"Genitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Old English a large number of words had in the genitive case singular the ending -es; in Middle English still more words took this ending: for example, in Chaucer, "From every schires ende," "Full worthi was he in his lordes werre [war]," "at his beddes syde," ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen." Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case, regardless of consequences—and therefore this bird stayed in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... height of earth;" "earthes" (an old form of the genitive), or "airthes height," not unnaturally corrupted to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... is the original particle of swearing, a Harf al-jarr (governing the genitive as Bi'llahi) and suggesting the idea of adhesion: "Wa" (noting union) is its substitute in oath-formulae and "Ta" takes the place of Wa as Ta'llahi. The three-fold forms are ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... point of antiquity is the habit which obtains to some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and "a long ways." Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbial genitive. "He goes out nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so severe, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. Leon Kellner's Historical English Syntax (p. 119) and find that the Gothic for "at night" was "nahts," ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... with the genitive, "follows verbs meaning to speak or know about a person," but only in the Odyssey. What preposition follows ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... emendations of 'courtiers' and 'king,' as to the sense;—only it is not impossible that Shakspeare's dramatic language may allow of the word, 'brows' or 'faces' being understood after the word 'courtiers',' which might then remain in the genitive case plural. But the nominative plural makes excellent sense, and is sufficiently elegant, and sounds to my ear Shakspearian. What, however, is meant by 'our bloods no more obey the heavens?'—Dr. Johnson's assertion that 'bloods' signify 'countenances,' is, I think, mistaken ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... follow each other in a false direction for want of a little independent thinking. The Greek of Plato was translated by a long succession of writers, "Zoroaster the son of Oromazes," until some one happened to think that this genitive might ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke |
