"Parlance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... autos." Whereupon he threw back his head and burst into peal after peal of such hearty laughter that, from pure contagion, I perforce joined in the chorus. In the days of Fielding and Sam Johnson, this fellow would have been dubbed "a lusty vagabond;" in the slangy parlance of today, he was a "husky hobo," equipped as such, even to the tin can of the comic journals. To him, the humor of a brother tramp refusing a ride—in an autocar, ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... is, however, with this secondary silica that the original sand has become a building stone, and the particles have become interlaced and bound together. Thus, in building parlance, the grains are the rubble of the wall, the currents the quarrymen, masons and laborers, and the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... globe, takes long sweeps from tree to tree, and owes this faculty to the extension of its skin between its fore and hind limbs, including the tail; but it cannot be really said to fly. The Bats, then, alone enjoy this privilege; and the prolongation of what, in common parlance, we should call the arms and fingers, constitutes the framework which supports the skin, or membrane forming the wings. The thumbs, however, are left free, and serve as hooks for various purposes. The legs, and tail (when ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... point. Adj. plain, simple; unornamented, unadorned, unvarnished; homely, homespun; neat; severe, chaste, pure, Saxon; commonplace, matter-of-fact, natural, prosaic. dry, unvaried,monotonous &c. 575. Adv. in plain terms, in plain words, in plain English, in plain common parlance; point-blank. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ordered two guns to advance straight along the road until within easy practice distance, and two others to go across the country to the right and left, so as to take the bridge, which stood at the extremity of a projecting bend of the river, or, as it is called in military parlance, a salient angle, ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... satisfactory condition in the state. Matters were hastened to their climax when the queen gave birth, in 1462, to a daughter who was called after her mother, Juana; but so evident was the paternity of this pitiful little princess, that she was at once christened La Beltraneja in common parlance; and by that sobriquet she is best known in history. It is doubtful if the sluggish moral natures of this time would have been moved by this fact, if the king had not insisted that this baby girl should be acknowledged ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... third party to perform their settlement duties; all they required to obtain the deed, or "lift" as it is called in Canadian parlance, was the sworn certificate for cutting the road, allowances, and the payment of certain fees to Government. The consequence of this was, that many false certificates were sworn to, as few persons or magistrates would be at the trouble and expense of travelling thirty or forty miles ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... had then over the absurdity of such a thing. "The idea of Phil's thinking that Pink Upham is anybody to be considered seriously!" she exclaimed, as she recalled his uncouth laugh, his barbaric taste in dress, his provincial little habits and mannerisms, which in the parlance of the Warwick Hall girls, would have stamped him "dead common" according to their standards. She was still looking dreamily out into the snowy yard when Mrs. Ware came to the door to inquire with an ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... as if it were a huge game. Like life itself, it was a great adventure. In the parlance of Wall Street, he was a "bull," for he was always raising salaries and royalties. Somebody once said ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... is as odd as ever. We had a dispute about the word "heir," which I contended was pronounced like "air;" he said that might be in common parlance; or that we might so use it, speaking of the "Heir-at-Law," a comedy; but that in the Law Courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say Hayer; he thought it might even vitiate ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... may be noted that things, not words, are referred to; for Edison, in addition to inventing the apparatus, has often had to coin the word to describe it. A large number of the words and phrases in modern electrical parlance owe their origin to him. Even the "call-word" of the telephone, "Hello!" sent tingling over the wire a few million times daily was taken from Menlo Park by men installing telephones in different parts of the world, men who had just learned it at the laboratory, and thus made ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... closed his teeth grimly and his eyes snapped. Now he knew why Mr. Wynne had taken that useless cab ride up Fifth Avenue. It was to enable him to get rid of the diamonds! There was an accomplice—in detective parlance the second person is always an accomplice—in that closed cab! It had all been prearranged; Mr. Wynne had deliberately made a monkey of him—Steven Birnes! Reluctantly the detective permitted himself to remember that he didn't know whether there was anybody in that cab or not when ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... own personal gifts came to the front. By dint of argument, raillery, and—in one or two particularly bad and obdurate cases— judicious chastisement he finally succeeded in, what is termed in modern parlance, "licking ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... himself,—and there is too much anxiety that the nature of her intrigue with Carter shall not be misunderstood. Nevertheless, she bears that stamp of verity which marks all Mr. De Forrest's creations, and which commends to our forbearance rather more of the highly colored and strongly-flavored parlance of the camps than could otherwise have demanded reproduction in literature. The bold strokes with which such an amusing and heroic reprobate as Van Zandt and such a pitiful poltroon as Gazaway are painted, are no less admirable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... friend, the Englishman who had won the money, was not such a one as these, at any rate in regard to Monaco. Yesterday had been his first appearance, and he had broken ground there with great success. He was an ill-looking person, poorly clad,—what, in common parlance, we should call seedy. He had not a scrap of beard on his face, and though swarthy and dark as to his countenance, was light as to his hair, which hung in quantities down his back. He was dressed from head to foot in a suit of cross-barred, light-colored tweed, of which he wore the coat buttoned ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... these occasions was not conceived entirely in the spirit of self-sacrifice. Often would she suggest the game and even the theme; in such case, casting herself invariably for what, in old theatrical parlance, would have been termed the heavy lead, the dragons and the wicked uncles, the fussy necromancers and the uninvited fairies. As authoress of a new cookery book for use in giant-land, my aunt, I am sure, would have been successful. Most ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... deal of distrust of Washington. It was argued that at least one-third of the class from which he came had Tory and Royalist inclinations, and what guarantee had they that Washington was not one of their number? Washington himself found that those who styled themselves in old country parlance "The Gentry," were loyal to King George rather than to the colonies, and while his own men were inclined, at times, to doubt the sincerity of the Father of his Country, the very men with whom he was suspected of being in sympathy ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... a ton of oil. The killer is sometimes confounded with the grampus. The latter is considerably larger, has a longer and slenderer jaw, less round at the muzzle, smaller teeth, and "isn't so clean a made fish"; for, in nautical parlance, cetaceans are still fish. Killers frequently try to rob whalers of their prize, and sometimes actually succeed in carrying it down, despite the lances and other weapons with which their attack is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... assumption of human nature by Eternal God seems to demand, in the fitness of things, a method of entry into the material world, and a method of departure from it, wholly and strikingly dissimilar to the established order—in common parlance, miraculous. Answers conceived in these two senses—some rough and popular and declamatory, some learned and argumentative and scientific—appeared in great numbers. "Grave objections are alleged against the book.... Its conclusions about the meaning of the term God, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... to specialize—France in wine, England in wool—and so certain branches of production grew more important. The introduction of new crops produced no more remarkable results than in Ireland where the potato, transplanted from America, became a staple in the Irish diet: "Irish potatoes" in common parlance ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Observatory, Michigan, on July 14, a comet was discovered by Dr. Schaeberle, which, as his claim to priority is undisputed, is often allowed to bear his name, although designated, in strict scientific parlance, comet 1881 iv. It was observed in Europe after three days, became just discernible by the naked eye at the end of July, and brightened consistently up to its perihelion passage, August 22, when it was still about fifty million ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... understood at once that such a measure is believed by me to be emphatically a step not only in the right direction, but in the only direction, if grave dangers are to be avoided in India. Let me tell my English readers that, travelling as I did, an American, and not, in Indian parlance, as one of the governing class—one of the usurpers—I had many opportunities of hearing educated natives speak the thoughts of their hearts, which to an Englishman's ears would have been treason. Such trustworthy indications of the forces moving under the crust should be considered as invaluable ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... noticed:—1. Music to Goethe's "Jery und Baetely,"—which, in theatrical parlance, was shockingly damned;—but then "its author had made many enemies as editor of the 'Musikalische Zeitung,'" and the singers and actors embraced this opportunity of revenge. 2. Music to the melodrama, "Die Rache wartet," (Vengeance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... arrest, I believed myself under legal restraint. I imagined that at any moment I might be taken to court to face some charge lodged against me by the local police. Every act of those about me seemed to be a part of what, in police parlance, is commonly called the "Third Degree." The hot poultices placed upon my feet and ankles threw me into a profuse perspiration, and my very active association of mad ideas convinced me that I was being "sweated"—another police term which I had often seen in the newspapers. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... because it indicates that to the German mind the war with Russia and France is, in prize-ring parlance, a twenty-round affair, which can and will be won on points, whereas with England it is a championship fight to a finish, to be settled only by a knockout. The idea is that Russia will be eliminated as a serious factor by late Spring at the latest, and then, Westward Ho! ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the Russian batteries on the Danube, are singularly ineffectual, only eliciting a dropping fire of monosyllables. You envy the placidly languid young gentleman opposite, limp as his fast-fading camellia, and seated next to Belle Breloques, who is certain, in racing parlance, to make the running for him. But even that damsel seems preoccupied with her fan, and, despite her aplomb, hesitates to break the icy silence. The two City friends of the host are lost in mute speculation ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... struck her at the time surprisingly mild. It had been, in every way, the occasion, full of the reminder that her hostess was deep: it was definitely then that she had begun to ask herself what Aunt Maud was, in vulgar parlance, "up to." "You may receive, my dear, whom you like"—that was what Aunt Maud, who in general objected to people's doing as they liked, had replied; and it bore, this unexpectedness, a good deal of looking into. There were many explanations, and they were all amusing—amusing, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... upon that star as an outside object, refusing to allow that it is only an image inside the eye and making it difficult to realise that that star may have disappeared and had no existence for the past 999 years, although in ordinary parlance we are looking at and ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... imperceptible start, and opened his long dark eyes with questioning surprise at Bardo's blind face, as if his words—a mere phrase of common parlance, at a time when men were often being ransomed from slavery or imprisonment—had had some special meaning for him. But the next moment he looked towards Romola, as if her eyes must be her father's interpreters. She, intensely preoccupied with what related to her father, imagined that ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... mademoiselle sometimes passed the evening with Germinie at Madame Jupillon's. A native of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which supplies Paris with coupe drivers and lorettes' waiting-maids, this girl was what is called in vulgar parlance: "a great bringue;" she was an awkward, wild-eyed creature, with the eyebrows of a water carrier. She soon fell into the habit of going there every evening. She treated everybody to cakes and liquors, amused herself by showing off ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... frequently found to be much smaller, than might naturally be supposed; the fact is, that in good breeding waters strictly preserved, Trout soon become so numerous that the supply of food is inadequate to their wants; a state of things which in rural parlance is termed, as having more stock than the pasture will carry; a numerical reduction, to some extent in such streams is therefore extremely beneficial. Better fish are sometimes met with in free waters than in preserves, solely because they have had ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... legal parlance of the practice of torts such occurrences as these are known as "acts of God." Theologians who attempt to solve the mysteries of Providence have found in such occasions the evidence of Divine wrath and warning to the smitten people. But to seek the reason and to know the purpose, if there ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... best carry up the moral training of our children, and especially of our boys, to a higher level, without touching on the wider and national aspect of the problems we have been considering. Especially is this necessary in relation to that attribute which, in common parlance, arrogates to itself the name that covers the vast sweep of all moral obligation and calls itself emphatically "morality." "Language," Dr. Martineau has finely said, "is the great confessional of the human heart"; and it may be in some instinctive sense that this question of personal ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... entered Princeton, his father decided upon an experiment. He had raised his boy right, and trained him for the race of life, and now The Laird felt that, like a thoroughbred horse, his son faced the barrier. Would he make the run, or would he, in the parlance of the sporting world, "dog it?" Would his four years at a great American university make of him a better man, or would he degenerate into ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... ago, when first a candidate for Congress, Mr. Blackburn attended a public execution—in common parlance "a hanging"—in one of the counties in his district. Being a gentleman of great distinction, and a candidate for Congress, he was appropriately invited by the sheriff to occupy a seat with the prisoner and his spiritual adviser upon ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour, seated on opposite sides of the table, apparently found relaxation in reviewing their political careers and especially their old-time political battles. They would laughingly recall occasions when, in American parlance, they had put each other "in a hole"; the exigencies of war had now made these two men colleagues in the same government, but the twenty years preceding 1914 they had spent in political antagonism. Page's guests on this occasion learned much political history of the early twentieth century, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... Sir Percy, and a strange gleam suddenly flashed in his eyes. "Demn it, sir, and in Christian parlance ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... brings us to the subject of the Greek "orders." There are two principal orders in Greek architecture, the Doric and the Ionic. Figs. 51 and 61 show a characteristic specimen of each. The term "order," it should be said, is commonly restricted in architectural parlance to the column and entablature. Our illustrations, however, show all the features of a Doric and an Ionic facade. There are several points of agreement between the two: in each the columns rest on a stepped ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... in Hinsdale parlance, was only Miss Holbrook's garden, but in David's eyes it was fairyland come true. For one whole minute he could only stand like a very ordinary little boy and stare. At the end of the minute he became himself once more; and being ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... was originally applied to the Rajput clans in the hills and sub-montane tracts to the north of the Ravi. In later years it included hill Rajputs south of the Ravi, and in military parlance all these Rajputs who enlisted in our ranks ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... "the sentiments of those who think there is something to be said on the other side" are expressed in the above letter in "moderate language," how must those views sound when expressed in the most forcible terms of angry barroom parlance? Let us thank God that we are not compelled to hear these opinions when thus declared, nor even to see them ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... prided himself upon his way of turning a compliment, albeit his action, as they say in stable parlance, was a trifle heavy. When he had gone Dora nodded to ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... Rensellaerwick, demanding by what right he had seized upon this island, which lay beyond the bounds of his patroonship. The answer of Killian Van Rensellaer was in his own lordly style, "By wapen recht!" that is to say, by the right of arms, or in common parlance, by club-law. This answer plunged the worthy Wouter in one of the deepest doubts he had in the whole course of his administration. In the meantime, while Wouter doubted, the lordly Killian went on to finish his fortress of Rensellaersteen, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... building or show-place can have. Goethe, who turned his life-experiences into poetry, has told us something of one such house not far from Coblenz, in the village of Ehrenbreitstein, beneath the fortress, and which in familiar Coblenz parlance goes by the name of "The Valley"—the house of Sophie de Laroche. The village ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... steadfastness of purpose, nor has it the enlightened persistence of obstinacy. In view of his earlier account of his purpose he could not avow his errand; it bereft him of naught to disavow it, for Uncle Nehemiah was one of those gifted people who, in common parlance, do not mind what they say. Yet his reluctance to assure Lean-der that he was not the quarry that had led him into these wilds so mastered him, the spurious relinquishment had so the aspect of renunciation, ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... two dollars a barrel. The blockade being then limited to the Chesapeake and Delaware, the immediate effect was to transfer this lucrative traffic further north, favoring that portion of the country which was considered, in the common parlance of the British official of that day, "well inclined ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... of vision returned. They found themselves on the fore-deck of the unterseeboot. They had made up their minds to see a turtle-back deck with a narrow level platform in the centre; instead they found that the deck was almost flat and, in nautical parlance, flush, save where it was broken by the elongated conning-tower topped by the twin periscopes and ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... of short ones. Mr. Chute took me in hand, and I had to wake up and be alert with brains and body. The first part I played was Cupid in "Endymion." To this day I can remember my lines. I entered as a blind old woman in what is known in theatrical parlance as a "disguise cloak." Then, throwing it ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... unity and Messianism; unity of law throughout the world, and the terrestrial triumph of justice in humanity. These are the two dogmas which at the present time illuminate humanity in its progress, both in the scientific and social order of things, and which are termed in modern parlance unity of forces and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... what in common parlance is called a lady," said Angel, unflinchingly, "for she is a cottager's daughter, as I am proud to say. But she IS a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... regions is postulated by the Esoteric Philosophy, and is known to the Adepts and to very many less highly evolved men and women by personal experience; all that is needed for the study of these regions is the evolution of the faculties latent in every man; a "living" man, in ordinary parlance, can leave his dense and ethereal bodies behind him, and explore these regions without going through Death's gateway. Thus we read in the Theosophist that real knowledge may be acquired by the Spirit in the living ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... ingenious sumptuary enactment the latter class could be sequestrated or relegated to the background for a certain period—say ten years—the latter might increase and multiply, and quite, in vulgar parlance, get the start ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... religion fashionable, by cloaking France with the mask of hypocritical piety—a mask soon, however, to be torn aside by Philippe of Orleans in the wild saturnalia of the Regency. The Abbe de Bernis was also a constant visitor at the house of Madame d'Etioles; he was, in the parlance of the time, the Abbe de la Maison—it is true he had no other benefice—but little thought then, either the abbe of the house or the mistress of the house, that within ten years from that time they would reign over France as absolute ministers. There was one other individual of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... old Tom and Stapleton smoked in silence: the Dominie made use of his eyes in dumb parlance to Mary, who answered him with her own bright glances, and Tom and I began to find it rather dull; when at last old Tom's pipe was exhausted, and he laid it down; "There, I'll smoke no more—the worst of a pipe is that one can't smoke and talk at the same time. Mary, my girl, take your ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of their partisans on their country estates, seem rarely to have used the prefix which implied nobility. Their life was not unlike that of many an old Scottish laird, who, though possibly bourgeois in origin, yet by courtesy ranked as chieftain among his tenants, and was ennobled by the parlance of the countryside, perhaps all the more readily because he refused to wear the honours that came from over ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... In the homely parlance of the mines, these men agreed "to keep tabs for each other on the square." They will let no event of importance go by without reporting it to each other, and in this way give each full particulars of ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... weight of his forty-five years. His hair was of that uncertain sandy colour which somehow never seems to turn gray; the edges of the crisply-curling forelock being soaped, rolled and brushed up into that approved tonsorial ornament known in barrack-room parlance as a "quiff." His complexion was of that peculiar olive-brown shade especially noticeable in most Anglo-Indians. In his smart, soldierly aspect, biting, jerky Cockney speech and clipped, wax-pointed moustache he ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... repeated in other parts of the ship. Midshipmen gathered with a rush, Pennington and Hallam being the only members absent. As soon as the third classmen, or "youngsters," as they are called in midshipman parlance, had formed, the orders were read off dividing them into sections for practical instruction aboard ship ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... incomprehensible series of mistakes, she has found her way out here as a "single girl!" What was the Agent-General in London about, and what could the Dispatching Officer have been thinking of, when they let this ancient cripple pass them? Yet here she is, a "single girl" in immigrant parlance; and work she must get somehow and somewhere, for there are no poorhouses or paupers here as yet. But even she, useless to all seeming as she is, and unable to bear her part in the energetic industry of a new country, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... expectation of the unexpected. But Pirate behaved himself puzzlingly well. Fortunately for the jehu, these rides were always into the north country. He was continually possessed with fear lest she would make him drive through the shopping district. If he met Nancy, it would be, in the parlance of the day, all off. Nancy would have recognized him in a beard like a Cossack's; and here he was with the boy's face—the ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... of the week, and had another long talk with him. He told me that good conduct meant, in prison parlance, absence of punishment, and Oscar had been punished pretty often. Of course his offenses were minor offenses; nothing serious; childish faults indeed for the most part: he was often talking, and he was ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... recently returned from San Jose, doubting not that her admiration of his new dress would extend to him who filled it. In truth, his was a fine form and handsome face; yet sordid selfishness, and, in common parlance, "a determination to have his own way," were indelibly ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... a term of relation, the same thing not being so to all, and there is according to common parlance somewhat so fearful as to be beyond human endurance: this of course would be fearful to every man of sense, but those objects which are level to the capacity of man differ in magnitude and admit of degrees, so too the ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... for her a pleasant shrine, flower-decked, burn incense before her, beat the drum in her honour, let the women offer themselves as the sport and play-thing of her madness and of a surety will she repent her of the evil she hath done and will stay the slaughter. In spirit-parlance a woman chosen by the spirit, into whom as into a shrine the mother enters, is known as a "Jhad" or tree: for just as a tree yields rustling and quivering to the lightest breath of the gale, bends its head and moves its branches to and fro, so the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... strolling player listened to it all with deep interest. Notwithstanding his compassion for that poor devil of a Risler, and for Sidonie herself, for that matter, who seemed to him, in theatrical parlance, "a beautiful culprit," he could not help viewing the affair from a purely scenic standpoint, and finally cried out, carried away by ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... tendency of movement in that which we in common parlance call the Old World. As the nineteenth century closes, the tide has already turned and the current is flowing strongly. It is not too soon, for vast is the work before it. Contrasted to the outside world in extent and population, the civilization ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... mid-afternoon, when Sundown, gaunt and weary, arrived at the Concho. He was faint for lack of food and water. The Mexican cook, or rather the cook's assistant, was the only one present when Sundown drifted in, for the Concho was, in the parlance of the riders, "A man's ranch from chuck to sunup, and never a ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... of the "outhouses" which constituted the servants' quarters, in that which common parlance denominated the "back-yard" at "Elm Bluff," an old negro woman ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to be what in country parlance is called "a brave lump of a boy," and his mother thought he was old enough to do something for himself, she took him one day along with her to the squire's, and waited outside the door, loitering up and down the yard behind the house, among a crowd of beggars and great ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... parlance, the Countess was taken in flank. Another would have asked—What ladyship? To whom do you allude, may I beg to inquire? The Countess knew better. Rapid as light it shot through her that the relict of Sir Abraham was meant, and this she divined because she was aware that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Rossetti was a spiritualist, and it is a fact that he went to several seances; but the word 'spiritualism' seems to have a rather elastic meaning. A spiritualist, as distinguished from a materialist, Rossetti certainly was, but his spiritualism was not, I should say, that which in common parlance bears this name. It was exactly like 'Aylwinism,' which seems to have been related to the doctrines of the Lavaterian sect about which Jay Aitch inquires. As a matter of fact, it was not the original of 'Wilderspin' ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... western parlance, differs from a cabin in the logs being hewn on two sides to an equal thickness before raising,—in having a framed and shingled roof, a brick or stone chimney, windows, tight floors, and are frequently clapboarded on ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... head first into the great trouble of Sir Richard Frayne's life, I must ask my readers to let me go back, in military parlance, "two paces to the rear," so as to enter into a few explanations as to the position of the cousins, promising that the interpolation shall be neither tedious ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... civilization. The term, like the word from which it is derived, integer, signifies completeness, wholeness, entirety, soundness, rectitude, unimpaired state. It implies no scarification, no blemish, no unsoundness, no abrasion, no disfigurement, no distortion, no defect. In ordinary parlance integrity and honesty are regarded as synonyms, but a close analysis discovers honesty to be but one of the many manifestations of integrity. Lincoln displayed honesty in returning the pennies by way of rectifying ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... mysterious psychic force. Here and there among this cowering, sweating multitude crouched some poor wretch who had felt the pangs of an awakened conscience, but had not yet experienced that complete divestment of reason, that frenzy born of a convulsion of the mind, which, in the parlance of the Free Gospellers, is termed "the Light." On the floor before the mourners' bench lay the unconscious figure of a man in whom outraged nature had sought her last resort. This "trance" state is the highest evidence ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... impossible it would be then, with the support of a wife and potential family added; how they would hate having to knock off poker, find a cheaper tailor, and economise in golf balls. They shudder at the prospect, and decide in the expressively vulgar parlance of the day that it's 'not good enough.' The things that are beyond price are weighed against the things that are bought with ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... use of the word "her" in place of "she" is very common, as well as the curious term "just now," for an indefinite time to come, as "Her'll do it just now," instead of "She will do it soon." In vulgar parlance this book is not your own or our own, but "yourn" or "ourn," or it may be "hisn" or "hern." In pronunciation as well, though perhaps not so markedly, our people are sometimes peculiar, as when they ask for a "stahmp" or put ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... a large airy room, where the elder children, whole rows of little beings in red frocks, were busied under the direction of a lively young nurse, in building up coloured cubes, 'gifts' in Kindergarten parlance. ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exhilarating. She liked Meg, and wanted to see her home surroundings. The two younger sisters, Eppie and Molly, she knew already, as they were in the Lower Third and Second Forms, and she had always set them down, in school parlance, as "jolly kids". The rest of the family she hoped ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Arab. "Ana 'l-Tabb, al-Mudwi." In pop. parlance, the former is the scientific practitioner and the latter represents the man of the people ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... dreadful to think of her standing there alone, aiming a pistol at her young, passionate heart; but it is worse to picture her doing this under the gaze of unsympathizing eyes. I can not and will not so picture her. You have been misled by appearances or what in police parlance is called a clue." ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... mutually intelligible, when used as it is the usual practice to use them. That strange sentences may be made by picking out strange provincialisms, and stringing them together in a manner that never occurs in common parlance, is likely enough; but that any two men speaking English shall be in the same position to each other as an Englishman is to a Dutchman or Dane, so that one shall not know what the other says, is what I am wholly unprepared ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... is now peculiar to New York and a few other American cities came into vogue—a demi-toilet of marked elegance and richness, and yet without that display either of apparel and trimmings or of the wearer's personal charms which is implied by full evening dress in fashionable parlance. This toilet is very pleasing in itself, and it is happily adapted to the social conditions of a country in which any public exhibition of superior wealth in places set apart for common enjoyment of refined pleasure is not in good taste." Mr. White wrote in 1881; would he have been able to be so ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... territory of the desired fruit. After sinking and jolting for some little distance, we came to a part of the track which had been laid over with small parallel logs, close to each other, and forming what is called in country parlance "a corduroy road". We "bumped along" (as Jim Stokes, one of our party, a plain young farmer, expressed it) over this railway of the woods, until our bones seemed so loose we thought we could hear them rattle at every jolt; and at last stopped at a large ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... through its consequences, to the terrible operation of trepanning, performed by Monsieur Martener under the advice of Doctor Bianchon),—all this horrible drama reduced to judicial form was left to float in the vile mess called in legal parlance the calendar. The case was made to drag through the delays and the interminable labyrinths of the law, by the shufflings of an unprincipled lawyer; and during all this time the calumniated girl languished in the agony of the ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... actor's parlance, he means that he wishes he could talk the play over with me again and be persuaded that ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... ("She", in miners' parlance, was the stone then being crushed—a crushing is always a "she." Sometimes "she" is a "bully-boy with a glass eye; going four ounces to the ton." Sometimes "she" is a "rank duffer." Sometimes "she" is "just ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... nothing to lose, he employed all means to that end. Dutocq and himself were bound together in depravity. Cerizet was to Dutocq what the hound is the huntsman. Knowing himself the necessities of poverty and wretchedness, he set up that business of gutter usury called, in popular parlance, "the loan by the little week." He began this at first by help of Dutocq, who shared the profits; but, at the present moment this man of many legal crimes, now the banker of fishwives, the money-lender of costermongers, was the gnawing rodent ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... thighs. This flow of blood continues for about five days, and is known as a menstrual flow; and this time in a woman's life is known as the menstrual period. It is so named because of the regularity of its recurrence, the word mensa meaning a month. In common parlance, these periods are often spoke of as ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... glittering firemen preceding us, to the laying of a corner-stone that really was in our line: that of a monument to the memory of the dramatist Emile Augier. Here, naturally, M. Jules Claretie came to the fore. In the parlance of the Academy, Augier was "his dead man"; and not often does it happen that a finer, a more discriminating, eulogy is pronounced in the Academy by the successor to a vacant chair than was pronounced that hot day in Valence upon Emile Augier by the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... count's coronet, the escutcheon with two bends sinister and two stars, bearing the letters B. P., which signify Buonaparte, the field of the arms red, the bends and stars blue, the letters and coronet yellow!" In heraldic parlance this would be: Gules, two bends sinister between two estoiles azure charged with B. P. for Buona Parte, or; surmounted by a count's coronet of the last. In 1759 the same sovereign granted further the title of patrician. Charles, the son of Joseph, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... said. Such a threat had never been held out to either him or Jack through all their Ryeburn career. They looked upon it as next worst to being expelled. For reporting in Ryeburn parlance meant a formal complaint to the head-master, when a boy had been convicted of aggravated disobedience to the juniors. And its results were very severe; it entirely prevented a boy's in any way distinguishing himself during the half-year: however hard a 'reported' boy might work, he ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... face either from battle or from fire-tending, who was presented as Wee Jaikie. Last came the picket who had held his pole at Dickson's chest, a sandy-haired warrior with a snub nose and the mouth and jaw of a pug-dog. He was Old Bill, or, in Dougal's parlance, "Auld Bull." ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... so, most remarkably, was united the equally extraordinary destinies of the regal race of the heroic John Sobieski with that of our anointed warrior, Robert Bruce, in the person of his princely descendant, James Fitz-James, in diplomatic parlance styled the Chevalier de St. George; and from that blended blood, and by family connection, sprung from the same branching tree, I feel sanguinely confident that the claim I have set up for myself and gentle nephew, whose kindred spirit the warm heart ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... of Great Britain, whatever their color or complexion, were native-born British subjects—those born out of his allegiance were aliens. Slavery did not exist in England, but it did in the British colonies. Slaves were not in legal parlance persons, but property. The moment the incapacity, the disqualification of slavery, was removed, they became persons, and were then either British subjects, or not British subjects, according as they were or were not born within ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... very rare book in their power, might change or corrupt the meaning of a sentence in it, but they could not alter the signification of the words; moreover, if anyone wanted to change the meaning of a common word he would not be able to keep up the change among posterity, or in common parlance ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... in modern parlance means a Turkoman, a pomade: the settled people call themselves Osmanli or ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... utterly failed to sweeten my temper. I should have shared the fate of those unfortunate boys who were whipped to death in Lacedaemon, in honor of Diana; said whipping- festival (I here remark parenthetically, for my mother's enjoyment) being known in classic parlance as Diamastigosis!" ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... feel the need of a scientific nomenclature. In popular parlance, two possible types of Home Rule are recognized—"Federal" and "Colonial." Both, of course, may be "Colonial," because there are Colonial Federations as well as Colonial Unitary States. But, nomenclature apart, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... Breckenridge, and I shall take pleasure in providing a brave knight for your escort in the person of one Gerald Blank, in whose automobile we are to make the trip. He has a new seven-passenger car given him by his father, and, in the vulgar parlance of the day, we are going to 'make things hum.' It is only some sixty miles to the mountains, and we expect to be out only one night between Baltimore and our destination. Besides yourself, Aunt Betty and I, there will be only Gerald, Aurora, his sister, Jim Barlow, and Ephraim, who will ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... "hoodlum" in San Francisco parlance is a term applied to street loafers from fifteen to twenty-five years of age, who are disinclined to work and have ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... pulled himself up he thrust the skiff away with his foot. He climbed back along the ledge to her stern gangway and vaulting over the rail found himself on the narrow deck encircling the stern, which is in marine parlance the "quarter." ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... amiable exterior, but Mr. Brightman is capable of very strong dislikes, of one of which, alas! I am the object. Now this is not as it should be. You see what might happen, supposing Mr. Brightman were engaged to watch a little coterie, or, in plainer parlance, a little gang of supposed misdemeanants. If by any possible stretch of his imagination he could connect me with them, I should be the one he would go for all the time, and although I perhaps carry ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ten thousand years more, multiplied by the fourth power of two thousand miles. Seems simple? Well, I had to invent the mathematical process for it. Reckon in the gravitational attraction of the planets, and you'll begin to get an idea of the complexity of it. So, in vulgar parlance, we're not likely to arrive ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... call it what she pleases in common parlance," said the writer; "but it must stand Munt-grunzie in the stamped paper, being so nominated in the ancient ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... that Dummie protested his innocence. A violent coup-de-pied broke off all further parlance. He made a clear house of the Mug; and the landlady thereof, tottering back to her elbow-chair, sought out another pipe, and, like all imaginative persons when the world goes wrong with them, consoled herself for the absence of realities by the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... replying. The theatre was packed with a motley audience of unrelated people. Professors and their wives, reformers, writers, mothers with adolescent sons, mothers with young daughters—what, in Broadway parlance, is called a "high-brow" audience—a striking group of people gathered together to mark a daring experiment of our audacious times; a surgical clinic on a social sore, up to this moment hidden, ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... Andes. The latter name is derived from the Quichua word Antasuyu; Anta signifying metal generally, but especially copper, and Suyu a district; the meaning of Antasuyu, therefore, is the metal district. In common parlance, the word Suyu was dropped, and the termination a in Anta was converted into is. Hence the word Antis, which is employed by all old writers and geographers; and even now is in common use among the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... with that vast average who in common parlance are Mr. and Mrs. Smythe Johnes. How shall they be styled on the backs of their letters? How shall Mrs. Smythe Johnes especially, in signing herself Mary Johnes, indicate that she is not Miss Mary but Mrs. Smythe Johnes? When she is left a widow, how soon does ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Daughters, and a graduate of the High School, oftener than four nights in the week, without exciting more or less neighbourly comment; but David and the girl were merely going together—as the parlance of our town has it—and though they were engaged they had no idea of getting married at any definite time. David thus had three nights in the seven which might be called open. The big press would not receive him by night, and he spent his love on his linotype by day; so he was ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... peculiar for all three concerned. Despite the vigilance and woodcraft of Deerfoot the Shawanoe, he had allowed an enemy to creep up behind him and secure an advantage which could not be overcome. In the common parlance of the West, the Pawnee had ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... life Harut was, in sporting parlance, knocked out. He looked at us, then turning quite pale, lifted his eyes to heaven and rocked upon his feet as though he were about ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... Gortonoges and Wattaconoges. [16] Roger Williams tells us that the latter term, applied to the men of Boston, meant coat-wearers. Whether it is to be inferred that the Gortonoges went about in what in modern parlance would be called their "shirt-sleeves," the reader must ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... said at once, waving the flag, and without more ado plunged into an oration, which, so far as it went, must certainly be ranked among his masterpieces. "Great tidings, Friends! I have planted the grain of mustard seed or, in common parlance, have just come from the meeting which has incepted the League of Nations; and it will be my task this morning briefly to make known to you the principles which in future must dominate the policy of the world. Since it is for the closer brotherhood of man and the reign of perpetual peace ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lecture, in the Northern States of America, has become, in Yankee parlance, "an institution"; and it has attained such prevalence and power that it deserves more attention and more respect from those who assume the control of the motive influences of society than it has hitherto received. It has been the habit of certain literary men, (more particularly of such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... the oldest seaman in each claims the treat as his, and, accordingly, pours out the good cheer and passes it round like a lord doing the honours of his table. But the Saturday-night bottles were not all. The carpenter and cooper, in sea parlance, Chips and Bungs, who were the "Cods," or leaders of the forecastle, in some way or other, managed to obtain an extra supply, which perpetually kept them in fine after-dinner spirits, and, moreover, disposed them to look favourably upon a state ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... grim, gaunt man, was this stranger, Mr. Coroner, with a very odd-looking face. I should say an educated man—in common parlance, a gentleman. What drew my special attention to him was that he was talking aloud to himself—in fact, he seemed to be repeating poetry. I give you my word, I had no thought of The Avenger, no thought at all. To tell you the truth, I thought this gentleman was a poor escaped lunatic, a man ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... understand!" poor Mr. Dosson had said. "I thought you liked the piece—you think it's so queer THEY don't like it." "They," in the parlance of the Dossons, now never meant anything but the Proberts in ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... had no desire to run the risk of being buried alive in their holes. Many had gone to the Adelaide diggings, of which further particulars hereafter, and many more had gone across the country to the Ovens, or, farther still, to the Sydney diggings themselves. According to digging parlance, "the Turon was looking up," and Bendigo, Mount Alexander, and Forest Creek were thinned accordingly. But perhaps the real cause of their desertion arose from the altered state of the diggings. Some time since one party netted 900 pounds in three weeks; 100 pounds a week was thought nothing ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... 'plantations,' the word 'planter' is still current in the insular vocabulary, and the 'supplying system' still prevails, the solitary links which connect with these bygone days. A 'planter' in Newfoundland parlance is a fish trader on a moderate scale, the middleman between the merchant, who ships the cod to market and the toiler who hauls it from the water. 'Plantations' are yet interwoven with local tradition, and ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... clergyman was one of the unlucky days of his life; and he positively regrets ever having been a politician, or troubling his head about the southern-rights question. The party gather round the front stoop, and are what is termed in southern parlance "tuckered out." They are equally well satisfied of having done their duty to the state and a good cause. Dogs, their tails drooping, sneak to their kennels, horses reek with foam, the human dogs will ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... with which Mr McAllister accompanied his vain efforts to comfort and re-assure her. This excellent man quoted several passages from the works of Dugald Stewart and Locke, tending to show, in common parlance, that "necessity has no law," and that the rightly constituted human mind ought to rise superior to all circumstances—quotations which had the effect of making Mrs Sudberry more hysterical than ever, and which ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... infirmity of ugliness: it is not in human nature to admire her, and human nature is a thing very much to be consulted. Moreover, no one ever yet saw an amiable personage, who was not so far pleasing, or, in other parlance, so far pretty. I cannot help the common course of things; and however hackneyed be the thought, however common-place the phrase, it is true, nevertheless, that beauty, singular beauty, would be the first ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a real good may sometimes come indirectly from a word being a homophone, because its inconvenience in common parlance may help to drive it into a corner where it can be retained for a special signification: and since the special significance of any word is its first merit, and the coinage of new words for special differentiation is difficult and rare, we may rightly welcome any fortuitous means ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... part of the lake there occurs a deep bay or inlet, to save rounding which travellers usually strike straight across from point to point, making what is called in voyageur parlance a traverse. These traverses are subjects of considerable anxiety and frequently of delay to travellers, being sometimes of considerable extent, varying from four to five, and in such immense seas as Lake Superior, to fourteen miles. With boats, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... travelling-carriages for their families. They were old campaigners; they knew a thing or two about Arizona; we lieutenants did not know, we had never heard much about this part of our country. But a comfortable large carriage, known as a Dougherty wagon, or, in common army parlance, an ambulance, was secured for me to travel in. This vehicle had a large body, with two seats facing each other, and a seat outside for the driver. The inside of the wagon could be closed if desired by canvas sides and back which rolled up and down, and ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... got careless, for about noon the next day we heard the long-drawn-out "who-o-o-o-i-s-s-s-h" of a big shell coming. It struck about twenty-five yards behind our building and failed to explode; in soldier's parlance, it was a "dud." We were eating dinner and refused to be disturbed. Then came a steady stream of the big fellows; to the right, to the left, in front of the building and, finally, "smack," right into the house. Altogether, they put thirty-two ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... not, or need not be, wrapped up in obscure Latin and Greek terms. They may be expressed in the simplest English, because they are discovered by simple common sense. And thus geology is (or ought to be), in popular parlance, the people's science—the science by studying which, the man ignorant of Latin, Greek, mathematics, scientific chemistry, can yet become—as far as his brain enables ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... with the Marquis de Prerolles was not a mystery; from the moment of her entrance upon the scene, it was evident that she "played to him," to use a phrase in theatrical parlance. Thus, after the recital of the combat undertaken in behalf of Adrienne by her defender—a recital which she concluded in paraphrasing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... accomplishments, the epithet Gishi (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls—of whom so much is made in our popular education—are known in common parlance as ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... distance with a few intermediate facts, from 1609, relating to the discovery of the river, its early settlement, its old reaches and other points essential to the fullest enjoyment of our trip, which in sailor-parlance might be styled "a gang-plank of history," reaching as it does from the old-time yacht to the modern steamer, ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... man; but several of the harp-strings at once snapped in consequence of his fierce fingering, and he broke down amidst howls of guttural disapprobation. So far as competition was concerned, he was, in sporting parlance, nowhere! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various |
