"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Arena chapel or at the end of a Bach fugue. It is the comment of sophisticated refinement that can neither sit still nor launch out into rapturous, but ill-bred, ecstasies, of the weakling who takes refuge in slang or jocularity for fear of becoming natural and being thought ridiculous. Miss Coleridge stood for Kensington and Culture, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Medea, and called the Bacchae "Hallelujah Lasses." She and Kensington admired Greek ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... (see his Algebra, &c.), with three or four others, and in the latter half by a man to whom Saunderson had some resemblance in spring and elasticity of understanding, viz. by Edmund Burke. Since his day I know of no writers who have avoided the slang and unmeaning use of the word, excepting Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth; both of whom (but especially the last) have been remarkably attentive to the scholar-like [1] use of words, and to the history ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... and sprang from my unfamiliarity with the language. For although two nations use the same words and read the same books, intercourse is not conducted by the dictionary. The business of life is not carried on by words, but in set phrases, each with a special and almost a slang signification. Some international obscurity prevailed between me and the coloured gentleman at Council Bluffs; so that what I was asking, which seemed very natural to me, appeared to him a monstrous exigency. He refused, and that ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mother, reprovingly, "how many times must I tell you not to use slang? It is vulgar and unladylike, and quite out of keeping with your ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... night and day. He was afraid of the thoughts, the emotions that seized it, swaying, moving the multitude of undeveloped souls as if they had been one monstrous, dominating soul. He was afraid of their voices, when they chanted, sang and shouted together. He loathed their slang even when he used it. He disliked the collective, male odour of the herd, the brushing against him of bodies inflamed with running, the steam of their speed rising through their hot sweaters; and the smell of dust and ink and india-rubber and resinous ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... good? You go about Warwickshire, and fancy that from merely being born and wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands Shakspeare must have drunk in a portion of that frank artless sense of beauty which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in ennobling those who were born ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yelled Noddy, reverting in this moment of excitement, as was his habit at such times, to his almost forgotten slang. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... thoroughly in the vortex now: there was no doubt about that. Kitty might laugh as loud as she pleased, and he only looked charmed. Kitty might frisk like a will-o'-the wisp, and he only admired her innocent vivacity. Even the bits of slang and the Americanisms which occasionally slipped from her only struck him as original and piquant. How would it all end? That neither Koenigin nor I could divine, for Kitty was not one to wear her heart upon her sleeve. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the stage story from other literary forms like the novel and the short-story. It must be told dramatically or it is not a stage story; and the dramatic element must permeate its every fibre. Not only must the language be dramatic—slang may in a given situation be the most dramatic language that could be used—and not only must the quality of the story itself be dramatic, but the scene-steps by which the story is unfolded must scintillate with the soul ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... man is only a walking gentleman. With the exception of a crying father and a snivelling mother, the rest are SUPERS who have to dress well and have to PAY for their insignificant parts in the shape of costly presents." I did not care for the theatrical slang, but thought it ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... observer of ball-room talk will not fail to notice what may be called the exclusive slang of society. He will find people "in society" habitually using a few pet words which they love, not because they are a bit better than the synonyms used by other people, but just because other people don't use them, whereby they serve as a sort ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | For the interest of the reader, 'the morning hate' is | | WWI slang for the "Stand To Arms". | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... French artists whom he happened to know living here than with anybody else in the city; and yet when he went back to London he sometimes felt that the recollection of it, the chatter of studios, the slang of the critics, even the whole sense and sound of Paris gave him a little the recollection as of a huge cage of monkeys. Like most modern Englishmen, he talked disparagingly about British hypocrisy, Anglo-Saxon humbug, English stiffness and London fog; and ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... of the Church were "moveable." True, they moved only within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certain unalterable, wholly justifiable rules. Yet, in the very fact that they did move, there seemed—to use an expressive slang phrase of the day—"something not quite nice." It was therefore the fixed feasts that pleased Percy best, and on Christmas Day, especially, he experienced a temperate glow which would have perhaps surprised those who knew him ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... than shrinking! Free from the athletics and the slang, she is antetype, indeed, of, say, the St. Andrews girl, that admirable creation of our age; but she soars beyond her sister on the wings of her more exquisite sensibility, and her deeper restfulness. Not for her the perpetual pursuit ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... In German university slang the term Philister was applied to townsmen by students, and corresponded to the English university "snob." Hence it came to mean a person devoid of culture and enlightenment, and is used in this sense by Goethe in 1773. Heine ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... passion of horror and repugnance, firing the worn face and perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite terrible sight, if embodied in one old fellow-creature alone. Yet it 'crops up'—as our slang goes—my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... clumsy complexity and extravagant filthiness still astonish the visitors to the museum of machinery at South Kensington. He mentions running over a dog and complains of the ruinous price of 'spatchcocks' in Surrey. 'Spatchcocks,' it seems, was a slang term ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... performance is bound to be funny, nothing on earth can keep them from enjoying themselves. The most serious remark will be greeted with howls of approval; the most ancient joke takes on a novel and present sprightliness. In the slang of the stage, Barnes' ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... cases, it doesn't hurt them to lie out in the open air," responded the Colonel; "that was proved in the South African War. The wounds often heal if you leave them alone in the open air. But you people come along and stir up and joggle them. In army slang, we call ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... maquereaux of the old French comedy were clothed in a mottled dress like our harlequin, just as the Latin maccus or mime wore a centunculus or patchwork coat, his name being perhaps connected with macus (in macula), a spot (Gozzi, Memoirs, i, 38). In stage slang the harlequin was called patchy, as his Latin ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... can't find their opportunity. Enjoyment, Miss Cristel. Excitement, Mr. Roylake. For more than a year past, I have not luxuriated in the pleasures of society. I feel the social glow; I love the human family; I never, never, never was such a good man as I am now. Let vile slang express my ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... slang words like those. The girls had no business to be using them. You must copy the best, and not ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... had chosen yet? Didst thou in masterly disdain of too much law Not only limn the truths no others saw But also, lord not slave of written word, Lend ear to what no other poet heard And, liberal minded on the Mermaid bench With bow for blade and chaff for serving wench Await from overseas slang-slinging Jack Who brought the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... could not but see at once that the Attorney-General was the cynosure of all eyes. And, indeed, no one in the room more thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was the central and controlling attraction than Sir Richard himself. I must be pardoned for using an English slang-phrase, but I can convey the impression which he inevitably makes upon a spectator in no other way than by saying that he is "a most magnificent swell." And I do this with the more confidence as I have heard him characterized in precisely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... passages from the Count de Warren's very curious book, "British India in 1831:" "Besides the robbers, who kill for the sake of the booty they hope to find upon travellers, there is a class of assassins, forming an organized society, with chiefs of their own, a slang-language, a science, a free-masonry, and even a religion, which has its fanaticism and its devotion, its agents, emissaries, allies, its militant forces, and its passive adherents, who contribute their money to the good work. This is the community of the Thugs or Phansegars (deceivers or ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against the slap-dash untidy menage, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative gesture, beckoned him ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... yourself, Armstrong. Lads of your age who can talk nothing but barrack slang, and are eminently uncomfortable when they have to chat for five minutes to a lady, are naturally glad when they are free from the restraint of having to talk like reasonable beings; but it is not so with older and wiser men. How ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... bed, and wash dishes, and I don't say slang words any more, and I can weed everything in ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets and shoes—as these things sketched themselves to Milly—and something rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and the occasional freedom of her slang. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Olivia; she was pretty and merry and kind; and, above all, she had mastered to perfection the rare art of letting children alone. If we kept ourselves tolerably clean, and refrained from quarrelling or talking slang, Aunt Olivia did not worry us. Aunt Janet, on the contrary, gave us so much good advice and was so constantly telling us to do this or not to do the other thing, that we could not remember half her instructions, and ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sees so much in the West, with the funniest quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would eat it off even clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating eyes, to show if I'm worth the asking price. But here was real love being made off down in the earth (we'd run away ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... that is awful slang. But what can you expect of a 'freshie'? I've got to make the most of my time, too, you know, for when I get to be a junior I'll have to begin the 'prune and prism' act," retorted the girl with a roguish wink. "Then"— suddenly straightening herself, drawing down the corners of her mouth, ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Trafalgars? and when they came ashore again, were no longer the simple, slouching Simons of the village; but jolly tars, with rolling gait, quid in mouth, glazed hats, with crowns of one inch high, and brims of five wide, and with as much glib slang, and glib money to treat the girls with, as any Jack ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... and stared at me, but not insolently—merely with curiosity. They seemed a vile lot, one and all. With some of them every other word was an oath; their talk was almost gibberish to my ears with thieves' slang. I wondered to find not one of them dressed in felon's garb; but on reflection I concluded that they had plundered the crew and the people who had had charge of them and of the Cyprus, and had forced all those they drove out of the brig to change clothes ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... genius strays 'Mid Drury's stews to incubate her lays, And in St. Giles's slang conveys her tropes, Wreathing the poet's lines with hangmen's ropes; You who conceive 'tis poetry to teach The sad bravado of a dying speech; Or, when possessed with a sublimer mood, Show "Jack o'Dandies" dancing upon blood! Crush bones—bruise flesh, recount ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... all the young fellows drunk, as we generally do; and yet people will call our parties 'bourgeois' and yours 'recherche', if you give them nothing but tea and biscuit. Now, there's my Dick: he respects your husband; you can see he does. In his odious slang way, he says he's 'some,' and 'a brick;' and he's a little anxious to please him, though he professes not to care for anybody. Now, Dick has pretty sharp sense, after all, or he'd never have been just ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... TECHNICALIST.—He is a talker who indulges much in the slang of his calling. The naval cadet, for instance, poetically describes his home as "the mooring where he casts anchor," or "makes sail down the street," hails his friend to "heave to," and makes things as plain as a "pikestaff," and "as taut as a hawser." The articled law ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Fred, "if you desire the continuance of my friendship, and if you wish to respect the dignity of morality and the English language, you must refrain from using such insinuating balderdash and bar-room-slang." ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... in the English language, and which are at once so comprehensive and so expressive that, when once the use of them has been acquired, they become indispensable, so that they have gained a permanent place in the Anglo-Indian's vocabulary. It is not slang, but a good word of ancient origin. Hobson-Jobson quotes a curious Latin writer on the Empire of the Grand Mogul, who uses it with a definition appended, "ut spectet Thamasham, id est pugnas elephantorum, leonum, buffalorum et aliarura ferarum." "Show" ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... so when the order was given to loose only the topsails. Peaks, on the main topmast-stay, caught Howe in the very act of passing the gasket through the bight of the buntline. The veteran tar came down upon him with such a torrent of sea slang, that he did not attempt to repeat the act. The topsails were then set as smartly and as regularly as ever before. After the inspectors had seen all the sails set and furled in detail, the topsails, top-gallant sails, and courses, with the jib and spanker, were set as usual, when the vessel got ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... curbed, however, by the bookmaker, who, having no views, but seeing an opportunity for fun, brought up reinforcements of chaff and slang, easily construable into profanity, and impregnated with terse humour. Many of the ladies had spoken of the bookmaker as one of the best-mannered men on board. So he was to all appearance. None dressed with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... French artists, playwrights, and novelists invariably call their productions by the slang term 'machines.'—ED. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... motive may be worthy, for all that. You are not the only one involved. People who would pass for better than their neighbors will never believe any good purpose in one who does not choose to talk their slang." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... stretched through a watch, and kept all hands awake. They were amusing from their improbability, and, indeed, he never expected to be believed, but spun them merely for amusement; and as he had some humor and a good supply of man-of-war slang and sailor's salt phrases, he always made fun. Next to him in age and experience, and, of course, in standing in the watch, was an Englishman named Harris, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. Then came two or three ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... That would be death. I arranged with him the day I definitely said yes, and again on our wedding eve, so as to have no misunderstanding, that I might keep all my pet slang, and even use language if I felt it really necessary; otherwise he would certainly have been the 'Winter ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... name given to the twelve-inch howitzer. The trench language is changing so quickly that I think the staff in the rear are unable to keep up to date, because they have recently issued an order to the effect that slang must not be used in official correspondence. Now instead of reporting that a "dud Minnie" arrived over back of "mud lane," it is necessary to put, "I have the honor to report that a projectile from a ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... fashionable young lady, and, like most novices, she overdid the part. Quite forgetting her cousin, she tossed her head, twirled her fan, gave affected little shrieks at college jokes, and talked college slang in a way that convulsed Fletcher, who enjoyed ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today. ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... spoken speech—some of them perversions or corruptions, countenanced even by eminent writers; some, misapplications that weaken and disfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, downright vulgarisms—that is, phrases that come from below, and are thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them. These last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. Against such abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of some of them, they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be readily distinguishable from ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... barbed wire, and where the bodies of your friends and mine lie decomposing in muddy holes—you know the place?—I put my legs across the colonel's horse, which was in the wagonlines, and set forth for Amiens. That horse knew that I had pinched him—forgive my slang. I should have said it in the French language, vole—and resented me. Thrice was I nearly thrown from his back. Twice did he entangle himself in barbed wire deliberately. Once did I have to coerce him with many stripes to pass a tank. Then the heavens opened upon us and it rained. It rained ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... somewhat intimidated by her well-bred manners and cultured conversation. He made no secret of his preference for the homelier virtues of the elder sister, whose irrepressible propensity for picturesque, up-to-date slang and free-and-easy style put them on a more equal social footing. So began an acquaintance which resulted in the young man becoming a frequent and intimate visitor at the ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... is awfully nice. He did not forget my birthday, but he says that at that time he was stoney, in student's slang that means that he hadn't any money, and then he could not find anything suitable, but that he will repair the omission as soon as we get back to Vienna. But I don't know what I should like. Oswald is going to stay until we all go back to Vienna, and we are making a few excursions by ourselves. ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... fellows may merely have struck a pocket and exhausted it, but I don't believe so, and am willing to risk twenty thousand dollars on the continuance of the vein. If it is there, that sum of money ought to enable us to reach it from your present shaft; and if we do strike it, why, in the slang of the day, the Copper Princess is simply a 'peach.' Are you game to accept my offer and go in for raising ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... speculators, all the men who seek for violent sensations as a relief from immense labors, gave Lucien a welcome among them. And Lucien had gained confidence; he gave himself out in talk as though he had not to live by his wit, and was pronounced to be a "clever fellow" in the slang of ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... who do not themselves use slang understand and even appreciate it. The American brand is generally pithy, compact, and expressive, and not always vulgar. Slang is at its worst in contemptuous epithets, and of those the one that is lowest and most offensive seems likely to become ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... of patience" (or aloes) quoth one "are praiseworthy!" Quoth I, "Much I fear lest it make me stool." Mahmdah is not only un laxatif, but a slang name for ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the novels of Swift's coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the delectable author of the New Atlantis, to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the London Spy and several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collection at the British Museum, you may see, besides the Craftsman and Post Boy, specimens, and queer ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mountain trip especially to call upon him. Enriquez was a scion of one of the oldest Spanish-California families, and in addition to his friendship for the editor it pleased him also to affect an intense admiration of American ways and habits, and even to combine the current California slang with his native precision of speech—and a certain ironical ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... Ledesma (1552-1623). It consists in a strained search for unusual thoughts which entails forced paradoxes, antitheses and epigrams. This system, combined with local allusions, double meanings and current slang, in which Quevedo delighted, makes his poems often extremely difficult of comprehension. His romances de jaques, written in thieves' jargon, are famous in Spain. Quevedo wrote too much and carelessly and tried to cover too many fields, but at his best his caustic wit ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... mentally at least. I don't suppose any one could set me permanently on my physical, corporeal pins. Beg pardon for the slang, Conny, I don't forget how you and Sybil used to lecture me for that, and my other vices. Poor sis, she had given up the drink talks latterly, given me over as hopeless, and so I am. Con., I have made ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... that little slang phrase so much in vogue in America," queried Napoleon, coldly fixing his eye on Barras—"a phrase which in French runs, 'Petit, mais O Moi'—or, as they have it, 'Little, but O My'? Well, that is me. {1} Besides, if I am small, ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... might have taken place between two men. Indeed, they often were brutally frank to each other. Fanny had the vision, Fenger the science to apply it. Sometimes her intuition leaped ahead of his reasoning. Then he would say, "I'm not sold on that," which is modern business slang meaning, "You haven't convinced me." She would go back and start afresh, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... in half an hour, perhaps less. I don't want you to tell Sam unless he has to know. Don't let him risk defeat by attempting a rescue in case I don't show up. Tell him I'm playing off my own bat. That's a bit of English slang he'll understand." ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... dog as any of them, and far more than a match for the best of them at a tournament of slang, being on his preferment, thought it best to be civil, and replied, with a touch of his hat, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the river; and one is often startled at finding in the apparently rough crew men who seem worthy of a better fate. To these the river experiences are generally new, and the ribald jokes and low river slang, with the ever-accompanying cheap corn-whiskey and the nightly riots over cutthroat euchre, must be at first a revelation. Hundreds of these low fellows will swear to you that the world owes them a living, and that they mean to have it; that they are gentlemen, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... sticks in front of the chief, and under it they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the slang goes, Uncle Dick!" ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... years,—and partly on Balthazar's own property, of which enough remained to "cover" the claims of his children, if the liquidation of their mother's fortune did not yield sufficient to release him. Mademoiselle Claes was still, in Pierquin's slang, "a four-hundred-thousand-franc girl." "But," he added, "if she doesn't marry,—a step which would of course separate her interests and permit us to sell the forest and auction, and so realize the property of the minor children ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... the skipper standing on the same spot where he had left him, apparently in the same attitude, and with the same grave, sleepless expression on his cast-iron features. The boy, Robin Tips, was at the helm, looking very sleepy. He was an English boy, smart, active, and wide-awake—in the slang sense—in which sense also we may add that ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... great number of people. It is characteristic of Miss Royden that she should fasten on the real cause of this violence. "I don't like jargon," she said, "particularly the jargon of Christian Science and Theosophy. I love English literature too much for that; and I don't like slang, particularly slang of a brutal order; but I feel a deep sympathy with anybody who is trying, as Mr. Studdert-Kennedy is trying, to put life and power into institutionalism. It wants it so badly—oh, so very badly—life, life, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... of speaking all Americans are humourists. Just as all French people are wits by reason of the epigrammatic structure of their language, so are all Americans humourists by reason of the national stores of picturesque slang and analogy to which they have access. I think that this tendency to resort to a common stock instead of striving after individual exactitude and colour is to be deplored. It discourages thought where thought should be encouraged. Adults are, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... Europe, would act upon the inestimable rights of man as common fire does upon gold: purify without destroying them; so that a lover of liberty may find a country in any part of Christendom." The language had an unusual smack of the French revolutionary slang, in which he seems in no other instance to have indulged. But as the fury swelled, his earlier sympathies became merged in a painful anxiety concerning the fate of his many ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... waiter. This new attitude was loose in the back, tight across the shoulders, short in the seams—it was not made to fit Bertram Chester. When he launched out into rudimentary art criticism, stringing together the stock slang which he had picked up in the studios, when he tried to impress her with his refined acquaintance, his progress toward "society" of the conventional kind, her amusement took another turn in the circle ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... community where neighbors are quarreling, hating and lawing with each other. In home life there are angry words and bitter feelings and estrangements. There are lewd revelries and wanton pleasures. There are stealings and lyings, cheatings, fightings, swearings, drinking, chewing and smoking, slang phrases, etc. Such is a reproach, and thus we learn how righteousness exalts a nation and sin becomes a reproach ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... and clear; At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial, And clad in uniform, were loitering near A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal Took their impatience somewhat patiently, Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"— (A certain slang of the Academy, I beg the reader ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... to be very well posted on a number of subjects. She is unusually familiar with the Bible, and quotes scripture freely and correctly. She also uses beautiful language, totally void of slang and Negro jargon, "big" ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... about the bush," said I, desperately clothing my sentiments in slang, after the manner of my age; "the fellow who gets you for a wife, Maria, must be uncommonly fortunate, and I hope that with a good husband, who made your wishes his first consideration, you would not be unhappy ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to recount things as discreetly as possible, frightened by the very words he spoke, the horrors he had to relate in that sphere of superlative luxury and enjoyment, before those happy ones who possessed all the gifts of this world; for—to use a slang expression—he fully realised that he sang out of tune, and in most uncourteous fashion. What a strange idea of his to have called at the hour when one has just finished dejeuner, when the aroma of hot coffee flatters happy digestion. Nevertheless he went on, and even ended by raising his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... curiosity was Powerfully awakened by this bustle of preparation. I gazed with respect and wonder at the vagrant personages who accompanied these caravans. I loitered about the village inn, listening with curiosity and delight to the slang talk and cant jokes of the showmen and their followers; and I felt an eager desire to witness this fair, which my fancy decked out ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Castle exhausted their adulation, and had received their last reward for upholding the appointment. The Tory press, hungry for the spoil which it maddened the others to lose, paid back the compliments by intense vituperation. The slang of party warfare was bandied in the usual fashion, without thought or a care beyond the interest of party. The Register, to everybody's astonishment, took up the one cause not represented, namely, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... shoes, a daring little black-and-white hat mashed down upon her soft, loose hair, and, slung about her shoulders, a woolly coat of clearest lemon yellow. Vivian gave the impression of a soft little watchful cat, unfriendly, alert, selfish. Her manner was studiedly rowdyish, her speech marred by slang; she loved only a few persons in the world besides herself. One of these few persons, however, was Clarence Breckenridge's daughter, Carol, affectionately known to all these persons as "Billy," and it was in Miss Breckenridge's defence that Vivian was speaking now. A general ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... It did not require much imagination to suppose that the war would add to the number of their clients, whether their claims had real foundation or not; what they wanted above all things was some one of undoubted position who would "boom the movement," in the slang of the day. They laid all their plans to get their man in the author of Raymond, and they got him. Such is his thesis for what it ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... together with a fondness for misplaced pleasantry, gives rise to the vicious style described above. It gives some practical rules for writing a long sentence clearly and impressively; and it also examines the difference between slang, conversation, and written prose. Both for translating from foreign languages into English, and for writing original English composition, these rules have been used in teaching, and, we venture to ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... had picked up his knowledge of English at Alexandria, and his conversation abounded with slang phrases which ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... "Bud" more readily than to his own, and he made practical use of the slang and colloquialisms of the plains without ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... me here," she continued. "Helen daren't slang the rich, being rich herself, but she would like to. There's an odd notion, that I haven't yet got hold of, running about at the back of her brain, that poverty is somehow 'real.' She dislikes all organization, and probably confuses wealth with the technique of wealth. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... launched out on my speech. Not that I was tryin' to chuck any flowers of oratory. What I aimed to do was to tell 'em about Rowley's schemes as simple and straight away as I could, usin' one-syllable words for the most part, cannin' the slang, and soundin' as many final G's as my tongue would let me. Before I turned in too, I had it almost pat; but I hardly dared to go to sleep for fear it would get ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... 'people'? The boys in your family know of it—if you could get them to tell you. My two sons studied at a State university, and they would bring me home what they heard—the gossip, the slang, the horrible obscenity. Fourteen fellows in one dormitory using the same bathroom—and on the wall you saw a row of fourteen syringes! And they told that on themselves, it was the joke of the campus. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... truth, if the boys must have slang, I can bear the 'sea lingo,' as Will calls it, better than the other. It afflicts me less to hear my sons talk about 'brailing up the foresail' than doing as they 'darn please,' and 'cut your cable' is decidedly preferable to 'let her rip.' ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... their own and their people's bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that the fire is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other things, and few among their people guess how much they owe in mere life and money to what the slang of the minute calls ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... Scott's Lowland Scottish dialect; not choosing it of the most beautiful kind; on the contrary, it shall be a piece reaching as low down as he ever allows Scotch to go—it is perhaps the only unfair patriotism in him, that if ever he wants a word or two of really villainous slang, he gives it in English ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... for its author, his most eminent acts are written in the pages of the universally read historian above quoted. But he was in reality more of a Tory than it suited Macaulay to represent him, though he gloried in the name of Trimmer, and certainly showed what is called in modern political slang a 'crossbench mind' not only during the madness of the Popish plot, during the greater madness of James's assaults on the Church, the Constitution, and private rights, but also (after the Revolution) towards William of Orange. Born about 1630 he died in April 1695, leaving the fame, unjustified ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... all. He does not care a fig for order or logical sequence or congruity, or for striking a key of expression and keeping it, but becomes simply the most spontaneous and unstudied of human beings. He has at his command the whole vocabularies of the English and Scottish languages, classical and slang, with good stores of the French, and tosses and tumbles them about irresponsibly to convey the impression or affection, the mood or freak of the moment; pouring himself out in all manner of rhapsodical confessions and speculations, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we gladly sprung in. For the sake of the uninitiated, I must explain that, in digger's slang, a "canary" and half-a-sovereign ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... mad[e] out of Webster's White Devil, allusion to Welshmen proud of their gentility Wet finger What make you here? What thing is Love? Whifflers Whisht White sonne Whytinge mopp Widgeing Wildfowl ("Cut up wildfowl"—a slang expression) Wilding Windmills at Finsbury (See Stow's Survey, b. iii, p. 70, ed. 1720.) Wit without money Woad, patents for planting of ("Woad is an herbe brought from the parts of Tolouse in France, and from Spaine, much used and very necessary in the dying of wollen cloath."—Cowell's ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... one talk but slang when one thinks of such a person?" said Phoebe gravely; and thus saying she opened the door for her mother, and they went out in their best gowns to pay their visit. Mrs. Copperhead was very civil to the pastor's family. It was not ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the solitude and monotony of existence among the gum-trees. The typical Australian is an odd combination of the practical and the ideal. He is a student who learns to read to himself a foreign language, but does not attain to its pronunciation. He has no knowledge of the current jargon or society slang. He has unconsciously rejected vulgarisms and shallow conceits; but all the deeper thoughts, the poetry of life, which appeal to the soul, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... rank of a boss in his trade, and so remains at home in a shop and goes out with his hook no more, is called an ogre. A woman attaining this dignity is called an ogress. The terms are not idle ones. Like many of the words and phrases of slang they are based on the clearest conception of the merits of the case. An ogre or ogress without a daughter, real or adopted, lacks the first requisite for doing a successful business. The ogre or ogress ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the art, I thought, as I held myself in my seat. Of course, I meant decomposition of tones, as the slang of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... "I know that you wanted to use that particular expressive bit of our particularly expressive slang. What I mean is this: People study religion nowadays—that is, English-speaking people—with the Catholic Church left out. Yet she claims the allegiance of over three hundred million people. Without her, Christianity would be merely pitiful. She alone stands firm on her foundation. She alone has ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... of speech, for communicating our ideas to each other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy to observe these precise and beautiful forms of expression; it clips its words; throws its sentences together without regard to grammar; falls into slang; draws its figures from the coarse and low and sensual side of life, instead of from its pure and ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... kind of business on hand than he can perform for himself, naturally brings about him a train of satellites, who make it their business to minister to his importunate cravings. With them the phraseology of the initiated degenerates into a hard business sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant of respect towards literature as a vehicle of knowledge may linger in the conversation of their employers, has never belonged to theirs. They are dealers who have just two things to look to—the price of their merchandise, and the peculiar propensities of the unfortunates ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... using more western slang than was necessary, though he was dependent upon such expressions for the ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... the House of Commons, one has no reason to be surprised at his moderation. The conviction that the duke's government would only cease with the termination of his public career was so general, that the moment he was installed in office, the whigs smiled on him; political conciliation became the slang of the day, and the fusion of parties the babble of clubs and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the most provocative angle, and she knew just when to let Bud catch a slow, sidelong glance—of the kind that is supposed to set a man's heart to syncopatic behavior. She did not do it too often. She did not powder too much, and she had the latest slang at her pink tongue's tip and was yet moderate ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... exchanging a few words with each other, one of them spoke to him in a jargon which he seemed to understand, though we could not. He replied with hesitation. For some time they continued asking him questions, and then talking to each other in a slang which was as incomprehensible to us as was the language they spoke to ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... transfer them to a girl. Her feelings, in these cases, are not merely those of a warm friendship, but they resemble the passionate, self-sacrificing attitude of romantic love. New York schoolgirls have a special slang phrase for this kind of love—they call it a "crush," to distinguish it from a "mash," which refers to an impression made on a man. A girl of seventeen told me one day how madly she was in love with another ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... come to? Well, just lemmee drop it into your think tank, an' lay to what I say. It's all the ways from fifty to seventy thousand dollars, whatever her cargo is; call it sixty thousand—thirty thou' apiece. Oh, I don't know!" he exclaimed, lapsing to landman's slang. "Wha'd I say about a million to one ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... wish you would call her by her right name, Neale," said Ruth, sharply, for she did not approve of Neale's slang. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... heaps. The protection of the debris heaps was not quite so good as that afforded by the mines, and the music of the cannon the troglodytes had always with them. But there was more liberty and comfort in the caves, which were dry as dust and—no slang intended—not ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... he exclaimed, a weak smile on his lips. "I'm no boob!" Obviously, he meant this lapse into the slang of the Tenderloin to convey his intimate knowledge of police methods. "You can't soft-soap me! You don't want explanations! You want me to get myself in bad. But you won't get anything out of me. I ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... rigid and few in number because of his lack of discrimination and small experience, almost all pleasures, like almost all events, are of the nature of surprises. The child almost always laughs when he is pleased. The slang phrase "to be highly tickled" expresses with precision this close connection between laughter and pleasure. Moreover, as the complexity of life increases, its strains and repressions are multiplied, with the result that any giving way to an impulse contains a slight element of the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... creatures was of composite sound—now a word of Spanish, then of German, then of French, then of Gaelic, at times of Basque. It was either a patois or a slang. They appeared to be of all nations, and yet of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... not shamming anything," I protested as earnestly as I could, not quite knowing what his slang phrase meant, but believing it to imply that I was pretending to be ill to shirk duty when I was all right. "Weeks, I'm ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... as soon as Don Tiburcio was out of the way. Paulita became sadder and sadder in thinking about how the girls called cochers could occupy Isagani's attention, for the name had certain disagreeable associations that came from the slang ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Catherine used slang even in talking to the children. The little pony had been sold long ago, and going to town meant a walk of twelve miles. But Catherine started out early in the morning, and was back by nightfall, not so very much the worse, and carrying ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... pirate-tongue, cut-off from its roots, must continue to practise piracy, surely, or else take reinforcements in slang, otherwise it is inexpressive ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Athenaeum said, "They are prose poems, carefully meditated, and exquisitely touched in by a teacher ready to sympathize with every joy and sorrow." The five stories are told in simple and clear language, and without slang, to which she heartily objects. For one so rich in imagination as Miss Ingelow, her prose is singularly free ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... soap-bubbles out on the lawn and let them float away over the garden and the orchard like fairy balloons. They had glorious afternoon teas under the beech tree. They made ice cream themselves. Jims even slid down the bannisters when he wanted to. And he could try out a slang word or two occasionally without anybody dying of horror. Miss Avery did not seem to mind ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lovely and the goose hangs high!" cried the Captain, who on grand occasions was not above a little slang. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... little thin dresses in the cold, and pinch their little arms black and blue if they went to tell any of their tricks. And they learnt the older ones to be deceitful and sly and cowerdly. Learnt 'em to use jest the same slang phrases and low language that they did; tell the same lies, and so they wuz a spilin' 'em in every way; spilin' their brains with narcotics, their bodies by neglect and bad usage, and their minds and ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... with a rabble of words at command, Scotch, English and slang in promiscuous alliance. He at length against Syntax has taken his stand, And sets all the Nine ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... my Melanesian experience to bear upon Zululand. The immorality, infanticide, superstition, &c., seem to be as great in a Melanesian island as in any part of the heathen world. And with our many languages, it is not possible for us to-know the "slang" of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which he describes is a Trebuchet with moveable counterpoise. The history of the word appears to be the following. The Greek word [Greek: magganon], "a piece of witchcraft," came to signify a juggler's trick, an unexpected contrivance (in modern slang "a jim"), and so specially a military engine. It seems to have reached this specific meaning by the time of Hero the Younger, who is believed to have written in the first half of the 7th century. From the form [Greek: magganikon] the Orientals got Manganik and Manjanik,[6] ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... been glanced at. It has been often and quite truly observed that there are sentences, passages, paragraphs, almost whole letters in Horace Walpole and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in Fanny Burney and in Cowper, which no one would think old-fashioned at the present day in any context where modern slang did not suggest itself as natural. But this was by no means the only predisposing cause, though perhaps most of the others were, in this way or that, connected with it. Both in France and in England literature and social matters generally were in ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... shells. The blue eyes and the baby smile went up, confidingly, to the young ragamuffin's face. There had been kindness here. The boy had taken to Jo, it seemed; and was benevolently evincing it, in the best way he could, by teaching her good-natured slang. ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of the realm, and their entertaining this high opinion of themselves can scarcely be wondered at; they were low fellows, but masters of driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed as his unquestionable ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... it." Although Jerry was earnestly endeavoring to eliminate slang from her vocabulary, she could ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... said gently. "I'm sorry if I hit too hard. But I feel rather strongly on that subject. I've no wish to slang you. I only want to set you on your feet, and keep you there. So we may as well get ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... "You've recently," she observed, "got into a new way. Whatever slang you happen to hear outside you come and tell me. And whenever you read any improper book, you poke your fun at me. What! have I become ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Hawthorne, far as they had escaped from the bonds of their ancestral religion, still utter the word "soul" with awe. But in the popular sermon and hymn and story of our day,—with their search after the sympathetic and the sentimental, after what is called in magazine slang "heart-interest,"—the word has lost both its intellectual distinction and its literary magic. It will regain neither until it is pronounced once ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... let you know what especial things in language I hope you will keep your eye on. Of course Anneke couldn't be "electrified"—but you may find many less evident blunders than that would be. She might be shocked, but couldn't "receive a shock." We need free colloquial slang and common expressions; but while "get out" seems all right from Stuyvesant to Bogardus, for Barry to say "Skedadle" would put him in the 87th New York Vols., 1861-64. Yet I doubt whether we have any more classic and revered slang ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... simply means 'thought it long,' or 'thought it slow,' as we should say in modern slang; in ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... I come back I'll talk nothing but Greek and Latin. I'm getting French now from Ford, and Hindoo from Frank Harley. Then I know English and slang and Long Islandish. Think of one man ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... way,—that is, by a series of comic sketches, as many of my admirers no doubt remember,—I soon perceived the unstable character of my reputation. I was at the mercy of the next man who should succeed in inventing a new slang, or a funnier way of spelling. These things, in literature, are like "fancy drinks" among the profane. They tickle the palates of the multitude for a while, but they don't wear like the plain old beverages. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... to me," purred the smaller man in the Western slang that phrased incredulity. Then, suddenly, he foamed at the mouth. "Keep out of this if you're squeamish. Let me play out the hand. I'll bump ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... for him was really a sort of "old home week" feeling; that to her it was a relief to see any one who spoke her own language, who did not need to have it explained when she was jesting, and who did not think when she was speaking in perfectly satisfactory phrases that she must be talking slang. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... employed to assist in the interpretation, and produces the most dreary and monotonous sounds without the slightest trace of theme or melody or rhythm. While I don't want to be irreverent, they reminded me of a slang phrase you hear in the country about "the tune the old cow died of." Hindu music is worse than that you hear in China or Japan, because it is so awfully solemn and slow. The Chinese and Japanese give you a lot of noise if they lack harmony, but when a Hindu band reaches a fortissimo passage ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... grace, his eloquence, his literary charm. His style was entirely his own. He played strange tricks with the English language, heaped words upon words, strung adjective to adjective; mingled passages of Ruskinesque description with jerky fragments of modern slang. These mannerisms grew with his growth, but in the seventies they were not sufficiently marked to detract from the pure pleasure which we enjoyed when we listened to his preaching as to "a ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... founded in 1473 by Robert Woodlark, Chancellor of the University, and dedicated to "the glorious Virgin Martyr, St. Catherine of Alexandria." Undergraduate slang, alas! reduces all this to "Cat's." It was originally called St. Catherine's Hall, and is one of the smallest of the colleges. Although not claiming the strong ecclesiastical flavour of Corpus, it has educated quite a formidable array of bishops. From Trumpington Street the buildings ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... sense an attractive type. The Wall Street men are lilies that toil and spin ("tiger" lilies, one might term them, in remembrance of the old gambler-slang about faro and roulette); but their industries, however distinct, are what the political economists would call those of non-productive consumers. They are active drones, to speak with paradox, in the great hive of human energy. Like all gamesters, all ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... would be amazed to see the scores of little boys and girls, white and black, who daily visit the policy-shops in this neighborhood to put down the pennies they have begged or received for stolen articles on some favorite numbers—quick-witted, sharp, eager little wretches, who talk the lottery slang as glibly as older customers. What hope is there in the future for these children? Will their education in the shop of a policy-dealer fit them to ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... retiring, inconspicuous, and puzzling to our understanding. In his effort (never very successful) to strike off the shackles of modern slang, he fell into a way of speech that bewildered those unable to realise what an abiding sense of humour underlay it—as water runs beneath ice—more, I think, a matter of intonation and significant silences, than a mere play upon words and phrases; ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... clothing. I have labored with them to convince them that such is not the case, but still they yearn for the Brent finery. Judging from what I hear, it must have been 'some' wardrobe. Pardon my lapse into slang, O, Overton. A number of the teachers have commented on the affair. I've been asked several ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... may be a dictionary, and one may have it, and yet the word may not be there. It may be an old dictionary, and the word a new one; or a new dictionary, and the word an old one; a grave dictionary, and the word a slang one; a slang dictionary, and the word a grave one; and so on through a double line of battle of antitheses. Such is assuredly matter for serious cogitation: and voluntarily to encounter those anomalous perplexities requires no small amount of endurance, for the task is equally crabbed and onerous, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... latest American? I wish you'd find native slang; we used in my day; but I'll tell you why. It's because she's keeping him on till she sees what Eugene'll do. She's treating ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... must get as near as you can, Bertie. I dare say you cannot turn slang into Spanish; but you can find other words to express your meaning, and when you cannot hit on a word you must use an English one. Your best plan is to move along on the other side of Dias, and chat to his wife." "What have I got to say ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... uncomfortable. His sentiments and opinions are so very conservative, that they have no vitality in them. With a curious perverseness, the most gentle and accomplished women will turn from him with a sense of relief, to join in the society of a hearty fellow with a loud laugh and a dash of slang, and a free and easy way with him. It may be difficult to explain all this, but it is true. An exceedingly proper man is never a popular man. That life which is controlled by rigid and unvarying rules, and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. Real fairies never preach or talk slang. At the end, the little boy or girl wakes up and finds that ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... employed to pump water into the shallows in one direction, while in others the outer fields, in quarters whence a relieving force might be expected, were turned into lakes by the same machinery. Farther outside, a system of palisade work of caltrops and man-traps—sometimes in the slang of the day called Turkish ambassadors—made the country for miles around impenetrable or very disagreeable to cavally. In a shorter interval than would have seemed possible, the battlements and fortifications of the besieging army had risen like an exhalation ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that led you to expect the person enjoying them would dispose of disputations, speculations, aspirations, in a few very neatly and brightly uttered words, so simplified in sense, however, that they sounded, even when guiltless, like rather aggravated slang. It wasn't that Kate hadn't pretended too that she should like to go to America; it was only that with this young woman Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever of late, on the theory of intimate confessions, private ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... a bit of slang, and I like to use bits of English slang when I can; they'll be so useful to know by-and-by when I am scolding my people. Not ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... it. Her voice is charming, every tone is exquisitely modulated, and she expresses herself with ease, and with a certain grace of diction peculiarly her own. It is a treat to hear English spoken as she speaks it. She uses little or no slang and few abbreviations, but she is perfectly fearless in her choice of words, and invariably employs the one which expresses her meaning best, however strong it may be, yet somehow the effect is never coarse. Yesterday she wanted to know the name of an officer ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... declared, though without entire sincerity; "I can't quite keep up with your thieves' argot—your slang, you know. Just what did this brother ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... vain repetitions. She was always "a worm" when asked after her health, and everything that pleased her was "pucka." She knew no language but her own, and that she spoke indifferently, her command of it being limited for the most part to slang expressions, which are the scum of language; and a few stock phrases of polite quality for special occasions. But she used the latter awkwardly, as ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... think I'm going to split," she said, indignantly, recurring to her Bourke Street slang in the excitement of the moment. "I know what you know, but I'll be ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... all right, my dear fellow. I understand that it is the refined slang of the modern boudoir, and only ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... slang expression current among the irreverent youth of the present day, when referring to a man wise in his own conceit, to the effect that "what that fellow does not know is torn out." So I, quoting my juniors, begin my talk ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... of life simply written, an effective word of slang stuck in here and there where it does not seem at all out of place; honest, open-hearted, steady-eyed narratives all, with the breeze of the Western prairies in every line, as well as the brotherhood of man, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... Granger for a fisher of men; greed had sent him into the South Florida land business. His bland self-possession, his impressive physique, his confidence-winning voice and bearing constituted a profitable stock in trade. In the slang of his craft—shall we say "graft"?—he "played the church game strong." Under the sway of his hypnotic personality God-fearing, bank-fearing old couples brought forth hidden wealth to place in his dexterous ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... school-boy slang if I were you," returns Luttrell, with provoking coolness, and an evident irritating appreciation ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... in the bits of pickpocket argot that floated across to us, expressions like "crossing the mit," "nipping a slang," a "mouthpiece," "making a holler" and innumerable other choice bits as unintelligible to ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... in these two paragraphs except a little ginger, and a good deal of slang, but this may prove the most effective stimulant to a man's energy, the kind of persuasion ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... The child was utterly transformed. There was no sign of his mother's hand upon his clothes, his neatly brushed hair or his shiny face. His eyes, too, seemed to have grown bigger. Alfred had been a vulgar little boy, addicted to slang and immoderately fond of noisy games. Burton tried to call him back to his mind. It was impossible to connect him in any way with the child whom, through a crack in the door, he could see standing upon a chair the better to scrutinize closely ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
