"Expletive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lead-colored head and neck, becoming nearly black on the breast; clear olive-green back, and yellow belly. From his habit of keeping near the ground, even hopping upon it occasionally, I know him to be a ground warbler; from his dark breast the ornithologist has added the expletive mourning, hence the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... with a doubtful reputation uttered an exceedingly hard and naughty expletive, and he did so with much emphasis. His face was very red, and his lips quivered ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... should have followed the word "Europe." As it at present stands, the sentence implies that France, miserable as she may be, has, however, not been involved in a warfare. The word "same" is absolutely expletive; and by appearing to refer the reader to some foregoing clause, it not only loads the sentence, but renders it obscure. The word "to" is absurdly used for the word "in." A thing may be unknown to practitioners, as humanity ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the effect of his fervid eloquence and his withering sarcasm. A man of iron heart, he was ever anxious to meet his antagonists, haughty in his rude self-confidence, and exhaustive in the use of every expletive of abuse permitted by parliamentary usage. In debate he resembled one of the old soldiers who fought on foot or on horseback, with heavy or light arms, a battle-axe or a spear. The champion of the North, he divided the South and thrashed and slashed as did old Horatius, when with his good ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... nice discrimination and a great deal of experience, as in any case where it does no good it is apt to do a great deal of harm, by weakening the patient and thus depriving him of that power which he so much needs in struggling against the enemy invading his system. Besides, the expletive method has found many antagonists of weight: Simon, Williams, Tweedie, Allison and others have shown the danger of a general and indiscriminate use of it. Williams,[7] in his comparison of the epidemics of scarlatina from 1763 to 1834, has come to ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... gray white under the tan. Don Diego crossed himself and muttered a prayer. Juan Gonzalvo uttered an expletive and half smothered it in a gasp as the face of Tahn-te caught the light for ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "I work hard enough for him, confound him!" somewhat irrelevantly, but with laudable and not unamiable vigor. He meant no harm to "Old Flynn;" he would have done a good-natured thing for him at any moment, the mild expletive was simply the result of adopted custom. "There is n't a fellow in the place who does as much as I do. I worked from seven in the morning till midnight every day last week, and I wrote half his editorials for him, and nobody knows he does n't get them ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... upset. I had always known her as a woman who was quite active on her pins, but I had never suspected her of being capable of the magnificent burst of speed which she now showed. Pausing merely to get a rich hunting-field expletive off her chest, she was out of the room and making for the stairs before I could swallow a sliver of—I think—banana. And feeling, as I had felt when I got that telegram of hers about Angela and Tuppy, that my place was by her side, I put down my plate and hastened after her, Seppings ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... few lines when he exclaimed, with a strong expletive, "Boys, I would give a month's pay if we ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... rage of poor Mr. Schulemberg at finding that he was sold, though the goods were not! I decline reporting the conversation any farther, lest its strength of expression and force of expletive might be too much for the more queasy of my readers. Suffice it to say, that the swindlee, if I may be allowed the royalty of coining a word, at once freed his own mind and imprisoned the body of M. M. ——; for in those days ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... had endured "terrapin-buzzards," hurled at the group by my woman child, perceiving need of relief for her pent-up passion. I had, moreover, for the same reason, permitted my namesake to roll under his tongue the formidable and satisfying expletive, "John B. Gough!" But I felt that the line must be drawn at Gamboge. Terrapin-buzzards was bad enough, though it was true that this might be used innocently, as in a moment of mild dismay, or as an exclamation of mere astonishment without sinister import. But Gamboge!—and ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... his finger-tips and in every gesture. It was almost impossible at times to credit the fact that a Parisian was speaking, for the English of Gaston Max was flawless except that he spoke with a faint American accent. Then, suddenly, a gesture, an expletive, would betray the Frenchman. ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... exclaimed the Kaiser, using his usual expletive. "She's flying the White Ensign and an admiral's pennant, and, yes, a ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... another futile attempt to escape, and cursed his captors with gifts of expletive ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... preacher, a priest of the English Church, a Christian minister. He was, indeed, a liberal priest, sometimes even too free and easy. He brings in the sacred name perhaps more often than any other writer, and he does so not always in a devout way. He seemed at last to use the word "God" as if it were an expletive or mere intensive like a Greek ge [gamma epsilon], meaning "very much" or "very good," as where he so oddly calls the North-East wind "the wind of God." And he betrays a most unclerical interest ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... think me an idle dog; but where's the good of doing anything? I only know if I was not—not condemned to—to this—this life,' (had it not been for a sort of involuntary respect to the gentle compassion of the softened hazel eyes regarding him so kindly, he would have used the violent expletive that trembled on his lip;) 'if I was not chained down here, Master Philip should not stand alone as the paragon of the family. I've as ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... title, were not permitted within hearing distance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout the camp a popular form of expletive, known as "D—n the luck!" and "Curse the luck!" was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by "Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor from her Majesty's Australian ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... said he, after a searching examination. And he indulged in a true Virginian expletive. "Gentlemen, hush!" he murmured gently, looking at me with his grave eyes; "one time I got pretty near scared. You, Buck," he continued, "some folks would beat you now till yu'd be uncertain whether yu' was a hawss or ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... 'yellow'—a glass of agwa with yellow." Branch's voice shook. "I'm dying of a fever, and this ivory-billed toucan brings me a quart of poison. Bullets!" It was impossible to describe the suggestion of profanity with which the speaker colored this innocuous expletive. "Weak as I am, I shall gnaw his windpipe." He bared his teeth suggestively and raised two talon- ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... in lede, which so often occurs in Sir Tristram, may also have arisen from the Anglo-Saxon form of the word Latin. Sir W. Scott, in his Glossary, explains it: "Lede, in lede. In language, an expletive, synonymous to I tell you." The following are a few of the passages ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... the vowels in this line, the expletive do in the next, and the ten monosyllables in that which follows, give such a beauty to this passage as would have been very much ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... have aroused in Sukey's breast high impulses and pure motives; but it brought from her red lips, amid their nest of dimples, the contemptuous expletive "Fool," and I am not sure that she was entirely wrong. A due respect for the attractiveness and willingness of her sisters is wise in a woman. Rita's lack of wisdom may be excused because of the fact that her trust in Sukey was really a part ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... appearance, his blustering demeanour, his vulgarity, his arrogance, his sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want of common decency and common humanity, are marked in strong lines. His traditional peculiarities of expression complete the reality of the picture. The authoritative expletive, 'Ha!' with which ne intimates his indignation or surprise, has an effect like the first startling sound that breaks from a thunder- cloud. He is of all the monarchs in our history the most disgusting: for ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... uttered a rapid expletive, and reproached her with not having been to see him. She hesitated a moment; then she simpered the least bit and bridled. "He comes to see me—without reproach! But it would not be the same for me to go to him, though, indeed, you ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... the same opinion in rather stronger terms; Mr. Simpson, after having let a variety of expletive adjectives loose upon society without any substantive to accompany them, tucked up his sleeves, and began to wash ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... various noble qualities with personal gifts. But she was cold, although a coquette. In the Duchess of Devonshire it was the besoin d'aimer, the cordial nature recoiled into itself from being linked to an expletive, that betrayed her into an encouragement of what offered her the semblance of affection—into the temptation of being beloved. To the Duchess of Gordon her conquests were enhanced by the remembrance of what they might bring; but the Duchess of Rutland viewed her admirers in the ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... expletive, more than was his wont. It was no longer a matter of tracking the white steed. Indians were near. Caution had become necessary, and neither the company nor counsel of the humblest was to be scorned. We might soon stand in need of the strength, even ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... never could think of this hope without smiling to himself. He had at last obtained the explanation of Madge's effort and success. By the superb result he measured the strength of the love which had led to it. "Great Scott!"—his favorite expletive—he had thought; "what a compass there is in her nature! I had long suspected her secret, but when I touched upon it last night she made my blood tingle by her magnificent resentment. I would sooner have trifled with an enraged empress. Look at her now, smiling, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... turn, the theologians hurl reciprocal excommunications, the scientists of to-day laugh at those of last year. If Pilate meant it this way, we owe him some sympathy and respect. "Speak the truth and shame the devil," they say. Bah! [I think this expletive ought to be spelt Baa.] When you know what the truth is, you are more likely to shame your friends, and become obnoxious and ridiculous. And in most cases you don't know, and if you suppose you do, you are mistaken. I have thought out a way of approximating Truth on a large ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... distinction, as foo has many significations beside that of father, they add the syllable chin, implying kindred; thus, a Chinese in speaking of his parents invariably says foo-chin for father, and moo-chin for mother; but, in writing, the character of chin would be considered as an unnecessary expletive, that of foo being very differently made from any other called by ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... wife—a promise we cannot transcribe literally, because of the free employment of a popular adjective (supposed to be a corruption of "by Our Lady") before or after any part of speech whatever, as an expletive to drive home meaning to reluctant minds. It is an expression unwelcome on the drawing-room table. But, briefly, what Mr. Salter had so sworn to do was to twist his wife's nose off with his finger and thumb. And he did not seem unlikely to carry out his threat, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Palace. There was my Lord Berkeley, the king's especial crony, who possessed all his royal master's vices without any of his Majesty's meagre virtues. He imitated the king in dress, manner, cut of beard, and even in the use of Charles's favorite oath, "Odds fish!" an expletive too inane even to be wicked, being a distortion of the words "God's flesh." There was young Crofts, the king's acknowledged son, Duke of Monmouth by grace of his mother's frailties. He was a living example of the doctrine of total depravity ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... he turned with a start of astonishment, and went into a fit of laughing, re-echoed by all the young ones, who were especially tickled by hearing, from another, the abbreviation that had, hitherto, only lived in the favourite expletive, "As sure as my ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Bridge: is Bishop's Bridge.—85. Sword of Cordova, in Guild Hall, is a mistake for the sword of the Spanish General Don Xavier Winthuysen.—90. Vone banished priest: Rev. Thomas d'Eterville. The MS. gives the following inedited account of D'Eterville. I omit the oft-recurring expletive sacre (accursed):— ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... face of Sir Isaac, bearing an expression in which anger and horror were extraordinarily intermingled. If it was Sir Isaac he dodged back with amazing dexterity; if it was a phantom of the living it vanished with an air of doing that. Without came the sound of a flower-pot upset and a faint expletive. Mr. Brumley looked very quickly at Lady Beach-Mandarin, who was entirely unconscious of anything but her own uncoiling and enveloping eloquence, and as quickly at Miss Sharsper. But Miss Sharsper was examining a blackish bureau through ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... a vigorous expletive, and growled, "One thing Mr. Gregory has done for me, he's opened the flood-gates that have been so long dammed—yes, I ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the article on sale, as: "O oranges, to the right!" or "O eggs, out of the way!" This, which sounds so odd, is meant in good faith, and answers the desired purpose. No one calls out in Arabic, addressing another, without prefixing some expletive. Thus the dealer of sweetmeats drawls out: "In the name of the Prophet, comfits." Even the beggar says: "O Christian, backsheesh!" as he leans upon a crutch and extends his trembling hand. If you respond, all is well; if not, your ears will be assailed by a jumble of Arabic, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... for sake of Hetty's young ears could the old Squire mention the British rascals without his favorite expletive. Here, also, came in another lesson which sank deep into Hetty's heart. It was for his country that her grandfather had lost that leg, and would have gladly lost forty, if he had had so many to lose, not for himself; for something which he loved better than himself: this ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... learn right. From the first go off." He was silent for a few seconds, and then he broke out in a kind of ecstasy. "My Gawd, 'e'll be a bowler such as 'as never been, never in this world. He'll start where I left orf. He'll ..." Words failed him, he fell back on the expletive he had used, repeating it with ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... about her he might have formed a larger estimate of her staying-power. But he did not yet know what she was. That bad word that he had once let out through the window had been in Ranny's simple mind a mere figure of speech, a flowering expletive, flung to the dark, devoid of meaning and of fitness. He did not know what Violet's impulses and her instincts really were. He did not know that what he called her flabbiness was the inertia in which they stored their strength, nor that in them there remained a vigilant and indestructible ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... and the sound would make everybody look up to "see where the —— that came from." The discovery of the culprit would bring out a chorus from the working parties: "Give him a popgun, give him a popgun!" "Popgun" was preceded by the usual Australian expletive. ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... searching expletive by way of concluding the sentence fittingly. After which he slipped back and slammed the door, leaving Fenn waiting outside like the Peri at ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... which the peculiar physical deficiency of Dammit's mother had entailed upon her son. He was detestably poor, and this was the reason, no doubt, that his expletive expressions about betting, seldom took a pecuniary turn. I will not be bound to say that I ever heard him make use of such a figure of speech as "I'll bet you a dollar." It was usually "I'll bet you what you please," or "I'll bet you what you dare," or "I'll bet you a trifle," ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with an unmistakable British accent in the French expletive, "but I'll play no more.... The bank is broken ... and I have lost too much money. Mr. Segrave there has nearly cleaned me out and still I cannot ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... this absolutely quelled her. It was not now that she was afraid of him,—not at this moment, but that she was knocked down as though by a blow. She had been altogether so unused to such language that she could not get on with her matter in hand, letting the bad word pass by her as an unmeaning expletive. She wearily poured out the cup of tea and sat herself down silent. The man was too strong for her, and would be so always. She told herself at this moment that language such as that must always absolutely silence her. Then, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... liked, he would pay for them and welcome; but Ellen would have to stay where she was. He had promised Miss Alice; and he wouldn't break his word "for kings, lords, and commons." A most extraordinary expletive for a good Republican—which Mr. Van Brunt had probably inherited from his father and grandfather. What can waves do against a rock? The whilome Miss Fortune disdained a struggle which must end in her own confusion, and wisely kept her chagrin to herself, never even approaching the subject ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... his aversions for her. She had once used an expletive in his presence that had sickened him, and, noting its effect, she had not reiterated. The unfastidious brunette roots to her light hair. That sink with the grease-rimmed old beer! But then: her eyes where the brows slid down to make them heavy-lidded. That bit of blue vein in the crotch of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... sworn; and we have known worse; but with none of them had the word any meaning, nor has it any, ever, except in the pulpit; where it is a pity (as many an excellent clergyman has thought) that it is heard at all. Treat it lightly elsewhere, as an expletive and a mere way of speaking, and it will come to nothing as it deserves, and follow the obsolete "plagues" and "murrains" of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... his favorite, almost his only, expletive, but his thunder was only a single boom without reverberations. His four auditors understood him perfectly, however. Fosdick was always "starting" something. He had even attempted to organize a new cemetery association, which, as Greenlawn was commodious, and as ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... alien to the brimstone of the Lord, he became quite used to strong language on the part of other men, even in the most genial conversation. Carthey, a little Texan who went to work for him for a while, opened or closed every second sentence, on an average, with the mild expletive, "By damn!" It was also his invariable way of expressing surprise, disappointment, consternation, or all the rest of the tribe of sudden emotions. By pitch and stress and intonation, the protean oath was made ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... as much an Expletive as O, and can either of these Couplets deserve to be plac'd in the Front of the Iliad? I could wish Mr. Pope would return these two Lines once more to the Anvil, and dismiss all Expletives here at ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... want then is a couple of field pieces; zounds, sir!'—(the major has found this expletive in Lever's novels, and adopted it as particularly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... became while in action a stern, silent, intent person, his whole being centred on the game. With the exception of a casual remark of a technical nature when he met George on the various tees, and an occasional expletive when things went wrong with his ball, he eschewed conversation. It was not till the end of the round that ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... gives me a good view. Lead-colored head and neck, becoming nearly black on the breast; clear olive-green back, and yellow belly. From his habit of keeping near the ground, even hopping upon it occasionally, I know him to be a Ground-Warbler; from his dark breast the ornithologist has added the expletive Mourning, hence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... qui s'en prendre, 'on whom to lay the blame.' Note the expletive use of en and cf.— en vouloir qn., 'to have a grudge against some one.' en venir aux mains, 'to come to blows.' il en est de mme de . ., 'it is the ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... examples may be merely an expletive, having arisen out of the general use of the dative ethicus, but the context does not satisfy me that it has the force of a dative. Dr. Guest (Proceedings of Philolog. Soc., vol. i. p.151-153, ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... remarkable pathos, nor are fine passages by any means to seek in the greater length and less poetical subject of The Civil Wars of York and Lancaster. The fault of this is that the too conscientious historian is constantly versifying what must be called mere expletive matter. This must always make any one who speaks with critical impartiality admit that much of Daniel is hard reading; but the soft places (to use the adjective in no ill sense) are frequent enough, and when the reader ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... enormity; cards and dice were prohibited; and stronger expletive than the elegant ones invented for the special use of the King of Navarre was expiated either by the purse or the skin; Marot's psalmody was the only music, black or sad colour the only wear; and, a few years later, the wife of ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the horse in;—that's all." Then Tifto found it best to say a few words to Captain Green. But the Captain also said a few words to himself. "D—— young fool; he don't know what he's dropping into." Which assertion, if you lay aside the unnecessary expletive, was true to the letter. Lord Silverbridge was a young fool, and did not at all know into what a mess he was being dropped by the united experience, perspicuity, and energy of the man whose company on the Heath he ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... destruction," I answered in an expletive often used by my father in times of a catastrophe, and with those words I showed to my Buzz ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... these faults, the swearer will be forced to confess that his oaths are no more than waste and insignificant words, deprecating being taken for serious, or to be understood that he meaneth anything by them, but only that he useth them as expletive phrases, [Greek], to plump his speech, and fill up sentences. But such pleas do no more than suggest other faults of swearing, and good arguments against it; its impertinence, its abuse of speech, its disgracing the practiser ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... fish. By Jove!" (he had caught his father's expletive) "that blockhead has put the tent on the wrong side of the lake, after all. Holla, you, sir!" and the unhappy gardener looked up from his flower-beds; "what ails you? I have a great mind to tell my father of you—you grow stupider every day. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his place on the bench was taken almost immediately by a young man, fairly well dressed but scarcely more cheerful of mien than his predecessor. As if to emphasise the fact that the world went badly with him the new-corner unburdened himself of an angry and very audible expletive as he flung himself ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... reply was a coarse and violent expletive, and a blow with a thick heavy stick, aimed right at Sir Philip's head. The magistrate put up his arm, which received the blow, and was nearly fractured by it; but at the same moment, the younger traveller spurred forward his horse upon ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... is reported to have said, "I have over a dozen sons, and not one is worth a damn." I fear me that every father with sons grown to manhood has at some time voiced the same sentiment, curtailed, possibly, only as to numbers, and softened by another expletive, which does not mitigate the anguish of his cry, as he sees the dreams he had for his baby boys fade away into a ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... syllables generally contain nearly the same number of syllables as two Latin or Greek hexameters, but are in most instances capable of conveying more ideas, especially in translating from Greek which abounds so much in what seem to us expletive particles. The caesura, or pause is not invariably fixed on the same syllable of the verse, as in French; in the choice and variety of its position, consists the chief art of appropriate harmony. Accentuation of syllables, which seems, to answer the idea ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... The expletive there is not expressed, but the verb will precede the subject, as ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... bad shots and had no occasion for an extended vocabulary, was entirely convincing. One hears that the ladies have coined new words for the expression of their disgust at the results of their strokes, and, on the other hand, that the limits of expletive which they permit themselves when bunkered consist of the chiding utterance, "Oh, you naughty, naughty little ball!" However this may be, I know not, and I would only remark, without presumption, to the ladies, as I have done in another ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... be—" Dicky uttered his favorite expletive. "It takes one woman to dissect another. She looked like the readiest kind of ready money to me. Why, say, if what you say is true, she ought to be glad to earn the money I could pay her for posing. I could get her lots of ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... bolt upright, silent, sad, and solemn. One of the wig-making villains lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and finished by plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I expelled the nasty stuff with a strong English expletive and said, "Foreigner, beware!" Then this outlaw strapped his razor on his boot, hovered over me ominously for six fearful seconds, and then swooped down upon me like the genius of destruction. The first rake of his razor loosened the very hide from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... moment the hands are piped down, the second article of war, which forbids all swearing, etc, in derogation of God's honour is immediately disregarded. We are not strait-laced,—we care little about an oath as a mere expletive; we refer now to swearing at others, to insulting their feelings grossly by coarse and intemperate language. We would never interfere with a man for d—-g his own eyes, but we deny the right of his d—-g those ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... legitimately belonged to the text, restored in the foregoing translation by conjecture. Probably the lost sentence, like the intrusive one, ended with the word trocuire, "mercy," which, indeed, may have suggested the interpolation; this might easily have caused the scribe's eye to wander. An habitual expletive is also attributed to St. Patrick (modebroth, apparently "My ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... landscape o'er," the earnest and musical—if melancholy—exchange of salutations, the almost imperceptible drawing nearer, with the slightly waving tail the only sign of excitement, and at last the instantaneous dash, the slap or scratch (so rapid one can never tell which), the fiery expletive and retort, and the instant retreat, to sit down again. There seems to be some canon of feline etiquette which forbids two to meet and pass without solemn formalities of this sort, reminding one of the ceremonious greetings of the Orient, where time ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... that the room was empty, then suddenly I heard another violent expletive and became aware of a man sitting close beside the iron stove. He turned to stare at us as we entered, but to my surprise it was not Theodore's ugly face which confronted us. The man sitting there alone in the room where I had expected to see Theodore and Carissimo had ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who the unwitting offender was, and asked, "What are they doin' to ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... good trying to get anything out of him. Better split with him at once," said the guest who had used the expletive. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... permitted himself the consolation of doubtful language, he would probably have exclaimed with earnestness, "Confound Miss Willy!" but he came of a stock which condemned an oath, or even an expletive, on its face value, so this natural outlet for his irritation was denied him. Instead, therefore, of replying in words, he merely glanced sourly at the half-open door, through which issued the whirring noise of the little dressmaker at her sewing. Now and then, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... of versification has some abatements. He uses the expletive do very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost, universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and finding the ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... generous spirit not wholly quenched in him, had entered upon a glowing little speech in praise of the old gentleman and of his profession,—a speech which, if it were garnished with here and there an objectionable expletive, was very earnest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... blackguardism, and the use as common names of that of Our Lord and of Salvador, or Saviour, always strikes a disagreeable note. There is in Madrid a "Calle Jesus," and the sacred name, used as a common expletive, is heard on all sides. One of the most charming of Yradier's Andalusian songs, addressed by a contrabandista ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... course' puzzled Monica for a moment, but she remembered that it was an unmeaning expletive much used by people of Miss Eade's education. However, the story did not win her credence; by this time her disagreeable surmises ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing |
