"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to employ a slightly slang expression, gazed across Ballard Field. In the stands, the students responding thunderously to their cheer-leaders' megaphoned requests, roared, "Play ball! Play ball! Play ball!" Gay pennants and banners fluttered in the glorious sunshine ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... martial career, which, as it happened, had taken place in full view of his retainers, among whom it remained the greatest of jokes. Indeed, he wanted to kill a man, the wag of the party, who gave him a slang name which, being ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... so perhaps they won't try it on too hard," said Sam, and there the students' slang came to an end for the ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... but the head, and that was aqua-fortis,' and swore if anyone abused him he ought to be 'set straddle on an iceberg, and shot through with a streak of lightning.'" Somewhere between the dignified despair of Daniel Webster, and the adulatory slang of these gentry we must look for the actual truth about Jackson's administration. The fears of the statesman were not wholly groundless, for it is always hard to count in advance upon the tendency of high office to make men more reasonable. The enthusiasm of the editors had a certain foundation; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... feebleminded, and was yet permitted to continue in his responsible office. A trait, after the manner of the find in the Lido, forces itself upon me here. It was to this man that some youthful colleagues in the hospital adapted the then popular slang of that day: "No Goethe has written that," "No Schiller composed ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... society everywhere is to be pleasant without being prominent. In every other European country, however, able men are encouraged to talk; in England alone they are discouraged. People in society use a debased jargon or slang, snobbish shibboleths for the most part, and the majority resent any one man monopolising attention. But Oscar Wilde was allowed this privileged position, was encouraged to hold forth to amuse people, as singers are brought in to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... "don't talk slang. And I don't think it very polite to speak that way to Mr Millar about ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... discontented and wishing to annoy the government, they even affected dissatisfaction at the subordinate position which Jorrocks occupied in the administration, and it was generally said—had become indeed the slang of the party—that the test of the sincerity of the ministry to Liberal principles was to put Jorrocks in the cabinet. The countenance of the premier when this choice programme was first communicated to him was what might have been expected had he learnt of the sudden descent upon ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... are told that Maggie Koot Looks well in her golfing suit; And her brand-new Astral Bike Is the best they've seen this cike— Cike is slang for cycle, so I have learned from Koot & Co. Soon she's going to take a run Out from Gobi to the sun, After which she thinks to race For the Championship of Space, And a trophy given by ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... was strictly after the pattern of the real original, and so are the whole of our Vestry's proceedings. In all their debates, they are laudably imitative of the windy and wordy slang of the real original, and of nothing that is better in it. They have head-strong party animosities, without any reference to the merits of questions; they tack a surprising amount of debate to a very little ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... A Pair of Spectacles in a volume of French plays. The period to which the very slight and uninteresting story of Haddon Hall belongs is just before the Restoration, but the dialogue of "the book" is spiced with modern slang, both "up to date" (the date being this present year of Grace, not sixteen hundred and sixty) and out of date. The "out-of-date" slang, which is, "I've got 'em on"—alluding to the Scotchman's trousers—has by far the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... not said loudly; but the tone and the glint of the eyes—and the cultured boss stirred into using slang! The chairman knew that he might as well pick ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... 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 ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... to his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... bank clerk and a mining secretary—we could not separately challenge any special social or literary distinction. Yet I am satisfied that the very name of our Club—a common Spanish colloquialism, literally meaning "a little more or less," and adopted in Californian slang to express an unknown quantity—was supposed to be replete with deep ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... important personages 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 ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Antony and Caesar. Thus we saw traffic policemen with their Stop and Go signals in the middle of the Sahara; telephones, check books, motorcycles and automobiles in use, and so on. In addition, the leaders were filled with modern business and other slang; and the spectacle of a huge negro wrapping Cleopatsy in a modern Axminster rug and carrying her in to show her to Antony (instead of, as according to history, Caesar) kept the spectators in a roar of laughter. For an originally-worked-out ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... been expended upon persons of infinitely small merit, what was to be done when those of real superiority entered upon the scene? It was impossible to apply to them the forms of laudation adapted to their inferiors. Well, then, a species of slang was invented, by which it was thought practicable to make the genuine great men conceive they had passed into the condition of demigods. A language was devised that was to express the fervor of the adorers who were suddenly allowed to penetrate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... back even unto the third generation; he could order a dinner at Sherry's as readily as drinks at Sharkey's. Most valuable accomplishment of all, he learned to laugh. In the way of by-products he picked up a working acquaintance with American, English and German slang—French slang he already knew as a mother-tongue—considerable geographical knowledge of the capitals of Europe, America and Illinois, a taste that discriminated between tobacco and the stuff sold as such in France, and a genuine passion for ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... with, about such large establishments as Segenhoe, where, it may be presumed, they meet with kind treatment. Their reckless gaiety of manner; intelligence respecting the country, expressed in a laughable inversion of slang words; their dexterity, and skill in the use of their weapons; and above all, their few wants, generally ensure them that look of welcome,* without which these rovers of the wild will seldom visit a farm or cattle station. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... had Coxeter—to use a phrase which he himself would not have used, for he avoided the use of slang—"given himself away." Over his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... 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 hands; ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... night. This is in keeping with the grandeur and responsibility of the paternal relation. But really, in the only other example (which immediately occurs) of Papa's attempt to bias the filial intellect, we recognise nothing but what is mystical; and involuntarily we think of him in the modern slang character of 'governor,' rather than as a 'guide, philosopher, and friend.' It seems that one Saturday, about the time when the Rev. Walker in Furness must have been sitting down to his exegesis of hard sayings in the Town and Country Magazine, the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... let us wind up this chapter of accidents with an account of the manner in which a party of strangers, to use a slang but expressive phrase, came to grief during a visit to ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... howitzer) in orders "mother" is the 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 German Minnenwerfer landed in rear of Trench F 26 ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... also typical of Sophie that she had selected from among all the dashing wooers; at her heels, Walter Trumwell, simple and sedate, who was horrified by her pranks and shocked by her use of slang, but who adored her with the devotion of a frightened puppy. Their engagement had been long announced. It was only in its high-handed abruptness that the wedding was ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... troops should trust in God and keep their powder dry,—with a mind deep indeed, but distracted by internal conflicts, and prolific only in enormous, half-shaped ideas, which stammer into expression at once obscure and ominous, the language a strange compound of the slang of the camp and the mystic phrases of inspired prophets and apostles,—we still feel throughout, that, whatever may be the contradictions of his character, they are not such as to impair the ruthless energy of his will. Whatever he dared to think he dared to do. No practical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... 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 he ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... window,' but rather get one yourself, and polish up your English. Your spelling and your vocabulary are, to use your own expression, 'something fierce;' how can you expect the poor little French child to understand your slang?" ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... and the Italians, anxious not to be outdone in any respect by their allies, were the most accomplished of depredators. They had come in fact to hold theft meritorious, and designated it by the elegant name of poetry. This slang term had become so general, that it was used even by the officers; and the adjutant of Pepe's regiment, in reporting a marauder to him, calls the man a poet. The prosaic application of a couple of hundred lashes to the shoulders of this culprit, served as a warning to his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... P. was a very dignified gentleman and did not revert to his boyhood's slang except under extreme provocation. "He shouldn't have allowed you to urge him. And what about the brilliant prospect you gave up once just because his father was ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... love to tease her now and then. I go to the races, play cards, waltz, talk slang, and read novels. But when I do bow down to her I bow away down. Why, at Montrose, I ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... 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 ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... recall them in your memory or imagination, just as readily as you would were you observing their occurrence in the mind of a friend. You will find them all stored away in some parts of your mental make-up, and you may (to use a modern American slang phrase) "make them trot before you, and show their paces." Don't you see that they are not "You"—that they are merely something that you carry around with you in a mental bag. You can imagine yourself as living without them, and still being "I," ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... themselves gentlemen, belong to that class of men who cock their hats on one side of their heads, and often wear them when and where gentlemen would remove them; who pride themselves on their familiarity with the latest slang; who proclaim their independence by showing the least possible consideration for others; who laugh long and loud at their own wit; who wear a profusion of cheap finery, such as outlandish watch-chains hooked in the lowest button-hole of their vests, Brazilian diamonds in their shirt-bosoms, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... living, we are very familiar in the United States. It is a state of mind which prevailed in the Republican party with regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and found constant expression on the stump and in the newspapers in what is described, in political slang, as "waving the bloody shirt." It showed itself after the war in unwillingness to release the South from military rule; then in unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites or to withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the military support without which they could not have existed ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... at all," said Betty decidedly. "They are just silly little parlor tricks anyway—most of them—not worth wasting time over. Do you know Miss Willis told us in English class that a great deal of slang originated in college, and she gave 'stunt' as an example. She said it had been used here ever so long and only a few years outside, in quite a ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... In the slang of the newspaper shop a "story" means non-fiction. It may be an interview. It may be an account of a fire. It may be a page of descriptive writing for the Sunday magazine section. It may be merely ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... Billy briefly, "and I'm blowed if I'll ask my dear old dad to come to the rescue. He's had to cough up (shame on your slang, Billy) far too much already. I tell you, Gordon, I'm so fixed that I can't explain these things unless I'm actually brought to trial. It's—it's—well—you have no secret societies at the Point as we do at college, so you can't fathom it. I'm no more afraid of standing trial than ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... had. If I were among your friends I would be out of place and uncomfortable, and should always have to be bowing and scraping and exchanging compliments, and besides they would soon find out that my Spanish was doubtful. I talk a sailor's slang, but I doubt if I should understand pure Spanish. Altogether, I should be very uncomfortable, and should make you uncomfortable, and I would very much rather take my place among the men that work for you until I can get on ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... wring or dry each article in turn. The other gentleman on top received them all rather grimly, and had not perhaps been amused by the situation but for the exploit of his hat. It was of the sort called in Italian as in English slang a stove-pipe (canna), and having been made in Italy, it was of course too large for its wearer. It had never been any thing but a horror and reproach to him, and he was now inexpressibly delighted to see it steal out of the diligence in company with one of the red-leather cushions, and glide darkly ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... excessive self-consciousness, which makes it difficult or impossible to put themselves at ease among those with whom they would like to associate. They are painfully aware of their own surplus ego; they are constrained and awkward; they feel that in some way they are outsiders, that, as the slang phrase puts it, they do not belong. It is probable that more social failures are due to this trait than to ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... this grotesque procession had its own music. The Egyptians made their drums and African tambourines resound. The slang men, not a very musical race, still clung to the goat's horn trumpet and the Gothic rubebbe of the twelfth century. The Empire of Galilee was not much more advanced; among its music one could hardly distinguish some miserable rebec, from the infancy of the art, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... singular,' as Dryden says, We bring a fancy of those Georgian days, Whose style still breathed a faint and fine perfume Of old-world courtliness and old-world bloom: When speech was elegant and talk was fit For slang had not been canonised as wit; When manners reigned, when breeding had the wall, And Women - yes! - were ladies first of all; When Grace was conscious of its gracefulness, And man - though Man! - was not ashamed to dress. A brave ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... could reasonably have been expected. To say truth, the whole place reeked with vulgarity. The men drank beer by the gallon, and eat cheese by the hundred weight—wore jockey-cut coats, and talked slang—rode for wagers, and swore when they lost—smoked in your face, and expectorated on the floor. Their proudest glory was to drive the mail—their mightiest exploit to box with the coachman—their most delicate amour ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... "why will thee always use such shocking slang? How can I teach Jamie English with his father's example before him?" She shook a tiny finger ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... tailor's, or sewed together at home, are not always so attractive. The cherubs' wings with which imagination has endowed them drop off, and they subside into cheeky, and sometimes scrubby, little boys, with a tendency towards peppermints, and a strong bias in favour of slang and tricks. The choir-boys of Chenecote, however, had been well-trained under Mr. Smith's ascetic eye; and though he had not drained the humanity entirely out of them, he had persuaded them to perfect cleanliness, if not to perfect godliness. They appeared at Mrs. Windsor's cottage that evening ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... at him from one of the Russian rifle-pits, 180 yards away, passed within an inch of his head. "It passed an inch above my nut into a bank I was passing," wrote Gordon, who had not forgotten his school-boy slang. But the only other remark he makes about his escape in his letter home is, "They (the Russians) are very good marksmen; their bullet is ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... "Liberty." Hear the old bandogs of the Daily Press, Chained to their party posts, or fetter-free And running amuck against old party creeds, On-howl their packs and glory in the fight. See mangy curs, whose editorial ears Prick to all winds to catch the popular breeze, Slang-whanging yelp, and froth and snap and snarl, And sniff the gutters for their daily food. And these—are they our prophets and our priests? Hurra!—Hurra!—Hurra!—for "Liberty!" Flaunt the red flag and flutter the petticoat; Ran-tan the drums and let the bugles bray, The eagle scream and sixty ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... sufficient self-possession to listen, in the instinctive hope that some plan of escape might be suggested to her. But from what she could gather of the incoherent and various projects they discussed, one after another—disputing upon each with frightful oaths and scarce intelligible slang, she could only learn that it was resolved at all events to leave the district in which they were—but whither seemed yet all undecided. The cart halted at last at a miserable-looking hut, which the signpost announced to be an inn that ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that he could scarcely speak. This was a new experience. At first it attracted him, but the hopeless vulgarity of the girl at his side, her tawdry clothes, her sordid, petty talk, her slang, her miserable profanity, soon began to revolt him. He felt that he could not keep his self-respect while such a girl hung upon ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... authority, do you mean?" asked Margaret, who could not abide slang of any kind. "No, indeed, Basil. Your Uncle John is the head of the house, in every possible way. I hope you are all going to be very good and obedient. He is the kindest, best man in the ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... "look at the letter. Here's a man, commercially educated, for he has used the usual business formulas, 'on receipt of this,' and 'advices received,' which I won't merely say I don't use, but which few but commercial men use. Next, here's a man who uses slang, not only ineptly, but artificially, to give the letter the easy, familiar turn it hasn't from beginning to end. I need only say, my dear Stacy, that I don't write slang to you, but that nobody who understands slang ever writes it in that ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... left alone, neither the first nor the second nor'-wester of brandy-and-water could arouse him from his sullen mood. He told me frankly, and in his own sea-slang, that he could not disintegrate the idea of a lawyer from that of the devil, and that he was assured that neither I nor my cause would prosper if I permitted the interference of a land-shark. I was even obliged to assume a little the authority of a master, in order to subdue his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Then, just before the last big fight—the one you say you were in—the sergeant was held a prisoner in the hut where you found him. He was in a bad way and I suppose the Germans thought he'd die when they left him—which they did when our boys knocked the spots off 'em, if you'll excuse my slang." ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... decreased; but in Elizabethan London the eclat of the inns was at its brightest, and during the reigns of Elizabeth's two nearest successors London submitted to the Inns-of-Court men as arbiters of all matters pertaining to taste—copying their dress, slang, amusements, and vices. The same may be said, with less emphasis, of Charles II.'s London. Under the 'Merry Monarch' theatrical managers were especially anxious to please the inns, for they knew that no play would succeed which the lawyers ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... letters written by other persons, e.g. Cassius to Cicero; Quintus to Tiro, and subsequently in those of Augustus to Tiberius. It is a feature of the colloquial style and often corresponds to the modern use of "slang." Other letters of Cicero, especially those written to persons with whom he was not quite at his ease or those meant for circulation, are composed in his elaborate style with long periods, parentheses and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... satisfied, and I acknowledge, I did not prove an exception to the learned individuals about me, either in my relish for the good things, or my appetite to enjoy them. Dulce est desipere in loco, says some one, by which I suppose is meant, that a rather slang company is occasionally good fun. Whether from my taste for the "humanities" or not, I am unable to say, but certainly in my then humour, I should not have exchanged my position for one of much greater pretensions to elegance and ton. There was first a general onslaught upon the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... to New York in the spring I meant going on farther whether I could or not. Australia and home again was in my mind, and in New York slang I swore there should be "blood on the face of the moon" if I did not get through inside of four months. Now this is not record time by any means, and it is not difficult to do it in much less, provided one spends ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... stand up in front of an oncoming troop of horsemen, and snap them until they get so close you can see the whites of their eyes. Then if they turn at the right time—well and good. But if there's a slip, and they ride into you—good-night! Excuse my slang," he added, hastily. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... pages consecutively—just as Canter and Canterbury gallop, of which the one was at first the mere shorthand expression of the other, were at one period interchanged, and for the same reason. The abbreviated form wore the air of plebeian slang at its first introduction, but its convenience favoured it: soon it became reconciled to the ear, then it ceased to be slang, and finally the original form, ceasing to have any apparent advantage of propriety ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... at the Lyceum was to get everything "rotten perfect," as the theatrical slang has it, before the dress rehearsal. Father's test of being rotten perfect was not a bad one. "If you can get out of bed in the middle of the night and do your part, you're perfect. If you can't, you don't ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Thomas Nelson Page, and Mr. Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") has made the mountains of Tennessee her special province. Chicago has several novelists of her own: for example, Mr. Henry Fuller, author of The Cliff Dwellers, Mr. Will Payne, and that close student of Chicago slang, Mr. George Ade, the author of Artie. The Middle West counts such novelists as Miss "Octave Thanet" and Mr. Hamlin Garland, whose Main Travelled Roads contains some very remarkable work. The Far West is best ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... exploit. Similarly in athletic sports there is almost invariably present a good share of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification—features which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made up of extremely sanguinary locutions borrowed from the terminology of warfare. Except where it is adopted as a necessary means of secret communication, the use of a special slang in any employment ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... say I was the whole show. Of course, I'm joking now, but the women all take up for me and applaud everything I say, whether it has a point to it or not. 'Whole show!' I oughtn't to have said that. When I try to keep from using bookish expressions I drop plumb into slang; there is no middle ground ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... guests at the dinner said that the Americans by the introduction of slang were ruining the English language. Mr. James Russell Lowell had come evidently prepared for this controversy. He said that American slang was the common language of that part of England from which the Pilgrims sailed, ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... John spoke up sharply and said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang line," when I used all the flash words myself just ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... slang, and the united recollections of his associates can adduce but two or three instances in which he sunk verbally so low as even to hint slang. He said that there was one town which in his capacity of public speaker he should like to visit. It was a remote village in Virginia where there ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... for some months failing; and with early snows in the mountain and wasted capital in fruitless schemes on the river, there was little room for the indulgence of that lazy and original humor which belonged to their lost youth and prosperity. Blazing Star truly, in the grim figure of their slang, was "played out." Not dug out, worked out, or washed out, but dissipated in a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... nineteen when I went on the New England rural circuit—to give it a better name. Oh, I've been through all the steps! As soon as I felt a little secure about mother, I ventured to New York in answer to advertisements in The Reflector, and went out 'on the road' at 'fifteen per.'" These slang phrases seemed humorous as they came from her smiling lips, but Douglass knew some little part of the toil and discomfort they ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... free my mind with neatness and despatch. I simply wish to go over the whole affair, from Alfred to Omaha; and you've got to let me talk as much slang and nonsense as I want. And then I'll skip all the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... analogous; he was a great pugilist, knew the merits of every man in the ring, and the precise date and circumstances attending every battle which had been fought for the previous thirty years. His conversation was at all times interlarded with the slang terms appropriated to the science, to which he was so devoted. In other points he was a brave and trust-worthy officer, although he valued the practical above the theoretical branches of his profession, and was better pleased when superintending the mousing of a stay or the strapping of ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... after, on the 22d of February, the President greatly damaged his cause by denouncing a Senator and a Representative, and using the slang of the stump against the Secretary of the Senate in the midst of an uproarious Washington mob. The people were mortified that the Executive of the nation should have committed ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... there are the Samoan Village, the Maori Village, and the Tehuantepec Village. All these people are genuine and live in primitive style on the Zone, though, to tell the truth, they are quite likely to use college slang and know which fork to use first. Not on the Zone, but proper to be mentioned here, are the Blackfoot Indians brought to the Exposition from Glacier Park by the Great Northern Railroad. Eagle Calf is a real chief of the old days, and his band is ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... cares for chiselled prose nowadays? In the days when link-boys and sedan chairs helped home a jag they had the time to speak good English. But now! Good Lord! With typewriters cutting your phrases into angular fragments, with the very soil at your heels saturated with slang, what hope in an age of hurry has a fellow to think of the cadence? I honestly believe Stevenson was having fun when he wrote that essay of his on the technical elements of style. It's a puzzle picture and no more to be ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... thoroughfare, is a perfect piece of imaginative precision. From under the edge of the hood his eyes look upon Crainquebille, who has just uttered in an uncertain voice the sacramental, insulting phrase of the popular slang—Mort aux vaches! They look upon him shining in the deep shadow of the hood with an expression of sadness, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... thundered, King, Praeneste-bred, Hurled vineyard slang in handfuls at his head, A tough grape-gatherer, whom the passer-by Could ne'er put down, with all ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... word wizardry, he had Billy Sunday, master of slang and argot of one language, skinned by miles. For in Abel Ah Yo were the five verbs, and nouns, and adjectives, and metaphors of four living languages. Intermixed and living promiscuously and vitally together, he possessed in these languages a reservoir ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... off, but ere they had gone two April knew the painter as well as if they had been twin sisters. Clive Connal hadn't a secret or a shilling she would not share with the whole world. She used the vocabulary of a horse-dealer and the slang of a schoolboy, but her mind was as fragrant as a field that the Lord hath blessed, and her heart was the heart of a child. It was shameful to deceive such a creature, and April's nature revolted from the act. Before they reached the farm she had confessed ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... approximate meaning in English, saying it was as difficult to translate these intimate and slang phrases as it would be to put "Yankee Doodle" into French or German. His translation, as he wrote it on a scrap ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... such a consarn be, Barbican?" asked Ardan, who every now and then liked to ventilate his stock of American slang. "Is it one of those particles of meteoric matter you were speaking of just now, caught within the sphere of our Projectile's attraction and accompanying us to ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... new field for me and I delved into the matter with success. Counterfeit money, in slang, is called "queer," and those who pass it on the public are called "shovers." Its manufacturer never "shoves" it, but sells it in quantities to small shop keepers, car conductors, and others, at a certain percentage of its face value—50 ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... ordinary men. Frequenters of the now fashionable prize-ring—thanks to two brutes who have brought that degraded pastime into prominent notice—will hear a great deal about a man 'fancying himself.' It is common slang and heeds little explanation. Hook 'fancied himself' from an early period, and continued to 'fancy himself,' in spite of repeated disgraces, till a very mature age. At Harrow, he was the contemporary, but scarcely the friend, of Lord ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... those qualities in which they feel themselves to be chiefly deficient. Their reverence and affection are bestowed upon her whose voice is ever soft, gentle and low, and whose mild influence is shed like a balm upon the labours and troubles of life. Of slang, and of slaps upon the back, of strength, whether of language or of body, they get enough and to spare amongst themselves, and they are scarcely to be blamed if at certain moments they should prefer refinement to roughness, and gentleness to gentlemen. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... 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 ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... a play, for instance, presupposes some acquaintance with a few plays already written. No one can succeed as a novelist without a fair knowledge of the technique of millinery or a tolerable mastery of stock exchange slang. The writer of scientific articles for the magazines must have fancy, and the writer of advertisements must have poetry and wit. But to produce a book of epigrams on Woman requires nothing but an elementary knowledge of spelling and the ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... Zack said was smothered in the sound of a blow, expressive of fury and despair, which he administered to the mattress on which he was sitting. Having relieved himself thus, he jumped out of bed, pronouncing at last in real earnest those few words of fatal slang which had often burst from his lips in other days as an ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... whispered, "this is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really must hear ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... gentle reader, what Tom told me long afterward? He had advanced and been repulsed—had attacked and been "scattered." Pardon the slang of the army, and admire the expeditious operations of the gentlemen ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... for a long time that a good deal of the teaching of the world regarding women has come under the general heading of "dope." Now "dope" is not a slang word, as you may be thinking, gentle reader. It is a good Anglo-Saxon word (or will be), for it fills a real need, and there is none other to take its place. "Dope" means anything that is calculated to soothe, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... immediately scrambled to his feet. He seemed a bit what he himself would have termed "groggy," being familiar with the slang of the prize ring, but in spite of this he leaped wildly at ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,—I know no other word in our language, (bookish and pedantic terms out of the question,) but 'hanging' woods, the 'sylvae superimpendentes' of Catullus [2]; yet let some wit call out in a slang tone,—"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence it is that so many dull pieces have had a decent run, only because nothing unusual above, or absurd below, mediocrity furnished ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... sled that worked on its runners no longer, but that sunk with every fresh drift to the main-boards themselves. Wadded with clothing, shouting in a mixture of French and English and his own peculiar form of slang, Ba'tiste tried in vain to force the laboring animals onward. But they only churned uselessly in the drift; their hoofs could find no footing, save the yielding masses of snow. Puffing, as though the exertion had been his own, the trapper ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... slang term. In the British navy there were formerly two days in each week on which meat formed no part of the men's rations. These were called banyan days, in allusion to the vegetarian diet of the Hindu merchants. Banyan hospital also became a slang term ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... make a bugbear of aunt Shaw' said Margaret, laughing. 'Edith picked up all sorts of military slang from Captain Lennox, and aunt Shaw never took any ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... son-in-law of the premier, assuming that he was the party pointed at, attacked what he called "the bishop's gross and virulent invective—his malignant, calumnious, and false insinuations—his well-known powers of pamphleteering slang." Here the noble lord was called to order, and the Earl of Winchelsea moved that the words "false insinuations" and "pamphleteering slang" should be taken down. After some observations from Earl Grey, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Durham went ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy. Unlike Plautus, he draws his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude; Terence for the few. Plautus delighted in a noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence confines himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian, and other great critics. He aspired to the approval of the good, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... demi-savans (I don't mean Napoleon's in Egypt, but the provinvial editors—in some cases it amounts to the same thing) having proved the word to be Greek, I suppose it is slang no longer), the Tenth Illinois regiment (Dick Wolcott, you know) camped a few miles to the northward, near the woods; and hasty but shady structures were soon reared in front of the officers' tents; but one morning there arose ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... know what you mean; and I must remind you also that in this school we neither teach nor learn slang." ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Committee. It is thus manifest that the cause is not to be put down or even passed by with contemptuous silence, vulgar abuse, or conservative scorn. Foote squealed out his angry opposition, in the old stupid slang (of Shakespeare perverted from "Macbeth"), about unsexing woman with the right of suffrage, and endeavored to contrast it with property-claims; as if the revolutionary maxim concerning taxation and representation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sight to any one who had not lost his sense of appreciation of the noblest of all the works of Nature. Both men fulfilled that requisite of the powerful athlete that they should look larger without their clothes than with them. In ring slang, they buffed well. And each showed up the other's points on account of the extreme contrast between them: the long, loose-limbed, deer- footed youngster, and the square-set, rugged veteran with his trunk like the stump of an oak. The ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was only a boy. You remember that I was only a boy,—just out of the shop. The more uneducated a man was in our church-pulpit then, the better. I knew nothing, John," appealingly. "When I preached about foreordination and hell-fire, it was in coarse slang: I knew that. I used to think there might be a different God and books and another life farther out in the world, if I could only get at it. I never was strong, and they had forced me into it; and when you came to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... the present time seem to be unwilling to make new words. The chief word-makers of to-day are the people who talk a new slang (and of these we shall see something in another chapter), and the scientific writers, who, as they are constantly making new discoveries, have to ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... his constant study was "slang," in which he was no mean proficient. He always carried in his pocket a colt (i.e. a foot and a half of rope, knotted at one end, and whipped at the other), for the benefit of the youngsters, to whom he ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 new ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the many private academies, or the Realschule, where thorough instruction is given, but with less special, though no slight attention to Latin and Greek, and more to mathematics and practical branches, even then he must acquire from one of the gymnasia the exemption-and-maturity-right. In the slang of student-life, the gymnasiast is styled a Frog, the school itself a Pond; between the time of his declaration of maturity and his reception as student, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... few young 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 yet, after all, he missed ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... between the true and the false in belief ever grow up. Truth grafts itself on previous truth, modifying it in the process, just as idiom grafts itself on previous idiom, and law on previous law. Given previous law and a novel case, and the judge will twist them into fresh law. Previous idiom; new slang or metaphor or oddity that hits the public taste:—and presto, a new idiom is made. Previous truth; fresh facts:—and our mind ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... influence. What of that? Was this singular apparition—as full of character as of terror—therefore the creature of my fancy, or the invention of my poor stomach? Was it, in short, subjective (to borrow the technical slang of the day) and not the palpable aggression and intrusion of an external agent? That, good friend, as we will both admit, by no means follows. The evil spirit, who enthralled my senses in the shape of that portrait, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... red glow departed and the darkness gathered, if there was one lonely boy in the world, languidly despairing, it was I. Many times I found myself uttering aloud such slang expressions as: "Oh, my hat! If only I had told the beastly truth for the third time! Dash it, why didn't I? Why the deuce didn't I?" I addressed myself as: "You blithering, blithering fool!" And my temples began to ache and now and then to hammer. For, always in these ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... bit of business rhetoric that I thought effective I would jot it down and commit it to memory. In like manner I would write down every new piece of slang, the use of the latest popular phrase being, as I thought, helpful in making oneself popular with Americans, especially with those of the young generation. But somehow a slang phrase would be in general use for a considerable time before it attracted ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... time, almost habitual with Mr. Ruskin, is a national humiliation, giving point to the Frenchman's sneer as to our distinguishing literary characteristic being 'la brutalite.' In Carlyle's case much must be allowed for his rhetoric and humour. In slang phrase, he always 'piles it on.' Does a bookseller misdirect a parcel, he exclaims, 'My malison on all Blockheadisms and Torpid Infidelities of which this world is full.' Still, all allowances made, it is a thousand pities; and ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... become immortal in the pages of Lavengro. Dr. Knapp has encouraged the idea that Joseph Sell was a real book, ignoring the fact that the very title suggests doubts, and was probably meant to suggest them. In Norfolk, as elsewhere, a 'sell' is a word in current slang used for an imposture or a cheat, and doubtless Borrow meant to make merry with the credulous. There was, we may be perfectly sure, no Joseph Sell, and it is more reasonable to suppose that it was the sale of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... entertained, that Gypsey language was composed only of cant terms, or of what has been denominated the slang of beggars, has probably been much promoted and strengthened by the dictionary contained in a pamphlet entitled, "The Life and Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew." It consists for the most part of English words, vamped up apparently not so much for the purpose ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... agreed weakly. It was audible in his voice, the effort to talk sanely of sane things, and in the slang of every day. "Addington's on. Let's can it! Here we are and here we're likely to stay for a few days. In the meantime we've got to live. How are we going to ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... to expect assent, but Hodder glanced involuntarily at her wonderful crown of hair. She had taken off her hat. He was thinking of the typical crime of American parents,—and suddenly it struck him that her speech had changed, that she had dropped the suggestive slang of the surroundings in which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and see him talking there with them. Quite naturally, as a matter of course, he swung in along-side the dark- eyed one and walked with her. There was no awkwardness on his part, no numb tongue. He was at home here, and he held his own royally in the badinage, bristling with slang and sharpness, that was always the preliminary to getting acquainted in these swift-moving affairs. At the corner where the main stream of people flowed onward, he started to edge out into the cross street. But the girl with the black eyes caught his arm, following him and dragging her companion ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... lad," he 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 to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... eyes fixed on Laura's face. Nobody laughed, nobody even chuckled, and yet it was a jolly letter that they read first, full of spirit and life and fun. High-hearted adventure rollicked through it, and the humor that makes light of hardship, and the latest slang of the front adorned its pages with grotesquely picturesque phrases. The Cameron boys were obviously getting a good time out of the war. Bob had got something else, too. The letter had been delayed in transmission and near the end was a sentence, "Brought down my first Hun to-day—great ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator) is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is always the exotic question, and everything, the life, the place, the dialects - trader's talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions and English and American slang, and Beach de Mar, or native English, - the very trades and hopes and fears of the characters, are all novel, and may be found unwelcome to that great, hulking, bullering whale, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wrong. She drew a striking picture of the ideal home in which children always stood modestly and reverently by their parents' chairs, consumed with anxiety to be of some service to their elders. They were always to be immaculately neat in their attire, and gentle in their ways. The use of slang was quite ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate what it was dangerous to announce; and Beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to borrow but never take the trouble to repay. For the Yang-ban was a "gentleman," he was. It was beneath his dignity to work—even to guide the reins of the horse he rode—but it was not beneath his dignity to sponge on his friends (I think the verb "to sponge" is too expressive to remain slang) or to borrow without repaying. Moreover, in case of extremity, it is said that Mother Yang-ban and Sister Ann might take in washing, as is recorded in the classic lays of our own land, but Father never defiled himself by doing ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... who am such a sweetheart of yours?"—his speech very foreign, yet slangily correct, being, in fact, all slang. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... and taverns are crowded. Drink is hotly called for at reeking bars; waiters and chambermaids pass to and fro, with dishes and tankards and bottles in their hands. All is noise and bustle, and eating and swilling, and disputation and slang, wild glee, and wilder despair, amongst those who come back from the race-course to the inns in the county town. At one of these taverns, neither the best nor the worst, and in a small narrow slice of a room that seemed robbed from the landing-place, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... plaisance, par maniere de Joyeusete.——Lettres Gothiques, fig. et bois et titre MSS. feuilles dorees, en maroquin, Paris, par Ant. Verard, 1475, fol.——No. 1963, Heide Beschryving der nieuevlyks uitgevonden en geoctrojeerde Slang-Brand-Spuiten, en Haare wijze van Brand-Blussen, Tegenwoordig binnen Amsterdam in gebruik zynde. Wyze figuurs Amst. 1690, fol. "Note in this book: Paris, 1736. Paid for this book for his Grace the Duke of Kingston, by Mr. Hickman, 24l." A great sum for a book about ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Carpe diem when at the age of thirty he is already an old, diseased man, he sings it almost with a sneer of hatred. It is from the lips of a grinning death's-head—not of a jovial roysterer, as Henley makes it seem in his slang translation—that the Ballade de bonne Doctrine a ceux de mauvaise Vie falls, with ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... Journal, published at Augusta, the Hon. James G. Blaine, the writer, declared epigrammatically that, in the defence of Judge Chase, "Paine furnished the logic, Choate the rhetoric, and Smith the slang." ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... ordinary conversation. When an occasion arose which seemed to demand a special effort, the talk around the "chuck-wagon" was so riddled with slang from all corners of the earth, so full of startling imagery, that a stranger might stare, bewildered, unable to extract a particle of meaning. And through it blazed such a continual shower of oaths, that were themselves sparks of satanic poetry, that, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... me with sheep's eyes. They are a washy blue, with the family white eyelashes (how different to Lord Robert's!). He has the most precise, regulated manner, and never says a word of slang; he ought to have been a young curate, and I can't imagine his spending money on any Angela Greys, even if she is a ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... her mother, reprovingly, "how many times must I tell you not to use slang? It is vulgar and unladylike, and quite out of ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... author's works. Many of the readers of Don Juan have, it must be confessed, been found among those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable—who have been attracted by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste, and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by a showy Shakespearian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the charge of being adapted "laudari ab illaudatis." But the welcome of the work in other quarters is as indubitably ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... the words were uttered was so venomous, that Bob realized the speaker meant mischief, though he was ignorant of the fact that in the slang of tramps who beat their way on railroads, "con" betokened conductor, and "blind baggage" the platform of the coach in a ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... at the same time. All the robbers are eager to see what Juan's scheme was. When they find out what Juan has done, and see the holes in the bottom of all the pots, they cannot help laughing. The captain, however, addresses Juan with all the epithets found in a common slang dictionary. The captain now decides never to let Juan stay in the house alone, and from that time on takes him ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... being natus rebus agendis—sent into this world not for talking, but for doing; not for counsel, but for execution. On that field he was a portentous man, a monster; and, viewing him as such, I am disposed to concede a few words to what modern slang denominates his "antecedents." ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... propagandist was strong in William James. He wished to give as well as receive. And he listened for truth from anybody, and from anywhere, and in any form. He listened for it from Emma Goldman, the pope, or a sophomore; preached from a pulpit, a throne, or a soap-box; in the language of science, in slang, in fine rhetoric, or in the talk of a ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... celestial That very night was visible 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 ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... the footlights, evidently for the expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the gallery responded—how heartily, those who were present have never forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more. The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies, boxes; they answered, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... premeditated insult, or have got into a quarrel with them, conversation on political subjects was for many years effectually banished from almost every public company. However, since I had returned from my travels (which is the slang term of going to prison), I had acquired a considerable degree of confidence, and, accordingly, the very first time that I found this Mr. Perry pouncing upon one of the company with one of his rude knock-down arguments, I, without ceremony, took up the cudgels, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... which, if they were not essentially faults, were not likely to improve a full-sized novel. He would too much abound in description; the want of evolution of character—his character is not bad in itself, but it is, to use modern slang, rather static than dynamic—naturally shows itself more; and readers who want an elaborate plot look for it longer and are more angry at not being fed. But for the short, shorter, and shortest kind—the story which may run from ten to a hundred pages with no meticulous limitations on either side—it ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... In the slang of the day, Goliah had delivered the goods. The nine captains of industry who had failed to accept his invitation were dead. A sort of violent disintegration of the tissues was the report of the various autopsies ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... little that some of the feasts 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 ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm |
