"Provincialism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I think that it can rely on the Frenchman, who only wants to make the most of his own without encroaching on anybody's else property and is disinterested in human incubation for the purpose of overwhelming his neighbors. True internationalism will spring from the provincialism that holds fast to its own home and does not interfere with the worship by other countries of ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... "ground," and a fence or stone wall is a "mound." The Cotswold folk do not talk about houses; they stick to the old Saxon termination, and call their dwellings "housen"; they also use the Anglo-Saxon "hire" for hear. The word "bowssen," too, is very frequently heard in these parts; it is a provincialism for a stall or shed where oxen are kept. "Boose" is the word from which it originally sprang. A very expressive phrase in common use is to "quad" or "quat"; it is equivalent to the word "squat." Other words in this dialect are "sprack," an adjective meaning quick or lively; ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... all become absolutely wearied of it. Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of a sunset. Sunsets are quite old-fashioned. They belong to the time when Turner was the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on. Yesterday evening Mrs. Arundel insisted on my going to the window, and looking at the glorious sky, as she called it. Of course I had to look at it. She is one of those absurdly pretty Philistines to ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... direction of local autonomy that he exalted the state above the nation in the Kentucky resolutions of 1798, declaring the Constitution to be a mere compact and the states competent to interpret and nullify federal law. This was provincialism with a vengeance. "It is jealousy, not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions," wrote Jefferson for the Kentucky legislature. Jealousy of the national government, not confidence in it—this is the ideal that reflected the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... unfortunate at that time, as it served to increase existing jealousies between the troops from the different States, and so far impair the morale of the army. It excites a smile to-day to read that men from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland charged New Englanders generally with provincialism and cowardice, and that the charge was resented; but such was the fact. The feeling between them grew to such an extent that Washington was obliged to issue orders condemning its indulgence. The Kip's Bay panic offered a favorable opportunity ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... tending? This anxiety of man to know the aim and the end is essentially human; it is a kind of infirmity or provincialism of the mind, and has nothing in common with universal reality. Have things an aim? Why should they have; and what aim or end can there be, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... transition makes the stranger guest a little dizzy at first. There are handsome buildings in Denver—blocks that would do credit to any city under the sun; but there was for years an upstart air, a palpable provincialism, a kind of ill-disguised "previousness," noticeable that made her seem like the brisk suburb of some other place, and that other place, alas! invisible to mortal eye. Rectangular blocks make a checker-board of the town map. The streets are appropriately named ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Agatha, puzzled by the provincialism, and attracted at once by the man's intelligent face, and by a keen, misery-stricken, hungry look, which she had truly ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... delightfully. The available translations leave much to be desired, but to the student of Latin Livy's style is pure and simple, and possesses that charm which purity and simplicity always give. If there is anything to justify the charge of "Patavinity," or provincialism, made by Asinius Pollio, we, at least, are not learned enough in Latin to detect it; and Pollio, too, appears to have been no gentle critic if we may judge by his equally severe strictures upon Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust. This much we know: the Patavian's heroes live; ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... of the city of New York do not refer to it as "Gotham." This shows the worst kind of provincialism and a vulgar spirit. ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature that inspired us. We could not give her over to a lumberman, doubly accursed by wealth and provincialism. We shuddered to think of Milly, with her voice modulated and her elbows covered, pouring tea in the marble teepee of a tree murderer. No! In Cypher's she belonged—in the bacon smoke, the cabbage perfume, the grand, Wagnerian chorus of hurled ironstone ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... pleases. But, Margaret, don't get to use these horrid Milton words. "Slack of work:" it is a provincialism. What will your aunt Shaw say, if she hears you use ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to harbour birds. The soil is a rich dark loam, yielding good crops, with very little manure, and the surface is level. There are sixty-three tenants occupying plots varying in size, according to circumstances, from 48 "lug" downwards—25, 30, 16, &c. A "lug" is a provincialism for perch. The rent is 5d. per "lug" or perch, and each occupier on becoming a tenant receives a card on which the following rules are ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... easily understood that such authoritative utterances as that of Dieterich must have produced a great effect throughout Protestant Christendom; and in due time we see their working in New England. That same tendency to provincialism, which, save at rare intervals, has been the bane of Massachusetts thought from that day to this, appeared; and in 1664 we find Samuel Danforth arguing from the Bible that "comets are portentous signals of great and notable changes," and arguing from history that they "have ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Mackenzie among men of letters; Hutton, Black, Cullen, and Gregory among scientific leaders. Scottish patriotism then, as at other periods, was vigorous, and happily ceasing to be antagonistic to unionist sentiment. The Scot admitted that he was touched by provincialism; but he retained a national pride, and only made the modest and most justifiable claim that he was intrinsically superior to the Southron. He still preserved intellectual and social traditions, and cherished them the more warmly, which marked him as a distinct member of the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... much time out here?" asked John, to conceal the fact that he was somewhat hurt by this remark. It seemed an unkind allusion to his provincialism. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... queen and somewhat confused by the many questions addressed to her; robed in a white gown, she was extremely pretty, fair, and wore natural roses in her ash-colored hair, her eyes had a wondering expression, her cheeks were flushed, and in her amiable, gracious manner, she disclosed a touch of provincialism, modesty and hesitation—Marianne heard Madame Gerson say to ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... than to be lax in pronunciation and it is absolutely necessary to rise above provincialism. "Maria" is not a rhyming companion for "fire" except in dialect verse, though this pairing sounds ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... about all this, but what specially strikes me is a curious flavor of city provincialism. There are little centres in the heart of great cities, just as there are small fresh-water ponds in great islands with the salt sea roaring all round them, and bays and creeks penetrating them as briny as the ocean itself. Irving has given a charming picture of such ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... having a sense of refinement, which had made her appreciate the whole manner of being at the Hall. By her dear old friends the Miss Brownings she was petted and caressed so much that she became ashamed of noticing the coarser and louder tones in which they spoke, the provincialism of their pronunciation, the absence of interest in things, and their greediness of details about persons. They asked her questions which she was puzzled enough to answer about her future stepmother; her loyalty to her father forbidding ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the same with matters of speech, choice of words and ideas, as it is with matters of feeling. The mind can rust as well as the body if it is not rubbed up in Paris; but the thing on which provincialism most sets its stamp is gesture, gait, and movement; these soon lose the briskness which Paris constantly keeps alive. The provincial is used to walk and move in a world devoid of accident or change, there is nothing to be ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... am a natural character, and always was, and act and talk naturally, and as far as I can judge, the little alteration my sojourn in London with the American embassy has made in my pronunciation and provincialism, is by no means an improvement to my Journal. The moment you take away my native dialect, I become the representative of another class, and cease to be your old friend 'Sam Slick, the Clockmaker.' Bear with me this once, Squire, and don't ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the reason of this undeniable provincialism of the English Puritans and Protestant Nonconformists, a provincialism which has two main types,—a bitter type and a smug type,—but which in both its types is vulgarising, and thwarts the full perfection of our humanity? Men ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... my attention was called to this word in the proof did I know that in this sense it is a provincialism. It is so used, at least in half the country, and yet neither of our ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... the prime characteristics of the man of culture is freedom from provincialism, complete deliverance from rigidity of temper, narrowness of interest, uncertainty of taste, and general unripeness. The villager, or pagan in the old sense, is always a provincial; his horizon is narrow, his outlook upon the world restricted, his knowledge of life limited. He may know ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... France her Rabelais, her Moliere, her Voltaire; Germany her Jean Paul, her Heine; England her Swift, her Thackeray; and America has her Lowell. By the side of all those great masters of satire, though kept somewhat in the rear by provincialism of style and subject, the author of the "Biglow Papers" holds his own place distinct from each and all. The man who reads the book for the first time, and is capable of understanding it, has received a new sensation. In Lowell the American mind has for the ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... of the lesser world of fashion, and of the theatre, he retailed: how the king walked and looked, of the rivalry between Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Baddeley, of Charles Fox's debts and eloquence, of the vogue of Cecilia Davis, or "L'Inglesina." To Janice, hungry with the true appetite of provincialism, it was all the most delicious of comfits. To talk to a man who could imitate the way the Duke of Gloucester limped at a levee when suffering from the gout, and who was able to introduce a story by saying, "As Lady Rochford once said to me at one of her routs—" was almost like meeting those ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... expression for a number of petty feudal states, practically independent and almost always at strife. Henceforward there was peace; and throughout the whole of this northern part of his domains it was the constant policy of Philip gradually to abolish provincialism and to establish a centralised government. He was far too wise a statesman to attempt to abolish suddenly or arbitrarily the various rights and privileges, which the Flemings, Brabanters and Hollanders had wrung from their sovereigns, and to which ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... then with impatience. Many of the things that seemed so important to him were valueless in her more practical eyes. Instead of a regime which ennobled those who enjoyed its privileges, she saw only a slavish devotion to worn-out traditions, and a clannish provincialism which proved to her all the more clearly the narrow-mindedness of the people who sustained and defended them. So far as she could judge, the qualities that she deemed necessary in the make-up of a robust life, instinct with purpose ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Hungarians. The Hungarian, representing the extreme of the emphasis and caprice; the Bohemian, showing a great deal of impetuosity;—which, however, they lose in their productions in proportion as they become polished and finished writers. Bohemianism, in German music, has more the character of provincialism than ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... birth, born at Amiens of a Russian father and an English mother, Paul Bourget inherited Anglo-Saxon as well as Gallic intuitions. He is very proud of the cosmopolitan spirit which exempts him from the usual French provincialism, and has sought to develop it by travel and study. He endeavors to know intimately the phases of life which he wishes to describe, and then to treat them in the light of a large knowledge of many peoples. Yet he feels a somewhat bitter realization that so general a view ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the group that has since come to be called the "Chicago Renaissance." Anderson soon adopted the posture of a free, liberated spirit, and like many writers of the time, he presented himself as a sardonic critic of American provincialism and materialism. It was in the freedom of the city, in its readiness to put up with deviant styles of life, that Anderson found the strength to settle accounts with—but also to release his affection for—the world of small-town ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... the caviler against missions; we shall raise the negro in the face of those who say he can not be raised; we shall see the latter-day miracles, and the lame man healed and rejoicing at the Temple gate. Thus may the breath of God sweep across our pastorates and dismiss timidity, provincialism, ease, and narrowness of outlook. And thus may the power be demonstrated as of heaven because it is the power unto salvation. Let us fear not men who shall die, nor be content to fill our peaceful lot and occupy a respectable ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... e.g. Guy, Guyon, Hugues, Hugon. From Lat. Pontius came Poinz, Poinson, whence our Poyntz, less pleasingly Punch, and Punshon. In the Pipe Rolls these are also spelt Pin-, whence Pinch, Pinchin, and Pinches.] Horn is an old personal name, as in the medieval romance of King Horn, Shipp is a common provincialism for sheep, [Footnote: Hence the connection between the ship and the "ha'porth of tar."] Starr has another explanation (see Starling) and Bell has several (chapter 1). I should guess that Porteous was the sign used by some medieval writer of mass-books and breviaries. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Lancastrian provincialism is supposed to be a corruption of "choose how." Its exact pronunciation can hardly be ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... members of a single community, with closely similar inheritance and environment, we find marked divergence in moral judgment. And when we compare widely different times and places we are apt to wonder if there is any common ground. It is only a very smug provincialism that can attribute the alien standards of other races and nations to a disregard of the light. Mohammedans and Buddhists have believed as firmly in, and fought as passionately for, their moral convictions as Christians ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... of a "divine provincialism," which expresses the sturdy sense of a nation, and is but ill replaced by a cosmopolitanism lacking in virtue and distinction. Perhaps this is England's gift, and insures for her a solidarity which Americans lack. Ignoring or misunderstanding the standards of other races, she ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the introduction of competition in any society is to break up all types of isolation and provincialism based upon lack of communication and contact. But as competition continues, natural and social selection comes into play. Successful types emerge in the process of competitive struggle while variant individuals who fail to maintain the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... who had a keen ear for that sort of thing, could not help noticing the other's voice. It was a pleasing voice, a cultured voice, and refined withal, nor could his fastidious ear detect the faintest trace of provincialism or vulgarity about it. The intonation was perfect. There is nothing so quick to betray to the sensitive ear any strain of plebeian descent as the voice, and of this no one was more thoroughly aware than Laurence Stanninghame. This man, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... some other Province. The hot vigorous local life which Provincial institutions intensified was in itself an admirable thing. But it engendered a mild edition of the feelings which set Greek States and Italian cities at each others' throats. From the first many colonists were convinced that Provincialism was unnatural and must go. But for twenty years the friends of the Provinces were usually ready to forego quarrelling with each other when the Centralists in Parliament threatened the Councils. There ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... ordained a public fast on the news of the massacre of white women and children by the Sepoys. Thousands of Canadians enlisted in the Northern armies. The Papal Zouaves went from Quebec to the aid of the Pope against Garibaldi. All these were symptoms that Canadians were beginning to outgrow their narrow provincialism and to perceive their relations to the outer world, and especially towards Britain. The country was reaching out towards the role which in our own day she has played in the ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... one side. It was taken for granted that he, who had spoken so many eloquent words, all pointing to the magnificent future of British North America, all tending to inspire its youth with love of country as something far higher than mere provincialism, would now be among the advocates of federation, and the wise and loving critic of the scheme to be submitted to the legislatures. Though his ideal had ever looked beyond to a wider Imperial federation, he had at his best always regarded ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... broader culture and for a freer spiritual life. It took a tremendous grip on New England, beginning about 1830, and kept it for nearly forty years; for New England has always been more or less provincial—provincialism being the habit of measuring everything by one ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... through unpopulated country five miles off instead of through the Five Towns, because it loathed the mere conception of a railway. And now, people are inquiring why the Five Towns, with a railway system special to itself, is characterised by a perhaps excessive provincialism. These interesting details have everything to do with the history of Edwin Clayhanger, as they have everything to do with the history of each of the two hundred thousand souls in the Five Towns. Oldcastle guessed not the vast influences ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... times, with a coldness of exterior that had at least the merit of appearing to avoid deception. Both were violently prejudiced, though in Mr. Monday, it was the prejudice of old dogmas, in religion, politics, and morals; and in the other, it was the vice of provincialism, and an education that was not entirely free from the fanaticism of the seventeenth century. One consequence of this discrepancy of character was a perfectly opposite manner of viewing matters in this interview. While Mr. Monday was disposed to take things amicably, Mr. Dodge was all ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... between me and my intentions; until one day, upon arranging my toilet hastily before dinner, I suddenly made the discovery that I had no waistcoat (or vest, as it is now called, through conceit or provincialism), which was not torn or otherwise dilapidated; whereupon, buttoning up my coat to the throat, and drawing my gown as close about me as possible, I went into the public "hall" (so is called in Oxford the public eating-room) with no misgiving. However, I was detected; for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... diffused everywhere, to make head against the advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. Of society there was but little; for what it suited the caprice of certain people to call such was little more than the noisy, screeching, hoydenish romping of both sexes. The taint of provincialism was diffused over all feelings and beliefs. Of arts and letters the country possessed none or next to none. Moreover, there was no genuine sympathy with either. To all this dismal prospect there was slight hope of improvement, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... of Lancashire varies with its valleys. It is only necessary, therefore, to remark that as these Idylls are drawn from a once famous valley in the North-east division of the county, the provincialism is peculiar to that valley—indeed, it would be more correct to say, to that section of the ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... excellent, but we do not like the use of the plebeian expression "onto" on page 3. There is properly no such word as "onto" in the English language, "upon" being the preposition here required. Webster clearly describes "onto" as a low provincialism or colloquialism. "Little Jack in Fairyland," by Ruth Ryan, is a well written account of a dream, with the usual awakening just as events are coming to a climax. The style is very attractive, and the images ingenious. "Getting What You Want," by Mr. Moe, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... and interested besides in the contrast between the boy's oddly noble face and good bearing on the one hand, and on the other the drawl of his bluntly articulated speech and the coarseness of his tone, both seeming to her in the extreme of provincialism, promised; and Robert, entranced by all the qualities of her voice and speech, and nothing disenchanted by the nearer view of her lovely face, confided in her ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... British jingoism which points to America as the country of Puritanic provincialism. It is quite true that our life is stunted by Puritanism, and that the latter is killing what is natural and healthy in our impulses. But it is equally true that it is to England that we are indebted for transplanting this spirit ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... conditions of life as to make them minister to his perfection. The one most cultured may come out of a factory, and the man of least culture may be found in a university. Indeed colleges and universities, not infrequently, are haunts of provincialism and of dread of enthusiasm. The object of culture is the perfection of the spirit to the end that all that hinders, or limits, may disappear and only pure power, clear vision, and full self-realization remain. Those whose growth ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... Lyapinsky house, I related my impressions to a friend. The friend, an inhabitant of the city, began to tell me, not without satisfaction, that this was the most natural phenomenon of town life possible, that I only saw something extraordinary in it because of my provincialism, that it had always been so, and always would be so, and that such must be and is the inevitable condition of civilization. In London it is even worse. Of course there is nothing wrong about it, and it is impossible to be displeased with it. I began to reply to my friend, but with so much ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... of varied tastes and developed a desire for literary entertainment, as well as for instruction. Works like those of Irving and Cooper gained wide circulation only because of the new demands, due to the increasing population, to the decline in colonial provincialism, and to the growth of the new national spirit. Probably no one would have been inspired, twenty-five years earlier, to write a work like Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York. Even if it had been produced earlier, the country would not have been ready to receive ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... longings of the Jewish people throughout the world, Zionism should serve as a leaven, quickening and stimulating the Jewish activities of this country, and rescue them from the greatest danger of Diaspora Judaism, the danger of provincialism, of falling away from the main body of universal Israel. In the particular situation confronting us Zionism ought to assert the claims of Palestine, in addition to those of the Diaspora. But the Zionists cannot replace the present agencies ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... are evidence of a broad pronunciation which, at the present time, is said to be a characteristic of the northwestern division of Lancashire, but I think that there is good evidence for asserting that this strong provincialism was not confined, formerly, to the West-Midland dialect, much less to a division of any particular county. We find traces of it in Audelay's Poems (Shropshire), the Romance of William and the Werwolf,[35] and even in the Wickliffite ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... a brown, wrinkled old man, with sparse pepper-and-salt whiskers and a parrot-like nose. "Sharper" was written all over his hatchet features; but probably his provincialism and lack of book education had kept him from ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... unless by a recent immigrant. The misuse of the aspirate is, indeed, a peculiar part of the birthright of an Englishman. No one ever yet heard it from the poorest or most illiterate class in the United States. In Australia, says Mr. Froude, 'no provincialism has yet developed itself. The tone is soft, the language good.' The young people looked fresh and healthy, 'not lean and sun-dried, but fair, fleshy, lymphatic.' Mr. Froude could not see any difference between his countrymen at home and those who had settled down ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... should be any question concerning the origin of the well-known sobriquet of "Yankees." Nearly all the old writers who speak of the Indians first known to the colonists make them pronounce the word "English" as "Yengeese." Even at this day, it is a provincialism of New England to say "Anglish" instead of "Inglish," and there is a close conformity of sound between "Anglish" and "yengeese," more especially if the latter word, as was probably the case, be pronounced ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... longer indulge our traditional provincialism. We are to play a leading part in the world drama whether we wish it or not. We shall lend, not borrow; act for ourselves, not imitate or follow; organize and initiate, not peep about merely to see where we may ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... away the time, we strolled about the city. Munich is a fine, handsome, open town, full of noble streets and splendid buildings; but in spite of this and of its hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, an atmosphere of quiet and provincialism hovers over it. There is but little traffic on ordinary occasions along its broad ways, and customers in its well-stocked shops are few and far between. This day being Sunday, it was busier than usual, and its promenades were ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... foutering. Fouter (Fr. foutre; Lat. futuere), verbum obscaenum. cf. the noun in phrase 'to care not a fouter' (footra, footre, foutre), 2 Henry IV, V, iii. To 'fouter' is also used (a vulgarism and a provincialism) in a much mitigated sense to meddle about aimlessly, to waste time and tongue doing nothing, as of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... business of moving regiments about from one garrison to another is a good cure for provincialism," said ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Commerce, secure in the knowledge its city suffered from nothing worse than fires, earthquakes, a miserable climate, and an invincible provincialism, invited displaced businessmen to resettle themselves in an area where improbable happenings were less likely; and the state of Oklahoma organized a border ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... musical voice was trained and softened; the delicate, refined accent retained no trace of provincialism. Everything about Dora pleased the eye and gratified the taste; the girlish figure had grown matronly and dignified; the sweet face had in it a tinge of sadness one may often see in the face of a mother who has lost a child. Lady Helena, fastidious ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... natural impulse. They saw greater painting than their own in Venice and Verona, and not unfrequently their own works show an uncouth attempt to adopt that greatness, which comes out in exaggeration of colour even more than of form, and speaks for that want of taste which is the indelible stamp of provincialism. But there were Venetian towns without the traditions even of the schools of Vicenza and Brescia, where, if you wanted to learn painting, you had to apprentice yourself to somebody who had been taught by somebody who had ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... Senora's provincialism. What a great world lay outside that of her own, of which ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... even for their poverty; but for their brotherhood, and for their calm indifference to all the rest of the world whom they did not care to receive into their kingdom of Bohemia. There is human nature in this; more human nature than there is in most provincialism. Take a community of one hundred people and let any ten of its members join themselves together and dictate the terms on which an eleventh may be admitted to their band. The whole remaining eighty-nine will quarrel for the twelfth place. But take a community of a thousand, and let ten such internal ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... The provincialism indicated by the title of the pop song, "Good bye, Broadway! Hello, France!" reminds us of the headline in a New York paper some years ago: "Halley's Comet ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the corps report in this respect." Yet mention is not made of the fact that my report literally copies that of the division commander, who himself selected the regiments for the charge! The "Ohioan" had soon gone west again with his division, and was probably fair game. There is something akin to provincialism in regimental esprit de corps, and such instances as the above, which are all found within a few pages of the book referred to, show that, like Leech's famous Staffordshire rough in the Punch cartoon, to be a "stranger" is a sufficient reason to "'eave 'arf a brick at un." ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... to know and discuss their characters, and where there were few topics of public interest to take off their attention, a very considerable portion of town talk and criticism fell upon him. The old town had a certain provincialism, which is less the characteristic of towns in these days, when society circulates so freely, than then: besides, it was a very rude epoch, just when the country had come through the war of the Revolution, and while the surges of ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... first address, but in such a manner that it could hardly be distinguished whether he was passing upon his friend a sort of jocose mockery, or whether it was his own native dialect, for his ordinary discourse had little provincialism. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... democracy the product of French infidelity and of false humanitarianism, industrial prosperity the inveterate foe of the graces of life. To use Lanier's words, he "failed to perceive the deeper movements underrunning the times." Defeated in a long war and inheriting the provincialism and sensitiveness of a feudal order, he remained proud in his isolation. He went to work with a stubborn and unconquered spirit, with the idea that sometime in the future all the principles for which ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Ulsterman is seldom either a lovable or an interesting character. He has certain rude virtues which command respect and other qualities, not in themselves virtues—such as clan conceit and an intensely narrow provincialism—that beget the virtues of industry, honesty and frugality. But to the philosopher and student of character all types are interesting, and Mr. ERVINE'S skill lies in his ability not merely to draw his Ballyards hero to the life but to interest us in his unsuccessful efforts to become a successful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... the notion of a number, as in early English: it is also spelt anow, and in Chaucer ynowe, and is the plural of enough. It still occurs as a provincialism in England. On lines 780-799 Masson says: "A recurrence, by the sister, with much more mystic fervour, to that Platonic and Miltonic doctrine which had already been propounded by the Elder Brother (see ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... obsolete or too new to have gained a place in the language, or that is a provincialism, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... was more provincial than he had to be; for that matter, there is no provincialism so rampant as that of the thronging, striving, self-sufficient city. But isolation in any sort is a thing to be reckoned with. The two pioneering years in the Rockies had done their work,—of narrowing, as ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... surface. And then, just as we are beginning to think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, like the Sixty-Ninth, to show us that continental provincialism is as bad as that of Coos County, New Hampshire, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... white-spotted green leaves of "Our Lady's thistle" were caused by some drops of her milk falling upon them, and in Cheshire we find the same idea connected with the pulmonaria or "lady's milk sile," the word "sile" being a provincialism for "soil," or "stain." A German tradition makes the common fern (Polypodium vulgare) to have sprung ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... rapt meditation. He marveled at himself for having ever accepted his present position. Its limitations were so narrow and so palpable, its possibilities were so restricted, its complacent provincialism so glaring, that the imaginative glories with which he had once enwrapped it seemed now simply grotesque. As long as he remained, he was an entombed nonentity. Beyond the college walls, out of the reach of the contemptible bigotry of the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... stimulate them intellectually or socially. Strong and peculiar individuals and families were often developed at the expense of a friendly community life: neighbourhood feuds were common. Country life was marked with the rigidity of a hard provincialism. All this, however, is rapidly changing. The closer settlement of the land, the rural delivery of mails (the morning newspaper reaches the tin box at the end of my lane at noon), the farmer's telephone, the spreading ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... origin were now sunk out of sight, covered with the infamy of the Reign of Terror and the responsibility of the series of desolating wars which had followed it, and no man dared to speak for them. Those were dark days for Ireland. Her parliament was gone, and in the blighting shade of the provincialism to which she was reduced, genius and courage seemed to have died out from the land. Thousands of her bravest and most devoted children had perished in her cause—some on the scaffold, and others on the field of battle—and many whose presence at home ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... has largely outgrown provincialism. He has seen much of the world, and he knows the varied worth of varied lands. He travels more widely than the man of any other state, and he has the education which travel gives. As a rule, the well-to-do Californian knows Europe better than the average Eastern man of equal ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... what else is left to inspire to us? We are bankrupt. What is there in all the Churches to help humanity if not their ethics—ethics which are not the perquisite of any sect, no mere provincialism of any Church or nation, but the ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... and fall is the garment of prose as language. There is a lack of urban ease, certainty, and perfection of manner. The limitation, however, stops there. The world in which the artist works is the universal world of man's nature, just as much as is Shakespeare's. He escapes from provincialism here, in the substance, because he was a New Englander, not in spite of that fact; for the spirituality which is the central fact of New England life itself escapes from provincialism, being a pure expression of that Christianity in which alone true cosmopolitanism ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... went abroad were plucked from their Main Streets, and herded through great cities to the mingled companionship of the camps. "Main Street," when it came to be written, found an awakened consciousness of provincialism, and a detached view of the home town such as had never before been shared by many. Seeing home from without was so general as to constitute, not a mere experience, but a mass emotion. And upon this ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... difficulties was ever before presented as has been illustrated in the history of California. There was no general or common source of jurisprudence. Law was to be administered almost without a standard. There was the civil law, as adulterated or modified by Mexican provincialism, usages, and habitudes, for a great part of the litigation; and there was the common law for another part, but what that was was to be decided from the conflicting decisions of any number of courts in America and England, and the various and diverse considerations of policy arising ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... under present conditions, and because the majority of those who do elect it never have an opportunity to continue the study of government, it is thought that the selection of American government for the beginning subject has the tendency to foster provincialism. When but one course is taken this one, it is contended, should deal with foreign governments, to supply a broader basis for the comparison of political institutions. As the study of government is introduced in the grades ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... sweeper with the broom held aloft, gazing at the sky, and plunged into the English Shop to see whether I might buy something warm for Nina. Here, indeed, I could fancy that I was in the High Street in Chester, or Leicester, or Truro, or Canterbury. A demure English provincialism was over everything, and a young man in a high white collar and a shiny black coat, washed his hands as he told me that "they hadn't any in stock at the moment, but they were expecting a delivery of goods at any minute." Russian shopmen, it is almost needless to say, do not care whether ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... hour. "The Church cannot remain an isolated factor in the nation. The Catholic Church possesses spiritual and moral resources which are at the command of the nation in every great crisis. The message to the nation to forget local boundaries and provincialism is a message likewise to the Catholic Church. Parochial, diocesan and provincial limits must be forgotten in the face of the greater tasks which burden our collective religious resources." (Card. Gibbons.) Let us give to the people that broad, Catholic vision of our present ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... of "the country"—bird-nature and rock scenery being his favourite but by no means his only subjects. For "Scenes of Clerical Life" he stands admittedly alone in France, and has naturally been dealt with most often from this point of view. Of that intense provincialism, in the good sense, which is characteristic of French literature, there have been few better representatives. Wordsworth himself is scarcely more the poet of our Lake and Hill country than Fabre is the novelist of the Cevennes. Peasant life and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... only in a limited part of the country is called a provincialism. It must be known and recognized for what it is worth, but not obtruded ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... references to dress in the eighteenth century than in the previous one. The colonists had become more prosperous, a little more worldly, and certainly far less afraid of the wrath of God and the judges. As travel to Europe became safer and more common, visitors brought new fashions, and provincialism in manner, style, and costume became much less apparent. Madame Knight, who wrote an account of her journey from Boston to New York in 1704, has left some record of dress in the different colonies. Of the country ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... and, as they passed on up the line of a dozen cars, loudly proclaimed their admiration of the entire arrangement. "They are just like prairie schooners," said one young man, to Lily's huge delight, for she had never before seen so much provincialism all at once. The platform was thick with people rushing to find their cars at the last minute. All was hurry and excitement and colour and laughter. The orange of Woodbridge and the olive of Hartley were everywhere. Each person boldly ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... why he does nothing," May exclaimed. "Fancy!" Her provincialism was becoming very marked. "A lord with hardly enough to live upon! But I'm astonished that he ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... himself that the subject and the a narrator could offer, and he began to grow inattentive. The long roll of names and of styles of furniture, hitherto unfamiliar, confused him, and the constant reiteration of the local point of view seemed an almost incredible provincialism. When they returned at last to the drawing-room, Mr. Parr, just returned from his ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... for a celebrated tree when I approach it for the first time. Provincialism has no SCALE of excellence in man or vegetable; it never knows a first-rate article of either kind when it has it, and is constantly taking second and third rate ones for Nature's best. I have often fancied the tree was afraid ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Since provincialism is by no means the exclusive distinction of the landward bred, there was an immediate restirring of the gossip pool when the story of Tom's befriending of Nancy Bryerson and her child got abroad in Gordonia and among ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... him, and she did not see him again that night. She forgot him utterly. Even the little wince of distress he gave her by his provincialism was forgotten in the ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Mauperin!" said Mme. Mauperin, blushing at being convicted of the most flagrant provincialism; and then, turning upon her daughter, she exclaimed, "Oh, dear, Renee, how you stoop! Do ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... youth, he carried morbidity to perfection. Only when he was travelling (as, for example, in Egypt) do his letters lose for a time their distemper. His love-letters are often ignobly inept, and nearly always spoilt by the crass provincialism of the refined and cultivated hermit. His mistress was a woman difficult to handle and indeed a Tartar in egotism, but as the recipient of Flaubert's love-letters she must win ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... nothing beyond the reach of the very general reader. The notable point is that he refrains from passing judgment on the entire body of French poetry because it is unlike English poetry. He is not infected with the wilful provincialism of Lamb nor with the spirit of John Bullishness which seriously proclaims in its rivals "equally a want of books and men."[57] "We may be sure of this," says Hazlitt, "that when we see nothing but grossness ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... epoch of fermentation has three or four drawbacks for the critic—drawbacks, however, that may be overlooked by a person for whom it has an interest of association. It bore, intellectually, the stamp of provincialism; it was a beginning without a fruition, a dawn without a noon; and it produced, with a single exception, no great talents. It produced a great deal of writing, but (always putting Hawthorne aside, as a contemporary but not a sharer) ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... paranomasia[obs3], play upon words; word play &c. (wit) 842; double-entendre &c. (ambiguity) 520[Fr]; palindrome, paragram[obs3], anagram, clinch; abuse of language, abuse of terms. dialect, brogue, idiom, accent, patois; provincialism, regionalism, localism; broken English, lingua franca; Anglicism, Briticism, Gallicism, Scotticism, Hibernicism; Americanism[obs3]; Gypsy lingo, Romany; pidgin, pidgin English, pigeon English; Volapuk, Chinook, Esperanto, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... before the War of Secession, when wealth and leisure were abundant among the planters and in the principal New England towns, observed that 'there would seem to be something in the relation of a colony to the mother-country which dooms the thought and art of the former to a hopeless provincialism.' If a comment so largely fanciful could be made respecting Australasia and Canada, it would practically mean—at all events from the American point of view—that as long as they remain dependencies of Great Britain, and therefore lack the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... and none of them more than the Great Elector and Frederick the Great, were incessant travellers, they will reply that their kings had to be so at a time when the Empire was not yet established, when rebellious nobles had to be subdued, and when the spirit of provincialism and particularism had to be counteracted. Hence, they say, former Hohenzollerns had to exercise personal control in all parts of their dominions, see that their military dispositions were carried out, and study social and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... make a display of provincialism to-night," he said. "America will have to blush for herself. I have copies of the Monitor, and all our London cables show the greatest amazement in Great Britain and on the Continent that we should put up such ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... makes Mr. Aristobulus Brag use the provincialism "I swanny;" "by which," observes the author, "I suppose he meant—I swear!" Of course, this has nothing to do with swearing by swans, more than sounding like it; argument of sound being very different from sound argument. Mr. Cooper ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... isolation are seen in a class provincialism that is hard to eradicate, and in the development of minds less alert to seize business advantages and less far-sighted than are developed by the intense industrial life of the town. There is time to brood over wrongs, real and imaginary. Personal prejudices often grow ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... And then, too, ennui, a gloomy ennui, the ennui of seeing the same faces always in the same places, with their defects or their poses, that uniformity of fashionable gatherings which ends by establishing in Paris each winter a spiteful and gossiping provincialism more petty than that of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... monarchy. The three great European empires are, at the time of writing, in a state of septic dissolution. The victors have sprung to the welcome conclusion that democracy is everywhere triumphant, and that before long no other type of civilised state will exist. The amazing provincialism of American political thought accepts this conclusion without demur; and our public men, some of whom doubtless know better, have served the needs of the moment by effusions of political nonsense which almost surpass the orations delivered ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge |
