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More "Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes fixed on Laura's face. Nobody laughed, nobody even chuckled, and yet it was a jolly letter that they read first, full of spirit and life and fun. High-hearted adventure rollicked through it, and the humor that makes light of hardship, and the latest slang of the front adorned its pages with grotesquely picturesque phrases. The Cameron boys were obviously getting a good time out of the war. Bob had got something else, too. The letter had been delayed ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... boy," said Henderson, "your eternal friend's delicate insinuation that you are a donkey. Here, come with me and I'll take you to be patted on." Henderson's exuberant spirits prevented his ever speaking without giving vent to slang, bad puns, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... keeping with the grandeur and responsibility of the paternal relation. But really, in the only other example (which immediately occurs) of Papa's attempt to bias the filial intellect, we recognise nothing but what is mystical; and involuntarily we think of him in the modern slang character of 'governor,' rather than as a 'guide, philosopher, and friend.' It seems that one Saturday, about the time when the Rev. Walker in Furness must have been sitting down to his exegesis of hard sayings in the Town and Country Magazine, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... by his vanity is very good: but I wish you would not let him plunge into a "vortex of dissipation." I do not object to the thing, but I cannot bear the expression: it is such thorough novel slang; and so old that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel that ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... It was a bit of slang, and I like to use bits of English slang when I can; they'll be so useful to know by-and-by when I am scolding ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... fire-extinguisher on him and saved him from being a total loss to the insurance companies. But he learned his lesson. There's nothing like experience to teach caution, and that little episode gave Phaeton caution to burn, if I may indulge in mundane slang. He was guyed so unmercifully by everybody for his carelessness that the first thing he did when he recovered was to learn how to drive, and it wasn't six cycles before he was the most expert whip in Olympus. He ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... American (slang) way of putting an affirmation; and, probably, the strongest instance of it on record is that of a Bowery boy, who, when asked by a clergyman, "Wilt thou have this woman?" replied, "I won't ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... sole mistress of your fortune. At first this struggle will serve as a distraction for her soul, whether it be empty or in too violent commotion; next, she will find in your opposition a new motive for ridicule. Slang expressions will not fail her, and in France we are so quickly vanquished by ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... motion pictures provoke the ingenuity of the audience, not their passionate sympathy. When, in the minds of the deluded producers, the beholders should be weeping or sighing with desire, they are prophesying the next step to one another in worldly George Ade slang. This is illustrated in another good Action Photoplay: the dramatization of The Spoilers. The original novel was written by Rex Beach. The gallant William Farnum as Glenister dominates the play. He has excellent support. Their team-work makes them worthy ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... sits up; literally this time slang is unknown to him; and re-reads it. That girl has come! There can't be any doubt of it. He had almost forgotten her existence during these past tranquil months, when no word or hint about her reached him, ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... purer than shrinking! Free from the athletics and the slang, she is antetype, indeed, of, say, the St. Andrews girl, that admirable creation of our age; but she soars beyond her sister on the wings of her more exquisite sensibility, and her deeper restfulness. Not for her the perpetual ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... uneasily as she came from the dressing tent and stopped to gaze at the nearby church steeple. The incongruity of the slang, that soon came from her delicately formed lips, was lost upon him as she turned her eyes ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... evening along the whole extent of a long and deserted thoroughfare, is a perfect piece of imaginative precision. From under the edge of the hood his eyes look upon Crainquebille, who has just uttered in an uncertain voice the sacramental, insulting phrase of the popular slang—Mort aux vaches! They look upon him shining in the deep shadow of the hood with an expression of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... I get you; but that's only slang. You have been here long enough, I should guess from your talk, to get on to our American guff. Well, we're glad to ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... has got to make the taught think for themselves. In proportion as his teaching makes them contribute their share of effort will it be fruitful. This is, of course, the merest truism, sometimes dignified in the current pedagogical slang by the name of "self-activity," or the like. But whatever new bottles the theorists, and their extreme left wing the faddists, may choose to serve up our old wine in, the fact is there: children have got to be made to use their own brains. The eternal ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... the third generation; he could order a dinner at Sherry's as readily as drinks at Sharkey's. Most valuable accomplishment of all, he learned to laugh. In the way of by-products he picked up a working acquaintance with American, English and German slang—French slang he already knew as a mother-tongue—considerable geographical knowledge of the capitals of Europe, America and Illinois, a taste that discriminated between tobacco and the stuff sold as such in France, and a genuine passion for ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... permitted to continue in his responsible office. A trait, after the manner of the find in the Lido, forces itself upon me here. It was to this man that some youthful colleagues in the hospital adapted the then popular slang of that day: "No Goethe has written that," "No Schiller composed ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... usually conscious is dissociated and the submerged part takes the stage. When we forget our surroundings in concentration or absent-mindedness, a part of us is dissociated and our friends say that we are "not all there," or as popular slang has it, "Nobody home." When a mood or system of complexes drives out all other moods, one becomes "a different person." But if this normal dissociation is carried a step farther, we may lose the power to put ourselves together again, and then we may truly be said ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... it, David, who had been amusing himself in Madrid by teaching the elements of grammar and a large vocabulary of English slang to any Spaniard who would pay for it, came home and enlisted with Jonathan in a line regiment. For two months they drilled and exercised themselves in the so-called "arts of war." Then, chiefly on account of a soulless section ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... savouring of slang could possibly be applied to Raymond, he might be said to be struck all of a heap by his wife's proposition. He had never even thought of the possibility of making a home anywhere but at Compton Poynsett, or of his wife ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is. You know who I mean. Why, she's even taught me to cut out slang. Say, Bobby, I didn't know how much like a rough-neck I used to talk. I never opened my yawp but what I spilled a line of fricasseed gab so twisted and frazzled and shredded you could use it to stuff sofa-cushions; but now I've ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... solid body or the creeping thing itself? You are no better than a man pouring water into a mortar and braying it with an iron pestle; he thinks he is doing a necessary useful job, whereas, let him bray till all's blue (excuse the slang), the water is as much water as ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... scrutiny, but a face that was becoming a kind of hold on life, even a kind of refuge, an ally. It was a face that might have come out of a rather flashy book; or such as is revered on the stage. 'A rotten bad face,' he whispered at it in his own familiar slang, after some such abrupt encounter; a fearless, packed, daring, fascinating face, with even—what?—a spice of genius in it. Whose the devil's face was it? What on earth was the matter?... 'Brazen it out,' a jubilant thought cried suddenly; 'follow it up; ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... mystified, Gondureau explained the two slang words for her benefit. Sorbonne and chump are two forcible expressions borrowed from thieves' Latin, thieves, of all people, being compelled to consider the human head in its two aspects. A sorbonne is the head of a living man, his faculty of thinking—his council; a chump ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... words into approximate meaning in English, saying it was as difficult to translate these intimate and slang phrases as it would be to put "Yankee Doodle" into French or German. His translation, as he wrote it on a scrap ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... heads were moved by one muscle, all the faces were turned toward him with wide, derisive grins. He seemed to hear some one make a humorous remark in a low tone. At it the others all crowed and cackled. He was a slang phrase. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... so I inquired at the Poodle's office,' answered the fellow with a grin as he signified the official by the students' slang appellation. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... manners is heat and exaggeration in conversation. It is a just complaint among refined and cultivated people that many, even of the well-educated young women of the present day, talk too loudly and vehemently; are given to exaggeration of statement and slang expressions. The greatest blemish of the conversation and manners of the young people of to-day is obtrusiveness and exaggeration. By obtrusiveness I mean a style of speech and manners that attracts attention and remark; by exaggeration ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... is that dancing chit Slang and suggestiveness serve her for wit, And impudence for beauty. Yet frigid 'Form' melts at her cockney spell, 'Form,' which votes valsing with the reigning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... for words, and the confusion of them with one another, the forgetfulness of proper names (more commonly than of other words because they are more isolated), aphasia, and the like. There are philological lessons also to be gathered from nicknames, from provincialisms, from the slang of great cities, from the argot of Paris (that language of suffering and crime, so pathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect articulation of the deaf and dumb, from the jabbering of animals, from the analysis of sounds in relation to the organs of speech. ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... version "up to date" (as the slang goes) of Our Village, may interest the supporters of the Statesman Mr. ACLAND, without annoying the admirers ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... of horsemen, and snap them until they get so close you can see the whites of their eyes. Then if they turn at the right time—well and good. But if there's a slip, and they ride into you—good-night! Excuse my slang," he added, hastily. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... this high opinion of themselves can scarcely be wondered at; they were low fellows, but masters at driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of the coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... arose at the detection of the swaggering boatswain; and all that the Baronet had for it was to sneak off, saying, "D—n the old quiz, who the devil thought to have heard so much slang from an old ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... language, and when employed impart to it much dignity and beauty; but there is no standard of orthography, nor any grammar, and but few rules of universal application. Every Siamese writer spells to please himself, and the purism of one is the slang or gibberish ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... interests. Tall and well-built, with handsome, strongly-marked features, he gave at first sight an impression of strength—which faded somewhat when he began to talk. It was not so much the manner of his speech—with its rapid slang, and its way of turning everything to a jest—as the feeling it produced, that the brain behind it took naturally the path of least resistance. He was in fact one of those personalities who are often enough prominent in politics and social life, by reason ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... face), using an ugly slang word for a foreigner's Japanese mistress; and they would pretend that she smelt ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... were to use the word "flabbergasted" as expressing Miss Baker's immediate state of mind, I should draw down on myself the just anger of the critics, in that I had condescended to the use of slang; but what other word will so well express what is meant? She had fully intended to go back to Littlebath, and had intended to do so at the earliest moment that would be possible. Was not Sir Lionel still at Littlebath? And, moreover, she fully intended to live there. That she ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the local locksmith. It's astonishing how good a job a locksmith in France can do, even on an automobile, the mechanism of which he perhaps has never seen before. Officially the locksmith in France is known as a serrurier, but in the slang of the land he is the cambrioleur du pays, a name which is expressive, but which means nothing wicked. He can put a thread on a bolt or make a new nut to replace one that has mysteriously unscrewed itself, which is more than many a mere bicycle ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... member of the profession living in the village, had no competitor save when the sitting of the court brought in one or more from neighboring settlements, and, being thus circumstanced, without opposition, and the only representative of his craft, he was literally, to employ the slang phrase in that quarter, the "cock of the walk." He was, however, not so much regarded by the villagers a worthy as a clever man. It required not erudition to win the credit of profundity, and the lawyer knew how to make ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... prefatory remarks of "conviction," &c. Mr. Bowles proceeds to Mr. Gilchrist; whom he charges with "slang" and "slander," besides a small subsidiary indictment of "abuse, ignorance, malice," and so forth. Mr. Gilchrist has, indeed, shown some anger; but it is an honest indignation, which rises up in defence of the illustrious dead. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... roots in water-soaked mud or the beds of running streams, while leaves and flowers rise far above into the light. Other pools should become "beds" for the water-flowers that float upon the surface. In the slang of the rock garden the plants living and flourishing on upright rocks are called "verticals." If we must have a slang for the flora of the brook garden we will term them "horizontals"— the plants that lie flat on the water surface, and only use their stems as cables to anchor them to ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... suited to their places. How he envied them! Then the whole superficies of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference. He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along with him. One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with semi-professional knowledge. Harvey, however, could never have entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through the portals of such ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... very pretty, attractive girl, whom Fred always took to dances, and skated with on the river; her chum Cissie Anderson, a little addicted to slang, though witty, and "fetching," as Sid Wells was heard to admit many a time, even when she had rubbed it into him pretty hard; and last, but not least, that energetic sister of Sid's, Mame Wells, a girl who could play almost any game that boys did, ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Whewell talked about American writers, and was very severe upon them; some of them were friends of mine, and it was not pleasant. But I was especially hurt by a remark which he made afterwards. Americans are noted in England for their use of slang. The English suppose that the language of Sam Slick or of Nasby is the language used in cultivated society. They do not seem to understand it, and I have no doubt to-day that Lowell's comic poems are taken seriously. So at this ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... money, they must be simplified, and treated much as a painter treats them, drawing them in squarely, seizing the more important features, and neglecting all that does not assert itself as too essential to be passed over—hence the slang and cant words of every profession, and indeed all language; for language at best is but a kind of "patter," the only way, it is true, in many cases, of expressing our ideas to one another, but still ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... than the seeds. Opium is extracted from poppy straw in commercial operations that produce the drug for medical use. Qat (kat, khat) is a stimulant from the buds or leaves of Catha edulis that is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), ephedrine, ecstasy (clarity, essence, doctor, Adam), phenmetrazine ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... speculators, all the men who seek for violent sensations as a relief from immense labors, gave Lucien a welcome among them. And Lucien had gained confidence; he gave himself out in talk as though he had not to live by his wit, and was pronounced to be a "clever fellow" in the slang ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... "I'm a blackguard; I know it; and I don't think I was worth fishing up. But you've done it, and I mustn't go back on you, I suppose." He lifted his poor, weak, bad little face, and looked Staniford in the eyes with a pathos that belied the slang of his speech. The latter released his hand from Captain Jenness and gave it to Hicks, who wrung it, as he kept looking him in the eyes, while his lips twitched pitifully, like a child's. The captain gave a quick snort either of disgust or of sympathy, and turned abruptly ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... conservative, that they have no vitality in them. With a curious perverseness, the most gentle and accomplished women will turn from him with a sense of relief, to join in the society of a hearty fellow with a loud laugh and a dash of slang, and a free and easy way with him. It may be difficult to explain all this, but it is true. An exceedingly proper man is never a popular man. That life which is controlled by rigid and unvarying rules, and regulated by conventionalities ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... was ordinary conversation. When an occasion arose which seemed to demand a special effort, the talk around the "chuck-wagon" was so riddled with slang from all corners of the earth, so full of startling imagery, that a stranger might stare, bewildered, unable to extract a particle of meaning. And through it blazed such a continual shower of oaths, that were themselves sparks of satanic poetry, that, in the phrase ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... and these called to him to come back and take up his wanderings and his discoveries. Some day, I will tell you how he broke his promise to help a friend. That was long since, and he has, by this time, been nearly spoilt for what he would call shikar. He is forgetting the slang, and the beggar's cant, and the marks, and the signs, and the drift of the undercurrents, which, if a man would master, he must always ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... not shamming anything," I protested as earnestly as I could, not quite knowing what his slang phrase meant, but believing it to imply that I was pretending to be ill to shirk duty when I was all right. "Weeks, I'm terribly ill, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... know; some old fellow who wrote the rules of arithmetic, I believe; it's only a bit of slang. But, I repeat, you have a right to be sad, and it's taking an unfair advantage of your relations to look as pleasant ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... a clever workman, you will meet next Sunday in the Louvre discoursing energetically on the comparative merits of the French and Italian schools of painting; yet this same Theophile shall be the Titi of the gallery of the Porte St. Martin in the evening, who yells slang at his friend on the opposite side; and the Pierrot or Debardeur of ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... is said that in Saugor no Bania dare go past a Bundela Rajput's house without getting down from his pony and folding up his umbrella. In Hindu slang a 'Chhatawali' or carrier of an umbrella was a term for a smart young man; as in the line, 'An umbrella has two kinds of ribs; two women are quarrelling for the love of him who carries it.' Now that the umbrella is free to all, and may be bought for a rupee or less ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... 110. The gesture is to place the fingers between the cravat and the neck and rub the latter with the back of the hand. The idea is that the deceit is put within the cravat, taken in and down, similar to our phrase to "swallow" a false and deceitful story, and a "cram" is also an English slang word for an incredible lie. The conception of the slang term is nearly related to that of the Neapolitan sign, viz., the artificial enlargement of the oesophagus of the person victimized or on whom imposition is attempted to be practiced, which is ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... like tawny lightning down the Pincian. The last words I heard from the club window, through the heliotrope-scented air, were "Thirty to one on Atys, half only if declared." They were wagering on our lives; the slang of the paddock was ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... taken an unwarrantable liberty with his good taste; that is to say, I have so far deviated from that stereotyped rule-so strictly observed by all our great authors-as to make my hero, who is what is curiously enough called a "Yankee Character," speak tolerably good English, instead of vulgar slang. In truth, so closely do "our great writers" adhere to this rule of depicting the eccentric American as a lean, scraggy individual, dressed most outlandishly, making splinters of the king's English, while drawling it with offensive nasal sounds, and violating the rules of common politeness ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Saupiero. I am followed by the yellow-collars [Note: Slang for Gendarmes.]. Hide me, for I ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... development of the latter; it will therefore progressively make war more catastrophic and less definitive. It will not make war impossible in the ordinary meaning of the word, the bigger the gun and the viler the lethal implement the more possible does war become, but it will make war "impossible" in the slang use of five or six years ago, in the sense, that is, of its being utterly useless and mischievous, the sense in which Norman Angell employed it and so brought upon himself an avalanche of quite unfair derision. No nation ever embarked upon so fair a prospect of conquest and dominion as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that if he ever did go in for the peculiar entertainment of falling in love, he would choose a shy girl with brown curls who did not talk slang and went about distributing buns to hungry boys. "Her for mine," he ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... heard you tell Aunt Ann. And now," said Portia, "the first time he does a real nice jolly piece of mischief you come down on him like—like a thousand of bricks." Her slang was reserved for the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... I come back I'll talk nothing but Greek and Latin. I'm getting French now from Ford, and Hindoo from Frank Harley. Then I know English and slang and Long Islandish. Think of one man with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... to be no Bridge that evening, and by unspoken consent everyone sat in the hall. It was a cold night, and the roaring fire was pleasant to hear, and in the expressive slang of ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... to sum up his attitude, less and less like Victor. But it is not to be presumed that he was sinking into mental nothingness. He was not perhaps quite so refined in his language as he might have been, he used slang, and sometimes was inclined to hang his hat on the floor and talk back. He was rather untidy in his dress. But certain compensating qualities of the highest value were appearing in Tim. He had gathered to himself a plentiful ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... all right, my dear fellow. I understand that it is the refined slang of the modern boudoir, and only known ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... "go on" a good deal about our slang. They used to be fond of quoting in superior derision in their papers our, to them, utterly unintelligible baseball news. Mr. Crosland, to drag him in again, to illustrate our abuse of "the language," quotes from some tenth-rate American author—which is a way they have had in England of ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... was strictly after the pattern of the real original, and so are the whole of our Vestry's proceedings. In all their debates, they are laudably imitative of the windy and wordy slang of the real original, and of nothing that is better in it. They have head-strong party animosities, without any reference to the merits of questions; they tack a surprising amount of debate to a very little business; they set more store by forms than they do by substances: - all ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... our readers are not familiar with the slang of the Rue de Jerusalem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied this word for the first time to this thing, allow us to explain to them ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... more characteristic of his talking and his writing than that tragic poem in which, with his heart crying for the child he had adored and lost, he could compare himself to 'an old black rotter of a boat' past service, and could see, when criticised for it, nothing discordant in that slang rotter dropped into such verse!" A good deal of Henley is in both answers. This curious blend must have especially struck everybody who saw him and listened to him in his own home. I can recall summer Sunday afternoons ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... they were absolutely terrified by this act of 'boycotting' (the slang word then current for such acts of abstention). Their counsels became wild and vacillating to the last degree: one hour they were for giving way for the present till they could hatch another plot; the next they all but sent an order for the arrest in the lump of all the workmen's committees; ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... all hazards, makes him seize the most effectual and sudden words in spite of usage and fashionable taste; and that, therefore, when he can get a brighter tint, a more expressive form, by means of some strange—we must call it—Carlylism; English, Scotch, German, Greek, Latin, French, Technical, Slang, American, or Lunar, or altogether superlunar, transcendental, and drawn from the eternal nowhere—he uses it with a courage which might blast an academy of lexicographers into a Hades, void even ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... "I wouldn't use school-boy slang if I were you," returns Luttrell, with provoking coolness, and an evident irritating ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... I use only the purest, most refined, and cultured English. I leave slang to those who can get by with it and put it over. So where I have used dashes you may use your favorite slang words. Mine were deleted ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... The slang term for the Health Exhibition at Kensington was familiar to him from the English papers he had seen in Paris. As soon as Eve had passed on he obtained a like ticket and hastened down the steps in pursuit. A minute or ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... we saw traffic policemen with their Stop and Go signals in the middle of the Sahara; telephones, check books, motorcycles and automobiles in use, and so on. In addition, the leaders were filled with modern business and other slang; and the spectacle of a huge negro wrapping Cleopatsy in a modern Axminster rug and carrying her in to show her to Antony (instead of, as according to history, Caesar) kept the spectators in a roar of laughter. For an originally-worked-out idea such as ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... that. What I did say was that he was 'half-seas over' which is a slang expression we use in England instead of saying tipsy, or dans les vignes du Seigneur, so prettily ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... and in a powerful but not very musical voice began to sing a hymn full of cowboy slang. His singing had a quality not usual in street singers, and a crowd quickly gathered about him. His song was long and not without a rude poetry. He began his address at last by issuing a defiance to his ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... pony, pulled up the lariat pin which held him out upon the prairie and scampered for home, and Billy and Davie Dunn, his chum, were forced to "hoof it," as the western slang ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... represent, and the Jews, and this alone ought to give us a friendly feeling toward one another. We are both misunderstood and caricatured. The Yankee stands for a peculiar sort of closeness in money matters and a shrewdness which has even given its slang name to a neighboring New England State, the "Nutmeg State." Perhaps we have both done too much in the past to deserve this reputation for super-cleverness. One of you has referred to the fact that there are Jews who do not like to acknowledge their race. In that respect ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... and receptions, dinners and theatres, race meetings and cricket matches, at both of which more attention is paid to fashion than to the field, follow one another in a dizzy succession. She has naturally no time for thought, but in order to avoid the least suspicion of it, she learns to chatter the slang of the youthful Guardsmen and others who are her companions. A certain flashing style of beauty ensures to her the devotion of numerous admirers, to whom she babbles of "chappies" and "Johnnies," and "real jam" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... variety of American slang is remarked upon by almost all English travellers, who, however, might find at home, in the language of high-born people, departures from purity quite as frequent and as great as those prevalent with us, although perhaps not so gross; for it must be confessed that most of our slang is coarse ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... those about her, Kitty tried to enact the fashionable young lady, and, like most novices, she overdid the part. Quite forgetting her cousin, she tossed her head, twirled her fan, gave affected little shrieks at college jokes, and talked college slang in a way that convulsed Fletcher, who ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... girl wants to know. The American girl! She comes over here, and, as a British matron, reduced to slang by force of indignation, once exclaimed to me: "You'd think the whole blessed show belonged to her." The European girl is hampered by her relatives. She has to account for her father: to explain away, if possible, her grandfather. The ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... the fatrasie—going to Sterne for pattern or inspiration. Now Rabelais is a perpetual fount of inspiration, an inexhaustible magazine of patterns to the most "serious" novelist whose seriousness is not of the kind designated by that term in dissenting slang. That abounding narrative faculty which has been so much dwelt on touches so many subjects, and manages to carry along with it so many moods, thoughts, and even feelings, that it could not but suggest to any subsequent writer who had in him the germ of the novelist's art, how ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... slang of its own. This is a matter of course. The vast cattle and sheep industries, the strange aspects of the country, and the strange native animals, brute and human, are matters which would naturally breed a local slang. I have notes of this slang somewhere, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... This is not slang, my dears; not a bit of it. It is but the translation of an inscription on an ancient Egyptian ball, a leaden one, used as a kind of bullet and thrown from a sling. Sometimes the name of the slinger was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... procuresses will write to men of means of their acquaintance, informing them in some cipher or slang phrase that they have a new importation in their house awaiting eligible disposition. Large sums are often paid under such circumstances, and the fresh importation is usually sold in this way five or six times. In other words, she is represented as a maid and imposed upon men as a virgin; ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Birmingham. I thought that in these days of slang everyone knew that. In old times at Brum, which had a lot of small metal industries, the gold- and silver-smiths used to buy metal from almost anyone who came along. And as metal in small quantities could generally be had cheap ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... dinners," when the guests themselves would be dressed up, the men in women's clothes, the women in men's, the male imitating the piping treble of the female voices, and the female the over-vowelled slang of the male, until, tiring of this foolishness, they would end up by flinging the food at the pictures on the walls, the usual pellet being softened bread and the favourite target the noses in the family portraits, which, hit and covered with a sprawling mess, looked ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Toping and Napping. 'To top' and 'to nap' are slang terms signifying to cheat, especially with dice. cf. R. Head, Canting Academy (1673), 'What chance of the dye is soonest thrown in topping, shoring, palming, napping.' Both words occur very frequently, and are amply ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... himself plunged into an armchair a la Voltaire, crossed his legs, raised the upper one to the level of his eye and looked fixedly at Dumay, who became, to use his own martial slang, "bayonetted." ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... grew red, like a bashful woman's. He thought Blecker had divined his secret, would haul it out roughly in another moment. If this slang-talking Yankee should take little Lizzy's name into his mouth! But the Doctor was silent, even looked away until the heat on the poor old bachelor's face had died out. He knew McKinstry's thought of that little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... could, at the end of this one day, understand or at the worst gather the drift of, all she heard, both of German and French her English was all right—at least, if she chose.... Pater had always been worrying about slang and careless pronunciation. None of them ever said "cut in half" or "very unique" or "ho'sale" or "phodygraff." She was awfully slangy herself—she and Harriett were, in their thoughts as well as their words—but she had no provincialisms, no Londonisms—she ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... must know, is styled 'plew' on board, in the slang of the training-ship; possibly, through some association with the 'sky blue' known in ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... comedy is Captain Tucca. "His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... indeed, little understood. Not many of those who think at all think beyond the line of established custom and routine. They may take pains in their letters to obey the ordinary rules of grammar, to avoid the use of slang phrases and vulgar expressions, to write a clear sentence; but how few seek for the not less imperative rules which are prescribed by politeness and good sense! Of those who should know them, no small proportion habitually, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... "You've recently," she observed, "got into a new way. Whatever slang you happen to hear outside you come and tell me. And whenever you read any improper book, you poke your fun at me. What! have I become ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... when they're far away," she said, picking that bit of comic supplement slang deliberately to annoy him. "I don't believe our grandfathers and grandmothers were always such models of decorum as they tried, when they had grown old, to make us think. And the simple primitive joys ... I believe an old-fashioned husking bee, if they had plenty of hard cider ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... pencil away with a precise movement. He looked at the Masked Lady with a smug smile. "That word snitch," he said. "It's entirely out of place, you know—after you've once introduced Aladdin and Hansel and Grettel in your story. And a giant. It's slang, and it came into use long after the race of giants ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... bed, and wash dishes, and I don't say slang words any more, and I can weed everything in ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... Archie played, Hock would sit quietly looking out of the window, vowing to himself he would give up slang, and go to Sunday-school regularly, and not shoot craps any more behind the barn with boys his father had expressed a wish not to have around the place. In after years Hock knew what made him have these good impulses ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... my feet, mentally at least. I don't suppose any one could set me permanently on my physical, corporeal pins. Beg pardon for the slang, Conny, I don't forget how you and Sybil used to lecture me for that, and my other vices. Poor sis, she had given up the drink talks latterly, given me over as hopeless, and so I am. Con., I ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... observe what was there before her for the first time. She looked at the thick rugs, the uniformed servants, the line of pale, sleek young men in the office enclosure, the swarming "guests" (according to the euphemistic slang of American hotels!),—all these women in evening gowns, much jewelled, on their way to dinner, with their attendant males; and she asked herself if it were the same world that ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... shocking stories of his superior officers. He scolded and carped and criticised and caviled, told half truths and solid lies, and the august and astute Committee listened with open ears, and the phonographer dotted down every word. So the meanest gossip and slang of the camp was raked into a heap and preserved in ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... manners a man may have had. If I were among your friends I would be out of place and uncomfortable, and should always have to be bowing and scraping and exchanging compliments, and besides they would soon find out that my Spanish was doubtful. I talk a sailor's slang, but I doubt if I should understand pure Spanish. Altogether, I should be very uncomfortable, and should make you uncomfortable, and I would very much rather take my place among the men that work for you until I can get on ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... the order of the Russian captain as distinctly as if I had been on board his own ship, and was somewhat surprised at its being given in slang English. ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... facades of the other she fired off a rocket-like shower of original remarks, paradoxes, and brilliant criticism. She knew exactly where to scoff and where to be enthusiastic, jeered with all the ruthless slang of the Paris gamins at the pompously mediocre sights recommended to the tourists' admiration by Baedeker, and gave evidence of deep and true comprehension of all that was ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... [Footnote A: Caput—a German slang expression with the general significance of the English "gone to smash," but also a hundred other and wider meanings, impossible ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... second and a lighter object in the novel of "Paul Clifford" (and hence the introduction of a semi-burlesque or travesty in the earlier chapters) was to show that there is nothing essentially different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice, and that the slang of the one circle is but an easy paraphrase of the cant ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... government of the many, or the ascendancy of the most ignorant or hollow. Posh is an almost untranslatable idiom, implying, as the reader will see later, contempt. The closest rendering I can give to it is our slang term, "bosh;" and this Koom-Posh may be loosely rendered "Hollow-Bosh." But when Democracy or Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into that popular passion or ferocity which precedes its decease, as (to cite illustrations from the upper world) during ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the fan. Short curls upon the temples were designated cavaliers; ringlets were garcons; while a hundred other inanities of the same description compelled the great ladies of the period to adopt a slang which was perfectly unintelligible to all save the initiated; and when we add to these details the well-authenticated fact that the royal apartments were fumigated with powdered tobacco (then a recent and costly ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... that Charles was often careless in his language; sometimes used slang words, and was apt to give a bad impression to strangers. Also that he did not always conduct himself at table, especially before visitors, with careful ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... in which she wouldn't be wasted; and this in spite of the heroine's pleasant abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets and shoes—as these things sketched themselves to Milly—and something rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and the occasional freedom of her slang. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... as the place of confinement. The name by which she was spoken or written of was Corpach, an ominous distinction, corresponding to what is called subject in the lecture-room of an anatomist, or shot in the slang of the Westport murderers' [Burke and Hare]. Sir Walter adds that 'it was said of M'Neil of Barra, that when he dined, his bagpipes blew a particular strain, intimating that all the world might go to dinner.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... hands in his pockets, and his quid in his mouth, with very much the air of one who had nothing to do but look about him, and spit right and left; addressing this old tar, Charley made known to him his wish in slang, which to Mary was almost inaudible, and quite unintelligible, and which I am too much of a land-lubber to ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... perished after drinking an extraordinary quantity, may be strictly denominated a duel with deadly weapons. In the south of France, it is said, one person sometimes invites another to partake of absinthe by the slang phrase, "Take a shovelful of earth;" as if an American bar-room lounger, recognizing with grim humor the deadly quality of his liquor, should say, "Come and get measured for your coffin." The French expression has certainly, in view of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... to tell me why I was a jolly fool, and so green, as you call it. Pity people can't teach you foreigners something better than slang. Now then—answer." ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... donor."[Footnote: Of the cant words used in this inauguratory oration, some are obvious in their meaning, others, as Harman Beck (constable), and the like, derive their source from that ancient piece of lexicography, the Slang Dictionary] ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... used slang as one kind of bait and he used to say: "It beats all how it draws." I saw this verified at Ottawa, Kansas, Chautauqua. Giving a Saturday evening lecture he baited the platform with slang, satire and humor. Sunday afternoon an hour before ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... that was the way it sounded to the people who heard it. Along the eastern front of these nations it was softened to "Zowie!" and in that form you can hear the people of eastern New York and Vermont still using it as slang. ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... at her husband's indorsement—"All right. Wade in." "It's nothing but Jim's slang," she said, with a laugh and a slightly heightened color. "He ought not to have sent you by that short cut; it's a bother, and even dangerous for a stranger. If you had come directly to US by the road, without making your first ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... consciously with a deliberate attempt upon them, in just that partial, selecting, creative way in which an artist looks at things for the purpose of painting a picture. In order to arrive at their effects, they shrink from no sacrifice, from no excess; slang, neologism, forced construction, archaism, barbarous epithet, nothing comes amiss to them, so long as it tends to render a sensation. Their unique care is that the phrase should live, should palpitate, should be alert, exactly expressive, super-subtle in expression; and they prefer indeed a ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... odd jobs of work that might be required, for a night's lodging and food for herself and wife. She had adopted this plan once or twice before, and with good success; for her father had been a tailor in Rouen, and as a girl she had often helped him with his work, and knew the tailors' slang and habits, down to the particular whistle and cry which in France tells so much to those of a trade. At this blacksmith's, as at most other solitary houses far away from a town, there was not only a store of men's clothes laid by as ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... behind the foot-lights, artists and their models, literary men of Bohemian tendencies, these are the people whom Billy Burgundy has selected for characterization. True, they speak their lines in slang, but it is the slang of the educated, and is ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... colloquial idioms, when to write in a loose slang had become a mark of loyalty, this is the only L'Estrange vulgarism I have ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... monsieur! A thousand pardons. It is a secret mission, is it not? Tut! Tut! I must not ask! You, too, are soldiers in a way. I must not talk about it. Forget that I have asked you. I am as silent as the graveyard. What is that delightful slang you have—remember it no more? Ah, I have blundered! Forget it! Now I have it! I shall forget it!" and, with a gay laugh, he smiled at the boys, and then, nodding, ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... around the barrel of a machine gun to keep the water from leaking out of the barrel casing. Also slang for rations. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... hardly have bettered it. His manner, in fact, left nothing to be desired; and the French in which immediately he begged a thousand pardons for the intrusion was so admirable that it seemed hard to believe he was the same man who had, only a few hours earlier, composedly traded the slang of the States with a chauffeur in front of the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the brotherhood. It did not require much imagination to suppose that the war would add to the number of their clients, whether their claims had real foundation or not; what they wanted above all things was some one of undoubted position who would "boom the movement," in the slang of the day. They laid all their plans to get their man in the author of Raymond, and they got him. Such is his thesis for ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever they ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... is due to the general ignorance of English prevailing throughout the world. It is atrociously taught, and taught by ignorant men. It is atrociously and meanly written. So far as this second cause of sheer ignorance goes, the gaps in knowledge are continually resulting in slang and the addition of needless neologisms to the language. People come upon ideas that they know no English to express, and strike out the new phrase in a fine burst of ignorant discovery. There are Americans in particular who are amazingly apt at this sort of ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... managed to improve my mind more than could reasonably have been expected. To say truth, the whole place reeked with vulgarity. The men drank beer by the gallon, and eat cheese by the hundred weight—wore jockey-cut coats, and talked slang—rode for wagers, and swore when they lost—smoked in your face, and expectorated on the floor. Their proudest glory was to drive the mail—their mightiest exploit to box with the coachman—their most delicate amour to ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smashed it to pieces on his head. John, who could run like a greyhound, and well knew how far he could trust to his heels, no sooner got out of the cellar than he let loose the floodgates of his wrath, and poured forth upon his astonished master a torrent of invective, partly the slang of the mob, and partly supplied from plays and farces by his memory; then assuring "the ugly illnatured hunks" that he never should see him again till he was able to make his thick scull ring with a drubbing, he disappeared, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... doesn't. It doesn't carry me anywhere except into trouble. When I think of all the pains I've taken to learn how to talk like the dictionary! Why, nobody talks like the dictionary any longer! They all talk slang, every one of them—only they don't talk the kind that Julius Gershom and all these politicians do. If you could have seen Mrs. Berkeley's face when I told her I'd had a 'grand' time to-night—she looked exactly like a frozen ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... closed window to make out what they were saying. Even if she had been actually in the room with them, she would have found much of their conversation incomprehensible, as it was largely made up of the extraordinary slang of the Paris street Arabs and rascals generally. From time to time one or the other of the participants in this orgy seemed to propose a toast, whereupon they would all clink their glasses together before raising them to ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... upon the town a whole winged flock of ballades of amazing dexterity. This unknown balladist was Mr. Henley; perhaps he was the first Englishman who ever burst into a double ballade, and his translations of two of Villon's ballades into modern thieves' slang were marvels of dexterity. Mr. Swinburne wrote a serious ballade, but the form, I venture to think, is not 'wholly serious,' of its nature, in modern days; and he did not persevere. Nor did the taste for these trifles long endure. A good ballade is almost as rare as ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... here," she continued. "Helen daren't slang the rich, being rich herself, but she would like to. There's an odd notion, that I haven't yet got hold of, running about at the back of her brain, that poverty is somehow 'real.' She dislikes all organization, and probably confuses wealth with the technique of wealth. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... catch the Post! Pheugh! But the Pats would have "had me on toast" (As 'ARRY would say in his odious slang), If I had been but a little bit later. Out o' breath as it is. Ah, hang This hurrying business! My mouth's like a crater, Dreadfully dry, and doosedly hot. Rather a downer, this is, for SCOTT's lot! Feared Mrs. Manchester might just say ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... danced and sang, and laughed out joyously at everything and at nothing, and talked the most fascinating nonsense—all in the role of "Cousin Burwell." She could imitate him to perfection; her strut and swagger and slang threw me into paroxysms of delight. We picked huckleberries, and dived into the woods to feast upon wild plums that had ten drops of syrupy juice between tough skins and flinty stones encased in the pulp of bitterness, ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Lord Lisle was about as unpleasant a matter as one could well experience. His language was coarse; his ideas coarser still. There was very little to redeem it. He mistook slang for wit, told stories that made his wife shudder, and misbehaved himself as only such a ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... about the ship, disturbing those who were disposed to read, write and study navigation. Not content with this, they hollowed, ridiculed and insulted people passing in vessels and boats up and down the river. The commander had no small difficulty in putting a stop to this disgraceful river-slang. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... his good taste; that is to say, I have so far deviated from that stereotyped rule-so strictly observed by all our great authors-as to make my hero, who is what is curiously enough called a "Yankee Character," speak tolerably good English, instead of vulgar slang. In truth, so closely do "our great writers" adhere to this rule of depicting the eccentric American as a lean, scraggy individual, dressed most outlandishly, making splinters of the king's English, while drawling it with offensive nasal sounds, and violating the rules ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Carthaginians with the most expert slingers in the world, who did them great service in battles and sieges.(582) They slang large stones of above a pound weight; and sometimes threw leaden bullets,(583) with so much violence, that they would pierce even the strongest helmets, shields, and cuirasses; and were so dexterous in their aim, that they scarce ever missed ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... tediousness. I have flaunted these truisms before you in order to exorcise that modern slang of yours which is more false than the overstrained forms of a feudal France. To shut out glory is not to be practical. You are not adjusting your life artistically; there is too much strain, too little warmth, too much self-complacence. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... principle. The tendency of the thoughtless is to denounce all compromise as wicked, and to stick to a form of words without bothering about the real meaning. Belief in "fads"—I cannot avoid the bit of slang—and singular malleability of real convictions are sometimes generated just by want of serious thought; and, at any rate, both phenomena are very common ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... squeegee went head-over-heels into the lee scuppers. It was the boatswain himself who picked me out, and who avenged me on his subordinate by a round of abuse which it was barely possible to follow, so mixed were the metaphors, and so cosmopolitan the slang. ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... taken back in our lives. All hands were called in to witness the phenomenon and, recovering from their astonishment, the boys joined hands and danced around me, singing and shouting in their excitement. Then each yelled something at the machine—bits of slang or slurs—and it made them roar to hear that funny little contraption ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... duchess, leaving her astonished auditors to look at each other a moment in silence, and then to express themselves fully and freely and unreservedly with regard to American effrontery, American manners, and American slang, as ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... seemed to me that even the sad sea waves were kinder to the Pretty Girl, such is the influence of youth and beauty. There were various men—heavy swells I should call some of them, only that that would be slang; but heavy swells were the order of the day. Then there was a benevolent old lady who believed in everything—in the music, and the Jane Moseley, and the long days, and the summer. There was another old lady of restless mind, who evidently believed ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... precisely those qualities in which they feel themselves to be chiefly deficient. Their reverence and affection are bestowed upon her whose voice is ever soft, gentle and low, and whose mild influence is shed like a balm upon the labours and troubles of life. Of slang, and of slaps upon the back, of strength, whether of language or of body, they get enough and to spare amongst themselves, and they are scarcely to be blamed if at certain moments they should prefer refinement ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... letter, which she read through carefully, then, "It has been a deliberate plot on Ethel Grimmer's part," she said. "She has gone out of her way to do it. I know she has got fast and vulgar lately, smoking cigarettes and talking slang; but I did not think she would do an immoral thing ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... with such chastened literary art as that of Thackeray and George Eliot, Matthew Arnold and John Morley, Lecky and Froude, Maine and Symonds, side by side with a Carlylese tendency to extravagance, slang, and caricature, we find another vein in English prose—the flat, ungainly, nerveless style of mere scientific research. What lumps of raw fact are flung at our heads! What interminable gritty collops of learning have we to munch! Through what ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... words are the names of various "tunes," and signified in each case a particular metre, rhyme, melody, &c, so that each was a brief definition of a number of individual items, so to speak. These Meistersinger technical terms (or slang?) are therefore not translatable, nor could they be made intelligible by paraphrase, even if the requisite information for each ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... has undergone such changes, even within the last sixty or seventy years, that many words, at that time considered pure, are now obsolete; while others—of which the word "mob" is a specimen—formerly slang, are now used by our best writers, and received, like pardoned outlaws, into the body of respectable citizens.' The standard, accordingly, to which the author refers in the work before us, is the sense in which a word is used by the purest writers and most correct speakers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... wish to make. As many purchasers of pianolas are people who never have received musical instruction, it might be supposed that the most popular selections for the instrument would be either bits of musical slang like twosteps and ragtime, or, at the best, simple pieces in the recognized classical forms. But the result of the spread of musical taste through this new instrument is wholly different and wholly novel from ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... not fear it; I'm no disembodied spirit— I am Lampton, the Slang Poet, with a price upon my head. I am watching by this portal for some late lamented mortal To arise in his disquietude and leave his ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... "Slang!" said Massachusetts, looking up again. "One cent for the missionary fund. You will clothe the heathen at this rate, Maine. That is ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... with vain repetitions. She was always "a worm" when asked after her health, and everything that pleased her was "pucka." She knew no language but her own, and that she spoke indifferently, her command of it being limited for the most part to slang expressions, which are the scum of language; and a few stock phrases of polite quality for special occasions. But she used the latter awkwardly, as workmen ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... strange sort of criminal, she thought, with his humour and ready address, his sudden shifts from slang of the street to phrases chosen with a discriminating taste in English, his cool indifference to her threatening attitude, and his paradoxical pose of warm—it seemed—personal interest in and consideration for a complete and, to say ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... been highly disappointed, for the proofs were invariably returned bristling with corrections and having a highly hieroglyphic appearance. Then Gluck would go in and slang his men. He kept them behind the partition ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... fatrasie—going to Sterne for pattern or inspiration. Now Rabelais is a perpetual fount of inspiration, an inexhaustible magazine of patterns to the most "serious" novelist whose seriousness is not of the kind designated by that term in dissenting slang. That abounding narrative faculty which has been so much dwelt on touches so many subjects, and manages to carry along with it so many moods, thoughts, and even feelings, that it could not but suggest to any subsequent writer who ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... absorbing in its allurements. Especially to the excitable, high-strung Harris, whose great eyes almost popped from his head at the continuous display of tropical marvels, and whose exclamations of astonishment and surprise, enriched from his inexhaustible store of American slang and miner's parlance, burst from his gaping mouth at every turn of the sinuous trail. From the outset, he had constituted himself Carmen's special protector, although much to Rosendo's consternation, for the lank, awkward fellow, whose lean shoulders bent under the weight of some six-feet-two ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... water into the shallows in one direction, while in others the outer fields, in quarters whence a relieving force might be expected, were turned into lakes by the same machinery. Farther outside, a system of palisade work of caltrops and man-traps—sometimes in the slang of the day called Turkish ambassadors—made the country for miles around impenetrable or very disagreeable to cavally. In a shorter interval than would have seemed possible, the battlements and fortifications of the besieging army ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a good deal of slang from the nature of his associates, and she set to work to improve his language, and ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... fair to credit such a noble creature with talking, or even thinking, slang, but Dick Darvall clearly understood her to say something of the sort, for after a while he reduced speed to a kind of india-rubber walk and patted ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... much head left if I bit for every slang word you use," retorted her half-sister. "Do get on with your French, Avice—it's nearly half-past twelve, and you know Eliza will want to lay the table presently. Come here, Queenie." She took the pillow case, and unpicked a few stitches, which clearly indicated that ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... "Guvnor is the Whitechapel slang for father. My man many years ago told me he had received it in that way—the death of his parent," explained Carter ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... family a fair trial also; if you will allow me the use of slang. Your wife told me that never in the whole course of your married life had she known you so bad tempered, so un-Christian like, as you were that month. Then you remember that other saddle, the one with the ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... interference of others. I had full confidence in the abilities of the commander, whom I had practically myself chosen, and, except when he asked for my assistance, I left him entirely alone. I encouraged him to pay no attention to those vexatious bureaucratic formalities with which, under the slang phrase of "red tape" our military system is overburdened. I exercised some little control over the demands for stores which were sent to the London War Office; and the mere fact that these demands passed through my hands, and that I declined to forward any request unless, besides being ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... suspecting Roscius took care to make his speech when he knew the king was within earshot—a little bit of that 'artifice' of his which has left such an impression in the theatre, that the phrase, 'As deep as Garrick,' is still current stage slang."[219] ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... cabin with the others, approached and stared at me, but not insolently—merely with curiosity. They seemed a vile lot, one and all. With some of them every other word was an oath; their talk was almost gibberish to my ears with thieves' slang. I wondered to find not one of them dressed in felon's garb; but on reflection I concluded that they had plundered the crew and the people who had had charge of them and of the Cyprus, and ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... Latin slang for hirsuta, and always used of nasty places or nasty people; it shall not stay. The species shall be our Viola Seclusa,—Monk's violet—meaning the kind of monk who leads a rough life like Elijah's, or the Baptist's, or Esau's—in another kind. This ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... [tone] of persiflage and personal satire. As an amateur, he was a painter of the very highest rank. Though I know nothing of the matter, yet I should hold him a perfect critic on painting, for he always made his criticisms intelligible, and used no slang. I am very sorry, as much as is in my nature to be, for one whom I could see but seldom. He was the great friend of Wordsworth, and understood his poetry, which is a rare thing, for it is more easy to see his peculiarities ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of arbitration, and an unknown President had just come in. Presently an unknown Ambassador arrived. Mexico got worse; would we not recognize Huerta? They send Carden. We had nothing to say about the tolls—simply asked for time. They were very friendly; but our slang phrase fits the situation—"nothin' doin'." They declined San Francisco[47]. Then presently they began to see some plan in Mexico; they began to see our attitude on the tolls; they began to understand our attitude toward concessions ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... in his circumstances. He very soon knew everybody, from the governor of the state down to the waiters at the hotel. He had the Wall street slang at his tongue's end; he always talked like a capitalist, and entered with enthusiasm into all the land and railway schemes with which the air ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... culture! Her forte is simply such vulgar things as suffice to raise a laugh! Worse than her is that P'in Erh with that coarse tongue! She has recourse to the devices of the 'Ch'un Ch'iu'! By selecting, from the vulgar expressions used in low slang, the most noteworthy points, she eliminates what's commonplace, and makes, with the addition of a little elegance and finish, her style so much like that of the text that each sentence has a peculiar character of its own! The three ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... at a time!" laughed Ned. "To answer the first query first, Captain Moore is the Secret Service officer who is to post us with regard to our mission to Chinese waters. Second he will, to use the slang adopted by Jack, be the 'Big Noise' as long as he is with us. Third, I don't know whether he is going on the journey with ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Patty, you must stop using slang. They'll never ask you to Herenden Hall again if you behave like ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... transports, accompanied by three of the American destroyers and two English "limeys "—-as the British destroyers are known in the slang of the sea—-slipped off silently into the twilight. The American infantry and marines were to be landed "somewhere in France." Jack and Ted viewed the departure ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... rig-out for the crew of a prairie schooner, eh?" There was a laugh at this which perplexed Clarence. Observing it, the humorist kindly condescended to explain that "prairie schooner" was the current slang for an emigrant wagon. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... expended upon persons of infinitely small merit, what was to be done when those of real superiority entered upon the scene? It was impossible to apply to them the forms of laudation adapted to their inferiors. Well, then, a species of slang was invented, by which it was thought practicable to make the genuine great men conceive they had passed into the condition of demigods. A language was devised that was to express the fervor of the adorers who were suddenly allowed to penetrate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... seventy years of age his mind was notably clear, orderly and active, and his talk (usually a carefully constructed monologue) was stately, formal and precise. He used no slang, and retained scarcely a word of his boyhood's vernacular. The only emotional expression he permitted himself was a chuckle of glee over an intellectual misstatement or a historical bungle. Novels, theaters, music possessed ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the heads were moved by one muscle, all the faces were turned toward him with wide, derisive grins. He seemed to hear some one make a humorous remark in a low tone. At it the others all crowed and cackled. He was a slang phrase. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... the hearse bearing his wife swing round through the gates of the cemetery, he mentally recorded the resolution that on that day all uncertain syntax, all abuse and neglect of aspirates, and all Midland slang should be banished from his house for ever. He had loved his wife, but he frankly acknowledged to his soul that her death had been opportune; and as her coffin was lowered into the grave, he could not help muttering the thought, "Here also ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... both Von Engel and Von Furzmann are determined that my silence shall voice itself. I have no doubt that they would like to have me write it, so that they could boast of it afterward to their fellow officers. Now, as Jimmie would say in his frightful slang, 'I'm going to give them a run for their money.' Von Engel will probably beseech you to arrange to keep Jimmie at your side, so that he can have a few words with Mrs. Jimmie. Von Furzmann will plead with you to permit him a word with me. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... of the smugglers and owlers who had used the Woolpack as their headquarters long ago, riding by moonlight to the cross-roads, with their mouths full of slang—cant talk of "mackerel" and "fencing" ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... them all wear the same tie, the same trowsers, the same boots. I hear them all say the same thing, and dance with the same partners in the same way. I see them go to Europe and return—I hear them talk slang to show that they have exhausted human life in foreign parts and observe them demean themselves according to their idea of the English nobleman. I watch them go in strongly for being "manly," and "smashing the spoonies"—asserting intimacies with certain ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... great buzzing noxious insects swarm out of their childish mouths; frightful nicknames, thieves' slang, sailors' oaths, that they perhaps had learnt down on the wharf; and they are both so engaged that they do not notice my landlady, who rushes out to see what is ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... the Greeks used to suspend in the gymnasium, like the pendulum of a clock (as may be seem on a fictile vase), to buffet to and fro with blows of the fist. The stuffed bag will represent the human head on the end of its trunk; and the word may have been a slang one of the day, or coined by the Asiatic Trimalchio, whose general language is filled with provincial patois. The translation would then be, in the familiar style of the original,—"The ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... man your fleets, to win your Camperdowns and Trafalgars? and when they came ashore again, were no longer the simple, slouching Simons of the village; but jolly tars, with rolling gait, quid in mouth, glazed hats, with crowns of one inch high, and brims of five wide, and with as much glib slang, and glib money to treat the girls with, as any Jack ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... talk. Their conversation might have taken place between two men. Indeed, they often were brutally frank to each other. Fanny had the vision, Fenger the science to apply it. Sometimes her intuition leaped ahead of his reasoning. Then he would say, "I'm not sold on that," which is modern business slang meaning, "You haven't convinced me." She would go back and start afresh, covering the ground ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... him. He had struck a bell, and the office seemed suddenly filled with clerks. Van Teyl's words were incoherent—a string of strange directions, punctuated by slang which was, so far as Lutchester was concerned, unintelligible. The whole place seemed to wake into a clamour of telephone bells, shouts, the clanging and opening of the lift gates, and the hurried tramp of footsteps in the corridors outside. Lutchester rose to ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... been lookin' consid'ble like rain, lately, hereabouts," continued the captain, coolly, in a kind of amphibious slang, characteristic of the man, "but in these yer latitudes no man kin set up ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... a complete language must be, with its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds; the many forms that single words may take, especially if they are verbs; the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang and inflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues these simians have![1] Where another race, after the most frightful discord and pains, might have slowly constructed one language before this earth grew cold, this race will create literally hundreds, each complete in ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... of that about me or any of my doin's. I hate sentimental bosh as much as you hate slang, and should have been a bachelor to this day if I hadn't seen Kitty jest as I did. You see, I'd been too busy larkin' round to get time for marryin', till a couple of years ago, when I did up the job double-quick, as I'd like to ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... not to turn out." Is turn out a slang phrase here, or is it a term commonly used in speaking of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... I wish you'd find native slang; we used in my day; but I'll tell you why. It's because she's keeping him on till she sees what Eugene'll ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... so grandly, and used such great big words!—"A good thing, too," Mrs Asplin averred. She wished the rest would follow her example, and not use so much foolish, meaningless slang.—Her eyes looked so bright and mocking, as if she were laughing at something all the time.—Poor, dear child! could she not talk as she liked? It was a great blessing she could be bright, poor lamb, with such a parting before her!—She was so grown-up, and patronising, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... says, may play all the tricks in its repertory, and none of them will tickle an audience into good humour. "Tousjours vieil synge est desplaisant." It is not the old jester who receives most recognition at a tavern party, but the young fellow, fresh and handsome, who knows the new slang, and carries off his vice with a certain air. Of this, as a tavern jester himself, he would be pointedly conscious. As for the women with whom he was best acquainted, his reflections on their old age, in all their harrowing pathos, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... merit." One of the most diverting personages in Jonson's comedy is Captain Tucca. "His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate what it was dangerous to announce; and Beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... function of analogy, in the extension and transformation of the meanings of words. Works on linguistics are full of evidence on this point. One could do better still by attending exclusively to the vernacular, to slang, which shows us creative force in action. "Slang," says one philologist, "has the property of figuring, expressing, and picturing language.... With it, however low its origin, one could reconstruct a people or a society." ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... ordinary conversation. When an occasion arose which seemed to demand a special effort, the talk around the "chuck-wagon" was so riddled with slang from all corners of the earth, so full of startling imagery, that a stranger might stare, bewildered, unable to extract a particle of meaning. And through it blazed such a continual shower of oaths, that were themselves sparks of satanic poetry, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... almost invariably present a good share of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification—features which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made up of extremely sanguinary locutions borrowed from the terminology of warfare. Except where it is adopted as a necessary means of secret communication, the use of a special slang in any employment ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... jovial party he had left, and straining his ears to catch if possible a little of their conversation. This he soon found was to no purpose for what did actually reach his ears was disguised so completely by the use of cant words and the thieves-latin called slang, that even when he caught the words, he found himself as far as ever from the sense of their conversation. At length ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... whose vivid genius strays 'Mid Drury's stews to incubate her lays, And in St. Giles's slang conveys her tropes, Wreathing the poet's lines with hangmen's ropes; You who conceive 'tis poetry to teach The sad bravado of a dying speech; Or, when possessed with a sublimer mood, Show "Jack o'Dandies" dancing upon blood! ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... John spoke up sharply and said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang line," when I used all the flash words myself just ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Bob sat in a swinging chair talking in snatches to Hicks, between calls on the telephone. He listened to quick, sharp orders as to men and instruments, as to the management of water, the undertaking of repairs. These were couched in technical phrases and slang, for the most part. By means of the telephone Hicks seemed to keep in touch not only with the plants in his own district, but also with the activities in Power Houses Two, Three and Four, many miles away. Hicks ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... than shrinking! Free from the athletics and the slang, she is antetype, indeed, of, say, the St. Andrews girl, that admirable creation of our age; but she soars beyond her sister on the wings of her more exquisite sensibility, and her deeper restfulness. Not for her the perpetual pursuit of ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy, closely copied the Greek Menander. Unlike Plautus, he drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude, Terence for the few; Plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian and other great critics. He aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... (the demi-savans (I don't mean Napoleon's in Egypt, but the provinvial editors—in some cases it amounts to the same thing) having proved the word to be Greek, I suppose it is slang no longer), the Tenth Illinois regiment (Dick Wolcott, you know) camped a few miles to the northward, near the woods; and hasty but shady structures were soon reared in front of the officers' tents; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... applied in slang language to cats and dogs, hence the witty Egyptians converted Admiral-Seymour (Lord Alcester) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... which reduced language to abstract generalization. His own vocabulary is concrete and vivid, and of a purity which makes one wonder how even the Quarterly Review could have ventured to apply to him the epithet "slang-whanger." ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of his baseball record, whereupon she used the slang of the game with so much authority that it became entertaining, but by a curious association of ideas she turned the conversation to the subject of a family who owed the hotel-keeper their last summer's board and who had ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... David, who had been amusing himself in Madrid by teaching the elements of grammar and a large vocabulary of English slang to any Spaniard who would pay for it, came home and enlisted with Jonathan in a line regiment. For two months they drilled and exercised themselves in the so-called "arts of war." Then, chiefly on account of a soulless ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... th' lot, they call us wild craturs an' mock wur pleasant dialect, wich is better English ner thairs. (Groans, which lasted for ten minits.) Yes, my fella citizens, yo've hed to put up wi' a deal o' slang fra theas uncultivated rascals. (We have.) An' wats wur case nur all, you've hed to wauk, wet and dry, thro' thick an' thin, i' all sorts o' weather, to Keighla, wen you've wanted to go on th' continent or to London. But soin yo can wauk slap to th' train in a jiffey. ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... ran up the staircase, a burst of laughter followed her in the midst of which she distinguished the retort: "Well, I own to the slang, but I inherited the oak, and the sticks ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... perfect sincerity. There are plenty of men, especially among those who desire the office of a pedagogue, whose field of vision is constricted to a slit. If they were painters their work would be in the slang of the day, "tight." One small group of facts they see hard and sharp, without atmosphere or value. Their own knowledge having no capacity for extension, no width or relationship to the world at large, they cannot imagine ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the many adventures that have become immortal in the pages of Lavengro. Dr. Knapp has encouraged the idea that Joseph Sell was a real book, ignoring the fact that the very title suggests doubts, and was probably meant to suggest them. In Norfolk, as elsewhere, a 'sell' is a word in current slang used for an imposture or a cheat, and doubtless Borrow meant to make merry with the credulous. There was, we may be perfectly sure, no Joseph Sell, and it is more reasonable to suppose that it was the sale of his translation of Klinger's Faustus that gave him the much needed money ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the kind of thing which is meant by people who talk of Muscular Christianity. It is certainly a noble and excellent thing to make people discern that a good Christian need not be a muff (pardon the slang term: there is no other that would bring out my meaning). It is a fine thing to make it plain that manliness and dash may co-exist with pure morality and sincere piety. It is a fine thing to make young fellows comprehend that there is nothing fine and manly in being bad and nothing unmanly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... departure from the English language would not be advisable,) far above all criticism. The attempt to censure the oddities with which it abounds—the frequent repetition—the metaphor and allusion used again and again till the page is covered with a sort of slang—would only subject the critic himself to the same kind of ridicule that would fall upon the hapless wight who should bethink him of taking some Shandean work gravely to task for its scandalous irregularities, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "American slang," he explained penitently. "I am sorry. I meant that it was very pleasant to be here alone with you ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Press, Chained to their party posts, or fetter-free And running amuck against old party creeds, On-howl their packs and glory in the fight. See mangy curs, whose editorial ears Prick to all winds to catch the popular breeze, Slang-whanging yelp, and froth and snap and snarl, And sniff the gutters for their daily food. And these—are they our prophets and our priests? Hurra!—Hurra!—Hurra!—for "Liberty!" Flaunt the red flag and flutter the petticoat; Ran-tan the drums and let the bugles ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... find it I fear he too often has no desire to cast anchor there. The distractions of life are frequently alluring, and the embryonic artists of to-day assure us that they must, in modern jargon, keep "in touch" with modern thought with a view of, in modern slang, being "up-to-date." Ideas such as these—and they seem to me to be not only largely prevalent but almost universal—are in my opinion fatal, not only to the development but to the very existence of art. We see in this country the effect upon every department thereof. Poetry, painting, sculpture, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... in spite of what seems to me a marked individuality of style, and—ah—your apparent delight in slang!" Her voice was quite even, although her eyes had glowed and sparkled and melted at his poetic phantasma of her past (as what woman's would not?). "I find a rather painful effort to be—what do you call it? highbrow?—in some of ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... lines for a moment. But even as he sat thus another light came into his eyes. His gaze took account of Alice's lips and the delicate, rounded whiteness of her neck and chin. Her like he had never met before. The girls he had known giggled; this one smiled. His sweetheart used slang and talked of cattle like a herder, but this woman's voice, so sweet and flexible, made delightfully strange music to ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... to be a young, and as Fong had said, "awful smart boy." Smuggled into the country in his childhood, he spoke excellent English, interspersed with slang. He repeated his story with a Chinaman's unimaginative exactness, not a detail changed, omitted or overemphasized. The young men were impressed by him, intelligent, imperturbable and self-reliant, a man admirably fitted to put in execution the move they had decided on. This turned on his ability ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... had gone on his pedestrian trip. Not that he had any sportsman accoutrements, or used any slang as to the particulars of his expedition. In one respect he was prepared for his excursion on the strictest modern principles. He was lightly equipped as to clothing, and in woollen garments from top to toe. Better still, he had a light ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... almost see the quotation marks around what Dr. O'Connor considered slang dropping into ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... liberal man: liberal in the true classical sense, not in the slang sense of modern politicians and education-mongers. Being so, I am sure that you will sympathize with my case. I am an ill-used man, Dr. North—particularly ill used; and, with your permission, I will briefly explain how. A black scene of calumny will be laid open; but you, Doctor, will make ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... beautifully chosen, and fit, without change of a syllable, for the most critical eye. What girl now studies the words with which she shall address her lover, or seeks to charm him with grace of diction? She dearly likes a little slang, and revels in the luxury of entire familiarity with a new and strange being. There is something in that, too, pleasant to our thoughts, but I fear that this phase of life does not conduce to a taste for poetry among our girls. Though ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... politely into the priest's more philosophic pleasures. He seemed to know a great deal both about the fishing and the books, though of these not the most edifying; he spoke five or six languages, though chiefly the slang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and very motley societies, for some of his cheerfullest stories were about gambling hells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or Italian brigands. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... grammar-grade children, idolize her. She is very witty, but her wit is always innocent and kind. She never hurts any one's feelings. And she is never impertinent. The professors are as crazy about her as the scholars,—forgive the slang. Did the twins ever tell you what happened the first day ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... the man, and the mystery surrounding his appearance and disappearance. What did the woman mean by "halibi"? She supposed it must be a slang word, so it would be no use looking in a dictionary; perhaps it ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... got on a swagger dress this time!' cried Mr. Tom, who, though he had never been to Oxford, was a genuine free-trader in slang, and was ready to ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... the Voice of Virtue and Truth, And the sweet little innocent prattle of Youth! The smallest urchin whose tongue could tang, Shocked the Dame with a volley of slang, Fit for Fagin's juvenile gang; While the charity chap, With his muffin cap, His crimson coat, and his badge so garish, Playing at dumps, or pitch in the hole, Cursed his eyes, limbs, body and soul, As if they did not belong to ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... would have done anyway, and you KNOW it," Martha charged, lapsing charmingly into twentieth-century slang. ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... here to mention the use, or rather misuse, of words which are often called "slang," such as "awfully jolly," "fearfully tedious," "horribly dull," or the expression "quite alarming," which young ladies, I think, have now happily forgotten, and the equally silly use of the word "howling" by young men. Such expressions mean absolutely ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... use of this technical device in an abundance of forms. In his slang any going back to an earlier scene is called a "cut-back." The cut-back may have many variations and serve many purposes. But the one which we face here is psychologically the most interesting. We have really an objectivation of our memory function. The case of the cut-back ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... description of being natus rebus agendis—sent into this world not for talking, but for doing; not for counsel, but for execution. On that field he was a portentous man, a monster; and, viewing him as such, I am disposed to concede a few words to what modern slang denominates ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... seized the opportune moment when the whale's side was presented just after the blow, sending his lance quivering home all its length into the most vital part of the leviathan's anatomy. Turning his happy face to me, he shouted exultingly, "How's dat fer high?"—a bit of slang he had picked up, and his use of which never failed to make me smile. "High" it was indeed—a master-stroke. It must have pierced the creature's heart, for he immediately began to spout blood in masses, and without another wound went into his ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... she wouldn't be wasted; and this in spite of the heroine's pleasant abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets and shoes—as these things sketched themselves to Milly—and something rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and the occasional freedom of her slang. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... and well knew how far he could trust to his heels, no sooner got out of the cellar than he let loose the floodgates of his wrath, and poured forth upon his astonished master a torrent of invective, partly the slang of the mob, and partly supplied from plays and farces by his memory; then assuring "the ugly illnatured hunks" that he never should see him again till he was able to make his thick scull ring with a drubbing, he disappeared, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... British Constitution," said the Boy. "It began long ago when they'd first mapped out the big military manoeuvring grounds—we call 'em Areas for short—where the I. G. spend two-thirds of their time and the other regiments get their training. It was slang originally for beef on the hoof, because in the Military Areas two-thirds of your meat-rations at least are handed over to you on the hoof, and you make your own arrangements. The word 'heef' became a parable for camping in the Military Areas and all its miseries. There ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... the Arena chapel or at the end of a Bach fugue. It is the comment of sophisticated refinement that can neither sit still nor launch out into rapturous, but ill-bred, ecstasies, of the weakling who takes refuge in slang or jocularity for fear of becoming natural and being thought ridiculous. Miss Coleridge stood for Kensington and Culture, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Medea, and called the Bacchae "Hallelujah Lasses." She and Kensington admired Greek ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... (see his Algebra, &c.), with three or four others, and in the latter half by a man to whom Saunderson had some resemblance in spring and elasticity of understanding, viz. by Edmund Burke. Since his day I know of no writers who have avoided the slang and unmeaning use of the word, excepting Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth; both of whom (but especially the last) have been remarkably attentive to the scholar-like [1] use of words, and to the history ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... and sprang from my unfamiliarity with the language. For although two nations use the same words and read the same books, intercourse is not conducted by the dictionary. The business of life is not carried on by words, but in set phrases, each with a special and almost a slang signification. Some international obscurity prevailed between me and the coloured gentleman at Council Bluffs; so that what I was asking, which seemed very natural to me, appeared to him a monstrous exigency. He refused, and that ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mother, reprovingly, "how many times must I tell you not to use slang? It is vulgar and unladylike, and quite out of keeping with your ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... night and day. He was afraid of the thoughts, the emotions that seized it, swaying, moving the multitude of undeveloped souls as if they had been one monstrous, dominating soul. He was afraid of their voices, when they chanted, sang and shouted together. He loathed their slang even when he used it. He disliked the collective, male odour of the herd, the brushing against him of bodies inflamed with running, the steam of their speed rising through their hot sweaters; and the smell of dust and ink and india-rubber and resinous ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... good? You go about Warwickshire, and fancy that from merely being born and wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands Shakspeare must have drunk in a portion of that frank artless sense of beauty which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in ennobling those who were born ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yelled Noddy, reverting in this moment of excitement, as was his habit at such times, to his almost forgotten slang. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... thoroughly in the vortex now: there was no doubt about that. Kitty might laugh as loud as she pleased, and he only looked charmed. Kitty might frisk like a will-o'-the wisp, and he only admired her innocent vivacity. Even the bits of slang and the Americanisms which occasionally slipped from her only struck him as original and piquant. How would it all end? That neither Koenigin nor I could divine, for Kitty was not one to wear her heart upon her sleeve. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the stage story from other literary forms like the novel and the short-story. It must be told dramatically or it is not a stage story; and the dramatic element must permeate its every fibre. Not only must the language be dramatic—slang may in a given situation be the most dramatic language that could be used—and not only must the quality of the story itself be dramatic, but the scene-steps by which the story is unfolded must scintillate with the soul ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... man is only a walking gentleman. With the exception of a crying father and a snivelling mother, the rest are SUPERS who have to dress well and have to PAY for their insignificant parts in the shape of costly presents." I did not care for the theatrical slang, but thought it ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... observer of ball-room talk will not fail to notice what may be called the exclusive slang of society. He will find people "in society" habitually using a few pet words which they love, not because they are a bit better than the synonyms used by other people, but just because other people don't use them, whereby they serve as a sort ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | For the interest of the reader, 'the morning hate' is | | WWI slang for the "Stand To Arms". | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... French artists whom he happened to know living here than with anybody else in the city; and yet when he went back to London he sometimes felt that the recollection of it, the chatter of studios, the slang of the critics, even the whole sense and sound of Paris gave him a little the recollection as of a huge cage of monkeys. Like most modern Englishmen, he talked disparagingly about British hypocrisy, Anglo-Saxon humbug, English stiffness and London fog; and ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... of the Church were "moveable." True, they moved only within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certain unalterable, wholly justifiable rules. Yet, in the very fact that they did move, there seemed—to use an expressive slang phrase of the day—"something not quite nice." It was therefore the fixed feasts that pleased Percy best, and on Christmas Day, especially, he experienced a temperate glow which would have perhaps surprised those who knew him ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... In German university slang the term Philister was applied to townsmen by students, and corresponded to the English university "snob." Hence it came to mean a person devoid of culture and enlightenment, and is used in this sense by Goethe in 1773. Heine ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... passion of horror and repugnance, firing the worn face and perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite terrible sight, if embodied in one old fellow-creature alone. Yet it 'crops up'—as our slang goes—my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... clumsy complexity and extravagant filthiness still astonish the visitors to the museum of machinery at South Kensington. He mentions running over a dog and complains of the ruinous price of 'spatchcocks' in Surrey. 'Spatchcocks,' it seems, was a slang term ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... performance is bound to be funny, nothing on earth can keep them from enjoying themselves. The most serious remark will be greeted with howls of approval; the most ancient joke takes on a novel and present sprightliness. In the slang of the stage, Barnes' ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... cases, it doesn't hurt them to lie out in the open air," responded the Colonel; "that was proved in the South African War. The wounds often heal if you leave them alone in the open air. But you people come along and stir up and joggle them. In army slang, we call ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... maquereaux of the old French comedy were clothed in a mottled dress like our harlequin, just as the Latin maccus or mime wore a centunculus or patchwork coat, his name being perhaps connected with macus (in macula), a spot (Gozzi, Memoirs, i, 38). In stage slang the harlequin was called patchy, as his Latin ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... can't find their opportunity. Enjoyment, Miss Cristel. Excitement, Mr. Roylake. For more than a year past, I have not luxuriated in the pleasures of society. I feel the social glow; I love the human family; I never, never, never was such a good man as I am now. Let vile slang express my ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... had chosen yet? Didst thou in masterly disdain of too much law Not only limn the truths no others saw But also, lord not slave of written word, Lend ear to what no other poet heard And, liberal minded on the Mermaid bench With bow for blade and chaff for serving wench Await from overseas slang-slinging Jack Who brought the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... could not but see at once that the Attorney-General was the cynosure of all eyes. And, indeed, no one in the room more thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was the central and controlling attraction than Sir Richard himself. I must be pardoned for using an English slang-phrase, but I can convey the impression which he inevitably makes upon a spectator in no other way than by saying that he is "a most magnificent swell." And I do this with the more confidence as I have heard him characterized in precisely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... passages from the Count de Warren's very curious book, "British India in 1831:" "Besides the robbers, who kill for the sake of the booty they hope to find upon travellers, there is a class of assassins, forming an organized society, with chiefs of their own, a slang-language, a science, a free-masonry, and even a religion, which has its fanaticism and its devotion, its agents, emissaries, allies, its militant forces, and its passive adherents, who contribute their money to the good work. This is the community of the Thugs or Phansegars (deceivers or ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against the slap-dash untidy menage, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative gesture, beckoned him ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... yourself, Armstrong. Lads of your age who can talk nothing but barrack slang, and are eminently uncomfortable when they have to chat for five minutes to a lady, are naturally glad when they are free from the restraint of having to talk like reasonable beings; but it is not so with older and wiser men. How ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets and shoes—as these things sketched themselves to Milly—and something rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and the occasional freedom of her slang. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Olivia; she was pretty and merry and kind; and, above all, she had mastered to perfection the rare art of letting children alone. If we kept ourselves tolerably clean, and refrained from quarrelling or talking slang, Aunt Olivia did not worry us. Aunt Janet, on the contrary, gave us so much good advice and was so constantly telling us to do this or not to do the other thing, that we could not remember half her instructions, and ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sees so much in the West, with the funniest quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would eat it off even clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating eyes, to show if I'm worth the asking price. But here was real love being made off down in the earth (we'd run away ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... that is awful slang. But what can you expect of a 'freshie'? I've got to make the most of my time, too, you know, for when I get to be a junior I'll have to begin the 'prune and prism' act," retorted the girl with a roguish wink. "Then"— suddenly straightening herself, drawing down the corners of her mouth, ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Trafalgars? and when they came ashore again, were no longer the simple, slouching Simons of the village; but jolly tars, with rolling gait, quid in mouth, glazed hats, with crowns of one inch high, and brims of five wide, and with as much glib slang, and glib money to treat the girls with, as any Jack ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... and stared at me, but not insolently—merely with curiosity. They seemed a vile lot, one and all. With some of them every other word was an oath; their talk was almost gibberish to my ears with thieves' slang. I wondered to find not one of them dressed in felon's garb; but on reflection I concluded that they had plundered the crew and the people who had had charge of them and of the Cyprus, and had forced all those they drove out of the brig to change clothes ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... genius strays 'Mid Drury's stews to incubate her lays, And in St. Giles's slang conveys her tropes, Wreathing the poet's lines with hangmen's ropes; You who conceive 'tis poetry to teach The sad bravado of a dying speech; Or, when possessed with a sublimer mood, Show "Jack o'Dandies" dancing upon blood! Crush bones—bruise flesh, recount ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... all the young fellows drunk, as we generally do; and yet people will call our parties 'bourgeois' and yours 'recherche', if you give them nothing but tea and biscuit. Now, there's my Dick: he respects your husband; you can see he does. In his odious slang way, he says he's 'some,' and 'a brick;' and he's a little anxious to please him, though he professes not to care for anybody. Now, Dick has pretty sharp sense, after all, or he'd never have been just ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... TECHNICALIST.—He is a talker who indulges much in the slang of his calling. The naval cadet, for instance, poetically describes his home as "the mooring where he casts anchor," or "makes sail down the street," hails his friend to "heave to," and makes things as plain as a "pikestaff," and "as taut as a hawser." The articled law ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Fred, "if you desire the continuance of my friendship, and if you wish to respect the dignity of morality and the English language, you must refrain from using such insinuating balderdash and bar-room-slang." ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... in the English language, and which are at once so comprehensive and so expressive that, when once the use of them has been acquired, they become indispensable, so that they have gained a permanent place in the Anglo-Indian's vocabulary. It is not slang, but a good word of ancient origin. Hobson-Jobson quotes a curious Latin writer on the Empire of the Grand Mogul, who uses it with a definition appended, "ut spectet Thamasham, id est pugnas elephantorum, leonum, buffalorum et aliarura ferarum." "Show" ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... so when the order was given to loose only the topsails. Peaks, on the main topmast-stay, caught Howe in the very act of passing the gasket through the bight of the buntline. The veteran tar came down upon him with such a torrent of sea slang, that he did not attempt to repeat the act. The topsails were then set as smartly and as regularly as ever before. After the inspectors had seen all the sails set and furled in detail, the topsails, top-gallant sails, and courses, with the jib and spanker, were set as usual, when the vessel got ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... curbed, however, by the bookmaker, who, having no views, but seeing an opportunity for fun, brought up reinforcements of chaff and slang, easily construable into profanity, and impregnated with terse humour. Many of the ladies had spoken of the bookmaker as one of the best-mannered men on board. So he was to all appearance. None dressed with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... French artists, playwrights, and novelists invariably call their productions by the slang term 'machines.'—ED. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... motive may be worthy, for all that. You are not the only one involved. People who would pass for better than their neighbors will never believe any good purpose in one who does not choose to talk their slang." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... stretched through a watch, and kept all hands awake. They were amusing from their improbability, and, indeed, he never expected to be believed, but spun them merely for amusement; and as he had some humor and a good supply of man-of-war slang and sailor's salt phrases, he always made fun. Next to him in age and experience, and, of course, in standing in the watch, was an Englishman named Harris, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. Then came two or three ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... That would be death. I arranged with him the day I definitely said yes, and again on our wedding eve, so as to have no misunderstanding, that I might keep all my pet slang, and even use language if I felt it really necessary; otherwise he would certainly have been the 'Winter ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... name given to the twelve-inch howitzer. The trench language is changing so quickly that I think the staff in the rear are unable to keep up to date, because they have recently issued an order to the effect that slang must not be used in official correspondence. Now instead of reporting that a "dud Minnie" arrived over back of "mud lane," it is necessary to put, "I have the honor to report that a projectile from a ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... fashionable young lady, and, like most novices, she overdid the part. Quite forgetting her cousin, she tossed her head, twirled her fan, gave affected little shrieks at college jokes, and talked college slang in a way that convulsed Fletcher, who enjoyed ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today. ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... spoken speech—some of them perversions or corruptions, countenanced even by eminent writers; some, misapplications that weaken and disfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, downright vulgarisms—that is, phrases that come from below, and are thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them. These last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. Against such abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of some of them, they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be readily distinguishable from ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... barbed wire, and where the bodies of your friends and mine lie decomposing in muddy holes—you know the place?—I put my legs across the colonel's horse, which was in the wagonlines, and set forth for Amiens. That horse knew that I had pinched him—forgive my slang. I should have said it in the French language, vole—and resented me. Thrice was I nearly thrown from his back. Twice did he entangle himself in barbed wire deliberately. Once did I have to coerce him with many stripes to pass a tank. Then the heavens opened upon us and it rained. It rained ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... somewhat intimidated by her well-bred manners and cultured conversation. He made no secret of his preference for the homelier virtues of the elder sister, whose irrepressible propensity for picturesque, up-to-date slang and free-and-easy style put them on a more equal social footing. So began an acquaintance which resulted in the young man becoming a frequent and intimate visitor at the ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... is awfully nice. He did not forget my birthday, but he says that at that time he was stoney, in student's slang that means that he hadn't any money, and then he could not find anything suitable, but that he will repair the omission as soon as we get back to Vienna. But I don't know what I should like. Oswald is going to stay until we all go back to Vienna, and we are making a few excursions by ourselves. ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... fellows may merely have struck a pocket and exhausted it, but I don't believe so, and am willing to risk twenty thousand dollars on the continuance of the vein. If it is there, that sum of money ought to enable us to reach it from your present shaft; and if we do strike it, why, in the slang of the day, the Copper Princess is simply a 'peach.' Are you game to accept my offer and go in for raising ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... who do not themselves use slang understand and even appreciate it. The American brand is generally pithy, compact, and expressive, and not always vulgar. Slang is at its worst in contemptuous epithets, and of those the one that is lowest and most offensive seems likely to become ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... of patience" (or aloes) quoth one "are praiseworthy!" Quoth I, "Much I fear lest it make me stool." Mahmdah is not only un laxatif, but a slang name for ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the novels of Swift's coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the delectable author of the New Atlantis, to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the London Spy and several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collection at the British Museum, you may see, besides the Craftsman and Post Boy, specimens, and queer ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mountain trip especially to call upon him. Enriquez was a scion of one of the oldest Spanish-California families, and in addition to his friendship for the editor it pleased him also to affect an intense admiration of American ways and habits, and even to combine the current California slang with his native precision of speech—and a certain ironical ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... Ledesma (1552-1623). It consists in a strained search for unusual thoughts which entails forced paradoxes, antitheses and epigrams. This system, combined with local allusions, double meanings and current slang, in which Quevedo delighted, makes his poems often extremely difficult of comprehension. His romances de jaques, written in thieves' jargon, are famous in Spain. Quevedo wrote too much and carelessly and tried to cover too many fields, but at his best his caustic wit ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... mentally at least. I don't suppose any one could set me permanently on my physical, corporeal pins. Beg pardon for the slang, Conny, I don't forget how you and Sybil used to lecture me for that, and my other vices. Poor sis, she had given up the drink talks latterly, given me over as hopeless, and so I am. Con., I have made ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... that little slang phrase so much in vogue in America," queried Napoleon, coldly fixing his eye on Barras—"a phrase which in French runs, 'Petit, mais O Moi'—or, as they have it, 'Little, but O My'? Well, that is me. {1} Besides, if I am small, ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... might have taken place between two men. Indeed, they often were brutally frank to each other. Fanny had the vision, Fenger the science to apply it. Sometimes her intuition leaped ahead of his reasoning. Then he would say, "I'm not sold on that," which is modern business slang meaning, "You haven't convinced me." She would go back and start afresh, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... in half an hour, perhaps less. I don't want you to tell Sam unless he has to know. Don't let him risk defeat by attempting a rescue in case I don't show up. Tell him I'm playing off my own bat. That's a bit of English slang he'll understand." ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... dog as any of them, and far more than a match for the best of them at a tournament of slang, being on his preferment, thought it best to be civil, and replied, with a touch of his hat, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the river; and one is often startled at finding in the apparently rough crew men who seem worthy of a better fate. To these the river experiences are generally new, and the ribald jokes and low river slang, with the ever-accompanying cheap corn-whiskey and the nightly riots over cutthroat euchre, must be at first a revelation. Hundreds of these low fellows will swear to you that the world owes them a living, and that they mean to have it; that they are gentlemen, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... sticks in front of the chief, and under it they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the slang goes, Uncle Dick!" ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... years,—and partly on Balthazar's own property, of which enough remained to "cover" the claims of his children, if the liquidation of their mother's fortune did not yield sufficient to release him. Mademoiselle Claes was still, in Pierquin's slang, "a four-hundred-thousand-franc girl." "But," he added, "if she doesn't marry,—a step which would of course separate her interests and permit us to sell the forest and auction, and so realize the property of the minor children ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... the skipper standing on the same spot where he had left him, apparently in the same attitude, and with the same grave, sleepless expression on his cast-iron features. The boy, Robin Tips, was at the helm, looking very sleepy. He was an English boy, smart, active, and wide-awake—in the slang sense—in which sense also we may add that ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... great number of people. It is characteristic of Miss Royden that she should fasten on the real cause of this violence. "I don't like jargon," she said, "particularly the jargon of Christian Science and Theosophy. I love English literature too much for that; and I don't like slang, particularly slang of a brutal order; but I feel a deep sympathy with anybody who is trying, as Mr. Studdert-Kennedy is trying, to put life and power into institutionalism. It wants it so badly—oh, so very badly—life, life, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... of speaking all Americans are humourists. Just as all French people are wits by reason of the epigrammatic structure of their language, so are all Americans humourists by reason of the national stores of picturesque slang and analogy to which they have access. I think that this tendency to resort to a common stock instead of striving after individual exactitude and colour is to be deplored. It discourages thought where thought should be encouraged. Adults are, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... Europe, would act upon the inestimable rights of man as common fire does upon gold: purify without destroying them; so that a lover of liberty may find a country in any part of Christendom." The language had an unusual smack of the French revolutionary slang, in which he seems in no other instance to have indulged. But as the fury swelled, his earlier sympathies became merged in a painful anxiety concerning the fate of his many ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... waiter. This new attitude was loose in the back, tight across the shoulders, short in the seams—it was not made to fit Bertram Chester. When he launched out into rudimentary art criticism, stringing together the stock slang which he had picked up in the studios, when he tried to impress her with his refined acquaintance, his progress toward "society" of the conventional kind, her amusement took another turn in the circle ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... community where neighbors are quarreling, hating and lawing with each other. In home life there are angry words and bitter feelings and estrangements. There are lewd revelries and wanton pleasures. There are stealings and lyings, cheatings, fightings, swearings, drinking, chewing and smoking, slang phrases, etc. Such is a reproach, and thus we learn how righteousness exalts a nation and sin becomes a reproach ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... and clear; At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial, And clad in uniform, were loitering near A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal Took their impatience somewhat patiently, Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"— (A certain slang of the Academy, I beg the reader ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... to be very well posted on a number of subjects. She is unusually familiar with the Bible, and quotes scripture freely and correctly. She also uses beautiful language, totally void of slang and Negro jargon, "big" ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... about the bush," said I, desperately clothing my sentiments in slang, after the manner of my age; "the fellow who gets you for a wife, Maria, must be uncommonly fortunate, and I hope that with a good husband, who made your wishes his first consideration, you would not be unhappy ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to recount things as discreetly as possible, frightened by the very words he spoke, the horrors he had to relate in that sphere of superlative luxury and enjoyment, before those happy ones who possessed all the gifts of this world; for—to use a slang expression—he fully realised that he sang out of tune, and in most uncourteous fashion. What a strange idea of his to have called at the hour when one has just finished dejeuner, when the aroma of hot coffee flatters happy digestion. Nevertheless he went on, and even ended by raising his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... curiosity was Powerfully awakened by this bustle of preparation. I gazed with respect and wonder at the vagrant personages who accompanied these caravans. I loitered about the village inn, listening with curiosity and delight to the slang talk and cant jokes of the showmen and their followers; and I felt an eager desire to witness this fair, which my fancy decked out ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Castle exhausted their adulation, and had received their last reward for upholding the appointment. The Tory press, hungry for the spoil which it maddened the others to lose, paid back the compliments by intense vituperation. The slang of party warfare was bandied in the usual fashion, without thought or a care beyond the interest of party. The Register, to everybody's astonishment, took up the one cause not represented, namely, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... shoes, a daring little black-and-white hat mashed down upon her soft, loose hair, and, slung about her shoulders, a woolly coat of clearest lemon yellow. Vivian gave the impression of a soft little watchful cat, unfriendly, alert, selfish. Her manner was studiedly rowdyish, her speech marred by slang; she loved only a few persons in the world besides herself. One of these few persons, however, was Clarence Breckenridge's daughter, Carol, affectionately known to all these persons as "Billy," and it was in Miss Breckenridge's defence that Vivian was speaking now. A general ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... It did not require much imagination to suppose that the war would add to the number of their clients, whether their claims had real foundation or not; what they wanted above all things was some one of undoubted position who would "boom the movement," in the slang of the day. They laid all their plans to get their man in the author of Raymond, and they got him. Such is his thesis for what it ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... together with a fondness for misplaced pleasantry, gives rise to the vicious style described above. It gives some practical rules for writing a long sentence clearly and impressively; and it also examines the difference between slang, conversation, and written prose. Both for translating from foreign languages into English, and for writing original English composition, these rules have been used in teaching, and, we venture to ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... had picked up his knowledge of English at Alexandria, and his conversation abounded with slang phrases which ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... "Bud" more readily than to his own, and he made practical use of the slang and colloquialisms of the plains without ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... me here," she continued. "Helen daren't slang the rich, being rich herself, but she would like to. There's an odd notion, that I haven't yet got hold of, running about at the back of her brain, that poverty is somehow 'real.' She dislikes all organization, and probably confuses wealth with the technique of wealth. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... launched out on my speech. Not that I was tryin' to chuck any flowers of oratory. What I aimed to do was to tell 'em about Rowley's schemes as simple and straight away as I could, usin' one-syllable words for the most part, cannin' the slang, and soundin' as many final G's as my tongue would let me. Before I turned in too, I had it almost pat; but I hardly dared to go to sleep for fear it would get ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... 'people'? The boys in your family know of it—if you could get them to tell you. My two sons studied at a State university, and they would bring me home what they heard—the gossip, the slang, the horrible obscenity. Fourteen fellows in one dormitory using the same bathroom—and on the wall you saw a row of fourteen syringes! And they told that on themselves, it was the joke of the campus. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... truth, if the boys must have slang, I can bear the 'sea lingo,' as Will calls it, better than the other. It afflicts me less to hear my sons talk about 'brailing up the foresail' than doing as they 'darn please,' and 'cut your cable' is decidedly preferable to 'let her rip.' ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... their own and their people's bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that the fire is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other things, and few among their people guess how much they owe in mere life and money to what the slang of the minute calls ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... Scott's Lowland Scottish dialect; not choosing it of the most beautiful kind; on the contrary, it shall be a piece reaching as low down as he ever allows Scotch to go—it is perhaps the only unfair patriotism in him, that if ever he wants a word or two of really villainous slang, he gives it in English ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... for its author, his most eminent acts are written in the pages of the universally read historian above quoted. But he was in reality more of a Tory than it suited Macaulay to represent him, though he gloried in the name of Trimmer, and certainly showed what is called in modern political slang a 'crossbench mind' not only during the madness of the Popish plot, during the greater madness of James's assaults on the Church, the Constitution, and private rights, but also (after the Revolution) towards William of Orange. Born about 1630 he died in April 1695, leaving the fame, unjustified ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... all. He does not care a fig for order or logical sequence or congruity, or for striking a key of expression and keeping it, but becomes simply the most spontaneous and unstudied of human beings. He has at his command the whole vocabularies of the English and Scottish languages, classical and slang, with good stores of the French, and tosses and tumbles them about irresponsibly to convey the impression or affection, the mood or freak of the moment; pouring himself out in all manner of rhapsodical confessions and speculations, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we gladly sprung in. For the sake of the uninitiated, I must explain that, in digger's slang, a "canary" and half-a-sovereign ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... mad[e] out of Webster's White Devil, allusion to Welshmen proud of their gentility Wet finger What make you here? What thing is Love? Whifflers Whisht White sonne Whytinge mopp Widgeing Wildfowl ("Cut up wildfowl"—a slang expression) Wilding Windmills at Finsbury (See Stow's Survey, b. iii, p. 70, ed. 1720.) Wit without money Woad, patents for planting of ("Woad is an herbe brought from the parts of Tolouse in France, and from Spaine, much used and very necessary in the dying of wollen cloath."—Cowell's ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... one talk but slang when one thinks of such a person?" said Phoebe gravely; and thus saying she opened the door for her mother, and they went out in their best gowns to pay their visit. Mrs. Copperhead was very civil to the pastor's family. It was not ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the solitude and monotony of existence among the gum-trees. The typical Australian is an odd combination of the practical and the ideal. He is a student who learns to read to himself a foreign language, but does not attain to its pronunciation. He has no knowledge of the current jargon or society slang. He has unconsciously rejected vulgarisms and shallow conceits; but all the deeper thoughts, the poetry of life, which appeal to the soul, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... rank of a boss in his trade, and so remains at home in a shop and goes out with his hook no more, is called an ogre. A woman attaining this dignity is called an ogress. The terms are not idle ones. Like many of the words and phrases of slang they are based on the clearest conception of the merits of the case. An ogre or ogress without a daughter, real or adopted, lacks the first requisite for doing a successful business. The ogre or ogress ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the art, I thought, as I held myself in my seat. Of course, I meant decomposition of tones, as the slang of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... "I know that you wanted to use that particular expressive bit of our particularly expressive slang. What I mean is this: People study religion nowadays—that is, English-speaking people—with the Catholic Church left out. Yet she claims the allegiance of over three hundred million people. Without her, Christianity would be merely pitiful. She alone stands firm on her foundation. She alone has ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... of speech, for communicating our ideas to each other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy to observe these precise and beautiful forms of expression; it clips its words; throws its sentences together without regard to grammar; falls into slang; draws its figures from the coarse and low and sensual side of life, instead of from its pure and ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... kind of business on hand than he can perform for himself, naturally brings about him a train of satellites, who make it their business to minister to his importunate cravings. With them the phraseology of the initiated degenerates into a hard business sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant of respect towards literature as a vehicle of knowledge may linger in the conversation of their employers, has never belonged to theirs. They are dealers who have just two things to look to—the price of their merchandise, and the peculiar propensities of the unfortunates ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... using more western slang than was necessary, though he was dependent upon such expressions for the ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... the House of Commons, one has no reason to be surprised at his moderation. The conviction that the duke's government would only cease with the termination of his public career was so general, that the moment he was installed in office, the whigs smiled on him; political conciliation became the slang of the day, and the fusion of parties the babble of clubs and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the most provocative angle, and she knew just when to let Bud catch a slow, sidelong glance—of the kind that is supposed to set a man's heart to syncopatic behavior. She did not do it too often. She did not powder too much, and she had the latest slang at her pink tongue's tip and was yet moderate ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... exchanging a few words with each other, one of them spoke to him in a jargon which he seemed to understand, though we could not. He replied with hesitation. For some time they continued asking him questions, and then talking to each other in a slang which was as incomprehensible to us as was the language they spoke to ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... transfer them to a girl. Her feelings, in these cases, are not merely those of a warm friendship, but they resemble the passionate, self-sacrificing attitude of romantic love. New York schoolgirls have a special slang phrase for this kind of love—they call it a "crush," to distinguish it from a "mash," which refers to an impression made on a man. A girl of seventeen told me one day how madly she was in love with another ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... come to? Well, just lemmee drop it into your think tank, an' lay to what I say. It's all the ways from fifty to seventy thousand dollars, whatever her cargo is; call it sixty thousand—thirty thou' apiece. Oh, I don't know!" he exclaimed, lapsing to landman's slang. "Wha'd I say about a million to one ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... wish you would call her by her right name, Neale," said Ruth, sharply, for she did not approve of Neale's slang. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... heaps. The protection of the debris heaps was not quite so good as that afforded by the mines, and the music of the cannon the troglodytes had always with them. But there was more liberty and comfort in the caves, which were dry as dust and—no slang intended—not ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... he exclaimed, a weak smile on his lips. "I'm no boob!" Obviously, he meant this lapse into the slang of the Tenderloin to convey his intimate knowledge of police methods. "You can't soft-soap me! You don't want explanations! You want me to get myself in bad. But you won't get anything out of me. I ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... rigid and few in number because of his lack of discrimination and small experience, almost all pleasures, like almost all events, are of the nature of surprises. The child almost always laughs when he is pleased. The slang phrase "to be highly tickled" expresses with precision this close connection between laughter and pleasure. Moreover, as the complexity of life increases, its strains and repressions are multiplied, with the result that any giving way to an impulse contains a slight element of the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... creatures was of composite sound—now a word of Spanish, then of German, then of French, then of Gaelic, at times of Basque. It was either a patois or a slang. They appeared to be of all nations, and yet of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... as soon as Don Tiburcio was out of the way. Paulita became sadder and sadder in thinking about how the girls called cochers could occupy Isagani's attention, for the name had certain disagreeable associations that came from the slang ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Catherine used slang even in talking to the children. The little pony had been sold long ago, and going to town meant a walk of twelve miles. But Catherine started out early in the morning, and was back by nightfall, not so very much the worse, and carrying ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... pirate-tongue, cut-off from its roots, must continue to practise piracy, surely, or else take reinforcements in slang, otherwise it is inexpressive ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Athenaeum said, "They are prose poems, carefully meditated, and exquisitely touched in by a teacher ready to sympathize with every joy and sorrow." The five stories are told in simple and clear language, and without slang, to which she heartily objects. For one so rich in imagination as Miss Ingelow, her prose is singularly free ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... soap-bubbles out on the lawn and let them float away over the garden and the orchard like fairy balloons. They had glorious afternoon teas under the beech tree. They made ice cream themselves. Jims even slid down the bannisters when he wanted to. And he could try out a slang word or two occasionally without anybody dying of horror. Miss Avery did not seem to mind ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lovely and the goose hangs high!" cried the Captain, who on grand occasions was not above a little slang. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... little thin dresses in the cold, and pinch their little arms black and blue if they went to tell any of their tricks. And they learnt the older ones to be deceitful and sly and cowerdly. Learnt 'em to use jest the same slang phrases and low language that they did; tell the same lies, and so they wuz a spilin' 'em in every way; spilin' their brains with narcotics, their bodies by neglect and bad usage, and their minds and ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... with a rabble of words at command, Scotch, English and slang in promiscuous alliance. He at length against Syntax has taken his stand, And sets all the Nine ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... my Melanesian experience to bear upon Zululand. The immorality, infanticide, superstition, &c., seem to be as great in a Melanesian island as in any part of the heathen world. And with our many languages, it is not possible for us to-know the "slang" of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which he describes is a Trebuchet with moveable counterpoise. The history of the word appears to be the following. The Greek word [Greek: magganon], "a piece of witchcraft," came to signify a juggler's trick, an unexpected contrivance (in modern slang "a jim"), and so specially a military engine. It seems to have reached this specific meaning by the time of Hero the Younger, who is believed to have written in the first half of the 7th century. From the form [Greek: magganikon] the Orientals got Manganik and Manjanik,[6] ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... been glanced at. It has been often and quite truly observed that there are sentences, passages, paragraphs, almost whole letters in Horace Walpole and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in Fanny Burney and in Cowper, which no one would think old-fashioned at the present day in any context where modern slang did not suggest itself as natural. But this was by no means the only predisposing cause, though perhaps most of the others were, in this way or that, connected with it. Both in France and in England literature and social matters generally were in ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... shells. The blue eyes and the baby smile went up, confidingly, to the young ragamuffin's face. There had been kindness here. The boy had taken to Jo, it seemed; and was benevolently evincing it, in the best way he could, by teaching her good-natured slang. ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of the realm, and their entertaining this high opinion of themselves can scarcely be wondered at; they were low fellows, but masters of driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed as his unquestionable ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... it." Although Jerry was earnestly endeavoring to eliminate slang from her vocabulary, she could ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... said gently. "I'm sorry if I hit too hard. But I feel rather strongly on that subject. I've no wish to slang you. I only want to set you on your feet, and keep you there. So we may as well get ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Hawthorne, far as they had escaped from the bonds of their ancestral religion, still utter the word "soul" with awe. But in the popular sermon and hymn and story of our day,—with their search after the sympathetic and the sentimental, after what is called in magazine slang "heart-interest,"—the word has lost both its intellectual distinction and its literary magic. It will regain neither until it is pronounced once ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... let you know what especial things in language I hope you will keep your eye on. Of course Anneke couldn't be "electrified"—but you may find many less evident blunders than that would be. She might be shocked, but couldn't "receive a shock." We need free colloquial slang and common expressions; but while "get out" seems all right from Stuyvesant to Bogardus, for Barry to say "Skedadle" would put him in the 87th New York Vols., 1861-64. Yet I doubt whether we have any more classic and revered slang ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... simply means 'thought it long,' or 'thought it slow,' as we should say in modern slang; in ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... way,—that is, by a series of comic sketches, as many of my admirers no doubt remember,—I soon perceived the unstable character of my reputation. I was at the mercy of the next man who should succeed in inventing a new slang, or a funnier way of spelling. These things, in literature, are like "fancy drinks" among the profane. They tickle the palates of the multitude for a while, but they don't wear like the plain old beverages. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... to me," purred the smaller man in the Western slang that phrased incredulity. Then, suddenly, he foamed at the mouth. "Keep out of this if you're squeamish. Let me play out the hand. I'll bump ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... for him was really a sort of "old home week" feeling; that to her it was a relief to see any one who spoke her own language, who did not need to have it explained when she was jesting, and who did not think when she was speaking in perfectly satisfactory phrases that she must be talking slang. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... employed to assist in the interpretation, and produces the most dreary and monotonous sounds without the slightest trace of theme or melody or rhythm. While I don't want to be irreverent, they reminded me of a slang phrase you hear in the country about "the tune the old cow died of." Hindu music is worse than that you hear in China or Japan, because it is so awfully solemn and slow. The Chinese and Japanese give you a lot of noise if they lack harmony, but when a Hindu band reaches a fortissimo passage ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... grace, his eloquence, his literary charm. His style was entirely his own. He played strange tricks with the English language, heaped words upon words, strung adjective to adjective; mingled passages of Ruskinesque description with jerky fragments of modern slang. These mannerisms grew with his growth, but in the seventies they were not sufficiently marked to detract from the pure pleasure which we enjoyed when we listened to his preaching as to "a ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... founded in 1473 by Robert Woodlark, Chancellor of the University, and dedicated to "the glorious Virgin Martyr, St. Catherine of Alexandria." Undergraduate slang, alas! reduces all this to "Cat's." It was originally called St. Catherine's Hall, and is one of the smallest of the colleges. Although not claiming the strong ecclesiastical flavour of Corpus, it has educated quite a formidable array of bishops. From Trumpington Street the buildings ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... sense an attractive type. The Wall Street men are lilies that toil and spin ("tiger" lilies, one might term them, in remembrance of the old gambler-slang about faro and roulette); but their industries, however distinct, are what the political economists would call those of non-productive consumers. They are active drones, to speak with paradox, in the great hive of human energy. Like all gamesters, all ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... would be amazed to see the scores of little boys and girls, white and black, who daily visit the policy-shops in this neighborhood to put down the pennies they have begged or received for stolen articles on some favorite numbers—quick-witted, sharp, eager little wretches, who talk the lottery slang as glibly as older customers. What hope is there in the future for these children? Will their education in the shop of a policy-dealer fit them to ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... retiring, inconspicuous, and puzzling to our understanding. In his effort (never very successful) to strike off the shackles of modern slang, he fell into a way of speech that bewildered those unable to realise what an abiding sense of humour underlay it—as water runs beneath ice—more, I think, a matter of intonation and significant silences, than a mere play upon words and phrases; ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... clothing. I have labored with them to convince them that such is not the case, but still they yearn for the Brent finery. Judging from what I hear, it must have been 'some' wardrobe. Pardon my lapse into slang, O, Overton. A number of the teachers have commented on the affair. I've been asked several ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... may be a dictionary, and one may have it, and yet the word may not be there. It may be an old dictionary, and the word a new one; or a new dictionary, and the word an old one; a grave dictionary, and the word a slang one; a slang dictionary, and the word a grave one; and so on through a double line of battle of antitheses. Such is assuredly matter for serious cogitation: and voluntarily to encounter those anomalous perplexities requires no small amount of endurance, for the task is equally crabbed and onerous, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... latest American? I wish you'd find native slang; we used in my day; but I'll tell you why. It's because she's keeping him on till she sees what Eugene'll do. She's treating ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... must get as near as you can, Bertie. I dare say you cannot turn slang into Spanish; but you can find other words to express your meaning, and when you cannot hit on a word you must use an English one. Your best plan is to move along on the other side of Dias, and chat to his wife." "What have I got to say ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... uncomfortable. His sentiments and opinions are so very conservative, that they have no vitality in them. With a curious perverseness, the most gentle and accomplished women will turn from him with a sense of relief, to join in the society of a hearty fellow with a loud laugh and a dash of slang, and a free and easy way with him. It may be difficult to explain all this, but it is true. An exceedingly proper man is never a popular man. That life which is controlled by rigid and unvarying rules, and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. Real fairies never preach or talk slang. At the end, the little boy or girl wakes up and finds that ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... employed to pump water into the shallows in one direction, while in others the outer fields, in quarters whence a relieving force might be expected, were turned into lakes by the same machinery. Farther outside, a system of palisade work of caltrops and man-traps—sometimes in the slang of the day called Turkish ambassadors—made the country for miles around impenetrable or very disagreeable to cavally. In a shorter interval than would have seemed possible, the battlements and fortifications of the besieging army had risen like an exhalation ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that led you to expect the person enjoying them would dispose of disputations, speculations, aspirations, in a few very neatly and brightly uttered words, so simplified in sense, however, that they sounded, even when guiltless, like rather aggravated slang. It wasn't that Kate hadn't pretended too that she should like to go to America; it was only that with this young woman Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever of late, on the theory of intimate confessions, private ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... a bit of slang, and I like to use bits of English slang when I can; they'll be so useful to know by-and-by when I am scolding my people. Not ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... it. Her voice is charming, every tone is exquisitely modulated, and she expresses herself with ease, and with a certain grace of diction peculiarly her own. It is a treat to hear English spoken as she speaks it. She uses little or no slang and few abbreviations, but she is perfectly fearless in her choice of words, and invariably employs the one which expresses her meaning best, however strong it may be, yet somehow the effect is never coarse. Yesterday she wanted to know the name of an officer ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... declared, though without entire sincerity; "I can't quite keep up with your thieves' argot—your slang, you know. Just what did this brother ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... vain repetitions. She was always "a worm" when asked after her health, and everything that pleased her was "pucka." She knew no language but her own, and that she spoke indifferently, her command of it being limited for the most part to slang expressions, which are the scum of language; and a few stock phrases of polite quality for special occasions. But she used the latter awkwardly, as ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... think I'm going to split," she said, indignantly, recurring to her Bourke Street slang in the excitement of the moment. "I know what you know, but I'll be ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... of life simply written, an effective word of slang stuck in here and there where it does not seem at all out of place; honest, open-hearted, steady-eyed narratives all, with the breeze of the Western prairies in every line, as well as the brotherhood of man, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... Granger for a fisher of men; greed had sent him into the South Florida land business. His bland self-possession, his impressive physique, his confidence-winning voice and bearing constituted a profitable stock in trade. In the slang of his craft—shall we say "graft"?—he "played the church game strong." Under the sway of his hypnotic personality God-fearing, bank-fearing old couples brought forth hidden wealth to place in his dexterous ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... school-boy slang if I were you," returns Luttrell, with provoking coolness, and an evident irritating appreciation ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... in the bits of pickpocket argot that floated across to us, expressions like "crossing the mit," "nipping a slang," a "mouthpiece," "making a holler" and innumerable other choice bits as unintelligible to ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... in these two paragraphs except a little ginger, and a good deal of slang, but this may prove the most effective stimulant to a man's energy, the kind of persuasion ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... The child was utterly transformed. There was no sign of his mother's hand upon his clothes, his neatly brushed hair or his shiny face. His eyes, too, seemed to have grown bigger. Alfred had been a vulgar little boy, addicted to slang and immoderately fond of noisy games. Burton tried to call him back to his mind. It was impossible to connect him in any way with the child whom, through a crack in the door, he could see standing upon a chair the better to scrutinize closely ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strictly after the pattern of the real original, and so are the whole of our Vestry's proceedings. In all their debates, they are laudably imitative of the windy and wordy slang of the real original, and of nothing that is better in it. They have head-strong party animosities, without any reference to the merits of questions; they tack a surprising amount of debate to a very little business; they set more store by forms than they do by substances: - all very ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... triumphs were completely eclipsed, I soon learned, by the capture, alive, on this last expedition, of an abominably poisonous snake, known to those who knew it as the Blue Dryad, or more familiarly in backwoods slang, as the Half-hour Striker, in vague reference to its malignant and fatal qualities. The time in which a snake-bite takes effect is, by the way, no very exact test of its virulence, the health and condition not only of the victim, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... near as you can, Bertie. I dare say you cannot turn slang into Spanish; but you can find other words to express your meaning, and when you cannot hit on a word you must use an English one. Your best plan is to move along on the other side of Dias, and chat to his wife." "What have I got to ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... position of girls in domestic service, especially in the towns and cities, is peculiarly hard for a self-respecting girl to bear. It is in large part a reflection upon her sacrifice of independence. The derisive slang term "slavey" expresses the generally prevalent public contempt. It is small wonder that a girl fears to brave such a sentiment and as a result avoids what is perhaps in itself congenial work in pleasanter surroundings than most ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... learned much street slang during his visits to Cottonton, and considered its acquisition a benefit and ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... were received by Mrs. Morrison and the teachers, and responded with an elaborate politeness that was the cult of the College. For the space of three hours an extremely high-toned atmosphere prevailed, not a word of slang offended the ear, and everybody behaved with the dignity and courtesy demanded by such a stately ceremony. Mrs. Morrison, in black silk and old lace, her white hair dressed high, was an imposing figure, and set a standard of cultured deportment that was copied by every girl in the room. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and the air of romance which he has given to some scenes in the concluding volume, almost invalidates its forerunners. Still we are bound to confess that his adventures are equal in interest to any work of fact or fiction that has appeared for several years. We omit the translations of some slang songs, one of which appeared recently in Blackwood's Magazine; still, they are exceedingly clever ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... by analogy is important in the development of language. Consider metaphor, for example, and slang, and the using of an old word in a new sense (as in ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... other, one of them spoke to him in a jargon which he seemed to understand, though we could not. He replied with hesitation. For some time they continued asking him questions, and then talking to each other in a slang which was as incomprehensible to us as was the language ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... at him. They uttered brief expressions of pity in slang. They said to Mr. Speedwell, "We wanted to see ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... and sudden words in spite of usage and fashionable taste; and that, therefore, when he can get a brighter tint, a more expressive form, by means of some strange—we must call it—Carlylism; English, Scotch, German, Greek, Latin, French, Technical, Slang, American, or Lunar, or altogether superlunar, transcendental, and drawn from the eternal nowhere—he uses it with a courage which might blast an academy of lexicographers into a Hades, void ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a jeweller to purchase them, but on the contrary make him regard the man as a fool, deceived with bits of coloured glass for rubies and sapphires. Major Marvel was not of such. He knew nothing of the slang of the Pharisees, knew little of the language of either the saints or the prophets, had, like most Christians, many worldly ways of looking at things, and yet I think our Lord would have said there ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... The drill of the student involved chiefly the acquisition of the special signals employed in railway work, including the numerals and abbreviations applied to save time. Some of these have passed into the slang of the day, "73" being well known as a telegrapher's expression of compliments or good wishes, while "23" is an accident or death message, and has been given broader popular significance as a general synonym for "hoodoo." All of this came easily ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... seen a reference to "Granny" (the fifteen-inch howitzer) in orders "mother" is the name given to the twelve-inch howitzer. The trench language is changing so quickly that I think the staff in the rear are unable to keep up to date, because they have recently issued an order to the effect that slang must not be used in official correspondence. Now instead of reporting that a "dud Minnie" arrived over back of "mud lane," it is necessary to put, "I have the honor to report that a projectile from a German Minnenwerfer landed in rear of Trench F ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... Bailey. "And you'll come near beating, too. We shall have to work harder than ever, but I'll beat Jack Allingham—or bust! Excuse the slang, Gertie, but I've got to ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... to the name "Bud" more readily than to his own, and he made practical use of the slang and colloquialisms of the plains without any ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... at Newnham Darsie and Hannah fell gradually and happily into the routine of college life. They grew to recognise their companions by name, and to place them according to their several "shops"; they entertained cocoa parties in their rooms; picked up slang terms, and talked condescendingly of "townees"; they paid up subscriptions to "Hall," "Games," "Flowers," and "Fic"; slept, played, and laughed and talked, and, above all, worked, with heart and mind, and with every ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... You will be getting tired early. And who is keeping you from a rest?" said Mackenzie, whose knowledge of contemporary slang was ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... from discouraged, showed her something else—many somethings. Concerning each he was enthusiastic, slangy, and familiar. Mary-'Gusta paid little attention to slang or enthusiasm; the familiarity she ignored utterly. She selected several of the novelties, a rather extensive line of Christmas cards, and in the matters of price and cash discounts was keen and businesslike. Keith watched and listened, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... scarce skill enough in music to write down the tunes she composes. I can easily believe this. There is a pedantry among great musicians that deprives their performances of much that is graceful and beautiful. It is the same in the other fine arts, where fashion always prefers cant and slang ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... know Froissart now, young folks. This age, I think, prefers recitals Of high-spiced crime, with "slang" for ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Hypothesis Suffiction Theory Lyell's Geology Gothic Architecture Gerard's Douw's "Schoolmaster" and Titian's "Venus" Sir J. Scarlett Mandeville's Fable of the Bees Bestial Theory Character of Bertram Beaumont and Fletcher's Dramas Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides Milton Style Cavalier Slang Junius Prose and Verse Imitation and Copy Dr. Johnson Boswell Burke Newton Milton Painting Music Poetry Public Schools Scott and Coleridge Nervous Weakness Hooker and Bull Faith Quakers Philanthropists Jews ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... gather," said the other, seating himself, "or you would have brought one of the 'busy fellows' with you. Here again you must pardon the slang but we call the detective the 'busy fellow' to distinguish him from the 'flattie,' who is the regular cop. Unless you should be under any misapprehension, Mr. Beale, it is my duty to tell you that I am a representative of the criminal classes, a fact which our learned friend," ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... is in some sort to be considered as a distinct nation, possessing manners, customs, a code, and, above all, a language of its own. This, by the outside world, is designated "slang;" just as in one country the tongue of another is vulgarly described as gibberish. Now and then, however, a word escapes from the peculiar vocabulary of the players, and secures the recognition and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... float away over the garden and the orchard like fairy balloons. They had glorious afternoon teas under the beech tree. They made ice cream themselves. Jims even slid down the bannisters when he wanted to. And he could try out a slang word or two occasionally without anybody dying of horror. Miss Avery did not seem to mind it ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... good deal about our slang. They used to be fond of quoting in superior derision in their papers our, to them, utterly unintelligible baseball news. Mr. Crosland, to drag him in again, to illustrate our abuse of "the language," quotes from some tenth-rate American author—which is a way they ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... Presently an unknown Ambassador arrived. Mexico got worse; would we not recognize Huerta? They send Carden. We had nothing to say about the tolls—simply asked for time. They were very friendly; but our slang phrase fits the situation—"nothin' doin'." They declined San Francisco[47]. Then presently they began to see some plan in Mexico; they began to see our attitude on the tolls; they began to understand our attitude toward concessions and governments run for profit; they began dimly to see ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... spark of a pyrotechnic set-piece, till the thinking world has been over-violently illuminated, has obscured its genesis and diverted attention from the simplicity and force of its fundamental principles.[1] In this, its progress has been like that of slang, which, gaining in popularity, must inevitably decrease ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... mustn't mind my way of talking. I was quite as sensitive and particular as you once; but I have picked up so much slang from the children that I am really hardly presentable. I suppose your father had no head for business, and made a ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the house and to become sole mistress of your fortune. At first this struggle will serve as a distraction for her soul, whether it be empty or in too violent commotion; next, she will find in your opposition a new motive for ridicule. Slang expressions will not fail her, and in France we are so quickly vanquished by ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... play with a gentleman of Italian complexion. Past guessing how it had come about, for the gentleman was an utter stranger. He had at any rate the tongue of an Englishman. He had the style, too, the slang and cries and tricks of an English schoolboy, though visibly a foreigner. And he had the art of throwing his heart into that bit of improvised game, or he would never have got hold of Bobby, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a conversation with Lord Lisle was about as unpleasant a matter as one could well experience. His language was coarse; his ideas coarser still. There was very little to redeem it. He mistook slang for wit, told stories that made his wife shudder, and misbehaved himself as only such a ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... were eventually hung at Tyburn Turnpike, in the presence of a vast crowd. According to Mr. J.T. Smith, in his "Streets of London," a Whig mug-house existed as early as 1694. It has been said the slang word "mug" owes its derivation to Lord Shaftesbury's "ugly mug," which the beer ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... undoubtedly, with the beauty that comes of perfect health undisturbed by thoughts of the why and the wherefore, or by anticipations of a troublesome to-morrow. Yet to the casual observer who beholds this admirably decorated creature, her conversation is disappointing. She revels in slang. Catch-words and phrases which are not called vulgar only because the better classes use them, come trippingly, but never with a pleasant effect from her lips. Nor has she that sense of reticence which is said to have been the distinguishing mark of unmarried girlhood at some former ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... She liked to use a bit of slang when it was perfectly safe—as in very good company, or among those she loved; at other times she ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... she doesn't know where Bella picks up her slang words. I think it is Mr. Ned who teaches her, for when he comes home in the summer he often says, with a sly twinkle in his eye, "Come out into the garden, Bella," and he lies in a hammock under the trees, and Bella perches on a branch near him, and he talks to ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... sailor, and his knowledge of sea-life, of seamen, and of sea-slang, is generally attributed to the instructions of his brother, the master of a ship. This brother was subsequently lost at sea, and Dibdin is said to have written Poor Tom Bowling as his elegy. Dibdin's sea-lore was, therefore, altogether second-hand and theoretical; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... wanted to see their bows; and for the same reeson keepin' em out in their little thin dresses in the cold, and pinch their little arms black and blue if they went to tell any of their tricks. And they learnt the older ones to be deceitful and sly and cowerdly. Learnt 'em to use jest the same slang phrases and low language that they did; tell the same lies, and so they wuz a spilin' 'em in every way; spilin' their brains with narcotics, their bodies by neglect and bad usage, and their minds ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... Like a tide. Doors are open, windows wide. Why in stuffy London stay?" Sing the Sirens (slyboots they!) With a Tennysonian twang, To the Tourist, (Not the poorest You may bet your bottom dollar, Which those Sirens aim to "collar." Demoiselles, excuse the slang!) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... or the sea,—the trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,—I know no other word in our language, (bookish and pedantic terms out of the question,) but 'hanging' woods, the 'sylvae superimpendentes' of Catullus [2]; yet let some wit call out in a slang tone,—"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence it is that so many dull pieces have had a decent run, only because nothing unusual above, or absurd below, mediocrity furnished an occasion,—a spark for the explosive materials collected behind ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... to do some spiral and somersault stunts for the benefit of some huns." ("Hun," used in this connection, not referring to the Germans. "Hun" is the slang term for student aviators, tacked on ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... Mrs. Harrison, smoking cigarettes—and cigars, too, sometimes, in the open air; drinking grog at night, and sometimes in the morning; letting Tom Edwards and the foolish boys who imitate him talk slang to her without putting them down; always ready for a walk or drive with the last handsome young man who has arrived; and utterly ignoring her husband, except when she makes some slighting mention of him for not sending ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... consisted, in about equal parts, of classical allusion, quotation from the stable, simper from the scullery, cant from the clubs, and the technical slang of heraldry. We boasted much of ancestry, and admired the whiteness of our hands whenever the skin was visible through a fault in the grease and tar. Next to love, the vegetable kingdom, murder, arson, adultery and ritual, we talked most ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against the slap-dash untidy menage, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative gesture, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... a slang phrase then making its way into merited favor. "What's become of him? I haven't seen anything else like it ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... complicated a complete language must be, with its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds; the many forms that single words may take, especially if they are verbs; the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang and inflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues these simians have![1] Where another race, after the most frightful discord and pains, might have slowly constructed one language before this earth grew cold, this race will create literally hundreds, each ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... sort!" Gisela's voice cut through the ripples of laughter which always greeted Mimi's redundant slang. "You'll go back to Germany with me and do your part in putting an end to this war!" All but Heloise half arose, but she sat staring at that hard drawn face ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... exclaimed the Dutchman, as he rapped his fingers upon the counter, and seemed impatient to draw forth his filthy stuff. They named their drinks, each with a different name. Manuel not being a Charleston graduate in the profession of mixing drinks and attaching slang names to them, Mr. Dusenberry undertook to instruct him in a choice. The Dutchman was an adept at mixing, and the "morning pulls" were soon set out to the extreme satisfaction of Dunn and Dusenberry. "All right! tip her down, my old fellow; ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... papers shows that the humorist can be pathetic on occasion without falling into mock sentiment. It is published by NEELY, of New York, and, if reduced in bulk, the Remarks of Bill Nye ought to do very well here, even among those who, for want of familiarity with American slang, do not keenly appreciate American humour. The Baron does appreciate it when it is genuine American humour, but when the peculiar style is only copied by a journalistic 'ARRY, with whom the stupidest and most vulgar Yankeeisms pass for the highest wit, simply because they are Yankeeisms, then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... find words to describe Nieuport as it is to talk of metaphysics in slang. The words don't seem invented that will convey that haunting sense of desolation, that supreme quiet under the shock of continually firing guns. Hardly anything is left now of the little homely bits that, when I saw the place last autumn, reminded one that this was ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... of "conviction," &c. Mr. Bowles proceeds to Mr. Gilchrist; whom he charges with "slang" and "slander," besides a small subsidiary indictment of "abuse, ignorance, malice," and so forth. Mr. Gilchrist has, indeed, shown some anger; but it is an honest indignation, which rises up in defence of the illustrious ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... hole"—a slang term for the mouth, has been well "threshed out"—as it is called. Of "My Prooshian Blue," as his son affectedly styled his parent, Mr. Lang correctly suggests the solution, that the term came of George IV's intention of changing the ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... say, I have so far deviated from that stereotyped rule-so strictly observed by all our great authors-as to make my hero, who is what is curiously enough called a "Yankee Character," speak tolerably good English, instead of vulgar slang. In truth, so closely do "our great writers" adhere to this rule of depicting the eccentric American as a lean, scraggy individual, dressed most outlandishly, making splinters of the king's English, while ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... didn't know college-slang. I suppose a royal mail is the only gentleman coach that you know of. Why, in Oxford, a coach means a private tutor, you must know; and those who can't afford a coach, get a cab, - alias a crib, - alias a translation. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Boston, 1936. A dictionary of cowboy words, figures of speech, picturesque phraseology, slang, etc., with explanations of many factors peculiar to range life. OP. Western Words, University of Oklahoma Press, 1944. A companion book. Come an' Get It, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. Informal exposition of ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... BUCKETSHOP, a slang financial term for the office or business of an inferior class of stockbroker, who is not a member of an official exchange and conducts speculative operations for his clients, who deposit a margin or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Caput—a German slang expression with the general significance of the English "gone to smash," but also a hundred other and wider meanings, impossible to ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... who wandered over the country dressed in grotesque fashion, pretending to be mad and working upon the fears or the charity of people for alms. They were common in the time of Shakespeare, and were found even as late as the Restoration. The slang phrase "to sham Abraham," is a survival of the practice. There was a ward in Bethlehem (or Bedlam) Hospital, called the Abraham Ward, and hence probably arose the name of these beggars. Harmless lunatics who had ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... risen, blowing off at a sad rate the smoke of that abstruse Institution.—"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles the Feldzeugmeister to himself. But "SI DEUS EST NOBISCUM," as Grumkow exclaims once to his beautiful Reichenbach, or NOSTI as he calls him in their slang or cipher language, "If God is with us, who can prevail against us?" For the Grumkow can quote Scripture; nay solaces himself with it, which is a feat beyond what the ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... so hard and so earnestly that the Reverend's heart was not hard enough to hold out against the pleadings —so he went away with the parent-honoring student, like a right Christian, and took supper with him in his lodgings, and sat in the surf-beat of his slang and profanity till near midnight, and then left him—left him pretty well talked out, but grateful "clear down to his frogs," as he expressed it. The Reverend said it had transpired during the interview that "Cholley" Adams's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... always very consciously with a deliberate attempt upon them, in just that partial, selecting, creative way in which an artist looks at things for the purpose of painting a picture. In order to arrive at their effects, they shrink from no sacrifice, from no excess; slang, neologism, forced construction, archaism, barbarous epithet, nothing comes amiss to them, so long as it tends to render a sensation. Their unique care is that the phrase should live, should palpitate, should be alert, exactly expressive, super-subtle in expression; and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and contented; and him he sought to save from all to which he subjected himself. He could not bear that that soft and delicate child should ever be exposed to the low and menial associations that now made up his own life—to the obscene slang of grooms and ostlers—to their coarse manners and rough contact. He kept him, therefore, apart and aloof in their little lodging, and hoped in time to lay by, so that Sidney might ultimately be restored, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... occasional rests. The road lay along Deer Creek, passing several plantations; and occasionally, at the bends, it crossed the swamp, where the water came above my hips. The smaller drummer-boys had to carry their drums on their heads, and most of the men slang their cartridge-boxes around their necks. The soldiers generally were glad to have their general and field officers afoot, but we gave them a fair specimen of marching, accomplishing about twenty-one miles by noon. Of course, our speed ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... you call it fair to persecute, in this way, at the instigation of a proud aristocrat (he had already learned this slang sophistry), a young man, who is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... me for being highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class lecture, and read some of my best poetry—not the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But say, when I get out in the tall grass, there's nothing will take but a lot of cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge in it here, he'd get the gate so fast it would make ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... they discovered that the "gentlewoman who had never appear'd on any stage before" could more than hold her own in repartee and give the fops of fashion as good as or better than they gave. How could they tell that the sprightly young budding actress had graduated in the wit and slang of the streets? ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... their guardian had told them that when they had earned the right to their names, they could embroider the symbol on her dress, and every day since then she had wished she knew what to do. Mary had chosen the name "Aka—I can," and when she had proved that she could break herself of using slang by using none for a whole month, she put a tiny little white flower on the dress, for she was ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... Eustace's brother-in-law, had told his friend Greystock, the lady's cousin, that Mr. Camperdown the lawyer intended to "jump upon" that lady. Making such allowance and deduction from the force of these words as the slang expression requires, we may say that John Eustace was right. Mr. Camperdown was in earnest, and did intend to obtain the restoration of those jewels. Mr. Camperdown was a gentleman of about sixty, who had been lawyer to Sir Florian's father, and whose father had been ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... cam let lawyers tell: Ha, ha, the provin' o't! Jury bodies luik fu' swell: Ha, ha, the provin' o't! "John's no right, yet Jim's no wrang! Art's made of nocht but peut an' slang! Half a bawbee! Hame let's gang!" ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... know about their being lovers exactly. Charley has that ridiculous flirting manner, young men think it their duty to cultivate, and it certainly was a strong case of spoons—excuse the slang. Pa would never have listened to it, though—he wants birth and blood too, and old Hampson's a pork merchant. Then Phineas Featherbrain came along, sixty years of age, and a petroleum prince. Of course, there was a gorgeous wedding—New ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... and seven o'clock. Many, however, do not come until after the theatres close. If they are strangers, their names and a description of them are recorded in the register. "Boys have come in," says Mr. Brace, "who did not know their own names. They are generally known to one another by slang names, such as the following: 'Mickety,' 'Round Hearts,' 'Horace Greeley,' 'Wandering Jew,' 'Fat Jack,' 'Pickle Nose,' 'Cranky Jim,' 'Dodge-me-John,' 'Tickle-me-foot,' 'Know-Nothing Mike,' 'O'Neill the Great,' 'Professor,' and innumerable others. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a strong man, a "he-man," according to the slang that was coming into fashion; he now tried to live up to that role. He didn't want to go mooning about over this accident; yet Jennie's face stayed with him—sometimes wild, as he had seen it at their last meeting, sometimes ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... was at its height, the two Parisians arrived in their native province, and found it absorbed in the unremitting toil of the wine-crop of 1836; there could therefore be no public demonstration in their favor. "We have fallen flat," said Lousteau to his companion, in the slang ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... younger blades a pass or two. These were veteran fencers with a skill of their own, which they loved to display at times. The zest was that of remembrance; the sword-play of words was above the head of a younger generation given to slang and music-hall airs; and so these two had little bouts for their own edification, and enjoyed the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... his memory for sketches of Eastern life, of which the vigour and colour may be compared with those of Mr. Kipling himself ... His pages 'palpitate with actuality,' if we may use a slang phrase of the day; not ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... vocabulary of baseball has by this time already given to the language words that show promise of attaining eventual legitimacy. An increasingly large source of enrichment of the native tongue comes from the "spontaneous generation" of slang, which, starting in the linguistic whimsicality of one individual, gets caught up in conversation, and finds its ultimate way into the language. Important instruments, certainly in the United States, in spreading such neologisms are the humorous ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... ladies are not the only greenbacks that are accepted at sight; and acceptable to it. The bank on which I should like to dwell—do you not guess it?—is the auriferous National. Those musical neighbors-how they do play, though! But, to borrow from Mr. SLANG, my queer neighbor opposite, they have about played out. Our gentlemanly landlord—all landlords are so very gentlemanly, kind, good, and considerate—Mr. GRABB, says it don't pay to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... diverting personages in Jonson's comedy is Captain Tucca. "His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... renowned for courage and for crime; his vessels were usually secreted in the land-locked bay of Barataria, to the westward of the mouth of the river. They were, however, soon extirpated by the American government. The language of the adjacent States is still adulterated with the slang of those scoundrels, proving how short a period it is since they disappeared, and how they must have mixed up with the reckless population, whose head-quarters were then at the mouth of ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... (Peter) wrote a slang description of a fight he had witnessed to a lady." Unlucky Peter! "Was ever woman in this manner wooed?" The lady "glanced her eye over page after page in hopes of meeting with something that was intelligible," and no wonder she did not care for a long letter "devoted to the ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... officer!" he exclaimed, a weak smile on his lips. "I'm no boob!" Obviously, he meant this lapse into the slang of the Tenderloin to convey his intimate knowledge of police methods. "You can't soft-soap me! You don't want explanations! You want me to get myself in bad. But you won't get anything out of me. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... worked at school (chap, xxvi.); and of old remedies for the lost art of swooning, in the 'lavender drops' of chapter xxix. The mention of a dance as a 'little hop' in chapter ix. reads like a premature instance of middle Victorian slang. But nothing is new—even in a novel—and 'hop,' in this sense, is at least as old ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... (Les) Nouvelles Nouvelles, ou pour mieux dire, Nouveaux Comptes a plaisance, par maniere de Joyeusete.——Lettres Gothiques, fig. et bois et titre MSS. feuilles dorees, en maroquin, Paris, par Ant. Verard, 1475, fol.——No. 1963, Heide Beschryving der nieuevlyks uitgevonden en geoctrojeerde Slang-Brand-Spuiten, en Haare wijze van Brand-Blussen, Tegenwoordig binnen Amsterdam in gebruik zynde. Wyze figuurs Amst. 1690, fol. "Note in this book: Paris, 1736. Paid for this book for his Grace the Duke of Kingston, by Mr. Hickman, 24l." A great sum for a book about a "newly discovered ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the difficult part of the subject to make clear, the most vulgar slang like that quoted above, is scarcely worse than the attempted elegance which those unused to good society imagine to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... my face occasionally, and now and then giving a lurch to this or that side of the road, attracted by a choice tuft of grass. And then I "came the Julius Caesar" over them, if you will allow me to use such a slang expression, a liberty I never should permit you. I don't know that Julius Caesar ever drove cattle, though he must often have seen the peasants from the Campagna "haw" and "gee" them round the Forum (of course in Latin, a language that those cattle understood as well as ours ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the position of office boy to that of secretary for the Corrugated Iron Company. The story is full of humor and infectious American slang. ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... spot that if he ever did go in for the peculiar entertainment of falling in love, he would choose a shy girl with brown curls who did not talk slang and went about distributing buns to hungry boys. "Her for mine," he expressed ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... "With that atrocious slang! Won't eat his oatmeal! And he's such a queer child—queer! So pale, never laughs, doesn't like any one. Why should you take up for him? He doesn't even like you. Hates ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... enough dead one," he muttered, unconsciously using the slang of the Street which he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... time. There is almost a mania for frivolity and excitement, which exhibits itself in many forms in our popular literature. To meet the public taste, our books and periodicals must now be highly spiced, amusing, and comic, not disdaining slang, and illustrative of breaches of all laws, human and divine. Douglas Jerrold once observed of this tendency, "I am convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw about all things. After all, life has something serious in it. It cannot be all a ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... a mental reservation regarding Bucharest) I felt bound to agree with them. For if only one-half of the tales which I heard concerning the gay doings of the elite here were true, then must the wicked little Roumanian capital "take" (to use a slang expression) "a back seat." Apparently this state of affairs has existed for some time, for when Admiral Melville, of the Jeannette, was here twenty years ago, searching the coast for his unfortunate shipmates, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... be silent, as we were, save the quartermaster Poitevin. He was a veteran,—sallow, wrinkled, with hollow cheeks, mustaches an ell long, and a red nose, like all brandy drinkers. He had a lofty way of speaking, which he interspersed with barrack slang. When the rain came down faster than ever, he cried, with a strange burst of laughter: "Ay, ay, Poitevin, this will teach you to hiss!" The old drunkard perceived that I had a little money in my pocket, and kept near me, saying: "Young man, if your knapsack tires ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... me," said Kathleen, in her easy slang, "is that he never pulls any knighthood-in-flower stuff, yet you somehow feel it's there. Know what I mean? There's a scrapper behind that ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... waiting he brought out the catapult which bulged from his inner pocket and explained some improvements which he had made in it. I asked him why he had brought it and he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds. Mahony used slang freely, and spoke of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We waited on for a quarter of an hour more but still there was no sign of Leo Dillon. Mahony, at ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Command of temper, Inquiries by public, Complaints by public, Constable to readily give his number on request, Tact, Discretion, Forbearance, Avoidance of slang terms, Necessity of cultivating power of observation, Liberty of the subject (unnecessary interference, etc.), Offences against discipline (drunkenness, drinking ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... Ibrahim had picked up his knowledge of English at Alexandria, and his conversation abounded with slang phrases which he used in ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... rank, he was perfectly at home in his descriptions of the upper classes, and never slow in exposing their vices. His studies of men took so universal a form that he became familiar even with the slang terms of pickpockets and house-breakers. "What Will He Do With It?" combines examples of the heroic, the humorous, the pathetic, and the villainous, and affords, perhaps, the best general view of the author's varied ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... recently," she observed, "got into a new way. Whatever slang you happen to hear outside you come and tell me. And whenever you read any improper book, you poke your fun at me. What! have I ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... would be proud of me yet, but oh, dear! the more I try to do, the more I seem disliked. They'll be fearfully sold when it comes to the performance. I wonder if I ought to give them just a hint! It's really too idiotic to have two Merchants. No, I won't! They'd probably only slang me for letting out Form secrets. I'm glad I'm not acting, at any rate. School's not exactly a terrestrial paradise at present. I wonder what other troubles are coming to me? I believe I'm one of those people who are born under an ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... philosophy, the frenzy of the day to coin catch-words that carry a seemingly attractive principle, but at the same time alluring and mischievous, and among them is this cry for woman's rights and also for negro suffrage and manhood suffrage and universal suffrage. It is all nothing but slang and demagoguery, and is fraught with naught but evil, mischief, and degradation, individually and nationally. For these reasons, sir, one of the last propositions, or if gentlemen choose, principles which have been or may be propounded to the people of America, or as an amendment ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... asked me to dine with him at his club, and I actually did; and actually he with me, at mine! And we spoke French all through dinner, and I taught him a lot of French school-boy slang, with which he was delighted. Then he came to see me in Barge Yard, and I even introduced him to my mother and sister, who couldn't help being charmed with him. He was fond of the best music only (he had no ear whatever, and didn't know a note), and only cared for old pictures—the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and now formed an island of American territory in the harbor of Chefoo. Perhaps we were not content to sit at the mahogany table in the glistening white and brass bound wardroom surrounded by those eager, sunburned faces, to hear sea slang and home slang in the accents of Maine, Virginia, and New York City. We forgot our dark-skinned keepers with the slanting, suspicious, unfriendly eyes, with tongues that spoke the one thing and meant the other. All the memories of those six months of deceit, of broken pledges, of unnecessary ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... Salisbury, your memory is admirable. Yes, I was hard up. But the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I became harder up. My financial state was described by a friend as "stone broke." I don't approve of slang, mind you, but such was my condition. But suppose we go in; there might be other people who would like to dine—it's a human ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... affair turned out. She had put him in the way of something absolutely special—an old house untouched, untouchable, indescribable, an old corner such as one didn't believe existed, and the holy calm of which made the chatter of studios, the smell of paint, the slang of critics, the whole sense and sound of Paris, come back as so many signs of a huge monkey-cage. He moved about, restless, while he wrote; he lighted cigarettes and, nervous and suddenly scrupulous, put them out again; the night was mild and one of the windows of his ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... the time of Cleopatra, Antony and Caesar. Thus we saw traffic policemen with their Stop and Go signals in the middle of the Sahara; telephones, check books, motorcycles and automobiles in use, and so on. In addition, the leaders were filled with modern business and other slang; and the spectacle of a huge negro wrapping Cleopatsy in a modern Axminster rug and carrying her in to show her to Antony (instead of, as according to history, Caesar) kept the spectators in a roar of laughter. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... of meaning to Strickland, and these called to him to come back and take up his wanderings and his discoveries. Some day, I will tell you how he broke his promise to help a friend. That was long since, and he has, by this time, been nearly spoilt for what he would call shikar. He is forgetting the slang, and the beggar's cant, and the marks, and the signs, and the drift of the undercurrents, which, if a man would master, he ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... solely to the English language, I think I might fairly take exception to a string of instances with which A.E.B. endeavours to refute me from a vocabulary of a language very expressive, no doubt, yet commonly called "slang". The words in question are not English: I never use them myself, nor do I recognise the right or necessity for any one else to do so; and I might, indeed, deem this a sufficient answer. But the fact is that the language in some degree is losing its instincts, and liberties are taken with ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... "how many times must I tell you not to use slang? It is vulgar and unladylike, and quite out of ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... following year, Studies for Stories was published, of which the Athenaeum said, "They are prose poems, carefully meditated, and exquisitely touched in by a teacher ready to sympathize with every joy and sorrow." The five stories are told in simple and clear language, and without slang, to which she heartily objects. For one so rich in imagination as Miss Ingelow, her prose is singularly free from obscurity and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... Darling!" and he says "In Kennington Station House." I was dropping at his feet Stone at the image of that Innocence in cells with murderers when he adds "He followed the Monkey." I says deeming it slang language "O sir explain for a loving grandmother what Monkey!" He says "Him in the spangled cap with the strap under the chin, as won't keep on—him as sweeps the crossings on a round table and don't want to draw his sabre more than he can ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... my angelic manner of speaking the celestial language. There is a winter Franconi's now, high up on the Boulevards, just like the round theatre on the Champs Elysees, and as bright and beautiful. A clown from Astley's is all in high favour there at present. He talks slang English (being evidently an idiot), as if he felt a perfect confidence that everybody understands him. His name is Boswell, and the whole cirque rang last night with cries for Boz Zwilllll! Boz Zweellll! Boz Zwuallll! etc. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... respect to me. And then, 'who can say?' as the Portuguese says when he hasn't anything else to say. They'll keep a strict watch over you, my friend, because you've played the lion too much. Just before I left the States, as you call them, a new slang phrase was going the rounds;—'it is better to play the fox some of the time than to roar all of the time.' Ergo, be foxy. Take it cool. So long as you haven't got that mint packed about your person, the game ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... work with such vigour and popularity. He turned his attention to abuses in Church and State, which he lashed with caustic satire, conveyed in short doggerel rhyming lines peculiar to himself, in which jokes, slang, invectives, and Latin quotations rush out pell-mell. His best works in this line are Why come ye not to Court? and Colin Clout, both directed against the clergy, and the former against Wolsey in particular. Piqued ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... a large scale is only a smirch to the reputation,—transferring thus to financial matters the loose principles of love in the eighteenth century. Diard now became a sort of business man, and concerned himself in several of those affairs which are called shady in the slang of the law-courts. He practised the decent thievery by which so many men, cleverly masked, or hidden in the recesses of the political world, make their fortunes,—thievery which, if done in the streets by the ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... vivacious, charming fellow, as any young gentleman may be who gaily wears the golden dish of Fifty thousand pounds per annum, nailed to the back of his very saintly young pate. The growth of the critical spirit in him, however, had informed him that slang had been a principal component of his rattling; and as he justly supposed it a betraying art for his race and for him, he passed through the prim and the yawning phases of affected indifference, to the pine Puritanism of a leaden contempt ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... into much of the slang language that the older midshipmen use when conversing together. Many somewhat obscure points in the regulations were made ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... fast disappearing. Improvement has peered beneath the aprons of our cabs, and penetrated to the very innermost recesses of our omnibuses. Dirt and fustian will vanish before cleanliness and livery. Slang will be forgotten when civility becomes general: and that enlightened, eloquent, sage, and profound body, the Magistracy of London, will be deprived of half their amusement, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... as Dryden says, We bring a fancy of those Georgian days, Whose style still breathed a faint and fine perfume Of old-world courtliness and old-world bloom: When speech was elegant and talk was fit For slang had not been canonised as wit; When manners reigned, when breeding had the wall, And Women - yes! - were ladies first of all; When Grace was conscious of its gracefulness, And man - though Man! - was not ashamed to dress. A brave formality, a measured ease, Were ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... stamped him unduly. In addition, the section of the country from which he came was against him. The bishop was not without his prejudices, and was disposed to father all the materialistic spirit of the age upon his guest, whether or no. He had noted that lapse into slang, and his attitude had become like that of the loiterers in the hall of Caiaphas, the high priest. Had his thought become vocal, it would have run like a garbled version of their triumphant charge against St. Peter: "Thou art a Westerner, and ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... critic will find little to cavil at in her productions. If fault should be found with any of them it would probably be with such a narrative as "Wolverine." It "bites," like all her Indian pieces, and conveys a definite meaning. But, written in the conventional slang of the frontier, it jars with her other work, and seems out of form, if not ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... for number nine and my four horses. Then I mean to invite you to my country house, to have a lot of "fat" girls to meet you who will talk slang at you, and one of them shall marry you—one whose father is a great newspaper man. And your new papa will start you in the business of making public opinion. You will play with that, too, but, then, you will ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... thought about it, what you have to say cannot fail to command their respect and approval, for you will have shown them that you possess a grasp of your subject and—to adopt an exceedingly expressive bit of slang—then some. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the city the constant street noise puts a nervous tax upon the children; the proximity of so many bright and moving objects taxes the eyes; the splash of gaudy and gross advertisements creates a fevered imagination; slang, profanity, and vulgarity lend a smart effect; the merchant's tempting display often leads to theft, and the immodest dress of women produces an evil effect upon the mind of the overstimulated adolescent boy; opportunities to ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... compliment somewhat singular. But she was prepared to forgive New York a few sins in the matter of commercial slang: New York, which evidently dressed as it liked, and talked as it liked. But not knowing any more of a gilt-edged security than that it was something to Mr. Spence's taste, a retort was out of the question. Then, as though she were doomed that day to complicity, her eyes chanced ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... newspaper literature as found its way into Briar Farm filled her with amazement, repulsion and disgust. There was nothing in any modern magazine that at all resembled the delicate, pointed and picturesque phraseology of the Sieur Amadis! Strange, coarse slang-words were used,—and the news of the day was slung together in loose ungrammatical sentences and chopped-up paragraphs of clumsy construction, lacking all pith and eloquence. So, repelled by the horror of twentieth-century "style," she had hidden her manuscripts deeper than ever in the old bureau, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... Abraham ward at Bedlam. The genuine Bedlamite was allowed to roam the country on his discharge, soliciting alms, provided he wore a badge. This humane privilege was grossly abused, and thus gave rise to the slang ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... use a phrase which he himself would not have used, for he avoided the use of slang—"given himself away." Over his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into the compartment, as he indicated to her the comfortable seat he ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... story. From the rustic conviviality of the inn at Ballymahon, and the company which used to assemble there, it is surmised that he took some hints in after life for his picturing of Tony Lumpkin and his associates: "Dick Muggins, the exciseman; Jack Slang, the horse doctor; little Aminidab, that grinds the music-box, and Tom Twist, that spins the pewter platter." Nay, it is thought that Tony's drinking song at the Three Jolly Pigeons was but a revival of one of the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... magnificent sight to any one who had not lost his sense of appreciation of the noblest of all the works of Nature. Both men fulfilled that requisite of the powerful athlete that they should look larger without their clothes than with them. In ring slang, they buffed well. And each showed up the other's points on account of the extreme contrast between them: the long, loose-limbed, deer- footed youngster, and the square-set, rugged veteran with his trunk ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of those plants, foreign and English, which love to have their roots in water-soaked mud or the beds of running streams, while leaves and flowers rise far above into the light. Other pools should become "beds" for the water-flowers that float upon the surface. In the slang of the rock garden the plants living and flourishing on upright rocks are called "verticals." If we must have a slang for the flora of the brook garden we will term them "horizontals"— the plants that ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... hands? Shall you flirt with the captain if he thinks your doing so will add to the humorous or dramatic interest of his story? Will you permit your children to make impertinent remarks to every one aboard ship; to pick up sailors' slang and use it at the dining-table—in short, to make themselves obnoxiously clever at all times, in order that Mr. Harley's critics may say that his book fairly scintillates with wit, and gives gratifying evidence that 'the rising young author' has made a deep and careful analysis ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... the 22d of February, the President greatly damaged his cause by denouncing a Senator and a Representative, and using the slang of the stump against the Secretary of the Senate in the midst of an uproarious Washington mob. The people were mortified that the Executive of the nation should have committed so serious ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... people across the brine Are exceedingly strong on Auld Lang Syne, But they're lost in the push when they strike a gang That is strong on American new line slang! ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... hand, and smashed it to pieces on his head. John, who could run like a greyhound, and well knew how far he could trust to his heels, no sooner got out of the cellar than he let loose the floodgates of his wrath, and poured forth upon his astonished master a torrent of invective, partly the slang of the mob, and partly supplied from plays and farces by his memory; then assuring "the ugly illnatured hunks" that he never should see him again till he was able to make his thick scull ring with a drubbing, he disappeared, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Lord Durham, son-in-law of the premier, assuming that he was the party pointed at, attacked what he called "the bishop's gross and virulent invective—his malignant, calumnious, and false insinuations—his well-known powers of pamphleteering slang." Here the noble lord was called to order, and the Earl of Winchelsea moved that the words "false insinuations" and "pamphleteering slang" should be taken down. After some observations from Earl Grey, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Durham went on to state ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... black people differ from their brethren of the other islands, so certainly do the white people. One soon learns to know—a Bim. That is the name in which they themselves delight, and therefore, though there is a sound of slang about it, I give it here. One certainly soon learns to know a Bim. The most peculiar distinction is in his voice. There is always a nasal twang about it, but quite distinct from the nasality of a Yankee. The Yankee's word rings sharp through his nose; not so that of the first-class ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... and few in number because of his lack of discrimination and small experience, almost all pleasures, like almost all events, are of the nature of surprises. The child almost always laughs when he is pleased. The slang phrase "to be highly tickled" expresses with precision this close connection between laughter and pleasure. Moreover, as the complexity of life increases, its strains and repressions are multiplied, with the result that any giving way to ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... last refinement of Eton slang (carefully treasured up by the others for reproduction) against the spite of the keeper, who he declared had grinned with malice as he turned him out at a little back gate into a lane with a high stone wall ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... besieged derive much comfort from their hopes was soon apparent. Out from the timber up the stream came sonorous voices shouting taunt and challenge, intermingled with the vilest expletives they had picked up from their cowboy neighbors, and all the frontier slang in ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Hodder glanced involuntarily at her wonderful crown of hair. She had taken off her hat. He was thinking of the typical crime of American parents,—and suddenly it struck him that her speech had changed, that she had dropped the suggestive slang of the surroundings in which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were merely such notes as he might have written had we both been living within the four-mile radius; usually notes about books which he needed, always brightened with a quip and some original application of slang. Occasionally there were rhymes. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Don't forget about using slang, Jimmie!" cautioned Ned, half laughing. "But you see the German officer, von Liebknecht, is really more than a little bit right ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to turn out." Is turn out a slang phrase here, or is it a term commonly used in speaking of the assemblage of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... themselves on the saucy chique with which they adopt certain Americanisms, and other cant phrases of the day. Such habits cannot be too severely reprehended. They lower the tone of society and the standard of thought. It is a great mistake to suppose that slang is in any way a ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... almost promised to make when he returned. He began and ended quite formally. George, apparently in the best of spirits, wrote as he always did, in a boyish, inconsequent fashion. His letter was filled with slang and gave no news. There was little to show that it was written from Mombassa, on the verge of a dangerous expedition into the interior, rather than from Oxford on the eve of a football match. But she read them over and over again. They were very matter of fact, and she ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... unforeseen complication had occurred. In their return the spirit of Fritz von Hartmann had entered into the body of Alexis von Baumgarten, and that of Alexis von Baumgarten had taken up its abode in the frame of Fritz von Hartmann. Hence the slang and scurrility which issued from the lips of the serious Professor, and hence also the weighty words and grave statements which fell from the careless student. It was an unprecedented event, yet no one knew of it, least of all those whom ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about her shoulders, a woolly coat of clearest lemon yellow. Vivian gave the impression of a soft little watchful cat, unfriendly, alert, selfish. Her manner was studiedly rowdyish, her speech marred by slang; she loved only a few persons in the world besides herself. One of these few persons, however, was Clarence Breckenridge's daughter, Carol, affectionately known to all these persons as "Billy," and it was in Miss Breckenridge's ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... with an air which would have befitted a grand duchess, leaving her astonished auditors to look at each other a moment in silence, and then to express themselves fully and freely and unreservedly with regard to American effrontery, American manners, and American slang, as represented ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... a holy life. You should use the very choicest words. Words that are wholly free from vulgarity, slang, and the spirit of the world. Untidiness, uncleanness, carelessness, and shabbiness are not at all beautiful ornaments in a holy life. But quietness, modesty, and reticence are gems which sparkle in a holy life like diamond sets in a band of gold. Give attention to your words, your thoughts, ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... the chambers—at Lind's table, in fact. He was a man of about twenty-eight or thirty, slim and dark, with a perfectly pallid face, a small black mustache carefully waxed, and an affectedly courteous smile. He wore a pince-nez; was fond of slang, to show his familiarity with English; and aimed at an English manner, too. He seemed bored. He regarded this man whom Brand introduced to him without ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... done by him at that time—one, an especially good one, I happened upon in the Grosvenor Gallery. This picture, although superficial and betraying when you looked into it a radical want of knowledge, was not lacking in charm. In French studios there is a slang phrase which expresses the meretricious charm of this picture—c'est du chic; and the meaning of this very expressive term is ignorance affecting airs of capacity. Now the whole of Mr. Menpes' ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... land and joined their friends in the debris heaps. The protection of the debris heaps was not quite so good as that afforded by the mines, and the music of the cannon the troglodytes had always with them. But there was more liberty and comfort in the caves, which were dry as dust and—no slang intended—not ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... sounds that had swept my memory back to civilization and drawn me from my Golden Bed. O Lalala had all the slang of poker—the poker of the waterfronts of San Francisco and of Shanghai—and evidently he had already taught his eager ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... hot weather, discomfort, parting, and death. That smell in our nostrils, and Adam's servant in waiting, we naturally fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay window overlooking the park, where they were carting the last of the hay. When twilight fell we would not have candles, but waited for the moon, and continued our talk ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... be out of place and uncomfortable, and should always have to be bowing and scraping and exchanging compliments, and besides they would soon find out that my Spanish was doubtful. I talk a sailor's slang, but I doubt if I should understand pure Spanish. Altogether, I should be very uncomfortable, and should make you uncomfortable, and I would very much rather take my place among the men that work for you until I can get on ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... laughed at his theatrical slang, wrapped her otter-skin rug round his legs, and murmured: 'Come close to me, darling; at any rate, you are not cold, I hope?' When they reached her pretty little house, with old tapestry and delicate colored plush hangings, they found supper waiting for them, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to employ a slightly slang expression, gazed across Ballard Field. In the stands, the students responding thunderously to their cheer-leaders' megaphoned requests, roared, "Play ball! Play ball! Play ball!" Gay pennants and banners fluttered in the glorious sunshine ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... martial career, which, as it happened, had taken place in full view of his retainers, among whom it remained the greatest of jokes. Indeed, he wanted to kill a man, the wag of the party, who gave him a slang name which, being ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... so perhaps they won't try it on too hard," said Sam, and there the students' slang came to an end for the ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... but the head, and that was aqua-fortis,' and swore if anyone abused him he ought to be 'set straddle on an iceberg, and shot through with a streak of lightning.'" Somewhere between the dignified despair of Daniel Webster, and the adulatory slang of these gentry we must look for the actual truth about Jackson's administration. The fears of the statesman were not wholly groundless, for it is always hard to count in advance upon the tendency of high office to make men more reasonable. The enthusiasm of the editors had a certain foundation; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... feebleminded, and was yet permitted to continue in his responsible office. A trait, after the manner of the find in the Lido, forces itself upon me here. It was to this man that some youthful colleagues in the hospital adapted the then popular slang of that day: "No Goethe has written that," "No Schiller composed ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... society everywhere is to be pleasant without being prominent. In every other European country, however, able men are encouraged to talk; in England alone they are discouraged. People in society use a debased jargon or slang, snobbish shibboleths for the most part, and the majority resent any one man monopolising attention. But Oscar Wilde was allowed this privileged position, was encouraged to hold forth to amuse people, as singers are brought in to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... "don't talk slang. And I don't think it very polite to speak that way to Mr Millar about ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... discontented and wishing to annoy the government, they even affected dissatisfaction at the subordinate position which Jorrocks occupied in the administration, and it was generally said—had become indeed the slang of the party—that the test of the sincerity of the ministry to Liberal principles was to put Jorrocks in the cabinet. The countenance of the premier when this choice programme was first communicated to him was what might have been expected had he learnt of the sudden descent upon ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... are told that Maggie Koot Looks well in her golfing suit; And her brand-new Astral Bike Is the best they've seen this cike— Cike is slang for cycle, so I have learned from Koot & Co. Soon she's going to take a run Out from Gobi to the sun, After which she thinks to race For the Championship of Space, And a trophy given by ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... A Pair of Spectacles in a volume of French plays. The period to which the very slight and uninteresting story of Haddon Hall belongs is just before the Restoration, but the dialogue of "the book" is spiced with modern slang, both "up to date" (the date being this present year of Grace, not sixteen hundred and sixty) and out of date. The "out-of-date" slang, which is, "I've got 'em on"—alluding to the Scotchman's trousers—has by far the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... not said loudly; but the tone and the glint of the eyes—and the cultured boss stirred into using slang! The chairman knew that he might as well pick ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... of your friends and mine lie decomposing in muddy holes—you know the place?—I put my legs across the colonel's horse, which was in the wagonlines, and set forth for Amiens. That horse knew that I had pinched him—forgive my slang. I should have said it in the French language, vole—and resented me. Thrice was I nearly thrown from his back. Twice did he entangle himself in barbed wire deliberately. Once did I have to coerce him with many stripes to pass a tank. Then the heavens opened upon ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... to his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... bank clerk and a mining secretary—we could not separately challenge any special social or literary distinction. Yet I am satisfied that the very name of our Club—a common Spanish colloquialism, literally meaning "a little more or less," and adopted in Californian slang to express an unknown quantity—was supposed to be replete with deep ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... important personages of the realm, and their entertaining this high opinion of themselves can scarcely be wondered at; they were low fellows, but masters of driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Antony and Caesar. Thus we saw traffic policemen with their Stop and Go signals in the middle of the Sahara; telephones, check books, motorcycles and automobiles in use, and so on. In addition, the leaders were filled with modern business and other slang; and the spectacle of a huge negro wrapping Cleopatsy in a modern Axminster rug and carrying her in to show her to Antony (instead of, as according to history, Caesar) kept the spectators in a roar of laughter. For an originally-worked-out ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... been expended upon persons of infinitely small merit, what was to be done when those of real superiority entered upon the scene? It was impossible to apply to them the forms of laudation adapted to their inferiors. Well, then, a species of slang was invented, by which it was thought practicable to make the genuine great men conceive they had passed into the condition of demigods. A language was devised that was to express the fervor of the adorers who were suddenly allowed to penetrate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... back even unto the third generation; he could order a dinner at Sherry's as readily as drinks at Sharkey's. Most valuable accomplishment of all, he learned to laugh. In the way of by-products he picked up a working acquaintance with American, English and German slang—French slang he already knew as a mother-tongue—considerable geographical knowledge of the capitals of Europe, America and Illinois, a taste that discriminated between tobacco and the stuff sold as such in France, and a genuine passion for ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... with, about such large establishments as Segenhoe, where, it may be presumed, they meet with kind treatment. Their reckless gaiety of manner; intelligence respecting the country, expressed in a laughable inversion of slang words; their dexterity, and skill in the use of their weapons; and above all, their few wants, generally ensure them that look of welcome,* without which these rovers of the wild will seldom visit a farm or cattle station. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... had Coxeter—to use a phrase which he himself would not have used, for he avoided the use of slang—"given himself away." Over his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... night. This is in keeping with the grandeur and responsibility of the paternal relation. But really, in the only other example (which immediately occurs) of Papa's attempt to bias the filial intellect, we recognise nothing but what is mystical; and involuntarily we think of him in the modern slang character of 'governor,' rather than as a 'guide, philosopher, and friend.' It seems that one Saturday, about the time when the Rev. Walker in Furness must have been sitting down to his exegesis of hard sayings in the Town and Country Magazine, the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... let us wind up this chapter of accidents with an account of the manner in which a party of strangers, to use a slang but expressive phrase, came to grief during a visit to ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... howitzer) in orders "mother" is the name given to the twelve-inch howitzer. The trench language is changing so quickly that I think the staff in the rear are unable to keep up to date, because they have recently issued an order to the effect that slang must not be used in official correspondence. Now instead of reporting that a "dud Minnie" arrived over back of "mud lane," it is necessary to put, "I have the honor to report that a projectile from a German Minnenwerfer landed in rear of Trench F 26 ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... also typical of Sophie that she had selected from among all the dashing wooers; at her heels, Walter Trumwell, simple and sedate, who was horrified by her pranks and shocked by her use of slang, but who adored her with the devotion of a frightened puppy. Their engagement had been long announced. It was only in its high-handed abruptness that the wedding was ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... troops should trust in God and keep their powder dry,—with a mind deep indeed, but distracted by internal conflicts, and prolific only in enormous, half-shaped ideas, which stammer into expression at once obscure and ominous, the language a strange compound of the slang of the camp and the mystic phrases of inspired prophets and apostles,—we still feel throughout, that, whatever may be the contradictions of his character, they are not such as to impair the ruthless energy of his will. Whatever he dared to think he dared to do. No practical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. Real fairies never preach or talk slang. At the end, the little boy or girl wakes up and finds that he ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... window,' but rather get one yourself, and polish up your English. Your spelling and your vocabulary are, to use your own expression, 'something fierce;' how can you expect the poor little French child to understand your slang?" ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... and the Italians, anxious not to be outdone in any respect by their allies, were the most accomplished of depredators. They had come in fact to hold theft meritorious, and designated it by the elegant name of poetry. This slang term had become so general, that it was used even by the officers; and the adjutant of Pepe's regiment, in reporting a marauder to him, calls the man a poet. The prosaic application of a couple of hundred lashes to the shoulders of this culprit, served as a warning to his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... P. was a very dignified gentleman and did not revert to his boyhood's slang except under extreme provocation. "He shouldn't have allowed you to urge him. And what about the brilliant prospect you gave up once just because his father was ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... love to tease her now and then. I go to the races, play cards, waltz, talk slang, and read novels. But when I do bow down to her I bow away down. Why, at Montrose, I ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... book, "British India in 1831:" "Besides the robbers, who kill for the sake of the booty they hope to find upon travellers, there is a class of assassins, forming an organized society, with chiefs of their own, a slang-language, a science, a free-masonry, and even a religion, which has its fanaticism and its devotion, its agents, emissaries, allies, its militant forces, and its passive adherents, who contribute their money to the good work. This is the community ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... recall them in your memory or imagination, just as readily as you would were you observing their occurrence in the mind of a friend. You will find them all stored away in some parts of your mental make-up, and you may (to use a modern American slang phrase) "make them trot before you, and show their paces." Don't you see that they are not "You"—that they are merely something that you carry around with you in a mental bag. You can imagine yourself as living without them, and still being "I," ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... themselves gentlemen, belong to that class of men who cock their hats on one side of their heads, and often wear them when and where gentlemen would remove them; who pride themselves on their familiarity with the latest slang; who proclaim their independence by showing the least possible consideration for others; who laugh long and loud at their own wit; who wear a profusion of cheap finery, such as outlandish watch-chains hooked in the lowest button-hole of their vests, Brazilian diamonds in their shirt-bosoms, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... living, we are very familiar in the United States. It is a state of mind which prevailed in the Republican party with regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and found constant expression on the stump and in the newspapers in what is described, in political slang, as "waving the bloody shirt." It showed itself after the war in unwillingness to release the South from military rule; then in unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites or to withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the military support without which they could not have existed ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... at all," said Betty decidedly. "They are just silly little parlor tricks anyway—most of them—not worth wasting time over. Do you know Miss Willis told us in English class that a great deal of slang originated in college, and she gave 'stunt' as an example. She said it had been used here ever so long and only a few years outside, in quite a ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... In the slang of the newspaper shop a "story" means non-fiction. It may be an interview. It may be an account of a fire. It may be a page of descriptive writing for the Sunday magazine section. It may be merely ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... Billy briefly, "and I'm blowed if I'll ask my dear old dad to come to the rescue. He's had to cough up (shame on your slang, Billy) far too much already. I tell you, Gordon, I'm so fixed that I can't explain these things unless I'm actually brought to trial. It's—it's—well—you have no secret societies at the Point as we do at college, so you can't fathom it. I'm no more afraid of standing trial than ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... had. If I were among your friends I would be out of place and uncomfortable, and should always have to be bowing and scraping and exchanging compliments, and besides they would soon find out that my Spanish was doubtful. I talk a sailor's slang, but I doubt if I should understand pure Spanish. Altogether, I should be very uncomfortable, and should make you uncomfortable, and I would very much rather take my place among the men that work for you until I can get on ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... wring or dry each article in turn. The other gentleman on top received them all rather grimly, and had not perhaps been amused by the situation but for the exploit of his hat. It was of the sort called in Italian as in English slang a stove-pipe (canna), and having been made in Italy, it was of course too large for its wearer. It had never been any thing but a horror and reproach to him, and he was now inexpressibly delighted to see it steal out of the diligence in company with one of the red-leather cushions, and glide darkly ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... excessive self-consciousness, which makes it difficult or impossible to put themselves at ease among those with whom they would like to associate. They are painfully aware of their own surplus ego; they are constrained and awkward; they feel that in some way they are outsiders, that, as the slang phrase puts it, they do not belong. It is probable that more social failures are due to this trait than to ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... this grotesque procession had its own music. The Egyptians made their drums and African tambourines resound. The slang men, not a very musical race, still clung to the goat's horn trumpet and the Gothic rubebbe of the twelfth century. The Empire of Galilee was not much more advanced; among its music one could hardly distinguish some miserable rebec, from the infancy of the art, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... singular,' as Dryden says, We bring a fancy of those Georgian days, Whose style still breathed a faint and fine perfume Of old-world courtliness and old-world bloom: When speech was elegant and talk was fit For slang had not been canonised as wit; When manners reigned, when breeding had the wall, And Women - yes! - were ladies first of all; When Grace was conscious of its gracefulness, And man - though Man! - was not ashamed to dress. A brave ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... could reasonably have been expected. To say truth, the whole place reeked with vulgarity. The men drank beer by the gallon, and eat cheese by the hundred weight—wore jockey-cut coats, and talked slang—rode for wagers, and swore when they lost—smoked in your face, and expectorated on the floor. Their proudest glory was to drive the mail—their mightiest exploit to box with the coachman—their most delicate amour ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... attitude, and with the same grave, sleepless expression on his cast-iron features. The boy, Robin Tips, was at the helm, looking very sleepy. He was an English boy, smart, active, and wide-awake—in the slang sense—in which sense also we may ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... "why will thee always use such shocking slang? How can I teach Jamie English with his father's example before him?" She shook a tiny finger ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... tailor's, or sewed together at home, are not always so attractive. The cherubs' wings with which imagination has endowed them drop off, and they subside into cheeky, and sometimes scrubby, little boys, with a tendency towards peppermints, and a strong bias in favour of slang and tricks. The choir-boys of Chenecote, however, had been well-trained under Mr. Smith's ascetic eye; and though he had not drained the humanity entirely out of them, he had persuaded them to perfect cleanliness, if not to perfect godliness. They appeared at Mrs. Windsor's cottage that evening ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... at him from one of the Russian rifle-pits, 180 yards away, passed within an inch of his head. "It passed an inch above my nut into a bank I was passing," wrote Gordon, who had not forgotten his school-boy slang. But the only other remark he makes about his escape in his letter home is, "They (the Russians) are very good marksmen; their bullet is ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... "Liberty." Hear the old bandogs of the Daily Press, Chained to their party posts, or fetter-free And running amuck against old party creeds, On-howl their packs and glory in the fight. See mangy curs, whose editorial ears Prick to all winds to catch the popular breeze, Slang-whanging yelp, and froth and snap and snarl, And sniff the gutters for their daily food. And these—are they our prophets and our priests? Hurra!—Hurra!—Hurra!—for "Liberty!" Flaunt the red flag and flutter the petticoat; Ran-tan the drums and let the bugles bray, The eagle scream and sixty ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... sufficient self-possession to listen, in the instinctive hope that some plan of escape might be suggested to her. But from what she could gather of the incoherent and various projects they discussed, one after another—disputing upon each with frightful oaths and scarce intelligible slang, she could only learn that it was resolved at all events to leave the district in which they were—but whither seemed yet all undecided. The cart halted at last at a miserable-looking hut, which the signpost announced to be an inn that ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that he could scarcely speak. This was a new experience. At first it attracted him, but the hopeless vulgarity of the girl at his side, her tawdry clothes, her sordid, petty talk, her slang, her miserable profanity, soon began to revolt him. He felt that he could not keep his self-respect while such a girl hung upon ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... authority, do you mean?" asked Margaret, who could not abide slang of any kind. "No, indeed, Basil. Your Uncle John is the head of the house, in every possible way. I hope you are all going to be very good and obedient. He is the kindest, best man in the ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... "look at the letter. Here's a man, commercially educated, for he has used the usual business formulas, 'on receipt of this,' and 'advices received,' which I won't merely say I don't use, but which few but commercial men use. Next, here's a man who uses slang, not only ineptly, but artificially, to give the letter the easy, familiar turn it hasn't from beginning to end. I need only say, my dear Stacy, that I don't write slang to you, but that nobody who understands slang ever writes it in that ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... left alone, neither the first nor the second nor'-wester of brandy-and-water could arouse him from his sullen mood. He told me frankly, and in his own sea-slang, that he could not disintegrate the idea of a lawyer from that of the devil, and that he was assured that neither I nor my cause would prosper if I permitted the interference of a land-shark. I was even obliged to assume a little the authority of a master, in order to subdue his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Then, just before the last big fight—the one you say you were in—the sergeant was held a prisoner in the hut where you found him. He was in a bad way and I suppose the Germans thought he'd die when they left him—which they did when our boys knocked the spots off 'em, if you'll excuse my slang." ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... decreased; but in Elizabethan London the eclat of the inns was at its brightest, and during the reigns of Elizabeth's two nearest successors London submitted to the Inns-of-Court men as arbiters of all matters pertaining to taste—copying their dress, slang, amusements, and vices. The same may be said, with less emphasis, of Charles II.'s London. Under the 'Merry Monarch' theatrical managers were especially anxious to please the inns, for they knew that no play would succeed which the lawyers ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... letters written by other persons, e.g. Cassius to Cicero; Quintus to Tiro, and subsequently in those of Augustus to Tiberius. It is a feature of the colloquial style and often corresponds to the modern use of "slang." Other letters of Cicero, especially those written to persons with whom he was not quite at his ease or those meant for circulation, are composed in his elaborate style with long periods, parentheses and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... satisfied, and I acknowledge, I did not prove an exception to the learned individuals about me, either in my relish for the good things, or my appetite to enjoy them. Dulce est desipere in loco, says some one, by which I suppose is meant, that a rather slang company is occasionally good fun. Whether from my taste for the "humanities" or not, I am unable to say, but certainly in my then humour, I should not have exchanged my position for one of much greater pretensions to elegance and ton. There was first a general onslaught upon the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... to New York in the spring I meant going on farther whether I could or not. Australia and home again was in my mind, and in New York slang I swore there should be "blood on the face of the moon" if I did not get through inside of four months. Now this is not record time by any means, and it is not difficult to do it in much less, provided one spends ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... stand up in front of an oncoming troop of horsemen, and snap them until they get so close you can see the whites of their eyes. Then if they turn at the right time—well and good. But if there's a slip, and they ride into you—good-night! Excuse my slang," he added, hastily. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... pages consecutively—just as Canter and Canterbury gallop, of which the one was at first the mere shorthand expression of the other, were at one period interchanged, and for the same reason. The abbreviated form wore the air of plebeian slang at its first introduction, but its convenience favoured it: soon it became reconciled to the ear, then it ceased to be slang, and finally the original form, ceasing to have any apparent advantage of propriety ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... at the Lyceum was to get everything "rotten perfect," as the theatrical slang has it, before the dress rehearsal. Father's test of being rotten perfect was not a bad one. "If you can get out of bed in the middle of the night and do your part, you're perfect. If you can't, you don't ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Thomas Nelson Page, and Mr. Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") has made the mountains of Tennessee her special province. Chicago has several novelists of her own: for example, Mr. Henry Fuller, author of The Cliff Dwellers, Mr. Will Payne, and that close student of Chicago slang, Mr. George Ade, the author of Artie. The Middle West counts such novelists as Miss "Octave Thanet" and Mr. Hamlin Garland, whose Main Travelled Roads contains some very remarkable work. The Far West is best ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... exploit. Similarly in athletic sports there is almost invariably present a good share of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification—features which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made up of extremely sanguinary locutions borrowed from the terminology of warfare. Except where it is adopted as a necessary means of secret communication, the use of a special slang in any employment ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... say I was the whole show. Of course, I'm joking now, but the women all take up for me and applaud everything I say, whether it has a point to it or not. 'Whole show!' I oughtn't to have said that. When I try to keep from using bookish expressions I drop plumb into slang; there is no middle ground ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... guests at the dinner said that the Americans by the introduction of slang were ruining the English language. Mr. James Russell Lowell had come evidently prepared for this controversy. He said that American slang was the common language of that part of England from which the Pilgrims sailed, ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... for some months failing; and with early snows in the mountain and wasted capital in fruitless schemes on the river, there was little room for the indulgence of that lazy and original humor which belonged to their lost youth and prosperity. Blazing Star truly, in the grim figure of their slang, was "played out." Not dug out, worked out, or washed out, but dissipated in a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... nineteen when I went on the New England rural circuit—to give it a better name. Oh, I've been through all the steps! As soon as I felt a little secure about mother, I ventured to New York in answer to advertisements in The Reflector, and went out 'on the road' at 'fifteen per.'" These slang phrases seemed humorous as they came from her smiling lips, but Douglass knew some little part of the toil and discomfort they ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... free my mind with neatness and despatch. I simply wish to go over the whole affair, from Alfred to Omaha; and you've got to let me talk as much slang and nonsense as I want. And then I'll skip all the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... analogous; he was a great pugilist, knew the merits of every man in the ring, and the precise date and circumstances attending every battle which had been fought for the previous thirty years. His conversation was at all times interlarded with the slang terms appropriated to the science, to which he was so devoted. In other points he was a brave and trust-worthy officer, although he valued the practical above the theoretical branches of his profession, and was better pleased when superintending the mousing of a stay or the strapping of ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... after, on the 22d of February, the President greatly damaged his cause by denouncing a Senator and a Representative, and using the slang of the stump against the Secretary of the Senate in the midst of an uproarious Washington mob. The people were mortified that the Executive of the nation should have committed ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... there are the Samoan Village, the Maori Village, and the Tehuantepec Village. All these people are genuine and live in primitive style on the Zone, though, to tell the truth, they are quite likely to use college slang and know which fork to use first. Not on the Zone, but proper to be mentioned here, are the Blackfoot Indians brought to the Exposition from Glacier Park by the Great Northern Railroad. Eagle Calf is a real chief of the old days, and his band is ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... cares for chiselled prose nowadays? In the days when link-boys and sedan chairs helped home a jag they had the time to speak good English. But now! Good Lord! With typewriters cutting your phrases into angular fragments, with the very soil at your heels saturated with slang, what hope in an age of hurry has a fellow to think of the cadence? I honestly believe Stevenson was having fun when he wrote that essay of his on the technical elements of style. It's a puzzle picture and no more to be ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... thoroughfare, is a perfect piece of imaginative precision. From under the edge of the hood his eyes look upon Crainquebille, who has just uttered in an uncertain voice the sacramental, insulting phrase of the popular slang—Mort aux vaches! They look upon him shining in the deep shadow of the hood with an expression of sadness, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... thundered, King, Praeneste-bred, Hurled vineyard slang in handfuls at his head, A tough grape-gatherer, whom the passer-by Could ne'er put down, with all ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... word wizardry, he had Billy Sunday, master of slang and argot of one language, skinned by miles. For in Abel Ah Yo were the five verbs, and nouns, and adjectives, and metaphors of four living languages. Intermixed and living promiscuously and vitally together, he possessed in these languages a reservoir ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... off, but ere they had gone two April knew the painter as well as if they had been twin sisters. Clive Connal hadn't a secret or a shilling she would not share with the whole world. She used the vocabulary of a horse-dealer and the slang of a schoolboy, but her mind was as fragrant as a field that the Lord hath blessed, and her heart was the heart of a child. It was shameful to deceive such a creature, and April's nature revolted from the act. Before they reached the farm she had confessed ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... approximate meaning in English, saying it was as difficult to translate these intimate and slang phrases as it would be to put "Yankee Doodle" into French or German. His translation, as he wrote it on a scrap ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... such a consarn be, Barbican?" asked Ardan, who every now and then liked to ventilate his stock of American slang. "Is it one of those particles of meteoric matter you were speaking of just now, caught within the sphere of our Projectile's attraction and accompanying us to ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... new field for me and I delved into the matter with success. Counterfeit money, in slang, is called "queer," and those who pass it on the public are called "shovers." Its manufacturer never "shoves" it, but sells it in quantities to small shop keepers, car conductors, and others, at a certain percentage of its face value—50 ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... ordinary men. Frequenters of the now fashionable prize-ring—thanks to two brutes who have brought that degraded pastime into prominent notice—will hear a great deal about a man 'fancying himself.' It is common slang and heeds little explanation. Hook 'fancied himself' from an early period, and continued to 'fancy himself,' in spite of repeated disgraces, till a very mature age. At Harrow, he was the contemporary, but scarcely the friend, of Lord ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... those qualities in which they feel themselves to be chiefly deficient. Their reverence and affection are bestowed upon her whose voice is ever soft, gentle and low, and whose mild influence is shed like a balm upon the labours and troubles of life. Of slang, and of slaps upon the back, of strength, whether of language or of body, they get enough and to spare amongst themselves, and they are scarcely to be blamed if at certain moments they should prefer refinement to roughness, and gentleness to gentlemen. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... require much imagination to suppose that the war would add to the number of their clients, whether their claims had real foundation or not; what they wanted above all things was some one of undoubted position who would "boom the movement," in the slang of the day. They laid all their plans to get their man in the author of Raymond, and they got him. Such is his thesis ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... a play, for instance, presupposes some acquaintance with a few plays already written. No one can succeed as a novelist without a fair knowledge of the technique of millinery or a tolerable mastery of stock exchange slang. The writer of scientific articles for the magazines must have fancy, and the writer of advertisements must have poetry and wit. But to produce a book of epigrams on Woman requires nothing but an elementary knowledge of spelling and the ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... Zack said was smothered in the sound of a blow, expressive of fury and despair, which he administered to the mattress on which he was sitting. Having relieved himself thus, he jumped out of bed, pronouncing at last in real earnest those few words of fatal slang which had often burst from his lips in other days as an ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... whispered, "this is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really must hear ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... gentle reader, what Tom told me long afterward? He had advanced and been repulsed—had attacked and been "scattered." Pardon the slang of the army, and admire the expeditious operations of the gentlemen ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... for a long time that a good deal of the teaching of the world regarding women has come under the general heading of "dope." Now "dope" is not a slang word, as you may be thinking, gentle reader. It is a good Anglo-Saxon word (or will be), for it fills a real need, and there is none other to take its place. "Dope" means anything that is calculated to soothe, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... immediately scrambled to his feet. He seemed a bit what he himself would have termed "groggy," being familiar with the slang of the prize ring, but in spite of this he leaped wildly at ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,—I know no other word in our language, (bookish and pedantic terms out of the question,) but 'hanging' woods, the 'sylvae superimpendentes' of Catullus [2]; yet let some wit call out in a slang tone,—"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence it is that so many dull pieces have had a decent run, only because nothing unusual above, or absurd below, mediocrity furnished ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... sled that worked on its runners no longer, but that sunk with every fresh drift to the main-boards themselves. Wadded with clothing, shouting in a mixture of French and English and his own peculiar form of slang, Ba'tiste tried in vain to force the laboring animals onward. But they only churned uselessly in the drift; their hoofs could find no footing, save the yielding masses of snow. Puffing, as though the exertion had been his own, the trapper ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... make a bugbear of aunt Shaw' said Margaret, laughing. 'Edith picked up all sorts of military slang from Captain Lennox, and aunt Shaw never took any ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... son-in-law of the premier, assuming that he was the party pointed at, attacked what he called "the bishop's gross and virulent invective—his malignant, calumnious, and false insinuations—his well-known powers of pamphleteering slang." Here the noble lord was called to order, and the Earl of Winchelsea moved that the words "false insinuations" and "pamphleteering slang" should be taken down. After some observations from Earl Grey, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Durham went ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy. Unlike Plautus, he draws his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude; Terence for the few. Plautus delighted in a noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence confines himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian, and other great critics. He aspired to the approval of the good, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... demi-savans (I don't mean Napoleon's in Egypt, but the provinvial editors—in some cases it amounts to the same thing) having proved the word to be Greek, I suppose it is slang no longer), the Tenth Illinois regiment (Dick Wolcott, you know) camped a few miles to the northward, near the woods; and hasty but shady structures were soon reared in front of the officers' tents; but one morning there arose ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... know what you mean; and I must remind you also that in this school we neither teach nor learn slang." ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Committee. It is thus manifest that the cause is not to be put down or even passed by with contemptuous silence, vulgar abuse, or conservative scorn. Foote squealed out his angry opposition, in the old stupid slang (of Shakespeare perverted from "Macbeth"), about unsexing woman with the right of suffrage, and endeavored to contrast it with property-claims; as if the revolutionary maxim concerning taxation and representation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sight to any one who had not lost his sense of appreciation of the noblest of all the works of Nature. Both men fulfilled that requisite of the powerful athlete that they should look larger without their clothes than with them. In ring slang, they buffed well. And each showed up the other's points on account of the extreme contrast between them: the long, loose-limbed, deer- footed youngster, and the square-set, rugged veteran with his trunk like the stump of an oak. The ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was only a boy. You remember that I was only a boy,—just out of the shop. The more uneducated a man was in our church-pulpit then, the better. I knew nothing, John," appealingly. "When I preached about foreordination and hell-fire, it was in coarse slang: I knew that. I used to think there might be a different God and books and another life farther out in the world, if I could only get at it. I never was strong, and they had forced me into it; and when you came to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... the present time seem to be unwilling to make new words. The chief word-makers of to-day are the people who talk a new slang (and of these we shall see something in another chapter), and the scientific writers, who, as they are constantly making new discoveries, have to ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... his constant study was "slang," in which he was no mean proficient. He always carried in his pocket a colt (i.e. a foot and a half of rope, knotted at one end, and whipped at the other), for the benefit of the youngsters, to whom he ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... others saw But also, lord not slave of written word, Lend ear to what no other poet heard And, liberal minded on the Mermaid bench With bow for blade and chaff for serving wench Await from overseas slang-slinging Jack Who brought the new ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the many private academies, or the Realschule, where thorough instruction is given, but with less special, though no slight attention to Latin and Greek, and more to mathematics and practical branches, even then he must acquire from one of the gymnasia the exemption-and-maturity-right. In the slang of student-life, the gymnasiast is styled a Frog, the school itself a Pond; between the time of his declaration of maturity and his reception as student, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... few young French artists whom he happened to know living here than with anybody else in the city; and yet when he went back to London he sometimes felt that the recollection of it, the chatter of studios, the slang of the critics, even the whole sense and sound of Paris gave him a little the recollection as of a huge cage of monkeys. Like most modern Englishmen, he talked disparagingly about British hypocrisy, Anglo-Saxon humbug, English stiffness and London fog; and yet, after all, he missed ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... between the true and the false in belief ever grow up. Truth grafts itself on previous truth, modifying it in the process, just as idiom grafts itself on previous idiom, and law on previous law. Given previous law and a novel case, and the judge will twist them into fresh law. Previous idiom; new slang or metaphor or oddity that hits the public taste:—and presto, a new idiom is made. Previous truth; fresh facts:—and our mind ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... influence. What of that? Was this singular apparition—as full of character as of terror—therefore the creature of my fancy, or the invention of my poor stomach? Was it, in short, subjective (to borrow the technical slang of the day) and not the palpable aggression and intrusion of an external agent? That, good friend, as we will both admit, by no means follows. The evil spirit, who enthralled my senses in the shape of that portrait, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... red glow departed and the darkness gathered, if there was one lonely boy in the world, languidly despairing, it was I. Many times I found myself uttering aloud such slang expressions as: "Oh, my hat! If only I had told the beastly truth for the third time! Dash it, why didn't I? Why the deuce didn't I?" I addressed myself as: "You blithering, blithering fool!" And my temples began to ache and now and then to hammer. For, always in these ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... bit of business rhetoric that I thought effective I would jot it down and commit it to memory. In like manner I would write down every new piece of slang, the use of the latest popular phrase being, as I thought, helpful in making oneself popular with Americans, especially with those of the young generation. But somehow a slang phrase would be in general use for a considerable time before it attracted ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... time, almost habitual with Mr. Ruskin, is a national humiliation, giving point to the Frenchman's sneer as to our distinguishing literary characteristic being 'la brutalite.' In Carlyle's case much must be allowed for his rhetoric and humour. In slang phrase, he always 'piles it on.' Does a bookseller misdirect a parcel, he exclaims, 'My malison on all Blockheadisms and Torpid Infidelities of which this world is full.' Still, all allowances made, it is a thousand pities; and ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... become immortal in the pages of Lavengro. Dr. Knapp has encouraged the idea that Joseph Sell was a real book, ignoring the fact that the very title suggests doubts, and was probably meant to suggest them. In Norfolk, as elsewhere, a 'sell' is a word in current slang used for an imposture or a cheat, and doubtless Borrow meant to make merry with the credulous. There was, we may be perfectly sure, no Joseph Sell, and it is more reasonable to suppose that it was the sale of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... entertained, that Gypsey language was composed only of cant terms, or of what has been denominated the slang of beggars, has probably been much promoted and strengthened by the dictionary contained in a pamphlet entitled, "The Life and Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew." It consists for the most part of English words, vamped up apparently not so much for the purpose ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... agreed weakly. It was audible in his voice, the effort to talk sanely of sane things, and in the slang of every day. "Addington's on. Let's can it! Here we are and here we're likely to stay for a few days. In the meantime we've got to live. How are we going to ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... to expect assent, but Hodder glanced involuntarily at her wonderful crown of hair. She had taken off her hat. He was thinking of the typical crime of American parents,—and suddenly it struck him that her speech had changed, that she had dropped the suggestive slang of the surroundings in which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and see him talking there with them. Quite naturally, as a matter of course, he swung in along-side the dark- eyed one and walked with her. There was no awkwardness on his part, no numb tongue. He was at home here, and he held his own royally in the badinage, bristling with slang and sharpness, that was always the preliminary to getting acquainted in these swift-moving affairs. At the corner where the main stream of people flowed onward, he started to edge out into the cross street. But the girl with the black eyes caught his arm, following him and dragging her companion ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... lad," he said gently. "I'm sorry if I hit too hard. But I feel rather strongly on that subject. I've no wish to slang you. I only want to set you on your feet, and keep you there. So we may as well get to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator) is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is always the exotic question, and everything, the life, the place, the dialects - trader's talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions and English and American slang, and Beach de Mar, or native English, - the very trades and hopes and fears of the characters, are all novel, and may be found unwelcome to that great, hulking, bullering whale, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wrong. She drew a striking picture of the ideal home in which children always stood modestly and reverently by their parents' chairs, consumed with anxiety to be of some service to their elders. They were always to be immaculately neat in their attire, and gentle in their ways. The use of slang was quite ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate what it was dangerous to announce; and Beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to borrow but never take the trouble to repay. For the Yang-ban was a "gentleman," he was. It was beneath his dignity to work—even to guide the reins of the horse he rode—but it was not beneath his dignity to sponge on his friends (I think the verb "to sponge" is too expressive to remain slang) or to borrow without repaying. Moreover, in case of extremity, it is said that Mother Yang-ban and Sister Ann might take in washing, as is recorded in the classic lays of our own land, but Father never defiled himself by doing ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... who am such a sweetheart of yours?"—his speech very foreign, yet slangily correct, being, in fact, all slang. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... and taverns are crowded. Drink is hotly called for at reeking bars; waiters and chambermaids pass to and fro, with dishes and tankards and bottles in their hands. All is noise and bustle, and eating and swilling, and disputation and slang, wild glee, and wilder despair, amongst those who come back from the race-course to the inns in the county town. At one of these taverns, neither the best nor the worst, and in a small narrow slice of a room that seemed robbed from the landing-place, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... plaisance, par maniere de Joyeusete.——Lettres Gothiques, fig. et bois et titre MSS. feuilles dorees, en maroquin, Paris, par Ant. Verard, 1475, fol.——No. 1963, Heide Beschryving der nieuevlyks uitgevonden en geoctrojeerde Slang-Brand-Spuiten, en Haare wijze van Brand-Blussen, Tegenwoordig binnen Amsterdam in gebruik zynde. Wyze figuurs Amst. 1690, fol. "Note in this book: Paris, 1736. Paid for this book for his Grace the Duke of Kingston, by Mr. Hickman, 24l." A great sum for a book about ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Carpe diem when at the age of thirty he is already an old, diseased man, he sings it almost with a sneer of hatred. It is from the lips of a grinning death's-head—not of a jovial roysterer, as Henley makes it seem in his slang translation—that the Ballade de bonne Doctrine a ceux de mauvaise Vie falls, with ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... Journal, published at Augusta, the Hon. James G. Blaine, the writer, declared epigrammatically that, in the defence of Judge Chase, "Paine furnished the logic, Choate the rhetoric, and Smith the slang." ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... me with sheep's eyes. They are a washy blue, with the family white eyelashes (how different to Lord Robert's!). He has the most precise, regulated manner, and never says a word of slang; he ought to have been a young curate, and I can't imagine his spending money on any Angela Greys, even if she is a ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... her mother, reprovingly, "how many times must I tell you not to use slang? It is vulgar and unladylike, and quite out of ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... author's works. Many of the readers of Don Juan have, it must be confessed, been found among those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable—who have been attracted by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste, and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by a showy Shakespearian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the charge of being adapted "laudari ab illaudatis." But the welcome of the work in other quarters is as indubitably ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... the words were uttered was so venomous, that Bob realized the speaker meant mischief, though he was ignorant of the fact that in the slang of tramps who beat their way on railroads, "con" betokened conductor, and "blind baggage" the platform of the coach in a ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... at the same time. All the robbers are eager to see what Juan's scheme was. When they find out what Juan has done, and see the holes in the bottom of all the pots, they cannot help laughing. The captain, however, addresses Juan with all the epithets found in a common slang dictionary. The captain now decides never to let Juan stay in the house alone, and from that time on takes him ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... being natus rebus agendis—sent into this world not for talking, but for doing; not for counsel, but for execution. On that field he was a portentous man, a monster; and, viewing him as such, I am disposed to concede a few words to what modern slang denominates his "antecedents." ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... propagandist was strong in William James. He wished to give as well as receive. And he listened for truth from anybody, and from anywhere, and in any form. He listened for it from Emma Goldman, the pope, or a sophomore; preached from a pulpit, a throne, or a soap-box; in the language of science, in slang, in fine rhetoric, or in the talk of a ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... celestial That very night was visible and clear; At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial, And clad in uniform, were loitering near A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal Took their impatience somewhat patiently, Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"— (A certain slang of the Academy, I beg the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... the footlights, evidently for the expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the gallery responded—how heartily, those who were present have never forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more. The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies, boxes; they answered, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... premeditated insult, or have got into a quarrel with them, conversation on political subjects was for many years effectually banished from almost every public company. However, since I had returned from my travels (which is the slang term of going to prison), I had acquired a considerable degree of confidence, and, accordingly, the very first time that I found this Mr. Perry pouncing upon one of the company with one of his rude knock-down arguments, I, without ceremony, took up the cudgels, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... which, if they were not essentially faults, were not likely to improve a full-sized novel. He would too much abound in description; the want of evolution of character—his character is not bad in itself, but it is, to use modern slang, rather static than dynamic—naturally shows itself more; and readers who want an elaborate plot look for it longer and are more angry at not being fed. But for the short, shorter, and shortest kind—the story which may run from ten to a hundred pages with no meticulous limitations on either side—it ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... little that some of the feasts of the Church were "moveable." True, they moved only within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certain unalterable, wholly justifiable rules. Yet, in the very fact that they did move, there seemed—to use an expressive slang phrase of the day—"something not quite nice." It was therefore the fixed feasts that pleased Percy best, and on Christmas Day, especially, he experienced a temperate glow which would have perhaps surprised those who knew ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... noble or good thing of any kind, than the stupidest Bosjesman. The thing is but a boy in years, and is addled with drink. To do its company justice, even its company is ashamed of it, as it drawls its slang criticisms on the representation, and inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardour to fling it into the pit. Its remarks are so horrible, that Mr. Goodchild, for the moment, even doubts whether that IS a wholesome Art, which sets women apart on ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... rather nice. You'll find a bunch of clippings in my second drawer there. Be sure and show them to your father, and don't fail to keep him in touch with your work: he can help you once he's aroused to what you can do. By the way, you must boil the slang out of your system. It's charming, but it won't do. First thing you know it will be slipping in to your ink-pot and corrupting your manuscripts. You know better; I don't! As you go on Nan Bartlett can probably save ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... not only "the best" foreigners (as the phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang), but some of "the best" English ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... naturally brings about him a train of satellites, who make it their business to minister to his importunate cravings. With them the phraseology of the initiated degenerates into a hard business sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant of respect towards literature as a vehicle of knowledge may linger in the conversation of their employers, has never belonged to theirs. They are dealers who have just two things to look to—the price of their merchandise, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... in tones of piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told; oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the growling and commotion on the bank, that my bullet has indeed told, and that something is hit. We soon get the frightened ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... her capital letter, had divined this near-at-hand truth along with the rest. Lowell, almost the greatest and finest realist who ever wrought in verse, showed us that Elizabeth was still Queen where he heard Yankee farmers talk. One need not invite slang into the company of its betters, though perhaps slang has been dropping its "s" and becoming language ever since the world began, and is certainly sometimes delightful and forcible beyond the reach of the dictionary. I would not have any one go about for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Griff in vain more than once, and they had only really met at a Castleford dinner-party. In fact, Clarence's youthful spirits, and the tastes which would have made him companionable to Griff, had been crushed out of him; and he was what more recent slang calls 'such a muff,' that he had perforce drifted out of our elder brother's daily life, as much as if he had been a grave senior of fifty. It was, as he owned, a heavy penalty of his youthful fall that he could not help his brother ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... governmental machine which will work without effort on the part of the people, we can sit at home while elections run themselves so well that only what the good people desire in political action will necessarily result. We want the equivalent of what, in the slang of practical mechanics, we call a fool-proof machine, because anybody can run it and no fool can interfere with its normal operation. So these political reformers are hunting a corrupt-politician-proof machine for government. ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... Wright at the Bowery Theatre, on Wednesday evening, was a singular melange of politics and impiety—eloquence and irreligion—bold invective, and electioneering slang. The theatre was very much crowded, probably three thousand persons being present; and what was the most surprising circumstance of the whole, is the fact, that about one half of the audience were ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... determine, his bed in the middle of the room, and his surplice on whose original purity he had so prided himself, drenched with ink. If he is matriculated he laughs at the beasts (those who are not matriculated), and mangles slang: wranglers, fops, and medalists become quite "household words" to him. He walks to Trumpington every day before hall to get an appetite for dinner, and never misses grace. He speaks reverently of masters and tutors, and does not curse even the proctors; he is merciful to his wine-bin, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... grate to let them pass, eyeing John Ayliffe with considerable attention as he did so. Locking the grate carefully behind him, he lighted them on with his lantern, muttering as he went in the peculiar prison slang of those days, various sentences not very complimentary to the tastes and habits of young John Ayliffe, "Ay, ay," he said, "clerk be damned! One of Tom's pals, for a pint and a boiled bone—droll I don't know him. He must be twenty, and ought to have been in the stone pitcher often enough ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... despised Concha's frankness. It was just as people believed; she was very attractive, very pretty, but absolutely lacking in scruples. As for himself, he heaped insults on himself in the slang of his Bohemian days, comparing himself with all the horned ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a weak smile on his lips. "I'm no boob!" Obviously, he meant this lapse into the slang of the Tenderloin to convey his intimate knowledge of police methods. "You can't soft-soap me! You don't want explanations! You want me to get myself in bad. But you won't get anything out of me. I ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... Cossie accompanied him to the same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against the slap-dash untidy menage, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative gesture, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... who frequent such dens. Each member should report daily, and if he is not familiar with the 'flash' dialect in which thieves converse (which is very improbable, if chosen as suggested), should take care to provide himself with a copy of GROSE'S Slang Dictionary or Vocabulary of Gross Language, which will the better enable ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... not essentially faults, were not likely to improve a full-sized novel. He would too much abound in description; the want of evolution of character—his character is not bad in itself, but it is, to use modern slang, rather static than dynamic—naturally shows itself more; and readers who want an elaborate plot look for it longer and are more angry at not being fed. But for the short, shorter, and shortest kind—the story which may run from ten to a hundred pages with no meticulous limitations on either ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... seldom that Frank used slang, but just then he was in want of a better expression by means of which to give vent ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... is a small circumstance to me—or, that it is a trifling sum to pay to be saved the embarrassment of proposing to Geoffrey, myself—or, take it any way you like, only, don't bother your pretty head an instant more about it. In the slang of the day: 'Forget it,' completely and utterly, as a favor to me if for no ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... was the jolliest little fellow in the world,' and Lieschen was the only 'good-natured body going,' and knew no end of Mahrchen. The boy spoke a very odd mixture of Lieschen's German and of English, pervaded by stable slang, and was altogether a curious study of the effects of absentee parents; nevertheless Honora and Lucilla both took a considerable fancy to him, the latter patronizing him to such a degree that she hardly allowed him to eat the much-needed breakfast, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wouldn't be wasted; and this in spite of the heroine's pleasant abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets and shoes—as these things sketched themselves to Milly—and something rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and the occasional freedom of her slang. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... circuit—to give it a better name. Oh, I've been through all the steps! As soon as I felt a little secure about mother, I ventured to New York in answer to advertisements in The Reflector, and went out 'on the road' at 'fifteen per.'" These slang phrases seemed humorous as they came from her smiling lips, but Douglass knew some little part of the toil and discomfort ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... of inventing an arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose of disguising references to functions and parts of the body regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common. Such private slang, growing up independently in families, and especially among women, as well as between lovers, is now almost universal. It is not confined to any European country, and has been studied in Italy by Niceforo (Il Gergo, 1897, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... which our ancestors amused themselves, from the novels of Swift's coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the delectable author of the New Atlantis, to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the London Spy and several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collection at the British Museum, you may see, besides ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when we come upon them in our reading of Latin. When, for instance, the slave in a play of Plautus says: "Do you catch on" (tenes?), "I'll touch the old man for a loan" (tangam senem, etc.), or "I put it over him" (ei os sublevi) we recognize specimens of Latin slang, because all of the metaphors involved are in current use to-day. When one of the freedmen in Petronius remarks: "You ought not to do a good turn to nobody" (neminem nihil boni facere oportet) we see the same use of the double negative to which we are accustomed in illiterate English. The rapid ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... his mood, Mr. Todd's speech was choicest English or the cosmopolitan, technical slang of the sea, mingled with wonderful profanity. But one habit of his early days he never dropped: he wore, in the hottest weather, and in storm and battle, the black frock and choker of the clerical profession. Standing now with one foot on the fore-hatch, waving his long arms ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... and joined their friends in the debris heaps. The protection of the debris heaps was not quite so good as that afforded by the mines, and the music of the cannon the troglodytes had always with them. But there was more liberty and comfort in the caves, which were dry as dust and—no slang intended—not too dusty. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the Ladies' Benevolent Society was cast, coined and made ready for current circulation, the tale of poor Alice Orville's imaginary shame and ruin. Yet faster flew those Christian ladies' Christian fingers for the poor heathen, while they thus discussed the slang and ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... agitation which was then beginning to make itself felt. The rise of the irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery made the South overbearing and truculent; it produced that class of politicians known as "Northern men with Southern principles," or, in the slang of the day, as "doughfaces;" and it had not yet built up a strong, vigorous, and aggressive party in the North. The lack of proper social opportunities, and this deterioration among men in public life, led to an increasing violence and roughness in debate, and to a good deal of coarse dissipation ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... evening, when Diana had left him, and he had been thinking seriously of his own career, and those many transactions of his troubled life which, in the slang denomination of the day, would be called "shady," he derived some scrap of comfort ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Bridge that evening, and by unspoken consent everyone sat in the hall. It was a cold night, and the roaring fire was pleasant to hear, and in the expressive slang of ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... a dirty job; but Johnny and I were vulgar enough to like it. I like young people because theyre not too afraid of dirt to live. Ive grown out of the mud pies; but I like slang; and I like bustling you up by saying things that shock you; and I'd rather put up with swearing and smoking than with dull respectability; and there are lots of things that would just shrivel you up that I think ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... carped and criticised and caviled, told half truths and solid lies, and the august and astute Committee listened with open ears, and the phonographer dotted down every word. So the meanest gossip and slang of the camp was raked into a heap ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... judges; but, quite the contrary—a sensible, well-informed, gentlemanly personage. But, then, he had no great friends, no patrician weaknesses; he knew nothing about racing, or betting, or opera-dancers, or slang in general. In short, he seemed flat and insipid to Bab, who had been compared to the beautiful Lady Mary Manvers by the soft and persuasive tongue of Lady Mary Manvers's dear friend. Yet, in her secret heart of hearts, Bab drew comparisons by no means disadvantageous to Edward Leslie. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... present exhibition or the unquestionable evidences. There was the lost and hardened female, uttering the wild screams of intoxication, or pouring forth from her dark, filthy place of confinement torrents of polluted mirth; the juvenile pickpocket, ripe in all the ribald wit and traditional slang of his profession; the ruffian burglar, with strong animal frame, dark eyebrows, low forehead, and face full of coarseness and brutality; the open robber, reckless and jocular, indifferent to consequences, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... York, and let myself as the 'Eminent and Graceful Queen of Terpsichore, imported from Paris at a cost of Forty Thousand Dollars in Gold.' And then I'll make a tour of the New England States. Or I'll learn to play the banjo and get off slang phrases, and then I'll appear as 'The Beautiful and Gifted Artist, ANNETTA BRUMMETTA, who has, by her guileless vivacity, charmed our most Fashionable Circles.' Or I'll go as Assistant Teacher in a Select Boarding School for Young Ladies. I ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... to his expressed surprise and he laughed and said, "D'you know, Rosalie, I don't believe I've ever before heard you use slang." ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... flank of Borrow. They are the three volumes of "Pugilistica," given me years ago by my old friend, Robert Barr, a mine in which you can never pick for half an hour without striking it rich. Alas! for the horrible slang of those days, the vapid witless Corinthian talk, with its ogles and its fogles, its pointless jokes, its maddening habit of italicizing a word or two in every sentence. Even these stern and desperate encounters, fit sports for the men of Albuera and Waterloo, become dull ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one kind of bait and he used to say: "It beats all how it draws." I saw this verified at Ottawa, Kansas, Chautauqua. Giving a Saturday evening lecture he baited the platform with slang, satire and humor. Sunday afternoon an hour before time for his lecture the people were hurrying to the auditorium. When presented to the great audience he said: "Record! Record! Record!" I remember the sermon as one of the sweetest and most powerful I ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... fulfilment of the highest social duties, are poorly performed, and, indeed, little understood. Not many of those who think at all think beyond the line of established custom and routine. They may take pains in their letters to obey the ordinary rules of grammar, to avoid the use of slang phrases and vulgar expressions, to write a clear sentence; but how few seek for the not less imperative rules which are prescribed by politeness and good sense! Of those who should know them, no small proportion habitually, from thoughtlessness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... this word was probably a reminiscence of the Oriental corruption failsuf. It recalls to my mind a Hindu who was very fond of the word, and especially of applying it to certain of his fellow-servants. But as he used it, bara failsuf,— "great philosopher"—meant exactly the same as the modern slang "Artful Dodger"! ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... you want to get looking at that for?" she asked Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd staring at the Vaterland, and got to where Anna-Felicitas stood listening abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang the young man was treating her to,—that terse, surprising, swift hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was hearing in such abundance ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... onomazeto] is the phrase of Dio Cassius. "Levissume transfuga" is the translation made by the author of the "Declamatio in Ciceronem." If I might venture on a slang phrase, I should say that [Greek: automalos] was a man who "went off on his own hook." But no man was ever more loyal as a political ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... American performance of Miss MARGARET MOFFATT at the opening of the First Act was as good as anything in the play. But happily this is not one of those imported creations that overwhelm my uninstructed intelligence with exotic colour and exotic slang. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... I request that you will not indulge in slang out of your proper sphere—the kitchen. (Aside.) He's right! I am "squiffy"—in fact, I never was "squiffier." Fetch my smoking cap! (Exit DIBBS, R.) It would be rash of me to assert that I was not "off color" and as to being prepared ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... her boarding-house less than a week definitely to like him. Every night when he sat down to dinner he brought news with him- news and jokes and new slang. Newspaper-office anecdote and talk gave a journalistic air to the gathering when he was present, and there was novelty in it. Soon every one was intimate with him, and interested in what he was doing. Galton's good-natured patronage of him was a thing to which no one was ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... light came into his eyes. His gaze took account of Alice's lips and the delicate, rounded whiteness of her neck and chin. Her like he had never met before. The girls he had known giggled; this one smiled. His sweetheart used slang and talked of cattle like a herder, but this woman's voice, so sweet and flexible, made delightfully strange music ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... appellation "Poivriere" or "pepper-box" was derived from the term "peppered" which in French slang is applied to a man who has left his good sense at the bottom of his glass. Hence, also, the sobriquet of "pepper thieves" given to the rascals whose specialty it is to plunder helpless, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the gallery responded—how heartily, those who were present have never forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more. The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies, boxes; they answered, as it were, antiphonally. Faces were seen ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... pamphleteer, who jumbles together French, English, Latin phrases, with slang and fashionable words, invented words, intermingled with short rhymes. Style, metre, rhyme, language, art of every kind, at an end; beneath the vain parade of official style there is only a heap of ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... equipped to such a high point of pedestrianism that a cynical person might have been reminded of loud calls for wine at some hostelry in the land of opera bouffe. He was speaking fluently, though with a detestable accent, in a rough-and-ready, pick-up dialect of Parisian slang, evidently under the pleasant delusion that he employed the French language, while Pere Baudry contributed his share of the conversation in a slow patois. As both men spoke at the same time and neither understood two consecutive words the other said, it ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... union. It is a thing that must be. But it is remarkable that while the French mind is agog to apprehend every fact and detail it can about the British, to make the wisest and fullest use of our binding necessities, that strange English "incuria"—to use the new slang—attains to its ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... know," answered Grace doubtfully. "She is an enigma. She speaks the most precise English, with absolutely no trace of slang. But she looks as though the whole world were her natural enemy. Elfreda named her the Anarchist. I am rather ashamed to say we call her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... watchwords of a wrangling match. Fulbert, meantime, made no secret of his contempt for both brothers as mere choristers instead of schoolboys, and exalted himself whenever he detected their ignorance of any choice morceau of slang; while their superior knowledge on any other point was viewed as showing the new-fangled girlish nonsense of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so; for there was a time still near in her memory, though unknown to any now upon the farm except her brother, when the Mains of Glashruach was the talk of Daurside because of certain inexplicable nightly disorders that fell out there; the slang rows, or the Scotch remishs (a form of the English romage), would perhaps come nearest to a designation of them, consisting as they did of confused noises, rumblings, ejaculations; and the fact itself was a reason for silence, seeing ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... a fig for order or logical sequence or congruity, or for striking a key of expression and keeping it, but becomes simply the most spontaneous and unstudied of human beings. He has at his command the whole vocabularies of the English and Scottish languages, classical and slang, with good stores of the French, and tosses and tumbles them about irresponsibly to convey the impression or affection, the mood or freak of the moment; pouring himself out in all manner of rhapsodical confessions and speculations, grave or gay, notes of observation and criticism, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he had ever met with the phrase—which is doubtful—had certainly never heard it addressed to himself; conceivably he might have once come across it in turning over the pages of a slang dictionary. A tragic expression traversed his bewildered features—and ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the source for the natural and semisynthetic narcotics. Poppy straw concentrate is the alkaloid derived from the mature, dried opium poppy. Qat (kat, khat) is a stimulant from the buds or leaves of Catha edulis that is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), ephedrine, ecstasy (clarity, essence, doctor, Adam), phenmetrazine ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... entirely his own. He played strange tricks with the English language, heaped words upon words, strung adjective to adjective; mingled passages of Ruskinesque description with jerky fragments of modern slang. These mannerisms grew with his growth, but in the seventies they were not sufficiently marked to detract from the pure pleasure which we enjoyed when we listened to his preaching as ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... of Ages? Surely we might appeal to them, in the name of their own brothers and others with whom they are intimately thrown, to work out these higher possibilities of their own womanhood; not to lower it by picking up slang words from their brothers—a woman ought to be above coarsening and vulgarizing God's great gift of speech—not to engage in games or romps that involve a rude rough-and-tumble with boys, which may develop a healthy hoyden, but is utterly destructive of the gracious ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... whom the slang term was new, looked at the speaker with a slightly puzzled expression; but Edward, who fully understood it, drew himself up with ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... said Louise. She liked to use a bit of slang when it was perfectly safe—as in very good company, or among those she loved; at other times she ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... war of independence our great-great-grandfathers, not yet having ceased to think of themselves as Englishmen, used to distinguish themselves as "Continentals," while the king's troops were known as the "British." The quaint term "Continental" long ago fell into disuse, except in the slang phrase "not worth a Continental" which referred to the debased condition of our currency at the close of the Revolutionary War; but "American" and "British" might still serve the purpose sufficiently whenever ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... words in spite of usage and fashionable taste; and that, therefore, when he can get a brighter tint, a more expressive form, by means of some strange—we must call it—Carlylism; English, Scotch, German, Greek, Latin, French, Technical, Slang, American, or Lunar, or altogether superlunar, transcendental, and drawn from the eternal nowhere—he uses it with a courage which might blast an academy of lexicographers into a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... "is Army slang. Your 'striker' is a private soldier, whom you hire at so many a dollars a month to do the rougher work in your quarters. You make whatever bargain you choose with the soldier. At this post the bachelor officers usually pay a striker ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in those casernes. And then, those visits, or rather ruthless inroads, called in the slang of the place {23} "straw-plait hunts," when, in pursuit of a contraband article, which the prisoners, in order to procure themselves a few of the necessaries and comforts of existence, were in the habit of making, red-coated battalions were ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... stereotyped in modern slang, and yet the idea could not but have existed under other words in the days of those flush individuals, Midas and Croesus. The first of these moneyed gentlemen found gold too plenty for comfort, while the latter, by his unfortunate end, proved that even at that early ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seen a camera, had never heard of a photograph, had not the least idea of what the process of sketching might be which he so boldly approved; nay, the very phrase embodying his encouragement of the project was foreign to his vocabulary,—a bit of sophisticated slang which he had adopted from his companion's conversation, and ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... at once change the whole habit of their minds, nor without some effort refrain from that abuse of their opposites in which they are accustomed to indulge when they have it all to themselves. Now every subject seems laboured—for in the pedantry of party spirit no partisan will speak but in the slang or cant of his own craft. Knowledge is not only at one entrance, but at every entrance quite shut out, and even literature itself grows perilous, so that to be safe they ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... beg me not to turn out." Is turn out a slang phrase here, or is it a term commonly used in speaking of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... tree-climbing episode in his martial career, which, as it happened, had taken place in full view of his retainers, among whom it remained the greatest of jokes. Indeed, he wanted to kill a man, the wag of the party, who gave him a slang name ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... have noted "Stonewall Jackson," and "Robert E. Lee," and one Ohio boat was labeled "Little Phil." Literature we found represented to-day, by "Octave Thanet"—the only case on record, for the Ohio-River "cracker" is not greatly given to books. Slang claims for its own, many of these knockabout craft—"U. Bet," "Git Thair," "Go it, Eli," "Whoa, Emma!" and nondescripts, like "Two Doves," "Poker Chip," and "Game ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... sunny France. It isn't the place that counts when the anchor goes down or up, it's the Who and the When; and in view of what has filled all the foregoing pages I trust that the reader will sympathize with Rosina and pardon my slang if I state that Genoa appeared to her upon this occasion very much more ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... treasury." On the following evening Lord Durham, son-in-law of the premier, assuming that he was the party pointed at, attacked what he called "the bishop's gross and virulent invective—his malignant, calumnious, and false insinuations—his well-known powers of pamphleteering slang." Here the noble lord was called to order, and the Earl of Winchelsea moved that the words "false insinuations" and "pamphleteering slang" should be taken down. After some observations from Earl Grey, Lord Holland, and the Duke ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... scribe! whose vivid genius strays 'Mid Drury's stews to incubate her lays, And in St. Giles's slang conveys her tropes, Wreathing the poet's lines with hangmen's ropes; You who conceive 'tis poetry to teach The sad bravado of a dying speech; Or, when possessed with a sublimer mood, Show "Jack o'Dandies" dancing upon blood! Crush bones—bruise flesh, recount each festering ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... his pen, in words that bite like acid, he etches for us the fools and knaves, the wife-beaters and adulterers, the cardsharpers and gamesters, the grovelling sycophants with their petty struggles for precedence or favour, their slang, their gluttony and drunkenness, their moral and ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... rebus agendis—sent into this world not for talking, but for doing; not for counsel, but for execution. On that field he was a portentous man, a monster; and, viewing him as such, I am disposed to concede a few words to what modern slang denominates his "antecedents." ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Both sides are squeezed by the gate-keeper —a very lucrative post in all yamens—before they are allowed to present their petitions. It then becomes necessary for plaintiff and defendant alike to go through the process of (in Peking slang) "making a slit," i.e., making a present of money to the magistrate and his subordinates proportionate to the interests involved. In many yamens there is a regular scale of charges, answering to our Table of Fees, but this is almost always exceeded in practice. The case is then ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... that for the moment you are back in the United States. You see American jitneys scooting through the jungle; you watch five-ton American tractors hauling heavy loads along the sandy roads; you hear American slang and banter on all sides, and if you are lucky enough to be invited to a meal you get American hot cakes with real American maple syrup. The air tingles with Yankee ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... come in naturally, and yet each bring us one step nearer to the journey's end, is now one of the lost arts of earth. But this is not all. A considerable portion of it must be pronounced decidedly slow. We use the word not in its slang application, but in the sense in which Goldsmith used it in the first line of "The Traveller," or rather, as Johnson told him he used it, when he said to him,—"You do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean that sluggishness of mind which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... dell, or river, or the sea,—the trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,—I know no other word in our language (bookish and pedantic terms out of the question), but hanging woods, the sylvae superimpendentes of Catullus; yet let some wit call out in a slang tone,—"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence it is that so many dull pieces have had a decent run, only because nothing unusual above, or absurd below, mediocrity furnished an occasion,—a spark for the explosive materials collected ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... undertake the journey to the Front in the true spirit of the French Poilu, and, no matter what happened, "de ne pas s'en faire." This famous "motto" of the French Army is probably derived from one of two slang sentences, de ne pas se faire des cheveux ("to keep one's hair on,") or de ne pas se faire de la bile, or, in other words, not to upset one's digestion by unnecessary worrying. The phrase is typical ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... lost soul who is plunging with accelerated speed down the steep road to ruin. His companions compare notes about him, and all his bodily symptoms are described with truculent glee in the filthy slang of the bar. So long as the wretch has money he is received with boisterous cordiality, and encouraged to rush yet faster on the way to perdition; his wildest feats in the way of mawkish generosity are applauded; and the very men who drink at his expense go on plucking him and laughing ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... this: My friend Sir J. L., with a large cluster of intellectual qualities, and another of social qualities, had one point of character which I will not call bad and cannot call good; he never used a slang expression. To such a length did he carry his dislike, that he could not bear head and tail, even in a work on games of chance: so he used obverse and reverse. I stared when I first saw this: but, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... their language more easily than they could learn ours. Occasionally, however, an Eskimo will startle all hands by rolling out an English phrase or sentence, and, like a parrot, he seems to have a special aptitude in picking up from the sailors phrases of slang or profanity. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... other way about. For metal in its literal sense was originally a scientific word, and in that sense may have been pronounced carefully by people who would pronounce it carelessly when they used it in a colloquial transferred sense approaching to slang. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... earful that time," spoke Bud, in picturesque, western slang. "We'll have to let the bottle-breaker wait for a spell, until we size up this rustler question. We may have to get up a sheriff's posse ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... boat, even the lightest, they would certainly have escaped in it." Cabral's pilot also, who had been with him before to that same island, declared that of the two great mountain peaks which he had noticed at the two ends of the island, east and west, only the Eastern was now standing. The slang name of "Azores" or "Hawks" now began to take the place of the old term of "Western" islands, from the swarms of hawks or kites that were found in the new discovered St. Michael, and in the others which came to light soon after. For the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... crusading hero of the song, and put the slang for "sergeant" in his stead, Jacqueline leaned back on the gunwale quite contented. She fell to gazing on the transparent emerald of the inshore, and plunged in her hand. The soft, plump wrist ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... not themselves use slang understand and even appreciate it. The American brand is generally pithy, compact, and expressive, and not always vulgar. Slang is at its worst in contemptuous epithets, and of those the one that is lowest and most offensive seems likely to become a permanent, recognized addition to the language. ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... back to the man, and the mystery surrounding his appearance and disappearance. What did the woman mean by "halibi"? She supposed it must be a slang word, so it would be no use looking in a dictionary; perhaps ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... the Prince had just seen, very elegant with his stick and eyeglass, and his careless, disdainful air; and who had said, like a man accustomed to every magnificence, fatigued with luxury, blase with pleasure, and caring only for what is truly pschutt (to use the latest slang): "Pretty ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... to an oracle; treasure up his cant phrases; echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey lore; and, above all, endeavour to imitate his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back thrusts his hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, and ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... ourselves," said she, struck by the phrase that fell from his lips. It was not Anne's habit to use slang, but somehow George's way of putting the situation into words was so aggravatingly complete that she almost resented his prior use of an expression that she had never used before in her life. It did sum up the business, neatly and compactly. Strange that she had never thought of that admirable ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... even the same courtesy shown to the weaker sex either. I have heard young men and young women—young ladies, I suppose I ought to say—who address each other in a 'hail-fellow-well-met' sort of manner, but what can you expect," in a disgusted tone, "when the girls talk slang, and ape their young brothers? I think the 'sweet madame' of our great-grandmothers' times preferable to these slipshod manners. I would rather see our girls live and die in single blessedness than marry one of ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... wish the coster's irony to appeal as coarsely in the school as it does in the tap room; but does it appear at all? Is the child taught to sympathize at all with his father's admirable cheerfulness and slang? I do not expect the pathetic, eager pietas of the mother, with her funeral clothes and funeral baked meats, to be exactly imitated in the educational system; but has it any influence at all on the educational system? Does ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... in grit—it will return to par and slang tomorrow. Keep a record of all you do to send to me, and above all—win the cup. With whom are ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... of us that is usually conscious is dissociated and the submerged part takes the stage. When we forget our surroundings in concentration or absent-mindedness, a part of us is dissociated and our friends say that we are "not all there," or as popular slang has it, "Nobody home." When a mood or system of complexes drives out all other moods, one becomes "a different person." But if this normal dissociation is carried a step farther, we may lose the power to put ourselves together again, and then we may truly ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... but I like to see what is going on; and" (with an heroic attempt at sea-slang) "I like ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... newer comedy. Unlike Plautus, he draws his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude; Terence for the few. Plautus delighted in a noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence confines himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian, and other great critics. He aspired to the approval of the good, rather than the applause of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... river for many miles. The California mining system a gambling or lottery transaction. Miner who works his own claim the more successful. Dr. C. a loser in his mining ventures. Another sleep-killer. Bowling-alleys. Bizarre cant phrases and slang used by the miners "Honest Indian?" "Talk enough when horses fight". "Talk enough between gentlemen". "I've got the dead-wood on him". "I'm going nary cent" (on person mistrusted). All carry the freshness of ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... an idea of rushing into anything thoughtlessly. Burns, 32, 22. O.N. rammr, vehement, and stam, stiff, hard, unbending. Cp. Cu. ram, strong, and rammish, violent, and American slang rambunktious, obstreperous. ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... North against each other, and—Heaven save the mark!—by the very politicians who have been most bitter in their denunciation of "geographical parties." Here comes a little Western lawyer, with unlimited resources of slang and slender capital of ideas, barely redeemed from being an absolute blackguard by the humanizing influences of a New England college, but showing fewer and fewer symptoms of civilization as he forgets the lessons of his collegiate life; and he delights an audience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... (goat face), using an ugly slang word for a foreigner's Japanese mistress; and they would pretend that ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... gives a new and delightful form to what seer or singer has shown us; in the former we have merely a translation which misses the music and adds no marvel. As for subject, Mr. Image protested against the studio-slang that no subject is necessary, defining subject as the thought, emotion or impression which a man desires to embody in form and colour, and admitting Mr. Whistler's fireworks as readily as Giotto's angels, and Van Huysum's roses no less than Mantegna's ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... metric system, 'meg' means million. So a megabuck is a million bucks, if you'll pardon the slang." ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... not bad," he said calmly, "but even your slang is a gentleman's. Your Excellency should imagine having been born a swine. That's the point. I should recommend more of silence, and if you happen to speak,—a brief articulation, roughly conceived and expressed. Don't bother at all with the person ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... story says that a commander when asked of what material his fortifications were built, called up his troops, and said: 'There!—every man's a brick.' Here we have the 'living walls' of the Romans—two old stories blended into one, and the whole greatly strengthened by a modern slang expression. When thus changed to suit the times, jests, instead of growing old, rather grow new again. Not unfrequently, a single joke becomes, in this manner, the parent of scores of others. I think that it is Mr. Wendell Phillips, who, in a lecture on Lost Arts, declares that there were ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... impossible to put themselves at ease among those with whom they would like to associate. They are painfully aware of their own surplus ego; they are constrained and awkward; they feel that in some way they are outsiders, that, as the slang phrase puts it, they do not belong. It is probable that more social failures are due to this trait than to ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Beautiful—if you'll excuse me for being highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class lecture, and read some of my best poetry—not the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But say, when I get out in the tall grass, there's nothing will take but a lot of cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge in it here, he'd get the gate so fast it would make his ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the humiliating position without a struggle and made up her mind to try at once to mold his character. She would begin by getting him to cut the slang ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... of writing "homely verse," With country phrases, jokes and slang; With "jiminies!" "by hecks!" and such, With "backwoods" odor, taste and tang— This thing, I say, of making light Of country life is funny—Not! I'd like to know where we would be If farms were all to go ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... was moored." "Handled his fives well" of course refers to the "sparring" of the cabman who wanted to fight Mr. Pickwick. "Friend in the green jemmy" refers to Mr. Winkle, who, we are told in Chapter I., "wore a new green shooting-coat," &c. "Pig's whisper" is slang for a very brief space of time. Bartlett says the Americans have "pig's whistle" the ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... all! The child was utterly transformed. There was no sign of his mother's hand upon his clothes, his neatly brushed hair or his shiny face. His eyes, too, seemed to have grown bigger. Alfred had been a vulgar little boy, addicted to slang and immoderately fond of noisy games. Burton tried to call him back to his mind. It was impossible to connect him in any way with the child whom, through a crack in the door, he could see standing upon a chair the better to scrutinize closely the few ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no misgivings about themselves, and they passed judgment on others with entire assurance. In their slang all with whom they came into contact were either "hearses" or "live Mollies." There was nothing racial, local, or social in this division. A family might be divided, one member being a live Molly, and all the rest the most dismal of hearses. Occasionally a stranger might be brought ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... for frivolity and excitement, which exhibits itself in many forms in our popular literature. To meet the public taste, our books and periodicals must now be highly spiced, amusing, and comic, not disdaining slang, and illustrative of breaches of all laws, human and divine. Douglas Jerrold once observed of this tendency, "I am convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw about all things. After all, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... two low-looking half-breeds in gaudy shirts, and wearing their black hair long and unkempt, were filling in the time waiting for breakfast, shooting "crap dice." The only words spoken between them were the filthy epithets and slang they addressed to the dice as they threw them, and the deep-throated curses as ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... no corrections are made, except in flagrant cases of slang or grammar, though all bad slips are mentally noted, for introduction at a more favorable time. It will mean that the teacher will respect the continuity of thought and interest as completely as ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... omnipresent and all-pervading goddess, was Jovita! Smiling, joyous, indefatigable in suavity and attention; all-embracing in her courtesies; frank of speech and eye; quick at repartee and deftly handling the slang of the day and the locality with a childlike appreciation and an infantine accent that seemed to redeem it from vulgarity or unfeminine boldness! Few could resist the volatile infection of her presence. A smile was the only tribute she exacted, and good-humor the rule laid down for her guests. ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... reads Berlioz's scores before hearing them played can have no real idea of their effect. The instruments appear to be arranged in defiance of all common sense; and it would seem, to use professional slang, that cela ne dut pas sonner, but cela sonne wonderfully. If we find here and there obscurities of style, they do not appear in the orchestra; light streams into it and plays there as in the facets ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Frank consoled her, "Alice and Dick will revel in these vulgar westernisms. See if they don't. Why Mother, it's by slang that a language is enriched, didn't ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... did not require much imagination to suppose that the war would add to the number of their clients, whether their claims had real foundation or not; what they wanted above all things was some one of undoubted position who would "boom the movement," in the slang of the day. They laid all their plans to get their man in the author of Raymond, and they got him. Such is his thesis for what ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... sounded no more like Mrs. Percifer than it fitted me; but mistaking my smile of irony for one of encouragement, he babbled on. I wish I could do justice to his "charmin'" accent and his perfectly unstudied manner of speech, a mixture of British and American colloquialisms, not to say slang. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... "An extremely interesting slang word, by the way," Marshall said. "'Shoot.' Superficially an invitation to violence. I wonder—" A glance from Malone was sufficient. "Getting back to the track, however," he went on, "I should begin by saying that Her Majesty ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... his passion, in a diatribe which beats in abomination any slang that was ever ranted out of a tub by a mountebank saint, he harps back upon the prodigious attractiveness of his mistress, in the following pathetic, though not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... have no permanence. They are addressed to a special class of readers,—a class generally neither of highly cultivated taste, nor of acute critical perception. Their writers are rarely men of sufficient talent to win for themselves recognition out of their own narrow set. What in the slang of the day are called "sensation" sermons are no exception to the common rule. Their momentary effect, depending upon exaggeration and extravagance, is no indication of worth. We should no more think of criticizing them in a literary journal, than of criticizing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... glint of dark youthful passion in Lorna's face. Lane felt rise in him a desire to bid her sharply to omit slang and profanity from the conversation. But the desire faded before his bewilderment. All had suffered change. What had he come home to? There was no clear answer. But whatever it was, he felt it to be enormous and staggering. And he meant to find out. Weary ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Slang Phrases.—"A Rowland for an Oliver" is no slang phrase of the eighteenth century; it is a proverbial expression as old as the days of the romances of Roland and Olivier. The other two were phrases put into the mouths of two characters (Dr. Ollapod, in Colman's ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... "this is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really must hear more ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Jim; "slang Billy. What's he here for, I'd like to know! I only want you to go round 'em every day, and see that they're ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... "Only you mustn't slang Harrow. And you'd better get it into your silly head that it's the best school in this or any other ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... life,—or, to use a phrase that is perfectly clear to us all, the things that help us in getting a living. The vast majority of men and women in this world measure all values by this standard, for most of us are, to use the expressive slang of the day, "up against" this problem, and "up against" it so hard and so constantly that we interpret everything in the greatly foreshortened perspective of immediate necessity. Most of us in this room are confronting this problem of making a living. At any rate, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... headwinds—working towards Copenhagen. We rounded the Scaw in a thick mist, saw the remains of four ships that had run aground upon it, and were nearly run into ourselves by a clumsy merchantman, whom we had the relief of being able to abuse in our native vernacular, and the most racy sea-slang. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... drawing himself into the smallest space possible. "No, Redhead! The devil dragged the man who did that down to the lower regions long ago, on account of my tongue. It's his son. The younger, the sharper. This stripling made Casper Rubling,—[Dice, in gambler's slang]—poor wretch, pay for his loaded ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... knew. Tremendous fop—ladies loved him—cheeks like roses—tongue like sulphuric acid. Beautiful to look at. Clothes like a fashion-plate—got any fashion-plates in Chaudiere? 'who's your tailor?'" he added, in the slang of the hour, with a loud laugh, then stopped suddenly and took off his hat. "I forgot," he added, with upturned eyes and a dramatic seriousness, "your tailor saved my life to-day-henceforth I am the friend ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... up a good deal of slang from the nature of his associates, and she set to work to improve his language, and teach ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... behind,—a sled that worked on its runners no longer, but that sunk with every fresh drift to the main-boards themselves. Wadded with clothing, shouting in a mixture of French and English and his own peculiar form of slang, Ba'tiste tried in vain to force the laboring animals onward. But they only churned uselessly in the drift; their hoofs could find no footing, save the yielding masses of snow. Puffing, as though the exertion ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... part there. She remembered this Jose very well, having met him more than once in former days with Guy. A Parisian Castilian, more Parisian than Spanish, he spoke with exquisite finish the classic tongue, and with the free-and-easy manner of a frequenter of the boulevards, chatted in the slang of the pavement or of the greenroom; he was an eminent virtuoso and collector, an author when the desire seized him, but only in his own interest, liberal in his opinions, lavish in his disposition, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... General Jackson, 'who was all brimstone but the head, and that was aqua-fortis,' and swore if anyone abused him he ought to be 'set straddle on an iceberg, and shot through with a streak of lightning.'" Somewhere between the dignified despair of Daniel Webster, and the adulatory slang of these gentry we must look for the actual truth about Jackson's administration. The fears of the statesman were not wholly groundless, for it is always hard to count in advance upon the tendency of high office to make men more reasonable. The enthusiasm of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... a sort of "old home week" feeling; that to her it was a relief to see any one who spoke her own language, who did not need to have it explained when she was jesting, and who did not think when she was speaking in perfectly satisfactory phrases that she must be talking slang. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... conceived the fond idea that Harlowe House is a headquarters for second-hand clothing. I have labored with them to convince them that such is not the case, but still they yearn for the Brent finery. Judging from what I hear, it must have been 'some' wardrobe. Pardon my lapse into slang, O, Overton. A number of the teachers have commented on the affair. I've ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... voice! We were never so taken back in our lives. All hands were called in to witness the phenomenon and, recovering from their astonishment, the boys joined hands and danced around me, singing and shouting in their excitement. Then each yelled something at the machine—bits of slang or slurs—and it made them roar to hear that funny ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... fourth in the tourney. Magnificently, he boarded at the yellow pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations, and made ...
— Options • O. Henry
... that about me or any of my doin's. I hate sentimental bosh as much as you hate slang, and should have been a bachelor to this day if I hadn't seen Kitty jest as I did. You see, I'd been too busy larkin' round to get time for marryin', till a couple of years ago, when I did up the job double-quick, as ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... and when to hold fast to a principle. The tendency of the thoughtless is to denounce all compromise as wicked, and to stick to a form of words without bothering about the real meaning. Belief in "fads"—I cannot avoid the bit of slang—and singular malleability of real convictions are sometimes generated just by want of serious thought; and, at any rate, both phenomena are ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the only member of the profession living in the village, had no competitor save when the sitting of the court brought in one or more from neighboring settlements, and, being thus circumstanced, without opposition, and the only representative of his craft, he was literally, to employ the slang phrase in that quarter, the "cock of the walk." He was, however, not so much regarded by the villagers a worthy as a clever man. It required not erudition to win the credit of profundity, and the lawyer knew how to make the most of his learning ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... I, "this isn't talking horse; we'll manage your sons, and you, too, if you don't dry up on your treason slang. Now, old covey, four hundred and seventy-five or I'm ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... wasted; and this in spite of the heroine's pleasant abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets and shoes—as these things sketched themselves to Milly—and something rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and the occasional freedom of her slang. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... is always 'Rengraciez!' and he cares not a single rotin for La Reniffe," she replied, dropping again into the slang of ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... agree with me here," she continued. "Helen daren't slang the rich, being rich herself, but she would like to. There's an odd notion, that I haven't yet got hold of, running about at the back of her brain, that poverty is somehow 'real.' She dislikes all organization, and probably confuses wealth with the technique of wealth. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... the slang term for gas observation balloons which go up at certain points and observe the enemy's positions or maneuvers before and during battle on the earth below. Sausages do not fight back much but are protected by support battle ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... the place. The gaily-coloured rows of neat dwellings that debouched on the esplanade, and the line of hotels and boarding-houses that faced the sea, were as new as the pantomime songs of last Christmas or this year's slang. One might conceive them being designed by architects who knew as little of the past as children know of death, and painted by fresh-faced people to match themselves, and there was a romping arbitrariness about the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... appearance," said Mrs. Houghton, turning her eyes upon Lord George. He simpered and looked pleased and did not seem to be at all disgusted by their friend's slang, and yet had she talked of "awfully swell" parties, he would, she was well aware, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... his novels, the theories enunciated in his magazine articles, adulating the intrusion of positivism upon art. But in the works of his best pupil, Rosny, the only talented novelist who is really imbued with the ideas of the master, naturalism has become a sickening jargon of chemist's slang serving to display a layman's erudition, which is about as profound as the scientific knowledge of a shop foreman. No, there is no getting around it. Everything this whole poverty-stricken school has produced shows that our literature has fallen upon evil days. The grovellers! They don't rise ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... literary genius. Or if in congratulating yourself upon the marvellous progress of Scientific Inventions, hailing from the keen-brained West, you could condone the degradation of the English language in the mouths of Shakespeare's countrymen and countrywomen by the use of American slang phrases, common, vulgar, coarse, alternating with choice expressions culled from the vocabulary of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... at Warren, vainly attempting to divine the meaning of the Yankee slang. But the Kentuckian was impatient: he knew that debates were seldom as productive as labor in a workshop, when ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... published during the past year. It is much easier for me to find the flaws than the remedies. Many of the words used in the original have no written character or hieroglyphic to represent them, while many others, though having a written form, are, like our own slang expressions, not found in ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... where, it appeared, that 'Phoebe was the jolliest little fellow in the world,' and Lieschen was the only 'good-natured body going,' and knew no end of Mahrchen. The boy spoke a very odd mixture of Lieschen's German and of English, pervaded by stable slang, and was altogether a curious study of the effects of absentee parents; nevertheless Honora and Lucilla both took a considerable fancy to him, the latter patronizing him to such a degree that she hardly allowed him to eat the much-needed breakfast, which ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bridegroom. The best man is only a walking gentleman. With the exception of a crying father and a snivelling mother, the rest are SUPERS who have to dress well and have to PAY for their insignificant parts in the shape of costly presents." I did not care for the theatrical slang, but thought it clever, ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... introduces the new trader to the South Pacific island where the scene of the story is laid, gives a brief description of the fate of the last dealer in copra. It may serve as a single illustration of volumes of racy, humorous, and imaginative slang; ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... It doesn't carry me anywhere except into trouble. When I think of all the pains I've taken to learn how to talk like the dictionary! Why, nobody talks like the dictionary any longer! They all talk slang, every one of them—only they don't talk the kind that Julius Gershom and all these politicians do. If you could have seen Mrs. Berkeley's face when I told her I'd had a 'grand' time to-night—she looked exactly like a frozen fish—though ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... little conversion to make. Ferragus and Vautrin are prototypes of Valjean, just as Valjean's Cosette exploited by Madame Thenardier is an adaptation of Ferragus' daughter or Doctor Minoret's Ursula. The prison manners and slang of the Miserables inevitably recall those of Vautrin's Last Incarnation, while, on the other hand, Hugo's salon ultra reappears in the Cabinet of Antiques. And the analogies present themselves continually. One might almost say that the whole ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... ancestral religion, still utter the word "soul" with awe. But in the popular sermon and hymn and story of our day,—with their search after the sympathetic and the sentimental, after what is called in magazine slang "heart-interest,"—the word has lost both its intellectual distinction and its literary magic. It will regain neither until it is pronounced once more ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... share of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification—features which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made up of extremely sanguinary locutions borrowed from the terminology of warfare. Except where it is adopted as a necessary means of secret communication, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... this language, I imagine that the three following words have come into the English—two of them being slang and one a sporting term—rum, ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... German slang expression with the general significance of the English "gone to smash," but also a hundred other and wider meanings, impossible to render ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... are determined that my silence shall voice itself. I have no doubt that they would like to have me write it, so that they could boast of it afterward to their fellow officers. Now, as Jimmie would say in his frightful slang, 'I'm going to give them a run for their money.' Von Engel will probably beseech you to arrange to keep Jimmie at your side, so that he can have a few words with Mrs. Jimmie. Von Furzmann will plead with ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... (J.W. ARROWSMITH). He reports in the following terms to his loved Chief:—This book achieves the task of combining extraordinary vulgarity with the flattest and most insipid dulness—not a common dulness, but a dulness redolent of low slang and dirty tap-rooms. The authors seem to plume themselves on their marvellous success in reaching Monte Carlo, which, with their usual sprightly facetiousness, they call "Charley's Mount." They are good enough to tell such of the travelling public as may want ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... with much earnestness, "if instead of ornamenting your conversation with cant terms, and miserable slang, picked up from the lowest refuse of our population, both east and west, you had cultivated your mind, and enriched it with quotations from classical writers, you would have been more like an Attache, and less like a peddling clockmaker than ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... right in saying that it is all O.K." He laughed, and stretched out his long legs comfortably. "You've got the idea. That's the way to get the good of traveling and seeing other kinds of folks. You learn my queer slang words, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... origin of the phrase "To kick the bucket," the tradition among the slang fraternity is, that "One Bolsover having hung himself to a beam while standing on the bottom of a pail, or bucket, kicked the vessel away in order to pry into futurity, and it was all UP with him from that moment—Finis!" Our Querist will find a very humorous illustration of its use (too long ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... reveal to you, gentle reader, what Tom told me long afterward? He had advanced and been repulsed—had attacked and been "scattered." Pardon the slang of the army, and admire the expeditious operations of the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... not care a fig for order or logical sequence or congruity, or for striking a key of expression and keeping it, but becomes simply the most spontaneous and unstudied of human beings. He has at his command the whole vocabularies of the English and Scottish languages, classical and slang, with good stores of the French, and tosses and tumbles them about irresponsibly to convey the impression or affection, the mood or freak of the moment; pouring himself out in all manner of rhapsodical confessions and speculations, grave or gay, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now is an independent critic. To accept fully, or as it is now called, to follow blindly; to admire heartily, or as it is now called, fanatically—these are considered signs of weakness or credulity. To believe intensely; to act unhesitatingly; to admire passionately; all this, as the latest slang phrases it, is "bad form"; a proof that a man is not likely to win in the race of this world the prize whereof is, the greatest possible enjoyment with the least ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... "Oh, that's river slang. You know every side-wheel steamer has a statement of her destination painted on her wheel house. I meant to ask what are ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... with the honesty of this confession, and in the same way I sympathize with those Officers of the Salvation Army who, in racing slang, cannot 'stay the course.' ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... of good looks, the kind that led you to expect the person enjoying them would dispose of disputations, speculations, aspirations, in a few very neatly and brightly uttered words, so simplified in sense, however, that they sounded, even when guiltless, like rather aggravated slang. It wasn't that Kate hadn't pretended too that she should like to go to America; it was only that with this young woman Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever of late, on the theory of intimate confessions, private frank ironies that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... his vessels were usually secreted in the land-locked bay of Barataria, to the westward of the mouth of the river. They were, however, soon extirpated by the American government. The language of the adjacent States is still adulterated with the slang of those scoundrels, proving how short a period it is since they disappeared, and how they must have mixed up with the reckless population, whose head-quarters were then at the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... doorway Marion checked herself abruptly, because she had resolved to purify her vocabulary of slang and all frivolous expressions. Her eyelids were pink, her lips were moist and tremulous, her face was all ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... loudly; but the tone and the glint of the eyes—and the cultured boss stirred into using slang! The chairman knew that he might as well pick up his hat ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... great keys were put in motion, and he opened the grate to let them pass, eyeing John Ayliffe with considerable attention as he did so. Locking the grate carefully behind him, he lighted them on with his lantern, muttering as he went in the peculiar prison slang of those days, various sentences not very complimentary to the tastes and habits of young John Ayliffe, "Ay, ay," he said, "clerk be damned! One of Tom's pals, for a pint and a boiled bone—droll I don't ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... very conventional, and twenty-five years old, Joyce nicknamed him 'The Pilgrim Father,' and vowed she wouldn't have him for her attendant; that I had to take him and let her walk in with Rob. She said she'd shock him with her wild west slang and uncivilized ways, and that I was the literary lady of the establishment, and would know how to ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... course refers to the "sparring" of the cabman who wanted to fight Mr. Pickwick. "Friend in the green jemmy" refers to Mr. Winkle, who, we are told in Chapter I., "wore a new green shooting-coat," &c. "Pig's whisper" is slang for a very brief space of time. Bartlett says the Americans have "pig's whistle" the ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead; and the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell upon his face to ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... glow departed and the darkness gathered, if there was one lonely boy in the world, languidly despairing, it was I. Many times I found myself uttering aloud such slang expressions as: "Oh, my hat! If only I had told the beastly truth for the third time! Dash it, why didn't I? Why the deuce didn't I?" I addressed myself as: "You blithering, blithering fool!" And my temples began to ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... thought that Mr. Horne was Metelill's friend. "So he was at first," Charley said, "but he is an uncommon goose, and Isa is no end of a hand at doing the pathetic poverty-stricken orphan! That's the way she gets so many presents!" Then she explained, in her select slang, that young Horne's love affairs were the great amusement of his fellow-pupils, and that she, being sure that the parasol was no present from me, as Isa had given the cousins to understand, had set Bertie Elwood to extract the truth by teasing his friend. "But I never meant to have ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... humourists by trade On waistcoat had the shoe displayed, Lampoon's sour spirit might be laid, And cease its spiteful railing. Whether the humour chanced to be Joke, pun, quaint ballad, repartee, Slang, or bad spelling, we should see Good humour ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... easy flow of words so natural to a woman, and especially to a Parisian woman, and which in Parisian slang is known as bagou, Mme. Mauperin, who had avoided meeting the priest's eyes, which she had felt fixed on her, now glanced mechanically at a light which was being stirred by the abbe's hands and ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... demarcation between them is sharply drawn. We all live in similar dug-outs, but we bring a new atmosphere into them. In one, full of the odour of Turkish cigarettes, the spoken English is above suspicion; in another, stinking of regimental shag, slang plays skittles with our language. Only in No. 3 is there two worlds blent in one; our platoon officer says that we are a most remarkable section, consisting ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... is Captain Tucca. "His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... quite "on his own hook," as people who speak slang say. There was no one to consult as to what he should do; and though this freedom was enjoyable in the full daylight, he began to feel lonesome as evening drew on. He found a good supper where he had found ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... shrinking! Free from the athletics and the slang, she is antetype, indeed, of, say, the St. Andrews girl, that admirable creation of our age; but she soars beyond her sister on the wings of her more exquisite sensibility, and her deeper restfulness. Not for her the perpetual ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... she cried with a blush, "don't you know me? Have I changed much? I should have known you anywhere; and I am glad to see you, awfully glad (excuse the slang, but it is such a relief to be able to say 'awful' without being pulled up by Aunt Chambers). Just think, it is three years since we met. Do you remember Grumps? How do I look? Do you think you will like me as ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... caricatured unmercifully. The benevolent face of the great editor, spectacled, and fringed with a snow-white beard, appeared on fans, on posters, on showcards, where, as a setting sun, it might be seen going down behind the western hills. "Go west," his famous advice to young men, became the slang phrase of the hour. He was defeated, for Grant carried thirty-one states, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... photo-plans of the enemy's trenches; the Supply; the Staff, who collect and note all things, and are very properly chaffed; and, be sure, the Interpreter, who, by force of questioning prisoners, naturally develops into a Sadducee. It is their little asides to each other, the slang, and the half-words which, if one understood, instead of blinking drowsily at one's plate, would give the day's history in little. But tire and the difficulties of a sister (not a foreign) tongue cloud everything, and one goes to ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... part of the sentence. "Papa hates London, and so do I. And as to riding in Rotten Row, je voudrais bien me voir faisant cela," added Vixen, whose study of the French language chiefly resulted in the endeavour to translate English slang into that tongue. "No, when I grow up I shall take papa the tour of Europe. We'll see all those places I'm worried about at lessons—Marathon, Egypt, Naples, the Peloponnesus, tout le tremblement—and I shall say to each of them, 'Oh, this is you, is ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... one time Prudence was away off." She smiled as she recognized a bit of Carol's slang upon her lips. "Don't worry about her. You needn't keep an eye on her any ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... serious opinions or humours of the moment, he still defends his ventures with indefatigable wit and spirit, hitting savagely himself, but taking punishment like a man. He knows and never forgets that people talk, first of all, for the sake of talking; conducts himself in the ring, to use the old slang, like a thorough "glutton," and honestly enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... merely being born and wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands Shakspeare must have drunk in a portion of that frank artless sense of beauty which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in ennobling those who were born there: yonder dirty, swindling, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not be an especially musical speech, it certainly does lend itself most admirably to slang purposes. Here again the Britishers show their inability to utilize the vehicle to the full of its possibilities. England never produced a Billy Baxter or a George Ade, and I am afraid she never will. Most of our slang ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... whole kit o' you, to come to my house tomorrow morning to see Rebecca Mary. I'm going to say it over again. Tomorrow morning, to see Rebecca Mary!" setting apart the syllables with the pointing finger. "You can play in my back yard," said Aunt Olivia, sublimely unconscious of slang. ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... could only have thought of a decent pretext. He wished me to drink with him, but I would none of his drinks. He grew pathetically tender in his professions; but I walked beside him in silence or answered him in stately courtesies; and when we got to the landing-place, passed the word in English slang to the Cigarette. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up in his chariot with his sling in his hand, and he fitted thereto small bolts, and slang. He did not make an end before he had overthrown and laid low three score of ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... supposed to have been invented by Alonso de Ledesma (1552-1623). It consists in a strained search for unusual thoughts which entails forced paradoxes, antitheses and epigrams. This system, combined with local allusions, double meanings and current slang, in which Quevedo delighted, makes his poems often extremely difficult of comprehension. His romances de jaques, written in thieves' jargon, are famous in Spain. Quevedo wrote too much and carelessly and tried to ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... in the galleys don't improve any manners a man may have had. If I were among your friends I would be out of place and uncomfortable, and should always have to be bowing and scraping and exchanging compliments, and besides they would soon find out that my Spanish was doubtful. I talk a sailor's slang, but I doubt if I should understand pure Spanish. Altogether, I should be very uncomfortable, and should make you uncomfortable, and I would very much rather take my place among the men that work for you until I can get ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... one," he muttered, unconsciously using the slang of the Street which he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing the ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... literature as found its way into Briar Farm filled her with amazement, repulsion and disgust. There was nothing in any modern magazine that at all resembled the delicate, pointed and picturesque phraseology of the Sieur Amadis! Strange, coarse slang-words were used,—and the news of the day was slung together in loose ungrammatical sentences and chopped-up paragraphs of clumsy construction, lacking all pith and eloquence. So, repelled by the horror of twentieth-century "style," she had hidden ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... "mother" is the name given to the twelve-inch howitzer. The trench language is changing so quickly that I think the staff in the rear are unable to keep up to date, because they have recently issued an order to the effect that slang must not be used in official correspondence. Now instead of reporting that a "dud Minnie" arrived over back of "mud lane," it is necessary to put, "I have the honor to report that a projectile from a German Minnenwerfer landed in rear ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... expectations are rigid and few in number because of his lack of discrimination and small experience, almost all pleasures, like almost all events, are of the nature of surprises. The child almost always laughs when he is pleased. The slang phrase "to be highly tickled" expresses with precision this close connection between laughter and pleasure. Moreover, as the complexity of life increases, its strains and repressions are multiplied, with the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... which Mr. Carson could not read were: "I would sooner be rented than, etc." Rent is a slang ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... tricks in its repertory, and none of them will tickle an audience into good humour. "Tousjours vieil synge est desplaisant." It is not the old jester who receives most recognition at a tavern party, but the young fellow, fresh and handsome, who knows the new slang, and carries off his vice with a certain air. Of this, as a tavern jester himself, he would be pointedly conscious. As for the women with whom he was best acquainted, his reflections on their old age, in all their harrowing pathos, shall remain in the original for me. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... neglect the solid body or the creeping thing itself? You are no better than a man pouring water into a mortar and braying it with an iron pestle; he thinks he is doing a necessary useful job, whereas, let him bray till all's blue (excuse the slang), the water is as much water as ever ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... had his face upon his hand, and once more he was the miserable man who had begun brokenly to unfold the history of his shame. The unconscious animation produced by the mere unloading of his heart, the natural boyish slang with which his tale had been freely garnished, had faded from his face, had died upon his lips. Once more he was a soul in torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence of ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... great football fan, after following the game for three or four years, learned all the slang expressions typical of football. She tried to work out new plays, criticised the generalship occasionally, and fairly 'ate and slept' football during the months of October and November. While the season was in progress I usually slept at home in Boston where I could rest more ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... Rowland for an Oliver" is no slang phrase of the eighteenth century; it is a proverbial expression as old as the days of the romances of Roland and Olivier. The other two were phrases put into the mouths of two characters (Dr. Ollapod, in Colman's Poor Gentleman, and Young Rapid, in Morton's ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... of the "fence's" parlour, and that of the literary salon; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in the other. Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, "The princess, I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;" and then in terrible slang we shouted a benediction on some "crib" that was going to be broken into that evening. And we thought there was something very thrilling in leaving the Rue de la Gaieté, returning home to dress, and presenting our spotless selves ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... be all but destitute. It is remarkable to see how she has taken possession of this money and with what shrewdness she manages it. I suspect her of certain small Bourse speculations—she has all the financial slang on the tip of her tongue—but if so, they succeed. For she keeps herself and the child, scornfully allows him so much for his pocket in the week, and even, as I judge from the consideration she enjoys in the church ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in at Sharpe's door once more, and slap one another on the back, and crowd up into the old familiar faggery, and hear all the old chaff and slang, interspersed with stories of the holidays, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... brought Whigs together but showed its taste by giving a prize for good comedies. Swift, when he came into favour, helped to form the Brothers' Club, which was especially intended to direct patronage towards promising writers of the Tory persuasion. The institution, in modern slang, differentiated as time went on. The more aristocratic clubs became exclusive societies, occupying their own houses, more devoted to gambling than to literature; while the older type, represented by Jonson's ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... had told his friend Greystock, the lady's cousin, that Mr. Camperdown the lawyer intended to "jump upon" that lady. Making such allowance and deduction from the force of these words as the slang expression requires, we may say that John Eustace was right. Mr. Camperdown was in earnest, and did intend to obtain the restoration of those jewels. Mr. Camperdown was a gentleman of about sixty, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Indeed, they often were brutally frank to each other. Fanny had the vision, Fenger the science to apply it. Sometimes her intuition leaped ahead of his reasoning. Then he would say, "I'm not sold on that," which is modern business slang meaning, "You haven't convinced me." She would go back and start afresh, covering the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... is coming home!" said Beatrice. "How you will learn to talk sea slang! And how happy grandmamma will be, especially if he comes in time for her great affair. Do you hear, Alex? you must practise your steps, for grandmamma is going to give a grand party, Careys and Evanses, and all, on purpose to gratify Fred's great ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the tolls trouble and the failure of arbitration, and an unknown President had just come in. Presently an unknown Ambassador arrived. Mexico got worse; would we not recognize Huerta? They send Carden. We had nothing to say about the tolls—simply asked for time. They were very friendly; but our slang phrase fits the situation—"nothin' doin'." They declined San Francisco[47]. Then presently they began to see some plan in Mexico; they began to see our attitude on the tolls; they began to understand our attitude toward concessions and governments run for profit; they began dimly to see that ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... from a convent in Brussels," he continued, feeling for his little brass box, "and to use the slang of our professional class, her people knew my people. That was the way we talked. If a thing was good, we called it 'ripping.' If it was unpleasant, we said it was 'beastly.' I believe the slang has changed since then, but the silly artificial spirit of it will never change. Why can't ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... infer from this how inconsistent with good manners is heat and exaggeration in conversation. It is a just complaint among refined and cultivated people that many, even of the well-educated young women of the present day, talk too loudly and vehemently; are given to exaggeration of statement and slang expressions. The greatest blemish of the conversation and manners of the young people of to-day is obtrusiveness and exaggeration. By obtrusiveness I mean a style of speech and manners that attracts attention ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... twelve hours, when the wagons had left too early, or had been overcrowded, or, after violent fighting, had stood waiting in line at the munitions depot behind the lines. Happy fellows, some of them, with broken arms or legs, the war slang, "a thousand-dollar shot," on their pale, yet laughing lips—enviously ogled by the men with slight wounds or the men sick with typhoid fever, who would all gladly have sacrificed a thousand dollars and a limb into the ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... breeze with dilating nostrils, and the wild look of her set him to wondering how such a gentle mother could have such a gypsy daughter. Perhaps it was the father—yes, the old man had been an Apache in his youth according to the slang of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... said the tall woman, in broken Gypsy slang, 'hear how they jabber (hunelad como chamulian), truly we will make them pay for the noise they raise in the house.' Then coming up to me, she demanded with a shout, fearing otherwise that I should not understand, whether I would not wish ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... notion. Much to our loss, for myself I prefer his 'Sea- Words and Phrases along the Suffolk Coast' (in the scarce 'East Anglian,' 1868-69 {81}) to half his translations. For this "poor old Lowestoft sea- slang," as FitzGerald slightingly calls it, illustrates both his strong love of the sea and his own quaint lovable self. One turns over its pages idly, and lights on dozens of entries ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... once—good fellow, bad fellow, cleverest chap I ever knew. Tremendous fop—ladies loved him—cheeks like roses—tongue like sulphuric acid. Beautiful to look at. Clothes like a fashion-plate—got any fashion-plates in Chaudiere? 'who's your tailor?'" he added, in the slang of the hour, with a loud laugh, then stopped suddenly and took off his hat. "I forgot," he added, with upturned eyes and a dramatic seriousness, "your tailor saved my life to-day-henceforth I am the friend of all tailors. Well, to continue. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... line of stuff!" She had never before employed Felicity's brand of slang. It came unpleasantly from her tongue. "The wages of sin and ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... What an unnatural transformation! He, who had said luxury was hurrying the civilized world to destruction, wore a pearl in his scarf-pin worth thousands of dollars if it was worth a cent. He had all the latest slang of a Bond Street Nut. (By the way, over here when one talks of a "nut" it doesn't mean a swell, but a youth who is what they'd call "dotty" or "bunny on the 'umph" in a London music hall.) And though his eyebrows still had that heavenly arch which must have made his early reputation, the rest ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... which the words were uttered was so venomous, that Bob realized the speaker meant mischief, though he was ignorant of the fact that in the slang of tramps who beat their way on railroads, "con" betokened conductor, and "blind baggage" the platform of the coach in a ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... power in their turn over ideas, we must, in education, attend to the language of children as a means of judging of the state of their minds; and whenever we find, that in their conversation with one another, they have any slang, which turns moral ideas into ridicule, we may be certain that this must have arisen from some defect in their education. The power of shame must then be tried in some new shape, to break this false association of ideas. Shame, in a new shape, affects the mind with surprising force, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... known how the lark in its zenith, children at play out-of-doors, good witches and jolly old parents have all been compared—how aptly!—with this very same Gladsome Beast. Only one "crab" he has (if I may use slang for a moment to make myself perfectly clear), only one drawback, and that is that in the gladness of his heart he spoils the cabbages of the Old Man Who Looks After Fairyland,—and of course ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... into tears. "You've recently," she observed, "got into a new way. Whatever slang you happen to hear outside you come and tell me. And whenever you read any improper book, you poke your fun at me. What! have I become a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... denying that Catherine used slang even in talking to the children. The little pony had been sold long ago, and going to town meant a walk of twelve miles. But Catherine started out early in the morning, and was back by nightfall, not so very much the worse, and carrying in her arms bundles which might have fatigued ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... the box, and in a powerful but not very musical voice began to sing a hymn full of cowboy slang. His singing had a quality not usual in street singers, and a crowd quickly gathered about him. His song was long and not without a rude poetry. He began his address at last by issuing a defiance to his enemies. This would mean little in an Eastern village, perhaps, but in a mining camp, ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... of "Liberty." Hear the old bandogs of the Daily Press, Chained to their party posts, or fetter-free And running amuck against old party creeds, On-howl their packs and glory in the fight. See mangy curs, whose editorial ears Prick to all winds to catch the popular breeze, Slang-whanging yelp, and froth and snap and snarl, And sniff the gutters for their daily food. And these—are they our prophets and our priests? Hurra!—Hurra!—Hurra!—for "Liberty!" Flaunt the red flag and flutter the petticoat; Ran-tan the drums and let ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
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