"Monosyllabic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place, the Bible furnishes a far greater variety of the finest reading-lessons than any other book whatever. This is a point to which my attention has been turned for many years, and the conviction grows upon me continually. There is no book in which children a little advanced beyond the simplest monosyllabic lessons will learn to read faster, or more readily catch the proprieties of inflection, emphasis, and cadence, than the Bible. I would by no means put it into the hands of a child to spell out and blunder over the chapters before he has read any thing else. The word ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... that the Captain said, and then relapsed into his usual good-tempered monosyllabic state; from which all the eager talk of the men, who took up the cudgels naturally enough for their own class, and talked themselves before the wine broke up into a renewed consciousness of their natural superiority, failed again ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... suffixed to its noun it undergoes various changes. In its monosyllabic forms it drops its vowel after a short (un-accented) vowel, as in auga-t (the eye), but keeps it after a long vowel, as in ā-in (the river), trē-it (the tree). The dissyllabic forms drop their initial vowel almost everywhere; not, however, after the -ar, -r, of the gen. sg., nor ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet
... other of his prisoners. Marguerite, however, observed complete silence in his presence: she acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of the head, and in reply to certain perfunctory queries of his—which he put to her in order to justify his appearance—she either nodded or gave curt monosyllabic answers through ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... atmospheric phenomena, especially of the tropics, have been christened by the Spaniard and Portuguese, the Corposant, the Pampero, the Tornado, the Hurricane. Then follows a host of words of which the derivation is doubtful,—such as sea, mist, foam, scud, rack. Their monosyllabic character may only be the result of that clipping and trimming which words get on shipboard. Your seaman's tongue is a true bed of Procrustes for the unhappy words that roll over it. They are docked without mercy, or, now and then, when not properly mouth-filling, they are "spliced" with a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... certain quaint, playful inflections and elisions, which, like the speech of children, have a fresh, natural, simple charm of their own. The changes of pronunciation, in German words, are curious. K becomes a light guttural ch, and a great number of monosyllabic words—especially those ending in ut and ueh—receive a peculiar twist from the introduction of e or ei: as gut, frueh, which become guet, frueeih. This seems to be a characteristic feature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... strange capers, with faces of earnest gravity. People smiling whenever spoken to, and without hearing what was said; and on-lookers smiling, by a sort of photographic process, at fun in which they had no concern. Introductions, where the lady was self-possessed and bewitching, the gentleman monosyllabic and poker-like; others, where he was off-hand, ogling, and facetious; she, timid, credulous, and blushing. All kinds of costumes, from the solitary dress-coat, and low-necked ball-dress, worn respectively by Mr. and Mrs. Van Brueck from Albany, to the mixed tweed ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... startled her and her hand shook so that some of the laudanum was spilled. It was long since she had heard her own voice in more than a monosyllabic answer to some necessary question. Inscrutably veiled in many folds of chiffon, she held herself apart from the world, and the world, carelessly kind, had left her ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Michael was left alone with his father, he found that his best efforts at conversation elicited only monosyllabic replies, and at last, in the despairing desire to bring things to a head, he asked him if he had received his letter. An affirmative monosyllable, followed by the hissing of Lord Ashbridge's cigarette end as he dropped it into his coffee cup, answered him, and he perceived that ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... two, three, or more explanations. This is especially true of some of our commonest monosyllabic surnames. Bell may be from Anglo-Fr. le bel (beau), or from a shop sign, or from residence near the church or town bell. It may even have been applied to the man who pulled the bell. Finally, the ancestor may ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... female: the muscularity of the male: the variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... largely monosyllabic, there are many significations attached to one word, and these often widely different. Thus kab means, a hand; a handle; a branch; sap; an offence; while cab means the world; a country; strength; honey; a hive; sting of an insect; juice of a plant; and, ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... meal by being as monosyllabic as possible; but it was not her natural attitude toward the world, and by the time the veal had arrived (it was Wednesday night) she was laughing whole-heartedly at Kid's ingenuous conversation. Miss McCoy's vocabulary was rich in the vernacular ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... this restricted sense it is that we are justified in considering the main portion of the Malayan as original, or indigenous, its affinity to any Continental tongue not having yet been shown; and least of all can we suppose it connected with the monosyllabic, or Indo-Chinese, with which it has ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... it not be a very great condescension on his part? Would it not be familiar? and would he not thereby lose his importance?" And in consequence of such reflections he always remained in the same dumb state, uttering from time to time a few monosyllabic sounds, and thereby earning the name of ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... assumed an indifference and impartiality of manner that no exigency of affairs, no pressing haste, could discompose or disturb; and my bow of recognition to Soult or Massena was as coolly measured as my monosyllabic ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... towns passed now and then with a shudder, where the funereal square bricks-up the Church, that Arctic hen-mother sits on the square, and the moving dead are summoned to their round of penitential exercise by a monosyllabic tribulation-bell. Fenellan's graphic sketch of the teetotaller woman seeing her admirer pursued by Eumenides flagons—abominations of emptiness—to the banks of the black river of suicides, where ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said one day, in answer to a demand of his for more faithful study; "must I?" And throwing up her proud little head, and shaking back with a trick she had her streaming red hair, she looked straight at him from her blue-gray eyes and asked the monosyllabic question, "Why?" And The Duke looked back at her with his slight smile for a few moments and then said in ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... looked as if she were fully sensible of the want of politeness in Mrs. O'Connor's mode of praising. "But, my lord," pursued she, "you wrong Captain Andrews, if you attribute his monosyllabic replies either to stupidity or timidity. You have not guessed the reason why he never gives on any subject more ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... scowl on Mr. Vernor's sour countenance grow deeper as I led her away. My perseverance was not rewarded by any very interesting results, for my partner, who was either distressingly shy, or acting under constraint of some kind, made monosyllabic replies to every remark I addressed to her, and appeared relieved when the termination of the set enabled her to rejoin her ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... said Grace, with indifference to these vows and protests; and without deigning further explanation or argument she made the invalid's toilet for her. If given time, Mrs. Maynard would talk herself into any necessary frame of mind, and Grace merely supplied the monosyllabic promptings requisite for her transition from mood to mood. It was her final resolution that when Dr. Mulbridge did come she should give him a piece of her mind; and she received him with anxious submissiveness, and hung upon all his looks and words with quaking and with an ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... plied Diotti with all manner of questions; "How did it happen?" "How did you escape?" and the like, all of which Diotti parried with monosyllabic replies, finally saying: "I was dissatisfied with my playing and ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... wood-shrikes, the tinkling of the bulbuls, the chattering of the mynas, the screaming of the green parrots, the golden-backed woodpeckers and the white-breasted kingfishers, the mingled harmony and discord of the tree-pies, the sharp monosyllabic notes of the various warblers, the melody of the sunbirds and the flycatchers. The green barbets also call spasmodically throughout the month, chiefly in the early morning and the late afternoon, but the only note uttered by the coppersmith is a soft wow. The hoopoe emits ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... there are not wanting evidences of a former monosyllabic tendency. The syllable bu, bun, or bung, for instance, occurs in a considerable number of words conveying an ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... in the charmed freedom of the domestic circle, Clarence forgot Susy's capricious commands of yesterday, and began to address himself to her in his old earnest fashion, until he was warned by a significant knitting of the young lady's brows and monosyllabic responses. But in his youthful loyalty to Mrs. Peyton, he was more pained to notice Susy's occasional unconscious indifference to her adopted mother's affectionate expression, and a more conscious disregard of her wishes. So uneasy did he become, in his sensitive ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... with him: but, alas, he looked to the Captain for an opinion. That gentleman, regarding me with a smile of ironical admiration, uttered a monosyllabic laugh in his ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... her head, but made no reply. Indeed, Paul found it very difficult to start a conversation of any sort with his new neighbour. To all his remarks she returned only monosyllabic answers, looking at him steadily all the while out of her full, dark eyes in a far-away, wistful manner, as though she saw in his face something which carried her thoughts into another world. It was a little uncomfortable for Paul, and he was not sorry when ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... raging at Yorktown. 'The Small' was instantly surrounded by terror-stricken boats; the people of the big 'St. Mark' leaned, pale, over their bulwarks, to question us. Nothing could be more delightful than to be as calm and monosyllabic as we were. * * * * * We leave at daybreak for Harrison's Bar, James River, where our gunboats are said to be; we hope to get further up, but General Dix warns us that it is not safe. What are we about to learn? No one here can tell. * * * * * (Harrison's Bar, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... sat down very slowly and painstakingly what of his great stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thornton was whittling the last touches on an axe-handle he had made from a stick of birch. He whittled and listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terse advice. He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty that it would not ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... 1844. Up to October of the same year the average attendance of children had been sixty-three. In that short time the progress had been very satisfactory; all the children had passed from the alphabetical to the monosyllabic class, and most had mastered the multiplication table; eighteen could write upon the slate, and six upon paper; twelve girls had commenced sewing, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... comes about any practical case, is it just? The opinions fly asunder far as the poles. And, what is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man so often as by Pope, and by Pope nowhere so often as in this very poem. As a single instance, he proscribes monosyllabic lines; and in no English poem of any pretensions are there so many lines of that class as in this. We have counted above a score, and the last line ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... lips were set in a tense expression of suffering—either physical or mental—perhaps both. His blue eyes looked sunken and lustreless. It was scarcely to be believed that ten short months could have wrought such wreck. He talked little—his responses to their questions were monosyllabic. His eyes constantly wandered away from their faces to the passers-by. He had the look of a man ever on the alert, ever on the watch—waiting and watching for some one he could not see. Miss Howard had never seen him before, but from the depths of her heart she pitied ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... river acts as a mirror, in reflecting the rays of the sun towards the vineyards. The Rheingau must not be confused with the district of Hochheim, which is situated on the Maine. Yet it is curious that the first syllable of the latter district (Hochheim) has furnished the monosyllabic English word Hock, under which are confused ALL the Rhine wines. Amongst the wines of the Rheingau may be enumerated Steinberg, Marcobrunner, and Johannisberg. With regard to the wines of the Rheingau, Mr. Henry Vizetelly observes: "Although the flavour and bouquet of the grand wines ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... invariably look in a fashionable sister's eyes! how long his arms, and how shapeless his hands! Poor blushing youth, is not the ordeal worst for himself, at that period when he scarcely dares trust the most modest of monosyllabic discourses to be articulated by those lips that are warning a waiting public of the dawn of whiskerdom! Freddy, once so lithe and graceful and pretty, had been transformed into an ungainly being, all length, without breadth or thickness. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... five kinds of sanctified libations (used in sacrifices). Thou art the seven woofs used in the Vedas. Salutations to thee in thy form of Sacrifice.[145] Libations are poured on the Homa fire in accompaniment with the seventeen monosyllabic sounds. Thou art the soul of the Homa. Salutations to thee! Thou art that Purusha whom the Vedas sing. Thy name is Yajus. The Vedic metres are thy limbs. The sacrifices laid down in the three Vedas are thy three heads. The great sacrifice ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... obliged to fetch a cup. When he returned, it was to find her talking monosyllabic English to a group ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... had an illustration nearer home and kept thinking of it as he murmured monosyllabic contributions while the doctor went on—"My own belief is that if the November election were delayed six months, Fremont ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... speaking in the tongue native to the old man, who was replying in his monosyllabic fashion while he kept all his regard for the stern-eyed white man, who, the squaw was explaining, represented all the unlimited power of the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... so later Blake growled out a monosyllabic assurance that he was now safely over his attack. Yet all the efforts of Lord James to jolly him into a cheerful mood utterly failed. Throughout the trip he continued to brood, and did not rouse out of his sullen taciturnity until the train was ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... get at him?—One day it occurred to me to try talking to Miss Vard. She was a monosyllabic person, who didn't seem to see an inch beyond the last remark one had made; but suddenly I found myself blurting out, "I wonder if you know how extraordinarily paintable your father is?" and you should have seen the change that came over her. Her eyes lit up and she looked—well, as I've ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... getting meagre monosyllabic answers to his eager questions but, by the time they reached home, he had gathered the story of what had happened in town that day. There were more men in the porch of the house and all were armed. The women of the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... broken. Mr Pickering sank back in his chair in a punctured manner. And Claire, making monosyllabic replies to her friend's remarks, was able to bend her mind to the task of finding out how she stood on this important Pickering issue. That he would return to the attack as soon as possible she knew; and the next time she must have her attitude clearly defined one ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... physically. Dr. Langden Downe reports several cases of this sort where the children had lived to be twenty-two years old and still remained infants, symmetrical in form, just able to stand beside a chair, utter a few monosyllabic sounds, and to be amused with toys. Dr. F. R. Lees, referring to the injury inflicted upon the liver by alcohol, says: "And recollect, whatever injury you inflict upon this organ, to your posterity the curse descends, and as is the father, so are the children." ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... gathered from that monosyllabic question and its answer, but its significance in Siddle's ears, could he have heard, would have been that of the passing ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... They had listened the evening before to the old accordian in the hands of Pete's wife; they had trotted the infant of the family on their knees; they had propounded another hundred questions to their uncommunicative host and gotten monosyllabic answers; but they had heard only that which was good to hear, and that which confirmed the leader in his mind that he had made a capital move in coming into this ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... cloud of mosquitoes. The men on the bank have finally given it up as a bad job, and they set round the fires smoking and slapping different parts of their persons, swearing volubly in English. For the Cree language is devoid of invective. In the morning we are a sorry crowd, conversation is monosyllabic and very much to the point. It is the first serious trial to individual good-humour. When each one of your four million pores is an irritation-channel of mosquito-virus it would be a relief to growl at somebody about something. But the sun and ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... determined to travel as far as we could that night, as the accommodations were vile in Petigo; and the spokeswoman mentioned a house of entertainment, about twelve miles forward, where, she said, we would find better treatment. When we got on terra firma, the first man I saw was the monosyllabic humorist, sitting on a hillock resting himself—his eyes fixed on the earth, and he evidently in a brown study on what he had gone through. He was drawing in his breath gradually, his cheeks expanding all the while, until they reached the utmost point of distention, when he would all at once let ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... was not able to live on laughter, as they appeared to be, so presently turning to my acquaintance, who had told me his name was the plain monosyllabic An, and clapping my hand on his shoulder as he stood lost in sleepy reflection, said, in a good, hearty way, "Hullo, friend Yellow-jerkin! If a stranger might set himself athwart the cheerful current of your meditations, may such a one ask ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... after the manner of Aristotle, though not into ten, but into forty categories, or genera, or great classes, such as World, Element, Animal, and apparently species of animals, such as Bird, Fish, Beast: for each of these great classes he devised a monosyllabic name—e.g., De for Element, Za for Fish; each of these genera is subdivided into species indicated by the addition of a consonant, and these are again subdivided into subordinate species distinguished by a vowel affixed. For example—De means an Element, any of the four, Fire, Air, Earth, ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... your treasures, blind to the fact that you are clutching both arms around them, that no gleam of flashing gold may reveal their whereabouts to him. You draw yourself up in your shell, projecting a monosyllabic claw occasionally as a sign of continued vitality; but the pachyderm does not withdraw, and you gradually lower ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... presence of a talkative, pretty girl, but a hero and a conqueror when with a suffering, anxious human being, beseeching his aid. His left-hand neighbour, the wife of a Frankfort banker, who chatted rapidly about the architecture of the dining-hall and the Wagner performances at Bayreuth, received monosyllabic, hesitating replies, while he talked eloquently to the lady on his right, the hostess, upon the influence of modern nervousness upon ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... way. Of a sudden he shone glorious; all tongues were busy with him, all eyes regarded him, every one wished for the honour of his friendship. Humplebee looked uncomfortable. He had the sniffy beginnings of a cold, the result of yesterday's struggle in icy water, and his usual diffident and monosyllabic inclination were intensified by the position in which he found himself. Clappings on the shoulder from bigger boys who had been wont to joke about his name made him flush nervously; to be addressed as 'Humpy,' ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... let fall, in his hesitating, monosyllabic way, some observation which I considered of value. Of the purely commercial side of the industry he knew next to nothing, but then he could tell me a thing or two concerning the psychology of popular taste, the forces operating behind the scenes of fashion, the methods employed by small firms ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... other members of the household, and though Mr. Chilton now and then sauntered into the schoolroom and frolicked with Hattie, his visits were coldly received by the teacher; who met his attempts at conversation with very discouraging monosyllabic replies. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the moment of her arrival, and, when a monosyllabic comment from the taciturn group threatened to reveal to the girl the threatened outbreak of the feud, he went over ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... convent, du Sacre Coeur, a round, dimpled bit of three-year-old humanity, who regarded the world from a pair of gravely twinkling black eyes, and only took a chubby thumb out of a rosy mouth long enough to answer in monosyllabic French. It was a child without an identity; there was but one name that any one seemed to know, ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... they knew not what. The man built a huge fire, so that if any other waifs had been left by this wreck of a world they might see the beacon, and reply in some fashion. They did not talk, except now and then, in a half whisper, they gave monosyllabic queries and replies. The shock that had obliterated a continent seemed to deprive them of all active use of their senses. They moved only in circles, returning always to the place from which ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... to the qualifications of Beekstein, fell into the same trap. He was a monosyllabic, oldish little fellow, whose cheeks had fallen down and disturbed the balance of his already bald head. He had but one emotion and one enthusiasm, a professional jealousy of Beekstein, who was several points ahead of him in the race for first ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... him. Anyone who ever knew Mark heard him use them freely, forcibly, picturesquely in his unrestrained conversation. Such language is forcible as all primitive words are. Refinement seems to make for weakness—or let us say a cutting edge—but the old vulgar monosyllabic words bit like the blow of a pioneer's ax—and Mark was like that. Then I think 1601 came out of Mark's instinctive humor, satire and hatred of puritanism. But there is more than this; with all its humor there is a sense of real delight in what may be called obscenity for its ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... As in V, iv, 30, the 'where' of the Folios represents the monosyllabic pronunciation of this word common in the sixteenth century. In Shakespeare's verse the 'th' between two vowels, as in 'brother,' 'other,' 'whither,' is frequently mute.—/basest metal./—The Folio spelling is 'mettle,' and the word here may connote 'spirit,' 'temper.' If it be taken literally, ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... supper; the count talking all the time to draw me out, and to hide his wife's sulkiness. I answered in the same gay strain, speaking to his wife, however, in the hope of rousing her. It was all lost labour. The little woman only replied by faint smiles which vanished almost as they came, and by monosyllabic answers of the briefest description, without taking her eyes off the dishes which she thought tasteless; and it was to the priest, who was the fourth person present, that she addressed her complaints, almost speaking affably ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the largeness of heart, the courage which urged him, the singleness of purpose which was always his. Then, when their decision had been taken, he remembered the abrupt falling back of the man into the quiet, almost monosyllabic manner which usually belonged ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... be regarded as the stem, there appear to be three Conjugations, but Dr. Strong gives four based on past tense, thus: i. Verbs with monosyllabic roots, 2. Verbs with roots in a, 3. Verbs with roots in i, 4. Verbs ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... do not like to be coddled. She began to talk cheerfully of the first thing that came into her head. He made the necessary monosyllabic responses when her speech put it up to him, but she saw that his mind was brooding over something else. Once she saw his gaze go up to the point on the cliff reached ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... (3) the nomads (Tartars, Mongols, etc.) of Northern and Central Asia and of Eastern Russia; (4) the Turks, the Magyars, or Hungarians, the Finns and Lapps, and the Basques, in Europe; (5) the Esquimaux and the American Indians. Languages of these peoples are monosyllabic or agglutinative. (Note that the Malays and American Indians were formerly ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... monosyllabic. He refused to discuss the situation or Mrs. Sherwood, returning with an obvious effort to commonplaces. Mrs. Morrell exerted all her fascination to get him back to the former level. A little cold imp sat in the back of ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... with a smile, and a glance which the vender of wine might probably have taught her himself after too large potations of his own spirituous manufactories. I was ushered into a small parlour—where sat, sipping brandy and water, a short, stout, monosyllabic sort of figure, corresponding in outward shape to the name of Briggs—even unto a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... monosyllables, (the most rudimentary form of speech), or of monosyllables pieced into words in the stiffest, most unwieldy manner, stuck together, as it were, with nothing to join them, wherefore this kind of language has been called agglutinative. Chinese belongs to the former class of languages, the "monosyllabic," Turkish to the latter, the "agglutinative." Further, the Turanians were probably the first to invent writing, but never went in that art beyond having one particular sign for every single word—(such is Chinese writing with its forty thousand signs or thereabouts, as many as words ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... half an hour it was doubtful whether the evening was going to be a success. Drexley was gloomy, and had not altogether lost the air of having been forced to do something which bored him. He was polite, but monosyllabic and gloomy, and his interest in the play was obviously feigned. Douglas wisely left him to Cicely, and devoted himself to her little friend, and he soon had the pleasure of seeing Drexley thaw. Cicely only laughed at his momentary lapses, and she was far too charming ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... "How do you like your eggs dressed?" Without waiting for the answer, he rode off; but twenty- five years later, riding through the same bar, kept by the same man, the traveller looked steadfastly at him, and received the monosyllabic answer, "Poached." A long parenthesis is twenty-five years; and we, gazing back over a far wider gulf of time, shall endeavor to look hard at the Sphinx, and to convince that mysterious young lady,—if our voice ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... at dinner, and was not quite so monosyllabic in her replies. Her netting was a great resource when she went into the drawing-room after dinner, and she began to feel a little less rigid and confused, made some progress in acquaintance with Clara, and when she went to bed was not without hopes of, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... won't. I WON'T!!!" At the third declaration she brought a saber-edged heel down square upon the most afflicted toe of a very sore foot which the Tyro had been nursing since a collision in the squash court some days previous. Involuntarily he uttered a cry of anguish, followed by a monosyllabic quotation from the original Anglo-Saxon. The girl turned upon him a baleful face, while the long-distance conversationalist on the dock reverted to his original possession and faded from sight in a series ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... glad to see her but his only sign of greeting was a "sai" and a nod to include us both. Her pleasure was undisguised, however, and as we rode down the valley she chattered volubly between the business of driving in half a dozen horses and a herd of sheep. The monosyllabic replies of the hunter were delivered in a voice which seemed to come from a long way off or from out of the earth beneath his pony's feet. I was interested to see what greeting there would be upon his arrival at the yurt. His two daughters and ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... quiet, brooding autumn dusk he came to their doorstep, dismounted, lifted his hat, smiled that wonderful smile of his, and made a bow that any courtier might have been proud to make. Behind him, on a brown horse, was Pedro, his lieutenant—the same monosyllabic Pedro, faithful unto death, and now as clean ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... group of languages and nations in South America was most widely spread from Guyana to Paraguay, and all over Brazil. It is quite monosyllabic, with the Hamite or African structure, having its affinities all over Africa, where hardly any except the Qua or Hottentot nation are of Chinese? or Turanic descent by structure ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... evidently ill at ease, and turned away his eyes when she looked at him, though he glanced at her furtively from time to time. His father chatted with him upon City matters, but the young man's answers were brusque and monosyllabic. His sleep had been troubled and broken, for the conversation of the night before had obtruded unpleasantly on ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Her monosyllabic answers were perfectly colorless, and, with this last, she picked up an empty dish, and vanished. I endeavored to laugh, but there was no response in the eyes of the woman opposite. She dropped her fork, and pushed back ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... dining-room, rich with all comforts and adorned with pictures by Frith and Goodall. Sally, who unfortunately knew no fear, talked defiantly; she addressed herself principally to her brother, and she questioned him persistently, although the replies she received were generally monosyllabic. As he chewed his meat with reflection and precaution, broke his bread with deliberate and well- defined movements, and filled his mouth with carefully chosen pieces, he gradually ventured to decide that he would not speak to his father ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... on the contrary it is the impression of strength, power, courage, and unassailable allegiance to truth. He is careless of appearance because he has something far better worth the while of his attention; he is aloof and remote, monosyllabic and sometimes even inaccessible, because he lives almost entirely in the spiritual world, seeking Truth with a steady perseverance of mind, Goodness with the full energy of his heart, and Beauty with the deep ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... expectations than that this vivacity was mere dissimulation and would take its leave of him when he left the company; yet this I found to be the case. The door was no sooner closed after him than his accustomed solemnity returned. He spake little, and that little was delivered with emphatical and monosyllabic brevity. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... "Good-by, give my love to your mother!" the child answers, "Yes, Mrs. Smith." In all monosyllabic replies a child must not say "Yes" or "No" or "What?" A boy in answering a gentleman still uses the old-fashioned "Yes, sir," "No, sir," "I think so, sir," but ma'am has gone out of style. Both boys and girls must ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... there are other languages, as the Chinese, and the monosyllabic tongues of south-eastern Asia, which possibly are connected lineally with it; the Japanese; the Malay-Polynesian, a well-developed family; the Hamitic (of which the Egyptian or Coptic is the principal member); the Dravidian ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... everybody were equally monosyllabic, how then? You would not get amused," suggested his ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... them what he had heard: the footfalls, below and above, the extraordinary conversation which had broken for a moment the silence of the inner hall. The account was bare, the phrases monosyllabic. He reported only what had been registered on the sensitive tympanums of his ears, to the last whisper of footfalls stealing past the dark wall of the shop. Of all the formless tangle of thoughts, suspicions, interpretations, and ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... his feet, obeying the monosyllabic summons, and followed Mr. Boner around the partition. Mr. Boner rated a private office, where he could worm information, trade secrets, and occasional concessions from travelling salesmen. There was nothing social ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... monologue was wasted on the moon, for no one argued with her. Grim led the way-off the highroad now, and down dark defiles that set the camels moaning, while their riders yelled alternately to Allah and apostrophized their beasts in the monosyllabic camel language. Camels hate downhill work, especially when loaded, and fall unless told not to in a speech they understand, in that respect ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... be told, even Mr Swiveller's approaches to the single gentleman were of a very distant kind, and met with small encouragement; but, as he never returned from a monosyllabic conference with the unknown, without quoting such expressions as 'Swiveller, I know I can rely upon you,'—'I have no hesitation in saying, Swiveller, that I entertain a regard for you,'—'Swiveller, you are my friend, and will stand by me I am sure,' with many other short speeches ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of maidenhood, from among whom he was expected to make his choice, were at length seated in various constrained attitudes about the room, a dead silence fell, broken only by an occasional nervous remark from Mrs. McNally, and a monosyllabic response from the wooer. The relief was general when the "decent body," engaged to help for the day, opened the door with a very black hand, kicked it still further back with a gaping shoe, and finally entered the room ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... These monosyllabic ejaculations broke forth like the vexed clucking of a frightened blackbird; after which relief, the Abbe resumed his fitful striding up and down the box-bordered alley. This lasted until the hour of twilight, when Augustine, the servant, as soon ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... a moment before, she had been oppressed with the heat. Her monosyllabic question was low and indistinct. She wondered whether Giovanni could hear the beatings of her heart, so slow, so ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... continued Deborah's wonderful song of Jael and Sisera to the bitter end of its strong monosyllabic climax. ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... will blaze and run, scorching all things; and, from Cadiz to Archangel, mad Sansculottism, drilled now into Soldiership, led on by some 'armed Soldier of Democracy' (say, that Monosyllabic Artillery-Officer), will set its foot cruelly on the necks of its enemies; and its shouting and their shrieking shall fill the world!—Rash Coalised Kings, such a fire have ye kindled; yourselves fireless, your fighters animated ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... endowed like the bee and the beaver with an instinct for living in groups, and moreover an imitator like the monkey, but more intelligent, capable of passing by degrees from the language of gesticulation to that of articulation, beginning with a monosyllabic idiom which gradually increases in richness, precision and subtlety.[3117] How many centuries are requisite to attain to this primitive language! How many centuries more to the discovery of the most necessary arts, the use of fire, the fabrication of "hatches of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... When he sat next to her at dinner she would be very silent. If he stayed at home on a morning she was not visible. During the short evenings he could never get her attention. And he made no progress with the Duke. The Duke had been very courteous to him at Richmond, but here he was monosyllabic and ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... of words, largely English, but with a considerable admixture from other tongues, combined in the framework of Chinese construction. It is current in ports all over the East, and is by no means confined to China. The principle is that roots, chiefly monosyllabic, are used in their crude form without inflection or agglutination, the mere juxtaposition (without any change of form) showing whether they are verbs, adjectives, etc. This is the Chinese ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... declined all monosyllabic masculine nouns having a short stem-vowel and ending in {-l} or ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... days to happen—ten days which were rather disagreeable, of course, but which Dolly, sure of the trumps in her little hands, bore with jolly fortitude. All that time, Charles-Norton glowered constantly. He was monosyllabic and ostentatiously unhappy. This more than was necessary, and very deliberate. It had to be deliberate; for, as a matter of fact, on the outside Charles was not having at all a ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... used. The words were always concrete, not abstract, by which it is meant that their meaning was capable of demonstration to the senses. With the exception of a few later specified series they were monosyllabic words. The nouns might denote objects of any size perceptible to the eye; the objects, however, were all of such a size that they could be shown through a 14x12 cm. aperture and still leave a margin. Their size ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... signification of the same word. The character of languages also favors or retards such changes, pliable and easily modified ones, such as those of the American Indians, and in a less degree those of the Aryan nations, favoring a developed mythology, while rigid and monosyllabic ones, as the Chinese and Semitic types, offer fewer facilities to such variations. Furthermore, tribal or national history, the peculiar difficulties which retard the growth of a community, and the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... influence of the chief accent affects also combinations of two monosyllabic words which make an iambus, and combinations like ego illi, age ergo, in which the second syllable of the second word is elided. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... origin of language, H.P. Blavatsky makes some statements which are quoted here and which should be borne well in mind in considering what follows. "The Second Race had a 'Sound Language,' to wit, chant-like sounds composed of vowels alone." From this developed "monosyllabic speech which was the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard consonants still in use among the yellow races which are known to the anthropologist. The linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative languages.... ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... hateful noonday sun. If we fell we were prodded with a sharp point. Our companions in chains did not stumble. They strode along proudly erect. Occasionally they would exchange words with one another in a monosyllabic language. They were a noble-appearing race with well-formed heads and perfect physiques. The men were heavily bearded, tall and muscular; the women, smaller and more gracefully molded, with great masses of raven hair caught ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... deny, my dear, that I have brought men—fluent conversationalists—round here for a pleasant evening's debate only to see them become abstracted and monosyllabic directly ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... al-ways," he said, in monosyllabic tones, as though he were reading out of a child's primer, - "I shall al-ways be glad to see any of the young friends of my old col-lege friend Lar-kyns; and I do re-joice to be a-ble to serve you, Mis-ter Green; and I hope your son, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... light of the united revelations of her sister-in-law and her husband she had come to seem to me almost a sinister personage. Yet the signs of a sombre fanaticism were not more immediately striking in her than before; it was only after a while that her air of incorruptible conformity, her tapering monosyllabic correctness, began to affect me as in themselves a cold thin flame. Certainly, at first, she resembled a woman with as few passions as possible; but if she had a passion at all it would indeed be that of Philistinism. She might ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... Chinese, which have neither compound words nor inflection, accent plays a very important part. As the words are all monosyllabic, stress could obviously not be so important as pitch as a help to distinguish different senses attached to the same syllable, and in no other language is variety of pitch so well developed as in Chinese. In languages which, like English, show comparatively little pitch ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... only short words and sentences or monosyllabic words and sounds, or, finally, they lack all articulate sound. Many microcephalous idiots babble words without understanding ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... side. The first emotion of their meeting having passed away, he found it easier to talk to her, and he did so in an odd monosyllabic way which she yet found interesting. All her life she had been somewhat peculiarly situated with regard to companionship. Her father, having once taken her abroad and once to London for the season, considered that he had done his duty ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at the head of the table, and was mortified that a couple of big old calf-bound books had to be placed on his chair to make him sit high enough. Phoebe and the Parson were at either side, and the foot of the table was taken by Annie, Archelaus, defiant and monosyllabic, on her left, and Lawyer Tonkin, glossy with black broadcloth, on her right. The lawyer had a haunting air as of cousinship to things ecclesiastical, and, indeed, he was lay-preacher at a Penzance chapel. Tom, who had taken care to set himself on his other ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... men made to express their thoughts were at first composed entirely of vowels. In the slow course of evolution the consonant sounds gradually came into use, but the development of language from first to last on the continent of Lemuria never reached beyond the monosyllabic phase. The Chinese language of to-day is the sole great lineal descendant of ancient Lemurian speech[20] for "the whole human race was at that time of one language and of ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... tantrums. He devoted himself to it, and it occupied him so agreeably that he did not observe the conduct of Mademoiselle Klosking on her return. She placed three photographs softly on the table, not very far from him, and then resumed her seat; but her eye never left him: and she gave monosyllabic and almost impatient replies to everything he mumbled with his mouth ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Ferdinand breathed right into Adele's translucent Listener those three Words which hold all Records as monosyllabic Trouble-Makers. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... plain truth!) bearing a pot of porter. Her appearance always acted as a damper to the curiosity raised by her oral oddities: hard-featured and staid, she had no point to which interest could attach. I made some attempts to draw her into conversation, but she seemed a person of few words: a monosyllabic reply usually cut short every ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... he consulted Considine. It was a hard confession for Jocelyn and the awkwardness of Considine did not make it easier. It seemed as if the two of them were up against a stone wall. Considine blushing and monosyllabic, begged for time to consider what might be done; and the fact that he did not seem to be utterly hopeless cheered Jocelyn considerably. Gabrielle, in the meantime, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... he ought to cultivate the solitary sister-in- law, began asking about Miles; but unlike the typical colonist, she was very silent, and her replies were monosyllabic, till Rosamond created a diversion by talking to Frank; and then Raymond elicited that Glen Fraser was far up the country—King Williamstown nearer than any other town. They had sent thither for a doctor for Miles, and he stayed one night, but said that mother's treatment ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... away with her pen-knife at a pencil or a pen; fidgetting a little, pouting a little, defending herself by monosyllables, and when I deprived her of the pen or pencil, fearing it would be all cut away, and when I interdicted even the monosyllabic defence, for the purpose of working up the subdued excitement a little higher, she would at last raise her eyes and give me a certain glance, sweetened with gaiety, and pointed with defiance, which, to speak truth, thrilled ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell |
