"Idiom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dismay to our mind. Those understanding the Indian tongue have frequently assured me that the Indian, when interpreting, reproduces with minuteness, if he be granted, of course, a certain latitude for differences of idiom, the speaker's thought and expressions. It is said by one of his own writers that the Indian is much more prone to follow the evil than the moral practices of the white; and there can be no doubt, I think, that, if habitually thrown ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... every stage of each of five and twenty subjects into which desirable science was divided, and copies and models and instructions that should give precisely the method and gestures esteemed as proficiency in art. Every section of each book was written in the idiom found to be most satisfactory to the examiners, and test questions extracted from papers set in former years were appended to every chapter. By means of these last the teacher was able to train his class to the very highest level of grant-earning efficiency, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Alexander Gill, he is now remembered only as the schoolmaster of a great poet, and that he did his duty well may be inferred from Dante's speaking of him gratefully as one who by times "taught him how man eternizes himself." This, and what Villani says of his refining the Tuscan idiom (for so we understand his farli scorti in bene parlare),[12] are to be noted as of probable influence on the career of his pupil. Of the order of Dante's studies nothing can be certainly affirmed. His biographers send him to Bologna, Padua, Paris, Naples, and even Oxford. All ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... interrogations as to the cause of the enmity made them, they said, suspect that, knowing he had reached the end of Ashtaroth's classical knowledge, he felt it useless to try to continue the dialogue in the Ciceronian idiom. Moreover, it was well known that only a few days before all Urbain's worst enemies had met in conclave in the village of Puidardane; and besides, how stupidly Mignon had shown his hand by mentioning Gaufredi, the priest who had been executed at Aix: lastly, why had not a desire for impartiality ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... much, except that boys everywhere are pretty similar, especially in the badness of their manners. I also learnt that shrugging the shoulders while exhibiting the palms of the hands, and smiting oneself vehemently on the chest, are indispensable elements of the French idiom. The indiscriminate use of the word 'parfaitement' I also noticed to be essential when at a loss for either language or ideas, and have made valuable use of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Dolph, with an idiom which he had learned when he was presented at the court of Louis the Sixteenth, "has surely not driven down from New Rochelle this morning? That ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... idiom is assuredly proper in a maritime people, especially as many of the phrases are at once graphic, terse, and perspicuous. How could the whereabouts of an aching tooth be better pointed out to an operative dentist than ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... dear, there was no need to be so literal," returned Mrs. Challoner, reprovingly; for she was a gentlewoman of the old school, and nothing grieved her more than slipshod English or any idiom or idiotcy of modern parlance in the mouths of her bright young daughters: to speak of any young man except Dick without the ceremonious prefix was a heinous misdemeanor in her eyes. Dulce would occasionally trespass, and was always rebuked ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... servants; while they, on the other hand, had lowered themselves to the mute, submissive regularity of the beast —went and came daily in the same occupations with the infallible accuracy of mechanism. But, as they said in their idiom, they had eaten their white bread first. Mademoiselle Cormon, like all persons nervously agitated by a fixed idea, became hard to please, and nagging, less by nature than from the need of employing her activity. Having no husband or ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... a perfect knowledge of this dialect. Though familiarly used in ancient times, it did not exist in any written form. It was the speech of the common people; and though the Gascons spoke the idiom, it had lost much of its originality. It had become mixed, more or less, with the ordinary French language, and the old Gascon words were ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... the name of each of her companions to the other. She strolled alone with one of them on each side of her; Mr. Giovanelli, who spoke English very cleverly—Winterbourne afterward learned that he had practiced the idiom upon a great many American heiresses—addressed her a great deal of very polite nonsense; he was extremely urbane, and the young American, who said nothing, reflected upon that profundity of Italian cleverness which enables people to appear more gracious in proportion as they are more acutely ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... the Rue du Rhone and on the quays, loitering in front of the jewellers' windows. They might have had a cavalier in the person of old M. Pigeonneau, who possessed a high appreciation of their charms, but who, owing to the absence of a common idiom, was deprived of the pleasures of intimacy. He knew no English, and Mrs. Ruck and her daughter had, as it seemed, an incurable mistrust of the beautiful tongue which, as the old man endeavoured to impress upon them, was pre-eminently ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... natives of an archipelago of the Pacific, it might be that he could speak English or one or two words of the European languages which Godfrey understood. But it was soon apparent that the unhappy man only used an idiom that was absolutely incomprehensible—probably the language of the aborigines among whom he had doubtless arrived when very young. In fact, Godfrey had immediately interrogated him in English, and had obtained no reply. He then made him understand by signs, not without difficulty, that ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... know how many drops more I shall drink. We get so fierce and reckless about our victuals. Will it be the spirit of the old counterfeiters who used to inhabit this island entering into us?" suggested Eva, using the English-Canadian idiom of the western provinces. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... students come from small inland towns, far from any music center, and have a wrong attitude of mind. They crave the glamor of footlights, flowers and applause, not realizing that music is a speech, an idiom, which they must master in order to interpret the works ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... that three and a quarter centuries have passed since it was written, and that she who wrote it was but eighteen years old at the time. I translate it into English, though it is impossible adequately to carry over either the flavour or the idiom of the language: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... reverence, and an aged mariner was procured from the Sailor's Snug Harbor in San Francisco, on trial. But the unfortunate seaman was more or less diseased, was not always presentable, through a weakness for ardent spirits, and finally, to use the powerful idiom of one of his disappointed foster-children, "up and died in a week, without slinging ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... conceptions. He had the hard features and athletic form said to be peculiar to his country, together with the national intonation and slow pedantic mode of expression, arising from a desire to avoid peculiarities of idiom or dialect. I could also observe the caution and shrewdness of his country in many of the observations which he made, and the answers which he returned. But I was not prepared for the air of easy self-possession and ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he has been the means of attracting others to the study of that interesting tongue, his own command of it was of the slightest. He never mastered 'deep' (or inflected) Romani, and even his broken gypsy is a curious Borrovian variety, distinct from the idiom of the tents. No gypsy ever uses chal or engro as a separate word, or talks of the dukkering dook or of penning a dukkerin. His genders are perversely incorrect, as in the title of the present book; and his 'Romano Lavo-Lil: Word Book ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... dialect is a very difficult one to deal with, as it presents us with no uniform type; and, moreover, works written in this idiom are marked by Northern or Southern peculiarities, which have led many of our editors altogether astray in determining the locality ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... of Gilbert and Dore, whose fecundity in their art was equal, and I ventured to assert the great artistic superiority of Gilbert. "You are right!" cried my enthusiastic friend, with more judgment of art than accuracy of English idiom; "Gilbert cocks Dore ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... oddities. In his 'Hydriotaphia' and, indeed, almost all his works the entireness of his mental action is very observable; he metamorphoses every thing, be it what it may, into the subject under consideration. But Sir Thomas Brown with all his faults had a genuine idiom; and it is the existence of an individual idiom in each, that makes the principal writers before the Restoration the great patterns or integers of English style. In them the precise intended meaning of a word can never be mistaken; ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... tiresome and difficult a Piece of Work it is to translate, nor how little valued in the World. My Experience has convinced me, that 'tis more troublesome and teazing than to write and invent at once. The Idiom of the Language out of which one translates, runs so in the Head, that 'tis next to impossible not to fall frequently into it. And the more bald and incorrect the Stile of the Original is, the more shall that of the ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... the "Hairy Ones" were the object of universal detestation: John Psicharis, the well known Greek Professor in Paris, the author of many works and of the first complete Grammar of the people's idiom; Alexandros Pallis, the translator of the Iliad and of the New Testament; and Kostes Palamas, secretary of the University of Athens, the poet of this "anti-nationalistic" faction. Against them the bitterest invectives were cast. The University students and, with them, masses of people ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... very little whether that form is the one in which Cervantes originally shaped his ideas. On the other hand, it is clear that there are many who desire to have not merely the story he tells, but the story as he tells it, so far at least as differences of idiom and circumstances permit, and who will give a preference to the conscientious translator, even though he may have ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... were blended and formed the ancient speech of the Netherlands, which in the Middle Ages, like the other European languages, passed through the different Germanic, Norman, and French phases, and ended in the present Dutch language, in which there is still a foundation of the primitive idiom and the evidence of a slight Latin influence. Certainly, there is a striking similarity between Dutch and German, and, above all, there are a number of root-words common to the two; but there is, however, a great difference in the grammar, that of the Dutch being much simpler in ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... seven times fifty tales, and I believe the doctor could easily pass this test. It is not easy to make a good translation from Irish to English, for they tell us there are no two Aryan languages more opposed to each other in spirit and idiom. We have heard little of the marvellous old tongue until now, but we are reading it a bit under the tutelage of these two inspiring masters, and I fancy it has helped me as much in my understanding of Ireland as my tedious and perplexing worriments ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bearings of this or that epoch; he had a firm, warm confidence in the future implied and adumbrated by this past; he had a feeling for the ceremonial in all eminent occasions. He had, too, a knack at archaic costume and knack enough at the idiom in which his contemporaries believed their forebears had expressed themselves. And he had, besides all these qualities needed to make his records heroic, the quality of moral earnestness which imparted to them the look of moral significance. Richard Carvel by the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... "but I do not know you. Where are you thinking of?" [A native idiom. It means "Where ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... nor the bond created by unity of language like Germany. Other European countries, it is true, like Holland or Poland, did not constitute strong geographical units and lacked definite boundaries but their people talked at least the same idiom and belonged, as far as the word may be used in a broad sense, to the same race. Others, like Switzerland, were divided between various languages, but possessed geographical unity. Belgium could not claim any of these distinctive features. Her boundaries ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... his attendants, "This lady is happy only as she has a number of Nestorian girls around her, eating care[1] for them, teaching and doing them good." So, when our ways please the Lord, he maketh even our enemies to be at peace with us. [Footnote: This is the Nestorian idiom. We say, "taking care ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... or impaired the beauty of those memorials that have survived the extinction of the Grecian states, and the glory of the eternal city; and such is the luminous correspondence of Language, that by transfusion into our vernacular idiom, we may receive a satisfactory measure of the original inspiration. Let it be kept in view, that Ideas, the frail associates of a perception, possess no permanence, are incapable of being transferred, and must fade away when our existence ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... her to decide quite calmly that it was impossible to scramble to her feet in time, so she had better draw her legs up and trust to the wheels missing her. Then suddenly the wheels stopped, and some one who had seized the horses' heads addressed the waggoner with the English idiom that is perhaps most ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... diction is pure when he uses such words only as belong to the idiom of the language. The only standard of purity is the practice of the best writers and speakers. A violation of ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... langsong, lanjar or lanchar, and lalu, to proceed, go, direct one's course. Their signification in a sentence is not easily translateable in English, but it is perhaps best rendered by the English idiom, to go and do a thing. Sometimes the effect is that of the adverbs "immediately," "at last," "incontinently," "forthwith," "altogether." Langsong is generally used in Penang, but in Perak the Malays generally use lanjar in ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... "duty," "right," "wrong," "pity," "hope," and other irrational and emotional conceptions, which have no existence, and the fiction of which has no object except to control feminine exuberances; but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary and I may also say, idiom. "Love" them becomes "the anticipation of benefits"; "duty" becomes "necessity" or "fitness"; and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover, among Women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... all thought of flight and escape. It was too late; in the brisk idiom of his mother-tongue, he was "caught with the goods on." "May as well face the music," he counseled himself, in resignation. From what he had seen and surmised of Mrs. Hallam, he shrewdly suspected that the tune would prove an exceedingly lively one; she seemed a woman of imagination, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... among the nations. The word found in this passage is evidently the same. And in the New Testament this phrase, originally Hebrew, is very much in vogue, especially in Paul's writings, who uses the Hebrew idiom more than ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... help thee home, and tell thee what I mean, by the way," said Penn, using the idiom of his sect, into which familiar manner of speech he naturally fell when ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... important, more subtle, more beautiful than the theme; but still the theme is there, a precise and definite dogma for fancy to embroider. It is only in Hellas that Shelley's power of narrative (in Hassan's story), his irrepressible lyrical gift, and his passion which at length could speak in its own idiom, combine to make a masterpiece which owes to Godwin only some general ideas. If the transcript became less literal, it was not that the influence had waned. It was rather that Shelley was gaining the full mastery of ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the People curses'; the subject of [Greek: en] being Aeschines. But there is the difficulty that, with this subject for [Greek: en, on etuchen] can only represent [Greek: touton on etuchen on], whereas the sense required is [Greek: touton oi etuchon], or (the regular idiom) [Greek: ton tuchunton]; and the sense is not so good, for the context [Greek: opse gar]) shows that the clause ought to refer to the acts of Aeschines about which he is going to speak, not to his parentage, which the ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... the opening of a National Theatre had been made at Christiania by the Swede, J. P. Stroemberg, in 1827; this was not successful, and his theatre was burned down in 1835. In it some effort had been made to use the Norwegian idiom and to train native actors, but it had been to no avail. The play-going public liked their plays to be Danish, and even nationalists of a pronounced species could not deny that dramas, like the great historical tragedies ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... he been disposed to mysticize and to shroud himself in "impenetrable darkness," he would have found it difficult to indulge that propensity in French. Thanks to the strict rgime and happy limitations of that idiom, the French is not a language in which philosophy can hide itself. It is a tight-fitting coat, which shows the exact form, or want of form, of the thought it clothes, without pad or fold to simulate fulness or to veil defects. It was a Frenchman, we are aware, who discovered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... which requires the shortest process of thought for its comprehension. But though conformity in particular points has been exemplified, no cases of complete conformity have yet been quoted. It is indeed difficult to find them; for the English idiom does not commonly permit the order which theory dictates. A few, however, occur in Ossian. Here is one:—"As autumn's dark storms pour from two echoing hills, so towards each other approached the heroes. As two dark streams from high rocks meet and mix, and roar on the ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through the gamut of opinion, went forward chiefly in German, which the foreigners of the party spoke with various accents, but glibly enough; only now and then did one of them spring over to his mother-tongue, to fetch a racy idiom or ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... day Aratov was in very low spirits. 'What is it, Yasha?' Platonida Ivanovna said to him: 'you seem somehow all loose ends to-day!'... In her own peculiar idiom the old lady's expression described fairly accurately Aratov's mental condition. He could not work and he did not know himself what he wanted. At one time he was eagerly on the watch for Kupfer, again he suspected ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... time possible. He is for ever correcting the same mistakes and rebuking the same stupidity, and the wonder is, not that he loses his temper, but that he should ever be able to preserve it. He understands men, and approaches them in an idiom that is likely ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... Genoa or Naples,—in short, were compatriots accustomed to live and eat in all latitudes just as though they were in their own little inland sea. Soon they would begin a speech in the Mediterranean idiom, a mixture of Spanish, Provencal and Italian, invented by the hybrid peoples of the African coast from Egypt to Morocco. Sometimes they would send each other presents, like those that are exchanged between tribes,—fruits from distant countries. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... before reaching mutual intelligibility; but gradually our work became easier, and when two or three months had passed we fairly understood each other—I trying to express myself in Hindustanee, and he performing the much-needed work of correcting my words and idiom. I commenced with a portion of the New Testament, and soon got into some of the classics of the language. The use of the Roman character in the writing of Indian languages had been strongly advocated by Sir Charles Trevelyan, by Dr. Duff, and other men of mark, and was accepted ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... and Greek stand in especial need of help to enable them to write a long English sentence clearly. The periods of Thucydides and Cicero are not easily rendered into our idiom without some knowledge of the links that connect an ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... the genius of his work than possessing it. Unless, indeed, a man be inspired by a power stronger than his individual understanding or any conscious purpose, his hand can never reach the cunning of any process truly creative. And so in all cases the temper and idiom of a people's religious culture will give soul and expression to their art; or, they have no religious culture, then there will not be soul-power enough in them to produce any art ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... some ways a misfortune that there is no such thing as a standard Yorkshire dialect. The speech of the North and East Ridings is far removed from that of the industrial south-west. The difference consists, not so much in idiom or vocabulary, as in pronunciation—especially in the pronunciation of the long vowels and diphthongs.(1) As a consequence of this, I have found it impossible, in bringing together dialect poems from all parts of the county, to reduce their forms ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... miles from the sea-coast, it is perhaps the most backward of all the South American capitals. Although under Spanish rule for three hundred years, the natives still retain the old Indian language and the Guarani idiom is spoken ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... would proceed from a friend or an enemy. The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly in forming a judgement of this nature; and as every tongue possesses one set of words which are taken in a good sense, and another in the opposite, the least acquaintance with the idiom suffices, without any reasoning, to direct us in collecting and arranging the estimable or blameable qualities of men. The only object of reasoning is to discover the circumstances on both sides, which are common to these qualities; to observe that ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... declare that he sees the smallest impurity in the style of Livy? Yet is it not certain that, in the style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the inelegant idiom of the Po? Has any modern scholar understood Latin better than Frederic the Great understood French? Yet is it not notorious that Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing but French, during more than half a century, after ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was made in choice Romaic—and which, doubtless, sounded much more heroic and elegant in that idiom than in simple English, was highly applauded by his followers—indeed, had they ever heard of Homer, they would have considered it equal in substance and talent to anything ever uttered by the most valiant of the heroes he speaks of. It was scarcely concluded, however—and ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... or their abhorrence. [28] The perpetual intercourse of the Huns and the Goths had communicated the familiar knowledge of the two national dialects; and the Barbarians were ambitious of conversing in Latin, the military idiom even of the Eastern empire. [29] But they disdained the language and the sciences of the Greeks; and the vain sophist, or grave philosopher, who had enjoyed the flattering applause of the schools, was mortified to find that his robust servant was a captive of more ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... unpopular person, and among the rest, for Lord Braxfield, than to give way to perfect raptures of moral indignation against his abstract vices. He was the last judge on the Scots bench to employ the pure Scots idiom. His opinions, thus given in Doric, and conceived in a lively, rugged, conversational style, were full of point and authority. Out of the bar, or off the bench, he was a convivial man, a lover of wine, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the Kojiki, a second work termed Nihongi or Chronicles of Japan was issued. It was prepared by imperial command and appeared in A.D. 720 in the reign of the Empress Gensho. It differs from the older book in being composed in the Chinese idiom, and in being much more tinctured with the ideas of Chinese philosophy. These two works, so nearly contemporaneous, both of them composed in so great a degree of the legendary elements of Japanese history, must ...
— Japan • David Murray
... could the rest, except David, who for politeness tried to be blank, and thoroughly warmed himself by the inward struggle, turning quite red. When the captain got us back to the road and "fell us out" (note the idiom!) we had calisthenics, with pushing matches that put warmth into us. And then we marched in skirmish line through low bushes for half a mile, till the captain lined us up for blank ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... verse. I believe that engagement never was carried into effect, notwithstanding the erudite pains Mr —- took to qualify himself to perform it successfully. No man could have laboured more to make himself master of the niceties of the Gallic idiom, and the right use of its very ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... is you, Yes!" he cried, using the Haitian idiom with its perpetual recurrence of "Yes" and "No," and went on, "and where is Monsieur ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... assumed such a tone of superiority in addressing me as evinced that he considered us to be completely in his power and he gave vent to several expressions of hatred towards the white people or as he termed us in the idiom of the voyagers, the French, some of whom he said had killed and eaten his uncle and two of his relations. In short, taking every circumstance of his conduct into consideration, I came to the conclusion that he would attempt ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... the French idiom, "always to hold the dame," mechanically raised the arms he had previously dejected, and the police officer, with an approving ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nutritious. It is a vegetable meat which, without being bloody and repulsive, is the equivalent of the horrors outspread upon the butcher's slab. To recall its services the more emphatically, the Provencal idiom calls it the gounflo-gus—the filler of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... generous—chief in that,'—'are most choice and well-bred—chief, indeed—at the head or top, in the matter of dress.' But without necessity or authority—one of the two, I would not throw away a word; and suggest therefore that Shakspere had here the French idiom de son chef in his mind, and qualifies the noun in it with adjectives of his own. The Academy Dictionary gives de son propre mouvement as one interpretation of the phrase. The meaning would be, 'they are of a most choice and developed instinct in dress.' Cheff or chief ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... remarks by the contemplation of Chinese Charley at the ranch. He has been with Mrs. Kitty twenty-five years; he wears American clothes; he speaks English with hardly a trace of either accent or idiom; he has long since dropped the deceiving Oriental stolidity and weeps out his violent Chinese rages unashamed. Yet even now Mrs. Kitty's summing up is that Charley is ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... in the original language. We have yet to meet with a version, whether of an ancient or of a modern classic, which is thoroughly appreciative and satisfactory. The majority are utterly disappointing and deceptive. It is in the transfer of the idiom and costume that the difficulty and consequent failure lie. No one who merely knows at second hand Homer, Herodotus, Plautus, Terence, Horace, Virgil, Montaigne, Le Sage (a metonym for Gil Blas), Cervantes, La Fontaine, Dumas, Maupassant, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... characteristics break out again, and break out with greater force than ever. What he calls—with one of those tumbles into foreign idiom which occasionally mark his pages—'the fever of the gamble' has never been truly diagnosed in English fiction, and the theme is undeniably fertile. He knows absolutely nothing about the manifestations of the disorder, to begin with; ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... very, spirit, coral, borough, manor, tenant, minute, honor, punish, clamor, blemish, limit, comet, pumice, chapel, leper, triple, copy, habit, rebel, tribute, probate, heifer, profit, cavil, revel, drivel, novel, hovel, city, pity, british, critic, madam, credit, idiom, body, study, tacit, licit, hazard, ezad, lizard, closet, bosom, ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston
... sure [writes Mikuli], Chopin made great demands on the talent and diligence of the pupil. Consequently, there were often des lecons orageuses, as it was called in the school idiom, and many a beautiful eye left the high altar of the Cite d'Orleans, Rue St. Lazare, bedewed with tears, without, on that account, ever bearing the dearly-beloved master the least grudge. For was not the severity which was not easily satisfied with anything, the feverish ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... conceived. My master of the language says he dreams of how much more solemnly he shall write to charming Mrs. Locke after a little more practice. Madame de Stael has written me two English notes, quite beautiful in ideas, and not very reprehensible in idiom. But English has nothing to do with elegance such as theirs—at least, little and rarely. I am always exposing myself to the wrath of John Bull, when this cterie come in competition; It is inconceivable what a convert M. de Talleyrand has made of me; I ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... pyrotechnical affair of De Beriot, which resembled nothing so much as a joke at a funeral. After that the fate of the concert could not be disputed even by the gallery. At the finish of the evening there was, in the terrible idiom of the theatre, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... always your first consideration. As long as they have rest and food, you are sure of getting along; as soon as they fail, you are reduced to difficulties. So absolute is this truth that it has passed into an idiom. When a Westerner wants to tell you that he lacks a thing, he informs you he is "afoot" for it. "Give me a fill for my pipe," he begs; "I'm plumb afoot ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... held; hands: part of the body by which A holds B. The preposition should, therefore, in my opinion be 'Per.'" (In the first case there is a certain amount of ambiguity, and je or per can be used indiscriminately). "(2). The little boy returned home quite by himself. This somewhat peculiar idiom obviously means that the child returned alone, and must be rendered thus 'La knabeto revenis domen sole.'" The Editor nearly altered the latter phrase to the more colloquial expression "The little boy returned home quite on his own." It seems to mean ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 5 • Various
... never!" she would say, adapting her idiom to make the old man feel at home, as he was presently ushered in, chuntering and triumphant; "you don't mean to say it's Uncle Clegg. Well, we are glad to see you! I was just having a little nap, and so you must ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... as exquisite a flavour as any that our sophisticated age can show, and its tragic end wrings the heart with its infinite pathos. By some singular discretion Mr. HEWLETT has chosen to eschew the least approach to Wardour-Street idiom, and this gives the narrative a simplicity, a sanity and a vivid sense of reality which are extraordinarily more effective than the goodliest tushery, of which flamboyant art Mr. HEWLETT is no mean master. I am sure he has chosen this time a more excellent way. There are transcriptions and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... the case [233] will be observed. It is that of an agent constituted for the very point and purpose of possession. A bailee may be an agent for some other purpose. A free servant may be made a bailee. But the bailee holds in his own as we say, following the Roman idiom, and the servant or agent holding as ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... Suburbia. Whatever you may think of Mr. EVANS' work, whether it attracts or violently repels, there can be no question of its devastating skill. His sketches, no more than a few pages in length, contain never an idle word, and the phrases bite like vitriol. Moreover he employs an idiom that is (I conjecture) a direct transcription from native speech, which adds enormously to the effect. Understand me, not for worlds would I commend these volumes haphazard to the fastidious; I only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... Il Signor Marchese Cantini, the learned and illustrious author of "Hi, diddlo-diddlino! Il gutto e'l violino!", has just rendered immense service to the trip-loving natives of these lovely isles, by preparing a "Guide to Conversation," that for utility and correctness of idiom surpasses all previous attempts of the same kind. With it in one hand, and a bagful of Napoleons or Zecchini in the other, the biggest dunce in London—nay, even a schoolmaster—may travel from Boulogne ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... administrator, and catechist. The knowledge of the two languages was indispensable to an ecclesiastic in such a country, where the majority of the rural population spoke only the old Carthaginian idiom. All this proves to us that Catholicism was in bad shape in the diocese of Hippo. Not only was there a lack of priests, but the bishop was a foreigner, little familiar with African customs. There was a general ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... unquestionable proof of the high antiquity of the document. For example, the eminent philologist, M. Renouard, writing as a philologist, and not as an historian, remarks that "the dialect of the Vaudois is an idiom intermediate between the decomposition of the language of the Romans and the establishment of a new grammatical system." This philological circumstance shows the extreme earliness of the period at which the Waldenses must have betaken ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... debate in her mind), "I want your opinion; will you give it me? Apropos of slang, why does it sit well on some people? It certainly does not vulgarize them. After all, in many cases, it is what they call 'racy idiom.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in what Idiom you will one day answer my last. {163a} Meanwhile, I have to thank you for Lady Pollock's Article on American Literature: which I like, as all of hers. Only, I cannot understand her Admiration of Emerson's 'Humble Bee'; which, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... imposing figure which he cut in a ballroom, but still he was occasionally to be found there. Miss Mary Todd, who afterward became his wife, was the magnet which drew the tall, awkward young man from his den. One evening Lincoln approached Miss Todd, and said, in his peculiar idiom: ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... ladies spoke French indeed with considerable facility, unshackled by any timid regard to idiom, and were in the habit of conducting conversations in that language in the presence of their less instructed elders; for according to the standard of those backward days, their education had been very lavish, such young ladies as Miss Landor, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... a peculiar grin wreathed itself around his lips. "I've seen no white man here," he said. "Except myself. They call me a white man." He spoke English without a trace of the red man's clipped idiom. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... his periods constructed with regard for every comma, Mathias' eyes were directed so frequently towards Paul that Paul could not but think that Mathias was vaunting his knowledge of Greek expressly, as if to reprove him, Paul, for the Aramaic idiom that he had never been able to wring out of his Greek, which he regretted, but which, after hearing Mathias, he would not be without; for to rid himself of it he would have to sacrifice the spirit to the outer form; as well might he offer sacrifice to the heathen gods; and he could ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... the vulgarity of crime had been equalled by his sensitive horror of illiterate, vulgar, or slangy speech; and they thus, to a certain extent, understood the painful nature of his present position, for the involuntary use of the idiom and ways of the society in which he was now condemned to mix was a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 18, October 14 and 25, Swift visited or dined with Mrs. Barton at her lodgings. He was also at this time on good terms with Halifax, and dined with him November 28, 1710, and with Mrs. Barton on November 30. According to the idiom of the day, lodgings was a name for every kind of residence, and even for the apartments of a guest in the house of his host. For anything to the contrary in the mere word, the lodgings might have been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... can be measured only by one who attempts a similar feat. Let him try to report the best conversation of a lively evening, following its course, preserving its point, differentiating sharply the traits of the participants, keeping the style, idiom, and exact words of each. Let him reject all parts of it, however diverting, of which the charm and force will evaporate with the occasion, and retain only that which will be as amusing, significant, and lively as ever at the end of ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... be sold. The curious may find it for themselves, the wealthy may speculate in the treasures which it advertises. Here is a piece of the Emperor Maximilian's waistcoat, "same in which they shot him," to employ an idiom of Captain Rawdon Crawley's. There are many relics of the same recent and troublous times; but the amateur is more strongly attracted by a very singular series of objects of the times of the Spanish Conquest, nearly four hundred years ago. It is not so much the obsidian idols, made of ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... what he ought not do. It was not necessary to translate it at all; he only needed to accept the Logos as a technical expression of Greek philosophy. He would then have seen that it is impossible to prize the Word too highly, if we first learn what the Word meant in the idiom of contemporary philosophy. Not even to a Faust should Goethe have imputed such ignorance as when he continues to speculate ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... recommended me to read his HERMANN before I read either THE MESSIAH or the odes. He flattered himself that some time or other his dramatic poems would be known in England. He had not heard of Cowper. He thought that Voss in his translation of THE ILIAD had done violence to the idiom of the Germans, and had sacrificed it to the Greeks, not remembering sufficiently that each language has its particular spirit and genius. He said Lessing was the first of their dramatic writers. I complained of NATHAN ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... coined goold in the silver mines. Mrs. Madison's pretty face was all blushes, smiles, and tears. Mr. Madison rose to reply with unexpected alacrity, and Louis was soon relieved from anxiety, at least, as far as regarded his eloquence, for he thought in the majestic Spanish idiom, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a clever Indian girl, who understands Spanish as well as her native idiom, and who translated various Castilian words for us into the original Tarrascan, which sounds very liquid and harmonious. To-morrow we shall leave Uruapa and this hospitable family, whose kindness and attention to us we never can ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... harvest. In my fifteenth summer my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language, but you know the Scottish idiom. She was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which in spite of acid disappointment, gin-house prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys here below! How she ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... disconcerted? Away went the spoon, forward she sprang, both hands outstretched, and her little black eyes twinkling with pleasure. 'Ah! but this is goodness itself,' said she, in the English wherein she flattered herself no French idiom appeared. 'You are come to let us participate in your rejoicing. Let me but summon Genevieve, the poor child is at every free moment trying to perfectionnate her music ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was with dangerous ideas, and an impossible style, defeat was inevitable. My English was rotten with French idiom; it was like an ill-built wall overpowered by huge masses of ivy; the weak foundations had given way beneath the weight of the parasite; and the ideas I sought to give expression to were green, sour, and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... voice was gentle, the child had caught the idiom and pronunciation of the fisherman's family; but even in that respect there was a natural refinement in the tone of her voice; and as Adam was a God-fearing man, and had brought up his sons to fear God also, no coarse language ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... version is readily attainable in a literal form; an extract from it has, however, been added to the Book of Leinster version for the purpose of comparison. In the renderings given of these romances the translation of the prose is nearly literal, but no attempt has been made to follow the Irish idiom where this idiom sounds harsh in English; actives have been altered to passive forms and the reverse, adjectives are sometimes replaced by short sentences which give the image better in English, pronouns, in which Irish is very rich, are often replaced by the persons ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... time to her own thoughts, as her Italian (not particularly fluent at best) was altogether lacking in idiom, and she missed the point of most that was said. In the first lull, the Count Olisco asked her the usual question put to every stranger, ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... used by the samurai, and other superior classes, differed considerably from those of the popular idiom; but these differences could not be effectively rendered ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Icelandic polity began to break up. The literature of the maturity of Iceland just before the fall of the Commonwealth is a literature belonging wholly and purely to Iceland, in a style unmodified by Latin syntax and derived from the colloquial idiom. The matter is the same in kind as the common matter of heroic poetry. The history represents the lives of adventurers, the rivalries and private wars of men who are not ignorant of right and honour, but who acknowledge little authority ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... form. He began to tell Scotch stories, memories of his old Parliament House days. He told them admirably, with a raciness of idiom which I had thought beyond him. They were long tales, and some were as broad as they were long, but Mr. Cargill disarmed criticism. His audience, rather scandalised at the start, were soon captured, and political troubles were forgotten in old-fashioned ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... vulgarity. By vulgarity vulgar Jews mean the reproduction of the Hebrew words with which the poor and the old-fashioned interlard their conversation. It is as if English-speaking Scotchmen and Irishmen should object to "dialect" novels reproducing the idiom of their "uncultured" countrymen. I do not possess a copy of my first book, but somehow or other I discovered the MS. when writing Children of the Ghetto. The description of market-day in Jewry was ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... clue. A hamlet, Marton, near Bedwin, another of the same name now corrupted to Martin, near Damerham, might each be truly described as boundary-towns. In Wiltshire to-day 'mere-stone' is the local idiom for a boundary-stone. Mere is alike the name of a hundred and of a parish in Wilts, both near its borders. The site of the present cathedral is at the junction of three ancient hundreds—Underditch, Alderbury, and Cawdon—the south-east wall of the close being the boundary ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... river ran out of the Tanganyika, as also the Kitangule ran out of the N'yanza, and the Nile ran into it, even though Snay said he thought the Jub river drained the N'yanza. All these statements were, when literally translated into English, the reverse of what the speakers, using a peculiar Arab idiom, meant to say; for all the statements made as to the flow of rivers by the negroes—who apparently give the same meaning to "out" and "in" as we do—contradicted the Arabs in their descriptions of the direction of the flow of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... becomes a law of anthropo-geography. It permeates the higher aspects of life. The wide, varied area occupied by the Germanic tribes of Europe permitted the evolution of the many dialects which finally made the richness of modern German speech. English has gained in vocabulary and idiom with every expansion of its area. New territories mean to a people new pursuits, new relations, new wants; and all these become reflected in their speech. Languages, like peoples, cease to grow with national stagnation.[302] To such stagnation movement or expansion is the surest antidote. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... not unfamiliar, tap on the shoulder, with the words (gratifying under quite other circumstances and from quite different lips) "I want you," might incapacitate him from prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely idiom—less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse); finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant Hooper might ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... Gerhard, in his quaint German idiom, "we will not quarrel, you and I. If I have been neglectful it was because edged tools were never a chosen plaything of mine. Perhaps your little Blackie realizes that he need have no fear of such things, for the ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... do. Whatever Mr. Whittier may lack, he has the prime merit that he smacks of the soil. It is a New England heart he buttons his strait-breasted coat over, and it gives the buttons a sharp strain now and then. Even the native idiom crops out here and there in his verses. He makes abroad rhyme with God, law with war, us with curse, scorner with honor, been with men, beard with shared. For the last two we have a certain sympathy as archaisms, but with the rest we can make no terms ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... of destroying them and repelling the beguilements of evil spirits better than we have, for the contemplative orders were more kindred to those earlier times than to-day. Monasticism of today takes another turn. Love of God is eternal, but we must love God in the idiom and spirit of our time." And Father Daly believed that there was no surer method of escaping from the danger than by active work, by teaching, which, he argued, was not incompatible with contemplation, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Bourbons, had a son, Eudes (or Odo), whose gallant repulse of the Pirates had given him a throne that was still held by his descendants a thousand years later, and he ruled in the French speech, while the Karolings of Laon still used the Teutonic idiom. When Laon was joined to Paris in 987 by the election of Hugh, modern France really began with a French king ruling at Paris, and a German emperor as alien to the realm of the Capets as was his brother of Byzantium. But there is still much to happen before the date of 987 can be ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... do?" exclaimed Maria Luisa, in the odd Italian idiom. "Marzio is in his humours—he must have gone to his friends. Ah! those friends of his!" she sighed. "Let us sit down to supper," she added; and, from her tone, the idea of supper seemed to console her ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... at Fawns—which had taken, for completeness, some ten days—Maggie naturally felt herself still more possessed, in spirit, of everything that had last happened in London. There was a phrase that came back to her from old American years: she was having, by that idiom, the time of her life—she knew it by the perpetual throb of this sense of possession, which was almost too violent either to recognise or to hide. It was as if she had come out—that was her most general consciousness; out of ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... loud tone made reference in the idiom to my miserable head: "Did you ever see anything to ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... bad—but it's to be expected. The people insisted on electing a desperado to the presidential office—they must take the hold-up that follows. [After a pause, he reads.] H'm! His English is lacking in idiom, his spelling in conservatism, his mind in balance, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... Arab idiom meaning, "I have not found thy good fortune (Ka'b heel, glory, prosperity) do ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Comtesse is suffering," said Elsie, in the spacious French idiom. "There is little that she can say. But she thanks Monsieur most sincerely for giving himself this trouble. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Faust is ushered in by Mefistofele. He is clad in his proper mediaeval garb, in strong contrast to the classic robes of the denizens of the valley in Thessaly. Mefistofele suggests to Faust that they now separate; the land of antique fable has no charm for him. Faust is breathing in the idiom of Helen's song like a delicate perfume which inspires him with love; Mefistofele longs for the strong, resinous odors of the Harz Mountains, where dominion over the Northern hags belongs to him. Faust ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of the more prominent ideas embodied in the King's address, which was delivered in the pure idiom of the elder chiefs, by which device he connected, as it were, modern science with ancient feeling. His train of ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... indebted to Mr. F. Ll. Griffith, who has in some cases—as in Anpu and Bata—almost entirely retranslated the original papyrus. The material followed in each instance will be found stated in the notes accompanying the tales. As to the actual phraseology, I am alone responsible for that. How far original idiom should be retained in any translation is always a debated question, and must entirely depend on the object in view. Here the purpose of rendering the work intelligible to ordinary readers required the modifying of some idioms and the paraphrasing of others. But so far as possible the style and ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... time another argument, which those who are blinded by prejudice frequently employ against Esperanto, that is to say, that on account of the differences in pronunciation and national idiom, Esperantists of various countries would not be able to understand the Esperanto of a foreigner, was effectually silenced. From the first moment that the English set foot on French soil to the final adieux, no difficulty was experienced, either ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... that the world had dropped from under him—and then risen to meet him. The brown mare turned, in the bush idiom, "on a sixpence," but Cecil did not turn. He went on. The onlookers had a vision of the mare chopping round, as duty bade her, to head off the bullock, while at right-angles a graceful form in correct English garments hurtled through the air in an elegant curve. When ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... mimic war correspondence here presented to the public. The stirring story of these tin-soldier campaigns occupies the greater share of the book, though interspersed with many pages of scattered verse, not a little Gaelic idiom and verb, a half-made will and the chaptering of a novel. This game of tin soldiers, an intricate "Kriegspiel," involving rules innumerable, prolonged arithmetical calculations, constant measuring with foot-rules, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... new population arose new languages, as we see in the different dialects of France, Spain and Italy; which, partaking of the native idiom of the new people and of the old Roman, formed a new manner of discourse. Besides, not only were the names of provinces changed, but also of lakes, rivers, seas, and men; for France, Spain, and Italy are full ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Orinoco,—we shall observe, at distant intervals upon the plain, irregular groups of palm-trees surmounting the wavy level of the grass. These isolated clumps or groves, called matas in the provincial idiom, form the landmarks of the Venezuelan Plains; and in the neighborhood of each we shall find the hato or dwelling of a Llanero. The building, we shall find in every case, is a roughly-constructed hut, consisting of a floor raised ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... as well as they. Could I have been instructed even in their phrases and speeches, I might have made valuable conjectures. But even their language, on these occasions, seems, by their own admission, beyond the learning of the 'linkisters.' It is a poetical, mystical idiom, varying essentially from that of trading and of familiar intercommunication, and utterly incomprehensible to the literal minds of mere trafficking explainers. Even were it otherwise, the persons hovering upon the frontier most ingenuously own, when pressed for interpretations ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... incorporated, as it were, with one another; for the domain of nature is like that of languages, in which etymological research reveals a successive development, by showing us the primary condition of an idiom reflected in the forms of speech in use at the present day. The study of the material world renders this reflection of the past peculiarly manifest, by displaying in the process of formation rocks of eruption and sedimentary strata ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... who helped us with our luggage, after being paid according to agreement, asked, as is very customary with these people, for quelque chose pour boire; which Sir Arthur, not being very expert in the French idiom, understood literally. He accordingly ordered a bottle of the light common wine, and being thirsty poured some into a tumbler and drank himself first, then poured out some more, and offered ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Not only their talents, but also their nations and dialects, were so various, that our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at Babel. We had the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, and foreign idiom, twanged off by the most discordant vociferation; for as they all spoke together, no man had any chance to be heard, unless he could bawl louder than his fellows. It must be owned, however, there was nothing pedantic in their discourse; they carefully avoided all learned disquisitions, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... style is more nearly correct and freer in movement. She improves in idiom, although she still omits articles and uses the "did" construction for the simple past. This is an idiom common ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Father's εν τοις του πατρος μου Syriac [Hebrew], in domo patris mei. The Armenian version renders the words in the same manner. It has been justly observed that τα του δεινος is a Greek idiom, not only with classical writers, but with the sacred penmen, for denoting the house ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... do, Arthur Alce"—dropping in her merriment into the lower idiom of the Marsh—"a-done do with your croaking and your stroking both. Let me go my own ways, for I know 'em better ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... "And a flirtation lurking in every corner!"—from Magee. "A country town where you don't know any one." "The easiest place in the world to get acquainted. I must be alone, man! Alone!" "Baldpate Inn," Bentley had cried in his idiom. "Why, Billy—Baldpate Inn at Christmas—it must be old John H. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... being an Irishman, mistook the idiom. "He's called a Bull," said he, stroking the barrel of his ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said the priest, as if continuing a sentence he was running over in his mind. "Casse! Pauvre Pierre, un peu casse, le pauvre bonhomme, but then, he's good for several years yet; cracked he is, but only cracked like a good old basin, and (in the idiom) he'll still hold ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... an instant. 'Oh yes!' she said, using her favourite English idiom. 'The door was open as always, monsieur, and I shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain. Listen! When I enter the room of madame from the other door in there—ah! but if monsieur will give himself the pain to enter the other room, all explains itself.' She tripped ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley |
