"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three separable elements, each contributing after its kind to the effect on our minds. When the general effect is to throw us into a state of pleasure, it is our habit to qualify the style with an adjective of praise, selecting the adjective according to the degree of restraint or of enthusiasm with which we are accustomed to express our emotions; when the general effect is to throw us into a condition of boredom or of distaste, we ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... asked Grandpapa, with a gentle emphasis on the adjective, which caused the combatants to ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... turned into a howling wilderness; and she observed, as is often done so astutely, that "when you do find a neat, capable, colored help, it's as good help as you can have." Which you may notice is just as true without the third adjective as with. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the chatter-box of the Dun Cow described it, was a bitter pill to him. "Who could have foreseen this?" said he. "It's devilish." We did not ourselves intend our readers to feel it so, or we would not have spent so much time over it. But as regards that one adjective, Mr. Monckton is a better authority than we are. He had a document with him that, skillfully used, might make mischief for a time between these lovers. But he foresaw there could be no permanent result without ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... descent from de Bohun. While, if he holds that kind hearts are more than coronets, he has an alternative descent from some medieval le bon. This adjective, used as a personal name, gave also Bunn and Bunce; for the spelling of the latter name cf. Dance for Dans, and Pearce for Piers, the nominative of Pierre (Alternative Origins, Chapter I), which also survives in Pears and Pearson. Swain ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... go to Italian, and look at the word nicchia. Both from Alberti and from Baretti we find it to bear the meaning of "a charge, a duty, or an employment;" and if before this word we place the adjective piccola, we have piccola nicchia, "a small task, or trifling service to be performed." Now I think no one can fail to see the identity of the meanings of the expressions piccola nicchia and pique-nique; but it remains to show how the words themselves may be identical. Those ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... old Spanish the article was often used before a possessive adjective that preceded its noun. This usage is now archaic ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... the king's divorce from Catherine of Arragon and his marriage with Anne Boleyn. More's philosophy is best reflected in his Utopia, the description of an ideal commonwealth, modeled on Plato's Republic, and printed in 1516. The name signifies "no place" (Outopos), and has furnished an adjective to the language. The Utopia was in Latin, but More's History of Edward V. and Richard III., written in 1513, though not printed till 1557, was in English. It is the first example in the tongue of a history as distinguished from a chronicle; that is, it is a reasoned and artistic presentation ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... teach, That it hath nine parts of speech;— Article, adjective, and noun, Verb, conjunction, and pronoun, With preposition, and adverb, And interjection, as I've heard. The letters are just twenty-six, These form all words when rightly mix'd. The vowels are a, e, o, i, With u, and sometimes w and y. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... I don't know how far I cannot read! Yet if 'the invisible things of God' may be known 'by the things which are seen,' there is at least room for ample study. To some people, Miss Faith, the world is always (with the change of one adjective) an incomprehensible little green book; while others read a few pages now, and look forward to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... motion, but are equally balanced. Rarely is so great prudence found blended with so undaunted courage. He has an indomitable will that cannot brook defeat. The word impossible he never knows, whatever difficulties intervene between him and duty. He feels like Napoleon, "that impossible is the adjective of fools." ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... questions about it so that he might be told no lies, but he searched it in vain for a trace of the suffering Machin. It was, however, full of typographical traces of himself and his family. The description of the reception was disturbingly journalistic, which adjective, for Mr. Prohack, unfortunately connoted the adjective vulgar. All the wrong people were in the list of guests, and all the decent quiet people were omitted. A value of twenty thousand pounds was ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... we have already completed thirty-seven years from Waterloo, and my remembrances upon this subject go back to a period lying much behind that great era), I used to be annoyed and irritated by the false interpretation given to the Greek word aion, and given necessarily, therefore, to the adjective aionios as its immediate derivative. It was not so much the falsehood of this interpretation, as the narrowness of that falsehood, which disturbed me. There was a glimmer of truth in it; and precisely that glimmer it ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... possession of the minds of young men when they find themselves in the presence of those who are adepts in the arts of vice—a fear of being thought "green," "verdant," or being measured by some other adjective used in fast circles to caricature the innocence of a soul unsullied by contact with the vices and follies of the city. He half expected that some of the dissolute young wretches who were drinking, swearing, and pouring the filth of a poisoned mind from their ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... and sights, where, and because, they recall what is pleasing, sublime, pathetic, and set our ideas and emotions flowing in one of these channels. But he does not get fairly on the track of either Alison's or any other decisive and marking adjective, with which to qualify his rapports. He wastes some time, moreover, in trying to bring within the four corners of his definition some uses of the terms of beauty, which are really only applied to objects by way of analogy, and are not meant to predicate the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... all others that he will walk three miles for it. Surely every one will admit that this is lamentable. It is not even a good mixture, for I used to try it occasionally; and if there is one man in London who knows tobaccoes it is myself. There is only one mixture in London deserving the adjective superb. I will not say where it is to be got, for the result would certainly be that many foolish men would smoke more than ever; but I never knew anything to compare to it. It is deliciously mild yet full of fragrance, and it never burns the tongue. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... this amendment they moved to make it read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its male citizens, all of that class shall be counted out of the basis of representation." Male citizens! For the first time in the history of our Government that discriminating adjective was placed in the Constitution, and yet the men on the floor of Congress, from Charles Sumner down, all declared that this amendment would not in any wise change ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... any statement unaccompanied by proof. The agreement of an adjective with its noun displeased him, because an arbitrary rule merely ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... is rather—rather comfortable when you get there," said Mr. Lanley, suddenly becoming embarrassed over his choice of an adjective. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... say that more women would have the courage to remain unmarried were there so euphonious a title awaiting them as that of "bachelor," which, when shorn of its accompanying adjective "old," ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... one unassisted noun, scorning the aid of verb, adjective, or adverb, the gooseherd, by a masterpiece of profound and subtle emphasis, contrived to express the fact that he existed in a world of dead illusions, that he had become a convert to Schopenhauer, and that Mr. Curtenty's inapposite geniality was a ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... don't—of course. Used as a noun—you know what a noun is, don't you? It means the name of anything. Wight means a person—any creature. Originally it meant a fairy, a supernatural being. As an adjective it means brave, valiant, strong or powerful. Or, ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... cut of their clothes and the way they wore them. Then she saw two or three whispering together, and the next moment came a brutal shout. She could not catch the sentence, but she heard the word "Papist" with an adjective, and caught the unmistakable bullying tone of the man. The next instant there broke out a confusion: a man dashed up the step from the crowd beneath, and she caught a glimpse of Dick Sampson's furious face. Then ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... mordant is first precipitated on to the fibre and combines with the colouring matter in the subsequent dye bath. But, whether the action is chemical or merely physical, the fact remains that all adjective dyes need this preparation of the fibre before they will fix themselves on it. The use of a mordant, though not a necessity, is sometimes an advantage ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... prosperous place at one time. The whitish clay soil has been quaintly corroded by the action of water, and one finds curious grottoes and deep, contorted, natural channels. A mosque and several impressive buildings—the adjective only applies when you do not get too near them—stand high up against the cliff side. The ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... (Serbian) adjective: Kosovar (Albanian), Kosovski (Serbian) note: Kosovan, a neutral term, is sometimes also used ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... I speak of her in these formal terms? To me, when I thought of her, which I did only too often, she was Juliet, with perhaps an adjective thrown in; and as Juliet I shall henceforth speak of her (but without the adjective) in this narrative, wherein nothing has been kept back from the reader—Juliet's visit, then, had been a great success, for my colleague was really pleased by the attention, and displayed a quiet geniality that ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... meeting. It should be added that Eva herself appears in the photograph as well as the simulacra of humanity. The faces are, on the whole, both pretty and piquant, though of a rather worldly and unrefined type. The latter adjective would not apply to the larger and most elaborate photograph, which represents a very beautiful young woman of a truly spiritual cast of face. Some of the faces are but partially formed, which gives them a grotesque or repellant appearance. What are we ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... board the cutter grinned while the old sea-dog expressed a highly colored opinion of the whole tribe of ship-fitters, machinists, and mechanics generally. After ten minutes of descriptive shouting, during which he never repeated an adjective twice, he wound up by saying that he considered "an engine-room an insult to a seaman's intelligence," and said that "he'd like to pave the bottom of the sea with the skeletons of engineers diving a thousand fathom for his lost propeller!" ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... in sticking the epithet "wanton" to Ganymede, that even Mr. Dyce, with his clear sight, did not see that the very word he wanted was the next word before him. It puts one in mind of a man looking for his spectacles who has them already across his nose. "Wanton" is a noun as well as an adjective; and, to prevent it from being mistaken for an epithet applied to Ganymede, it will in future be necessary to place after it a comma, when the passage ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and conflicts of this ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... convey the wires over sea, but now we are at a loss to comprehend where the difficulty lay! So wags the world. Tempora mutantur—excuse me for quoting the Etruscan. What would we do without the Atalantic telegraph? (Pundit says Atlantic was the ancient adjective.) We lay to a few minutes to ask the cutter some questions, and learned, among other glorious news, that civil war is raging in Africa, while the plague is doing its good work beautifully both in Yurope and Ayesher. Is it not truly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... something to burden it; but the vacant feeling was, oh, such a relief! Only the weary clerk can understand this thing; he knows so well what it means to carry a burden with him on a pleasure trip. "Pleasure" is not the adjective to qualify such a trip, where trees and flowers are decked with figures and where the mind sees phantoms of accumulated and accumulating work, waiting, waiting like Fate. Stories have been told of criminals carrying the body of a victim around on ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... all. Khokhriakov presided. His neck is like a bull's, but rougher—and red. He started the meeting by a thunderous "Shut up, you over there!" and "Somebody open the window; who in hell is smoking such ... tobacco (I omit the adjective, though correct ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... to my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson,' said Miss Tox, with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective; 'and Louisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warm before you go to bed, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... compound word hippopotamos is Damascius, who wrote in the sixth century. Achilles Tatius, who lived about the same time, calls the animal hippos tou Neilou, which is, he says, its Egyptian name. It seems probable that the word hippopotamus is a Roman corruption of the Greek substantive and adjective, and {36} is not a proper Greek word. Why this animal was called a horse is not evident. In shape and appearance it resembles a gigantic hog. Buffon says that its name was derived from its neighing like a horse (Quad., tom. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... to the waiting secretary. He groped in the chambers of his imagery for some superlative adjective to express his emotion before this colossal display of wealth. But his ample vocabulary had faded quite. He could only shake his head and give vent to the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the meaning of "I am well," and may be called a substitute for our verb "to be." By incorporating yalu with this expression, it makes it more emphatic, as, Yalu murrung nginyadhu, "Really I am well." Any adjective describing a human attribute may be taken as a predicate, as, good, bad, strong, sleepy, and employed with the ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews
... their Roman imitators, to whom we shall recur in a later chapter, and the mediaeval Troubadours and Minnesingers. To the present day sentimentality in love is so much more abundant than sentiment that the adjective sentimental is commonly used in an uncomplimentary sense, as in the following passage from one of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... adverbial form, the indefinite form, the attributive form, and the conclusive form, the two last being conjugated through all the various voices, moods, and tenses, to say nothing of all the potential forms. As one change is superposed on another, the adjective ends by becoming three or four times its original length. The fact is, the adjective is either adjective, adverb, or verb, according to occasion. In the root form it also helps to make nouns; so that it is even more generally useful than as a journalistic epithet with us. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... the eight-syllable line is "more congenial to the English language—more favourable to narrative poetry at least—than that which has been commonly termed heroic verse,"[363] and he proceeded to show that the first half-dozen lines of Pope's Iliad were each "bolstered out" with a superfluous adjective. "The case is different in descriptive poetry," he added, "because there epithets, if they are happily selected, are rather to be sought after than avoided.... But if in narrative you are frequently compelled ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Nahuatl language we find immediately the radical a, atl, which signifies water, war, and the top of the head. (Molina, Vocab. en lengua mexicana y castellana, etc.) From this comes a series of words, such as atlan, on the border of or amid the water, from which we have the adjective Atlantic. We have also atlaca, to combat or be in agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart from the water, and in the preterit makes atlaz. A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance of the Gulf of Uraba, in Darien, with a good harbor; ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... the moral judgment, but Macaulay's hardy and habitual recourse to strenuous superlatives is fundamentally unscientific and untrue. There is no more instructive example in our literature than he, of the saying that the adjective is ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... included in the fourth group was named by Bancroft the "adjective" group, because they require the aid of a second body, named the mordant, to properly develop and to fix the colour of the dye-stuff on the wool. It is sometimes known as the "mordant dye-stuff" class, and this is perhaps its best name. This (p. ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... as it is also implied that he led the way to heaven. The dogs of Yama are described in such a way as to remind one of the dogs that guard the path the dead have to pass in the Iranian legend, and of Kerberus, with whose very name the adjective 'spotted' has been compared[11]. The dogs are elsewhere described as white and brown and as barking (VII. 55. 2), and in further verses of the hymn just quoted (X. 14) they are called "thy guardian dogs, O Yama, the four-eyed ones who guard the path, who look on men ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... name of a great quarter in London, Mary-le-bone, as ludicrously ungrammatical. The writers had learned (or were learning) French; and they had thus become aware, that neither the article nor the adjective was right. True, not right for the current age, but perfectly right for the age in which the name arose; but, for want of elder French, they did not know that in our Chaucer's time both were right. Le was then the article feminine as well as masculine, and bone was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... smiled. The adjective was ludicrously inappropriate, but she understood Bernard's meaning, and appreciated his feelings as he ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... absolutely inexcusable, for it offends against good taste as well as good rhetoric; but the employment of words in a careless or perverted meaning is equally condemnable. It is also a mistake to use too many adjectives, to throw every adjective and adverb into the superlative degree, and in other ways to exaggerate every expression which you use. Much of this misuse of words is due to ignorance, but more to carelessness or laziness; in any case you can detect your faults if you seek for them, and you should take immediate steps to correct ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... the great evil of having in a formulary of worship too many things that have to be laboriously explained, it might be well if in the Litany the adjective "sudden," which ever since Hooker's day has given perpetual occasion for cavil, were to yield to "untimely," or some like word more suggestive than "sudden" of the thought clumsily expressed in the "Chapel Liturgy" by the awkward ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... also mean 'of the splendour of the gem called Marakata.' Nilakantha, however, shows that this would militate against the adjective Kankojwalatwacham below. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... vulgarism booze, a word probably brought into public favour by the new school of gutter evangelism, whose chief exponent is the Reverend William Sunday. The verb to booze, boose, or bouse, meaning "to drink immoderately," and the adjective boozy, boosy, or bousy, meaning "drunken," are by no means new to our language, Dryden having written the form bousy in some of his verses; but booze as a noun signifying "liquor" is certainly too vulgar a word for constant ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... pencil and paper. The first thing to write on the paper is an adjective which applies to a man. The paper is then folded over and passed to the right. This time each one writes the name of a man (either present or absent), folds the paper so the next one can't see what is written, and passes it on to ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... the adjective applied to her a hint which the wily lady would not have dared to make direct to the high-spirited old soldier, namely, that the continuance of his livelihood might depend on his consent. Betty knew likewise enough of the terrible world of the early eighteenth century to be aware that even such ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the cognate tribes. When they wish to distinguish between the actual father and a father's real or potential brothers, or between the actual mother and the mother's real or potential sisters, they use the adjective ka'ti (ka{LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H}t{LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN O}i), real, true, after the kinship term when the actual parent ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... old Reformers, who have been taught by experience, and are willing now to adopt the word 'Conservative,' at least in its adjective sense. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... your games." The sort was defined by an adjective, omitted. "What's your game? What the Hell are you at?" He ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... adequate to send her representatives to the lower House. I know the time may not have come for mooting a question of this sort; but I know the time will come, and that woman will be something more than a mere adjective to man in political matters. She will become a substantive also. And ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... goods; and there were diamond-shaped tickets (containing nothing but the price) for bonnets, gloves, and flimflams generally. The legends on the tickets gave no sort of original invention. The words 'lasting,' 'durable,' 'unshrinkable,' 'latest,' 'cheap,' 'stylish,' 'novelty,' 'choice' (as an adjective), 'new,' and 'tasteful,' exhausted the entire vocabulary of tickets. Now Mr. Povey attached importance to tickets, and since he was acknowledged to be the best window-dresser in Bursley, his views were entitled to respect. He dreamed of other tickets, in original ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... best printed English Essay, 8vo. containing 500 pages, on the Superstitions, Ghosts, Legends, &c. of all parts of the principality, to be delivered before February 3, 1831. Now when the limited period proposed for the collection of 500 pages of matter, and the above little adjective all is considered, it must appear obvious that such an Herculean labour is not capable of being accomplished by one individual alone.—Imagining it, therefore, to be a matter of impossibility to perform what the very reverend gentleman requires, I cannot ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... emphatic. To take HSKYRH as "hired," as has hitherto been done, and to translate "with a hired razor," is not only to suppose a very wooden metaphor, but is grammatically difficult, since HSKYRH would be a feminine adjective attached ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... is easily accounted for. She was born on the twenty-ninth day of February, the year of her birth being bisextile. Unor means February, Unorna, derivative adjective, 'belonging to February.' Some one gave her the name to ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... louis. Owen thought that if he had made an interval between each adjective he might ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... been grateful for a moderate biography of Poland's national poet; Miss Gardner's work merits a more distinguished adjective, and therefore is doubly worthy of attention." (Rest ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... could deny that we may say that man is good, for man, they said, means only man, and good means only good, and the word is can't be construed to identify such disparate meanings. Mr. Bradley revels in the same type of argument. No adjective can rationally qualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the substantive, it can't be united with it; and if not distinct, there is only one thing there, and nothing left to unite. Our whole pluralistic procedure in using subjects and predicates as we do is fundamentally ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... out on the distant sacred mountain, Fujiyama, which is revered by all Japan. Sometimes the clouds rested lovingly on its crest, and sometimes almost veiled it, but twice we saw the entire snow-covered space and no adjective can describe the matchless glory of that view. Poets have sung of it, and legend has woven fantastic tales around it, which the natives accept ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... puffed out. A very rare adjective, perhaps only here. The N.E.D. quotes this passage with a reference to the adjective 'flaberkin' puffed out, puffy, and a suggestion that it is akin to the substantive 'flab' ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... art. "The skill to leave out"—lo! the master faculty of the dramatist! But, in the first place, I do not believe that, having regard to the relative scope of the play and of the novel, the necessity for leaving out is more acute in the one than in the other. The adjective "photographic" is as absurd applied to the novel as to the play. And, in the second place, other factors being equal, it is less exhausting, and it requires less skill, to refrain from doing than to do. To know when to refrain from doing may be hard, but positively to do is even harder. ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... that I have used the word, it occurs to me that "childlike" is an adjective the best applied to this man, in spite of his portliness, and his three score ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... to is suffixed to the genitive; e.g., Pedro no to degozaru 'it belongs to Peter.' But since this is not a perfect way of speaking, it is better not to use it. I have cited it so that if you hear it you will understand. When two nouns are joined to form a single word, the one which is like an adjective does not require the genitive particle; e.g., cocuxu 'the Lord of the kingdom.' According to the ordinary rule we should say cocu no xu. This way of forming the genitive is very common in Japanese; ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... JERVAS. The adjective robust as applied to myself is, I think, a trifle misplaced. I suggest the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... first mooted this fire-alarm scheme of his, I had sat upon it, if you remember, with the maximum of promptitude and vigour. "Rotten" was the adjective I had employed to describe it, and you may recall that I mused a bit sadly, considering the idea conclusive proof of the general breakdown of a once fine mind. But now it somehow began to look as if it might have possibilities. The fact of the matter was that I had about reached the stage where ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Rabbis answered, 'To prevent putrefaction,' which would set in soon on that harvest day. Others say that the intention was to 'prevent more life escaping from him.' But 'dead' is not usually supposed to be an adjective admitting of comparison. Others find the reason in the wish to deliver Israel from the superstitious veneration of such things as the staff, by showing that it was powerless. But verse 31 plainly implies that the result of Gehazi's attempt ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... It is used as such in legal documents, but it is incorrect to employ it in business letters as other than an adjective. Use instead "they," "them," ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... paper. These "ladies" were much of a type, being either shop-girls or lady clerks, with a sprinkling of maid-servants and board school teachers. They were pale-faced, hard-working, over-dressed young women who read Marie Corelli, and considered her "deep"; who had one adjective with which to express appreciation of things, this "artistic"; anything they condemned was spoken of as "awful"; one and all liked to be considered what they called "up-to-date." Marriage they desired more than anything else in the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... intellectual, side of the human character, so that any perfectly clear expression of it in words was entirely impossible. It must be borne in mind that the Chinese language lacks definite word categories like substantive, adjective, adverb, or verb; any word can be used now in one category and now in another, with a few exceptions; thus the understanding of a combination like "white horse" formed a difficult logical problem for the thinker of the fourth century B.C.: did it mean "white" plus "horse"? Or was ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... gay, but what a lovable nature if one can apply such an adjective to him. He entertained the rest of us for a week out of "Pickwick Papers." The proper number of hours in the forenoon were spent in building the giant depot cairn, then lunch, and then the cosy sleeping-bags and Day's ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... a bit unbalanced? That is amusing." That the hostess meant the adjective in good faith was ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... poetic distinction. It is in the Songs of the Pixies that the young man "heaves the gentle misery of a sigh," and the sympathetic interest of the reader of today is chilled by the too frequent intrusion of certain abstract ladies, each preceded by her capital letter and attended by her "adjective-in-waiting;" but, after all deductions for the conventionalisms of "white-robed Purity," "meek-eyed Pity," "graceful Ease," etc., one cannot but feel that the Songs of the Pixies was the offspring not of a mere abundant and picturesque vocabulary but of a true poetic fancy. It is worth far more ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... heard when he returned from St. Louis, a heavy-hearted, dispirited man. Two recent failures had borne heavily upon him. If last winter had been dull, there was no adjective to apply to this. His first step was to mortgage Hope Terrace. He had deeded it to his wife, unincumbered; but now it appeared his only chance of salvation. Mrs. Lawrence made a feeble protest at first, and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... truly democratic at heart, Mackworth laid it on in theatric outward appearance, in true line with the Kansas tradition of a sockless Jerry Simpson, who went without socks, as the adjective implies, and made Congress on that one platform of his sartorial lack ... of William Roscoe Stubbs, who rode into the office of governor partly on the fact that his daughter could make salt-rising bread ... a form of bread-making cultivated ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the new substantial, but mean-looking cloister, on the other side rose the church of polished white marble, a splendid specimen of pure Byzantine architecture, if I dare apply such an adjective to that fantastic middle manner, which succeeded to the style of the fourth century, and was subsequently re-cast by Christians and Moslems into what are called ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... trust you will find me, madam, an OPEN enemy in the better sense of the adjective. As far as I can, I will answer questions if you wish to ask any. I will tell you honestly all the harm I meditate and outline clearly the extent of my hostility, if you will do the same," and he smiled so genially that she half smiled also as ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Melanesians (Codrington, "The Melanesians", pages 118, 119, 192, Oxford, 1891.) is somewhat more specialised—all men do not possess mana—but substantially it is the same idea. Mana is not only a force, it is also an action, a quality, a state, at once a substantive, an adjective, and a verb. It is very closely neighboured by the idea of sanctity. Things that have mana are tabu. Like orenda it manifests itself in noises, but specially mysterious ones, it is mana that is rustling in the trees. Mana is highly contagious, it can pass from a holy ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... brown hair. It frizzled like a furze-bush about her tiny face, and curled over her forehead. Her white even teeth showed prettily between her lips. She was not without points, but notwithstanding these it could not be said that she deserved the adjective pretty; and he was already convinced that it was not good looks that prejudiced her in Father Peter's eyes. Nor was the excuse that her singing attracted too much attention an honest one. What Father Peter did not like about the girl was her independent ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... You should have heard how Sir Deryck jumped at you, as soon as your name was mentioned, tentatively, as my possible correspondent. I had barely whispered it, when he leapt, and clinched the matter. I believe "wholesome" was an adjective mentioned. I hope you do not mind, dear Jane. I must confess, I would sooner be macaroons or oyster-patties, even at the risk of giving my friends occasional indigestion. But then I have never gone ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... word that it does not need a dictionary. Wright gives only the verb stolch 'to tread down, trample, to walk in the dirt'. The adjective is therefore primarily applicable to wet land that has become sodden and miry by being poached by cattle, and then to any ground in a similar condition. Since poach is a somewhat confused homophone, its adjective poachy ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... Holoitrochous].] A word borrowed from Homer, signifying properly a round stone fit for rolling, or a stone that has been made round by rolling, as a pebble in the sea. It was originally an adjective, with [Greek: petros] understood. Most critics suppose it to be from [Greek: holos] and [Greek: trecho], totus teres atque rotundus. Liddell and Scott derive it from [Greek: eilo], ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... her, knight, accost!" in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakespearian in the phrase—"give a coasting welcome" ("coasting" being taken as the epithet and adjective of "welcome"), that had the following words been, "ere they land," instead of "ere it comes," I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, "that give welcome to a salute ere ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... of the adjective set Fenwick grinning. The North found and gripped him; these are not the ways of ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and personality are closely associated with the life of the fort.[157] In reporting the casualties of the battle of Molino del Rey, September 8, 1847, the general commanding the American forces applied an adjective to only one of the dead. The report reads, "the service mourns the high-souled Scott, brevet lieutenant colonel 5th infantry".[158] This was Martin Scott, one of the most human, most lovable, and most energetic men who ever reviewed troops on the parade ground of Old Fort ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... addressed him with something which, if not an oath, sounded very like one, and commanded him to attend to his duty. 'You be d—d for a——,' commenced the gallant cavalier; but, looking up in order to suit the action to the words, and also to enforce the epithet which he meditated with an adjective applicable to the party, he recognised the speaker, made his military salaam, and altered his tone. 'Lord love your handsome face, Madam Nosebag, is it you? Why, if a poor fellow does happen to fire a slug of a morning, I am sure you were never the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Hop, "delicate—delicate!" the adjective being pronounced with a haunting repetition of its most melodious letter. Years of more or less familiarity with the English language had not been able to efface his racial penchant for the labial. One might naturally suppose that to compress ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... The adjective "mystical" is technically applied, most often. to states that are of brief duration. Of course such hours of rapture as the last two persons describe are mystical experiences, of which in a later lecture ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... written irksomely, will be Read in like manner. What did I say last In my late canto? Something, I believe Of gratitude. Now this same gratitude Is a fine word to play on. Many a niche It fills in letters, and in billet-doux,— Its adjective a graceful prefix makes To a well-written signature. It gleams A happy mirage in a sunny brain; But as a principle, is oft, I fear, Inoperative. Some satirist hath said That gratitude is only a keen sense Of future favors. ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... amused himself in picking up for a few pauls this or that picture, on seeing which an accomplished connoisseur, like Kirkup, would even hazard the name of Cimabue or Ghirlandaio, or if not that of Giotto, then the safer adjective Giottesque. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... daylight at the forge, and even in the summer his leisure minutes were few and far between. But he carried his Greek grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjective, or part of a verb, without being noticed by ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... Johnsonian period has assumed, in spite of the lexicographer's own dislike of that adjective, prodigious dimensions. After the critical labours of Malone, Murphy, Croker, J. B. Nichols, Macaulay, Carlyle, Rogers, Fitzgerald, Dr Hill and others, it may appear hazardous to venture upon such a well-ploughed field where the pitfalls ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... never seen a larger town than Santa Fe or a bigger body of water than the Pecos in flood. Some of them went by their own name; some had changed their names; and yet others possessed but half a name, colored by some adjective, like Cherokee Bill, Happy Jack of Arizona, Smoky Moore, the bronco-buster, so named because cowboys often call vicious horses "smoky" horses, and Rattlesnake Pete, who had lived among the Moquis and taken part in the snake-dances. Some were ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... I know, Aunt Hannah, everything you would say if you could. But please skip the hysterics. We've all had them, and Kate has already used every possible adjective that you could think up. Now it's just this." And he hurriedly gave Mrs. Stetson a full account of the case, and told her plainly what he hoped and expected that she would do ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... character, with a fine war record, usually bears the name of the buffalo or bear, lightning or some dread natural force. Another of more peaceful nature may be called Swift Bird or Blue Sky. A woman's name usually suggested something about the home, often with the adjective "pretty" or "good," and a feminine termination. Names of any dignity or importance must be conferred by the old men, and especially so if they have any spiritual significance; as Sacred Cloud, Mysterious Night, Spirit Woman, and the ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... over to Whitmonby and Dacier amid the ejaculations, and whispered: 'A lady's way of telling the story!—and excuseable to her:—she had to Jonah the adjective. What the poor fellow said was—' He murmured the sixty-pounder adjective, as in the belly of the whale, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Maxwell flushed and the others laughed. But, in actual fact, he was not far wrong in his curious choice of an adjective that morning. Dr. Christobal's dismal foreboding had been justified on the second day out. Leaden clouds, a sullen sea, and occasional puffs of a stinging breeze from the southwest, offered a sorry exchange for the sunny skies ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... disengaged hand, and looking at the boy's mother with a humorous suggestion of self-depreciation. Now, as formerly, he entertained the very friendliest sentiments towards all good women, yet maintained an expensively extensive acquaintance with women to whom that adjective is ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... gone by, we will not have many words to express the ideas embraced in mental science. In ancient times "pneuma" signified both mind and wind, or air. In later times it lost its physical currency, and no longer signifies, in its general currency, breath or air. The adjective, "pneumatikos," is never used in a physical sense. It came into ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... Institution, is out of place in the "Iron-Manufacturer's Guide." We must also enter an earnest protest against the importation, upon any terms, of such words as "ironoxydulcarbonate," "ironoxydhydrate," and the adjective "anhydrate." Some descriptions of considerable imaginative power have found place even in the directory of works. From the description of the Allentown furnaces we learn, with some surprise, that "no finer object of art invites the artist"; and again, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... The sun is shining, The sun is a body shining. But in these cases the words 'metal' and 'body' are unmistakable tautology, since 'metal' is implied in gold and 'body' in sun. But, as we have seen, any of these kinds of word, substantive, adjective, or participle, may occur syncategorematically in connection with others ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... of the Netherlands was a German, William of Nassau, prince of Orange.[Footnote: William (1533-1584), now commonly called "the Silent." There appears to be no contemporaneous justification of the adjective as applied to him, but the misnomer, once adopted by later writers, has insistently clung to him.] He had been governing the provinces of Holland and Zeeland when Alva arrived, but as he was already at the point ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... not easy to guess why Nash employed this Italian word instead of an English one. Lento means lazy, and though an adjective, it is used here substantively; the meaning, of course, is that the idle fellow who ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?" "Oh, against all rule, my lord, most ungrammatically! Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus—stopping as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... signification,—a literal and narrow meaning, and a general and rather undefined application. It signifies not only physical remedies and the art of using them, but second-sight, prophecy, and preternatural power. As an adjective, it embraces the idea of supernatural as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... exegeisthai]); Petersen, the latter. There is no doubt that [Greek: myesis] was opposed to [Greek: epopteia], and in this sense denoted incomplete initiation; but it was also made to include the whole process. The prevailing use of the adjective [Greek: mystikos] is of something seen "through a glass darkly," some knowledge purposely wrapped up ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... and the solid ground of history, the makers of the newer Buddhist doctrines in Nepal occupied themselves with developing the theory of Buddhahood and of the Buddhas;[16] for we must ever remember that Buddha[17] is not a proper name, but a common adjective meaning enlightened, from the root to know, perceive, etc. They made constant and marvellous additions to the primitive doctrine, giving it a momentum which gathered force as the centuries went on; and, as propaganda, it moved ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... brilliant Frenchman sent this sound advice to his pupil, Guy de Maupassant: "Whatever may be the thing which one wishes to say, there is but one word for expressing it, only one verb to animate it, only one adjective to qualify it. It is essential to search for this word, for this verb, for this adjective, until they are discovered, and to be satisfied with ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... perfectly, beautiful, wonderfully lovely?" cried Jessie, getting more excited with each adjective, and when the others laughed merrily at the extravagance of her description, she added, defiantly, "I don't care; it is! I'll leave ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... do you intend that adjective to apply?" inquired Elnora. "I never was less ashamed in all my life. Please remember I am in my own home, and your presence here is ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... understand why Mrs. Smith, with her absurd figure—for really I can apply no other adjective to it—should wear that most absurdly tight dress. Some one should tell her what a fright it makes of her. She is nothing but convexities. She looks exactly like an hour-glass, or a sodawater machine. At a little distance you can hardly tell whether she is ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... little of everything is best—ne quid nimis. Avoid all extremes. So it is with sugar. Mr. Reding, you are putting too much into your tea. I lay down this rule: sugar should not be a substantive ingredient in tea, but an adjective; that is, tea has a natural roughness; sugar is only intended to remove that roughness; it has a negative office; when it is more than this, it is too much. Well, Carlton, it is time for me to be seeing after my horse. I fear he has not had so pleasant an afternoon as I. I have ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... existing English name. The settler saw a fruit somewhat like a cherry. Though he knew well that it was not a cherry, he christened it the "native cherry." It may here be remarked that the prefix native is not a satisfactory distinguishing adjective. Native bear, native cherry, may teach the young Australian that the bear and the cherry so named are not as the bear of the Arctic Regions or the cherry of Europe. But in the British Museum the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... these last years that he should choose carefully and well? From among what class of man, of the society into which he had sunk, would he select one to give his daughter? He had written of "my old friend, Barry Craven." The name conveyed nothing—the adjective admitted of two interpretations. Which? Day and night she was haunted with visions of old men—recollections of faces seen when driving with her friends or visiting their homes; old men who had interested her, old men from whom she had instinctively shrunk. What type of man ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... and jolly about it. From his memory of high-school pleasures back in Catawba he suggested the nicest games: Going to Boston, and charades with stew-pans for helmets, and word-games in which you were an Adjective or a Quality. When he was most enthusiastic he discovered that they weren't paying attention; they were only tolerating him. As for the party, it was as fixed and standardized as a Union Club Hop. There was to be dancing ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... have received from England the testimony of one who has seen the original draught of that 'Fare thee well.' This original copy had evidently been subjected to the most careful and acute revision. Scarcely two lines that were not interlined, scarcely an adjective that was not exchanged for a better; showing that the noble lord was not so far overcome by grief as to have forgotten his reputation. (Found its way to the public prints through the ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... has been my observation that in the matter of oaths the Anglo-Saxon tongue is strangely lacking in variety and spice. There are a few stand-by oaths—three or four nouns, two or three adjectives, one double-jointed adjective—and these invariably are employed over and over again. The which was undeniably true in this particular instance. This man who swore so steadily merely repeated, times without number and presumably with reference to the Germans, the unprettiest and at ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... confounded, stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with a dreadful adjective appended to the fools, and an emphasis in his voice which showed he meant ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... simply accurate and humorous portraitures of local dialects and peculiarities, and thus afford little assistance in the search for a universally applicable rule of guidance. Doctor Holmes, I believe, objects to having the term "medicated" applied to his tales; but surely the adjective is not reproachful; it indicates one of the most charming and also, alas! inimitable features ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Oxford, such an every-day commodity as a dog can be obtained through the medium of "filthy lucre;" for there was a well-known dog-fancier and proprietor, whose surname was that of the rich substantive just mentioned, to which had been prefixed the "filthy" adjective, probably for the sake of euphony. As usual, Filthy Lucre was clumping with his lame leg up and down the pavement just in front of the Brazenface gate, accompanied by his last "new and extensive assortment" of terriers of every ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... it was only now, when the tide was just on the turn, that the limpets there got a sprinkling. Mr. Tryan was the first Evangelical clergyman who had risen above the Milby horizon: hitherto that obnoxious adjective had been unknown to the townspeople of any gentility; and there were even many Dissenters who considered 'evangelical' simply a sort of baptismal name to the magazine which circulated among the congregation of Salem ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... clean and homelike," said the girl quickly. At any other time he would have winced at the last adjective. It struck him now as exactly ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... less pronounced. No adjective has been more frequently applied to the Anglo-Saxon than the word "dull." The American mind has been accused of ignorance, superficiality, levity, commonplaceness, and dozens of other defects, but "dulness" is not one of them. "Smartness," rather, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... voice from the darkness, "what did that American-heiress- globe-trotter-girl say last season when she was tipped out of her 'rickshaw turning a corner? Some absurd adjective that made the man who picked ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... adjective for us that expresses the midnight caterwaul—"ghastful." Bartholomew probably suffered from those two minor curses of humanity—the amorous cat and the wandering cur. But he has preserved for us a noble eulogy of the dog, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... Here the view awes one into silence. Even the "Isn't it lovely?" and "oh, how wonderful!" types of people can scarcely say more than "Niagara!" Strange, too, it is that one seldom hears the word "scrumptious." Perhaps the people have chosen the adjective we heard a German use, who on being asked how he enjoyed the view ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... name takes two slightly different forms for the city and for the district. Thus we have Bourges and Berry, Angers and Anjou, Perigueux and Perigord, Le Mans and Maine.[26] So Constantia has become Coutances; but the adjective Constantinus has become Cotentin. City and district then bear the same Imperial name as that other Constantia on the Rhine with which Coutances is doomed to get so often confounded. How often has one seen Geoffrey of Mowbray described as "Bishop of Constance." In an ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... endeavoured to persuade the republican nationalists to give way; still less from any feeling that England's cause was their cause. When, at length, they became really earnest in pressing President Krueger to grant a "colourable" measure of franchise reform—to use Mr. Merriman's adjective—it was for their own sake, and not for England's, that they worked. This motive runs through the whole of their correspondence; but it emerges more frankly in the urgent messages sent during the three days (September 12th to 15th) in which the Transvaal reply to the British ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... certain; and the intermediate steps are very clear. From dies, comes diurnus. Diu is, by inaccurate ears, or inaccurate pronunciation, easily confounded with giu; then the Italians form a substantive of the ablative of an adjective, and thence giurno, or, as they make it, giorno; which is readily contracted into giour, or jour' He observed, that the Bohemian language was true Sclavonick. The Swede said, it had some similarity with the German. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... "Oboro" is an adjective meaning calm, and little glaring, and is specially attributed to the moon in spring. The line is ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... be napron (Fr. naperon), and adder should be nadder (A.-S. nddre). An amusing confusion has arisen in respect to the Ridings of Yorkshire, of which there are three. The word should be triding, but the t has got lost in the adjective, as West Triding became West Riding. The origin of the word has thus been quite lost sight of, and at the first organisation of the Province of Upper Canada, in 1798, the county of Lincoln was divided into four ridings and the county of York into two. York ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... that ideal of direct government. But what is this price which Mr. Lilly is railing at? "The price may be stated in eight words. 'The complete subordination of national to party interests.' The complete subordination. I use the adjective advisedly. Party interests are not only the first thought of politicians in England, but, too often, the last and only thought." All this is sheer nonsense. The coincidence of party aims with the real interests of the people which the British Parliament ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... was only one door, and it was locked. On the second there was also only one door, but when I turned the handle it opened. There came forth to meet me the chill musty air that is characteristic of a long unoccupied room. With it there came an indescribable odour. I use the adjective advisedly. Though very faint, diluted as it were, it was nevertheless an odour that made my gorge rise. I had never smelt anything like it before, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... brought out the beautiful lines of her figure, she turned her back upon the pawing, restless animal with as little concern as though she had delivered him to a correctly uniformed groom. No she was not pretty; she was—magnificent. The adjective forced itself upon him. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... The very adjective! Felix and I recognized its beautiful fitness at once. Yes, the Story Girl WAS fascinating and that was the final word to be said on ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... perhaps, find words to describe the glow and warmth and deep texture of a famous picture, and what you write will mean something to those who know the master's work; you may even conjure up an image before untutored eyes. But neither minute description nor well-turned phrase, neither sensuous adjective nor spiritual smile can tell half the truth ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... The expression to which Dio here refers is doubtless the adjective quinquefascalis, found in inscriptional Latin. All the editions from Xylander to Dindorf gave "six lictors", erroneously, as was pointed out by Mommsen (Romisches Staatsrecht, 12, p. 369, note 4). Boissevain is the first editor to make the correction. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... much as she did, although he would not have used the same adjective. There was something unusual about this girl. Why it was, he did not understand, but she seemed somehow to belong in a special way to the sweet old garden with its June roses. Maurice had fancies that would have astonished Katherine beyond measure if she could have ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... ha! that was from the late premier, I suppose. He merely forgot an adjective—it is cheap bread that the people are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... stairs, as we went down together. At the pawnbroker's shop, too, I began to be very well known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar relish in these ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... explaining the mystery of the Trinity, that he might both let them see his learning was not ordinary and withal satisfy some theological ears, he took a new way, to wit from the letters, syllables, and the word itself; then from the coherence of the nominative case and the verb, and the adjective and substantive: and while most of the audience wondered, and some of them muttered that of Horace, "What does all this trumpery drive at?" at last he brought the matter to this head, that he would demonstrate that the mystery ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... fence vexed the proud soul of Mrs. Pat. She was too good a sportswoman to school her horse over needless jumps when hounds were running, but it infuriated her to have to hustle with these outsiders for her place at a gap. So she complained to Major Booth, with a vehemence of adjective that, though it may be forgiven to her, need not be set ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... throughout the nation, Whigs and Democrats laughing alike; and when John Quincy Adams, in a speech shortly afterward, referred to the man who brought on this tempest of fun as "the late General Crary,'' there was a feeling that the adjective indicated a fact. It really was so; Crary, although a man of merit, never returned to Congress, but was thenceforth dropped from political life. More than twenty years afterward, as I was passing through Western Michigan, a friend pointed out to me his tombstone, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the adjective is made emphatic by being put before its noun; in 4, 14 the same effect is gained by putting ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... which there is usually no more infallible test. On our first Sunday we attended the Free Kirk in the morning, and the Established in the evening. The bonnets of the Free Kirk were so much the more elegant that we said to one another, "This is evidently the church of society, though the adjective 'Free' should by rights attract the masses." On the second Sunday we reversed the order of things, and found the Established bonnet much finer than the Free bonnets, which was a source of mystification to us, until we discovered that it was a question of morning or evening service, not ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Earth Colours: White Earth Colours: White Clay (China Clay): White Gypsum; Baryta: Magnesium Carbonate: Talc, Soapstone.—V., Organic Colours—1. Colours of Vegetable and Animal Origin: (a) Substantive (Direct Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Annatto; Turmeric: Safflower; (b) Adjective (Indirect Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Redwood; Cochineal; Weld: Persian Berries; Fustic Extract; Quercitron: Catechu (Cutch); Logwood Extract—2. Artificial Organic (Coal Tar) Colours: Acid Colours; Basic ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... round to her, startled and amused by the adjective. But the other two listeners took it quite quietly. It seemed to them apparently to express what ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Baroness admitted, "that in preparation of their briefs, they may light upon some other adjective." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... part, a series of incidents that is, we believe, the most ingenious yet planned by its author.... The adventure develops and grows, the tension increases with each page, to such an extent that the hackneyed adjective, 'breathless,' finds an appropriate place."—NEW YORK ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... and I must stop;" and then recollecting that he was writing to a "proper" person, making a postscript which says, "when I wrote d——d I only meant deuced." But one would as soon think of dropping out Shakspeare's adjective, and saying (as a very prim lady we once knew did in reading Lady Macbeth's soliloquy), "Out, spot!" as to drop out any of Lamb's qualifying words. He was sometimes accused of being irreverent, as in his article upon "Saying Graces," where he affirms that he is more disposed ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... as a ship out of soundings, Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings, Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle, Deaf to even the definite article— No verbal message was worth a pin, Though you hired an earwig to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... for the formidable adjective Susannah might have originated, and indeed expressed some idea of her own; but to confront a position described by her sister as "embarrassing" was quite beyond her powers, and she could only repeat feebly, "I'll give her half my money—I'll give her half my money. We can't drive her out ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... substance far more valuable than glass must have been meant." "Chumbatan," Prof. Wilson supposed to be the Pali equivalent to the Sanskrit chumbakam, "the kisser or attractor of steel;" the question he says is whether wajira is to be considered an adjective or part of a compound substantive, whether the phrase is a diamond-magnet pinnacle, or conductor, or a conductor or attractor of the thunderbolt. In the latter case it would intimate that the Singhalese had a notion of lightning ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... she hated going home. She hated 'that putrid boy'—a forbidden adjective; but what else could you call him? She was glad he would be gone the day after to-morrow. She was even more glad his nose was bleeding and his eye bunged up and his important blazer all bloodied. Girl though she was, there ran a fiercer strain in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... 'accosting?' 'Accost her, knight, accost!' in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakspearian in the phrase—'give a coasting welcome,' ('coasting' being taken as the epithet and adjective of 'welcome,') that had the following words been, 'ere they land,' instead of 'ere it comes,' I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome to a salute ere ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge |
