearly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... V. insist upon modern books, he cannot have better than Hendrik Conscience's novels, or Gerrits's Zoon des Volks. I would, however, advise him to get a volume of Jacob Cats' Poems, the language of which is not antiquated, and is idiomatic without being difficult to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... in the gymnasium at Cologne, and in a partial course at the university of Bonn. Though retaining a marked German accent, he quickly learned to speak English with fluency and eloquence, and yet with occasional idiomatic errors discernible when he words are printed. He took active part before German audiences, for Fremont, in the Presidential canvass of 1856, and began to make public addresses in English in 1858, when he espoused the cause of Mr. Lincoln in the famous contest with Douglas. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... not "see" her "sweetness of speech"; so we must understand that he addressed her and found out that she was fluent of tongue. But this idiomatic use of the word "see" is also found in the languages of Southern Europe: so Camoens (Lus. 1. ii.), "Ouvi * * * vereis" lit. "hark, you shall ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... and Popular Quotations, which are in constant use; taken from the Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Greek languages, (also including a complete collection of Law Maxims) translated into English, with illustrations, historical and idiomatic. Third American edition, corrected, with ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... use the pedal can secure an endless (almost orchestral) variety of tone-colors on the piano, thanks to the hundreds of overtones which can be made to accompany the tones played. Chopin spoke the language of the piano. His pieces are so idiomatic that they cannot be translated into orchestral language any more than Heine's lyrics can be translated into English. Chopin exhausted the possibilities of the pianoforte, and the piano exhausts the possibilities of ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... him correctly—"sized him up," in Dade's idiomatic phraseology—and knew that his vicious impulses were surface ones that had been acquired and not inherited, as he had thought. ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and ignorance of the idiomatic structure, the passage has hitherto been misunderstood; and Warburton proposed to read, "Which teacheth me," but was fortunately opposed by Johnson, although he did not clearly understand the passage. I have ventured ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... treated in the same way, the pupils translating the words previously given and the instructor giving the meaning of the new words only. Then making use of the first idiomatic expression "il y avait," an explanation is given, showing how it can be changed into the interrogative form "y avait-il?" and the pupils are questioned rapidly as follows, using only ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber
... the prescriptive right of kings; at least, they are supposed to be officially incapable of literary eminence. And yet it is a curious fact, that, of those idiomatic works which literature will not "let die," of those marked productions which survive by their individuality, three, at least, bear the impress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... having to do with every-day peaceful life,—the life of a settled nation,—words like basket (to take an instance which all the world knows) form a much larger body in our language than is commonly supposed; it is said that a number of our raciest, most idiomatic, popular words—for example, bam, kick, whop, twaddle, fudge, hitch, muggy,—are Celtic. These assertions require to be carefully examined, and it by no means follows that because an English word ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand without ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... reddened, fidgeted on his chair, looked about him with an anguished mute appeal for help. Mrs. Tootle repeated her question with emphasis and a change of countenance which he knew too well. The poor fellow had not the tact to appear to understand, and, as he might easily have done, mystify her by some idiomatic remark. He stammered out his apologies and excuses, with the effect ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... affirmed to be the true way of writing the name, by carrying numbers through the Roman Alphabet. Some Jews, according to Mr. Thorn, found it in [Hebrew: JSHW NTSRJ] Jesus of Nazareth. I find on inquiry that this satire was actually put forth by some medieval rabbis, but that it is not idiomatic: it represents quite fairly "Jesus Nazarene," but the Hebrew wants an article quite as much as ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... scientific value and importance of your undertaking and refer any one to whom you may apply to me. It may be, in fact, that this is all you want, but as you have taken to the caprice of writing in my tongue instead of in that vernacular, idiomatic and characteristically Dohrnian German in which I delight, I am not so sure about your meaning. There is a rub for you. If you write to me in English again I will send the letter ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... land and beyond it till they filled volumes; no preacher of the time had such an audience, and none such a wide popularity; he preached the old Puritan gospel, but it was presented in such a form and in such simple, idiomatic phrase, as to commend it as no less a gospel to his own generation: besides his sermons as published, other works were also widely circulated; special mention may be made of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... writing about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales. Mr. Lawson shows us what living in the bush really means. The result is a real book—a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic." ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... spent in river improvements, while Europe has contributed raw labor already fed to the strength of oxen and often already developed to highest skill. It was a young chemist trained in Europe who conducted me through the mills, explaining all the processes in a perfect idiomatic speech, though ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... historical painting, bold assertion instead of justified portraiture, flattery to the living instead of justice to the dead, clever plunder of other compilers instead of original research, or a cramped and scholastic instead of an idiomatic, "clear and graphic" style, would deserve rejection, and would, we ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... differing essentially from the accepted version, as could not but happen when a mind so original as that of the boy Jose was concentrated upon it. His first stumbling block was met in the prayer of Jesus in an attempt to render the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread," into idiomatic modern thought. The word translated "daily" was not to be found elsewhere in the Greek language. Evidently the Aramaic word which Jesus employed, and of which this Greek word was a translation, must have ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... fishing with him, for what they called white perch, probably the saibling; [Footnote: The American saibling, or golden trout, is only indigenous to Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, and to a small lake near Augusta.] and was greatly entertained with the peculiarities of an idiomatic Frenchman, an itinerant teacher of that language, whom Bridge, in the kindness of his heart, had taken into his own house. The last of July, Cilley also made his appearance, but did not bring the Madeira with ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... to the rank and dignity of an English classic. Plot, style, and truthfulness are of the soundest British character. Racy, idiomatic, mirror-like, always interesting, suggesting thought on the knottiest social and religious questions, now deeply moving by its unconscious pathos, and anon inspiring uproarious laughter, it is a work the world will not willingly let ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... had to let him in, and when he was, he lay," etc.; "the Giant got up cruelly early." These, and others like them, are profusely scattered through the tales, apparently from the mistaken notion that they have some idiomatic force. They jar upon the ear of the reader who comes to them from Mr. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various |
