"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... conceived the fond idea that Harlowe House is a headquarters for second-hand 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 ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... voice! We were never so taken back in our lives. All hands were called in to witness the phenomenon and, recovering from their astonishment, the boys joined hands and danced around me, singing and shouting in their excitement. Then each yelled something at the machine—bits of slang or slurs—and it made them roar to hear that funny ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... fourth in the tourney. Magnificently, he boarded at the yellow pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations, and made ...
— Options • O. Henry
... that about me or any of my doin's. I hate sentimental bosh as much as you hate slang, and should have been a bachelor to this day if I hadn't seen Kitty jest as I did. You see, I'd been too busy larkin' round to get time for marryin', till a couple of years ago, when I did up the job double-quick, as ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... and when to hold fast to a principle. The tendency of the thoughtless is to denounce all compromise as wicked, and to stick to a form of words without bothering about the real meaning. Belief in "fads"—I cannot avoid the bit of slang—and singular malleability of real convictions are sometimes generated just by want of serious thought; and, at any rate, both phenomena are ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the only member of the profession living in the village, had no competitor save when the sitting of the court brought in one or more from neighboring settlements, and, being thus circumstanced, without opposition, and the only representative of his craft, he was literally, to employ the slang phrase in that quarter, the "cock of the walk." He was, however, not so much regarded by the villagers a worthy as a clever man. It required not erudition to win the credit of profundity, and the lawyer knew how to make the most of his learning ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... I, "this isn't talking horse; we'll manage your sons, and you, too, if you don't dry up on your treason slang. Now, old covey, four hundred and seventy-five or I'm ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... wasted; and this in spite of the heroine's pleasant 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
... is always 'Rengraciez!' and he cares not a single rotin for La Reniffe," she replied, dropping again into the slang of ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... she doesn't know where Bella picks up her slang words. I think it is Mr. Ned who teaches her, for when he comes home in the summer he often says, with a sly twinkle in his eye, "Come out into the garden, Bella," and he lies in a hammock under the trees, and Bella perches on a branch near him, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... agree with 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
... the slang term for gas observation balloons which go up at certain points and observe the enemy's positions or maneuvers before and during battle on the earth below. Sausages do not fight back much but are protected by support battle ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... worked at school (chap, xxvi.); and of old remedies for the lost art of swooning, in the 'lavender drops' of chapter xxix. The mention of a dance as a 'little hop' in chapter ix. reads like a premature instance of middle Victorian slang. But nothing is new—even in a novel—and 'hop,' in this sense, is at least as old ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the place. The gaily-coloured rows of neat dwellings that debouched on the esplanade, and the line of hotels and boarding-houses that faced the sea, were as new as the pantomime songs of last Christmas or this year's slang. One might conceive them being designed by architects who knew as little of the past as children know of death, and painted by fresh-faced people to match themselves, and there was a romping arbitrariness about the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... appearance," said Mrs. Houghton, turning her eyes upon Lord George. He simpered and looked pleased and did not seem to be at all disgusted by their friend's slang, and yet had she talked of "awfully swell" parties, he would, she was well aware, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... his pony, pulled up the lariat pin which held him out upon the prairie and scampered for home, and Billy and Davie Dunn, his chum, were forced to "hoof it," as the western slang goes, home. ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... sailor, and his knowledge of sea-life, of seamen, and of sea-slang, is generally attributed to the instructions of his brother, the master of a ship. This brother was subsequently lost at sea, and Dibdin is said to have written Poor Tom Bowling as his elegy. Dibdin's sea-lore was, therefore, altogether second-hand and theoretical; and his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... his novels, the theories enunciated in his magazine articles, adulating the intrusion of positivism upon art. But in the works of his best pupil, Rosny, the only talented novelist who is really imbued with the ideas of the master, naturalism has become a sickening jargon of chemist's slang serving to display a layman's erudition, which is about as profound as the scientific knowledge of a shop foreman. No, there is no getting around it. Everything this whole poverty-stricken school has produced shows that our literature has fallen upon evil days. The grovellers! They don't rise ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... 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 ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... 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, ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... literary genius. Or if in congratulating yourself upon the marvellous progress of Scientific Inventions, hailing from the keen-brained West, you could condone the degradation of the English language in the mouths of Shakespeare's countrymen and countrywomen by the use of American slang phrases, common, vulgar, coarse, alternating with choice expressions culled from the vocabulary of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... at Warren, vainly attempting to divine the meaning of the Yankee slang. But the Kentuckian was impatient: he knew that debates were seldom as productive as labor in a workshop, when ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... published during the past year. It is much easier for me to find the flaws than the remedies. Many of the words used in the original have no written character or hieroglyphic to represent them, while many others, though having a written form, are, like our own slang expressions, not found in ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... where, it appeared, that 'Phoebe was the jolliest little fellow in the world,' and Lieschen was the only 'good-natured body going,' and knew no end of Mahrchen. The boy spoke a very odd mixture of Lieschen's German and of English, pervaded by stable slang, and was altogether a curious study of the effects of absentee parents; nevertheless Honora and Lucilla both took a considerable fancy to him, the latter patronizing him to such a degree that she hardly allowed him to eat the much-needed breakfast, which ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "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 ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... bridegroom. The best 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 clever, ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... introduces the new trader to the South Pacific island where the scene of the story is laid, gives a brief description of the fate of the last dealer in copra. It may serve as a single illustration of volumes of racy, humorous, and imaginative slang; ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... It doesn't carry me anywhere except into trouble. When I think of all the pains I've taken to learn how to talk like the dictionary! Why, nobody talks like the dictionary any longer! They all talk slang, every one of them—only they don't talk the kind that Julius Gershom and all these politicians do. If you could have seen Mrs. Berkeley's face when I told her I'd had a 'grand' time to-night—she looked exactly like a frozen fish—though ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... little conversion to make. Ferragus and Vautrin are prototypes of Valjean, just as Valjean's Cosette exploited by Madame Thenardier is an adaptation of Ferragus' daughter or Doctor Minoret's Ursula. The prison manners and slang of the Miserables inevitably recall those of Vautrin's Last Incarnation, while, on the other hand, Hugo's salon ultra reappears in the Cabinet of Antiques. And the analogies present themselves continually. One might almost say that the whole ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... 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 more ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... 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 Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... this language, I imagine that the three following words have come into the English—two of them being slang and one a sporting term—rum, ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... German slang expression with the general significance of the English "gone to smash," but also a hundred other and wider meanings, impossible to render ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... are determined that my silence shall voice itself. I have no doubt that they would like to have me write it, so that they could boast of it afterward to their fellow officers. Now, as Jimmie would say in his frightful slang, 'I'm going to give them a run for their money.' Von Engel will probably beseech you to arrange to keep Jimmie at your side, so that he can have a few words with Mrs. Jimmie. Von Furzmann will plead with ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... (J.W. ARROWSMITH). He reports in the following terms to his loved Chief:—This book achieves the task of combining extraordinary vulgarity with the flattest and most insipid dulness—not a common dulness, but a dulness redolent of low slang and dirty tap-rooms. The authors seem to plume themselves on their marvellous success in reaching Monte Carlo, which, with their usual sprightly facetiousness, they call "Charley's Mount." They are good enough to tell such of the travelling public as may want ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... with much earnestness, "if instead of ornamenting your conversation with cant terms, and miserable slang, picked up from the lowest refuse of our population, both east and west, you had cultivated your mind, and enriched it with quotations from classical writers, you would have been more like an Attache, and less like a peddling clockmaker than ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... 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
... right in saying that it is all O.K." He laughed, and stretched out his long legs comfortably. "You've got the idea. That's the way to get the good of traveling and seeing other kinds of folks. You learn my queer slang words, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... origin of the phrase "To kick the bucket," the tradition among the slang fraternity is, that "One Bolsover having hung himself to a beam while standing on the bottom of a pail, or bucket, kicked the vessel away in order to pry into futurity, and it was all UP with him from that moment—Finis!" Our Querist will find a very humorous illustration of its use (too long ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... reveal to you, 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 ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... 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, grave or gay, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now is an independent critic. To accept fully, or as it is now called, to follow blindly; to admire heartily, or as it is now called, fanatically—these are considered signs of weakness or credulity. To believe intensely; to act unhesitatingly; to admire passionately; all this, as the latest slang phrases it, is "bad form"; a proof that a man is not likely to win in the race of this world the prize whereof is, the greatest possible enjoyment with the least ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... "Oh, that's river slang. You know every side-wheel steamer has a statement of her destination painted on her wheel house. I meant to ask what are ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... with the honesty of this confession, and in the same way I sympathize with those Officers of the Salvation Army who, in racing slang, cannot 'stay the course.' ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... of good looks, the kind 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 frank ironies that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... his vessels were usually secreted in the land-locked bay of Barataria, to the westward of the mouth of the river. They were, however, soon extirpated by the American government. The language of the adjacent States is still adulterated with the slang of those scoundrels, proving how short a period it is since they disappeared, and how they must have mixed up with the reckless population, whose head-quarters were then at the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... doorway Marion checked herself abruptly, because she had resolved to purify her vocabulary of slang and all frivolous expressions. Her eyelids were pink, her lips were moist and tremulous, her face was all ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... 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 up his hat ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... great keys were put in motion, and he opened the grate to let them pass, eyeing John Ayliffe with considerable attention as he did so. Locking the grate carefully behind him, he lighted them on with his lantern, muttering as he went in the peculiar prison slang of those days, various sentences not very complimentary to the tastes and habits of young John Ayliffe, "Ay, ay," he said, "clerk be damned! One of Tom's pals, for a pint and a boiled bone—droll I don't ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... they discovered that the "gentlewoman who had never appear'd on any stage before" could more than hold her own in repartee and give the fops of fashion as good as or better than they gave. How could they tell that the sprightly young budding actress had graduated in the wit and slang ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... very conventional, and twenty-five years old, Joyce nicknamed him 'The Pilgrim Father,' and vowed she wouldn't have him for her attendant; that I had to take him and let her walk in with Rob. She said she'd shock him with her wild west slang and uncivilized ways, and that I was the literary lady of the establishment, and would know how to ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... course refers to the "sparring" of the cabman who wanted to fight Mr. Pickwick. "Friend in the green jemmy" refers to Mr. Winkle, who, we are told in Chapter I., "wore a new green shooting-coat," &c. "Pig's whisper" is slang for a very brief space of time. Bartlett says the Americans have "pig's whistle" the ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead; and the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell upon his face to ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... 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 ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... thought that Mr. Horne was Metelill's friend. "So he was at first," Charley said, "but he is an uncommon goose, and Isa is no end of a hand at doing the pathetic poverty-stricken orphan! That's the way she gets so many presents!" Then she explained, in her select slang, that young Horne's love affairs were the great amusement of his fellow-pupils, and that she, being sure that the parasol was no present from me, as Isa had given the cousins to understand, had set Bertie Elwood to extract the truth by teasing his friend. "But I never meant to have ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... humourists by trade On waistcoat had the shoe displayed, Lampoon's sour spirit might be laid, And cease its spiteful railing. Whether the humour chanced to be Joke, pun, quaint ballad, repartee, Slang, or bad spelling, we should see Good humour ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... easy flow of words so natural to a woman, and especially to a Parisian woman, and which in Parisian slang is known as bagou, Mme. Mauperin, who had avoided meeting the priest's eyes, which she had felt fixed on her, now glanced mechanically at a light which was being stirred by the abbe's hands and ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... demarcation between them is sharply drawn. We all live in similar dug-outs, but we bring a new atmosphere into them. In one, full of the odour of Turkish cigarettes, the spoken English is above suspicion; in another, stinking of regimental shag, slang plays skittles with our language. Only in No. 3 is there two worlds blent in one; our platoon officer says that we are a most remarkable section, consisting ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... slang nor sarcasm what I was usin'," sez I, smoothin' it over. "That gigantic maid you mentioned is part o' the tale that you ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... is Captain Tucca. "His peculiarity" has 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." ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... quite "on his own hook," as people who speak slang say. There was no one to consult as to what he should do; and though this freedom was enjoyable in the full daylight, he began to feel lonesome as evening drew on. He found a good supper where he had found ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... 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 ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... she cried with a blush, "don't you know me? Have I changed much? I should have known you anywhere; and I am glad to see you, awfully glad (excuse the slang, but it is such a relief to be able to say 'awful' without being pulled up by Aunt Chambers). Just think, it is three years since we met. Do you remember Grumps? How do I look? Do you think you will like me as ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... caricatured unmercifully. The benevolent face of the great editor, spectacled, and fringed with a snow-white beard, appeared on fans, on posters, on showcards, where, as a setting sun, it might be seen going down behind the western hills. "Go west," his famous advice to young men, became the slang phrase of the hour. He was defeated, for Grant carried thirty-one states, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... photo-plans of the enemy's trenches; the Supply; the Staff, who collect and note all things, and are very properly chaffed; and, be sure, the Interpreter, who, by force of questioning prisoners, naturally develops into a Sadducee. It is their little asides to each other, the slang, and the half-words which, if one understood, instead of blinking drowsily at one's plate, would give the day's history in little. But tire and the difficulties of a sister (not a foreign) tongue cloud everything, and one goes to ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... part of the sentence. "Papa hates London, and so do I. And as to riding in Rotten Row, je voudrais bien me voir faisant cela," added Vixen, whose study of the French language chiefly resulted in the endeavour to translate English slang into that tongue. "No, when I grow up I shall take papa the tour of Europe. We'll see all those places I'm worried about at lessons—Marathon, Egypt, Naples, the Peloponnesus, tout le tremblement—and I shall say to each of them, 'Oh, this is you, is ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... one time Prudence was away off." She smiled as she recognized a bit of Carol's slang upon her lips. "Don't worry about her. You needn't keep an eye on her any ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... so perhaps they won't try it on too hard," said Sam, and there the students' slang came to an end ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... 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 ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... serious opinions or humours of the moment, he still defends his ventures with indefatigable wit and spirit, hitting savagely himself, but taking punishment like a man. He knows and never forgets that people talk, first of all, for the sake of talking; conducts himself in the ring, to use the old slang, like a thorough "glutton," and honestly enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 there: yonder dirty, swindling, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not be an especially musical speech, it certainly does lend itself most admirably to slang purposes. Here again the Britishers show their inability to utilize the vehicle to the full of its possibilities. England never produced a Billy Baxter or a George Ade, and I am afraid she never will. Most of our slang ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... whole kit o' you, to come to my house tomorrow morning to see Rebecca Mary. I'm going to say it over again. Tomorrow morning, to see Rebecca Mary!" setting apart the syllables with the pointing finger. "You can play in my back yard," said Aunt Olivia, sublimely unconscious of slang. ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... could only have thought of a decent pretext. He wished me to drink with him, but I would none of his drinks. He grew pathetically tender in his professions; but I walked beside him in silence or answered him in stately courtesies; and when we got to the landing-place, passed the word in English slang to the Cigarette. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up in his chariot with his sling in his hand, and he fitted thereto small bolts, and slang. He did not make an end before he had overthrown and laid low three score of ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... supposed to have been invented by Alonso de 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 ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... in the galleys don't improve any manners a man may have 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 ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... ourselves," said she, struck by the phrase that fell from his lips. It was not Anne's habit to use slang, but somehow George's way of putting the situation into words was so aggravatingly complete that she almost resented his prior use of an expression that she had never used before in her life. It did sum ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... one," he muttered, unconsciously using the slang of the Street which he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing the ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... literature as found its way into Briar Farm filled her with amazement, repulsion and disgust. There was nothing in any modern magazine that at all resembled the delicate, pointed and picturesque phraseology of the Sieur Amadis! Strange, coarse slang-words were used,—and the news of the day was slung together in loose ungrammatical sentences and chopped-up paragraphs of clumsy construction, lacking all pith and eloquence. So, repelled by the horror of twentieth-century "style," she had hidden ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... "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 ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... expectations are 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 ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... slang words like those. The girls had no business to be using them. You must copy the ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... which Mr. Carson could not read were: "I would sooner be rented than, etc." Rent is a slang ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... tricks in its repertory, and none of them will tickle an audience into good humour. "Tousjours vieil synge est desplaisant." It is not the old jester who receives most recognition at a tavern party, but the young fellow, fresh and handsome, who knows the new slang, and carries off his vice with a certain air. Of this, as a tavern jester himself, he would be pointedly conscious. As for the women with whom he was best acquainted, his reflections on their old age, in all their harrowing pathos, shall remain in the original for me. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... neglect the solid body or the creeping thing itself? You are no better than a man pouring water into a mortar and braying it with an iron pestle; he thinks he is doing a necessary useful job, whereas, let him bray till all's blue (excuse the slang), the water is as much water as ever ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... had his face upon his hand, and once more he was the miserable man who had begun brokenly to unfold the history of his shame. The unconscious animation produced by the mere unloading of his heart, the natural boyish slang with which his tale had been freely garnished, had faded from his face, had died upon his lips. Once more he was a soul in torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence of ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... great football fan, after following the game for three or four years, learned all the slang expressions typical of football. She tried to work out new plays, criticised the generalship occasionally, and fairly 'ate and slept' football during the months of October and November. While the season was in progress I usually slept at home in Boston where I could rest more ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... Rowland for an Oliver" is no slang phrase of the eighteenth century; it is a proverbial expression as old as the days of the romances of Roland and Olivier. The other two were phrases put into the mouths of two characters (Dr. Ollapod, in Colman's Poor Gentleman, and Young Rapid, in Morton's ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... of the "fence's" parlour, and that of the literary salon; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in the other. Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, "The princess, I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;" and then in terrible slang we shouted a benediction on some "crib" that was going to be broken into that evening. And we thought there was something very thrilling in leaving the Rue de la Gaieté, returning home to dress, and presenting our spotless selves ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... be all but destitute. It is remarkable to see how she has taken possession of this money and with what shrewdness she manages it. I suspect her of certain small Bourse speculations—she has all the financial slang on the tip of her tongue—but if so, they succeed. For she keeps herself and the child, scornfully allows him so much for his pocket in the week, and even, as I judge from the consideration she enjoys in the church ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... It was 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. ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... in at Sharpe's door once more, and slap one another on the back, and crowd up into the old familiar faggery, and hear all the old chaff and slang, interspersed with stories of the holidays, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... brought Whigs together but showed its taste by giving a prize for good comedies. Swift, when he came into favour, helped to form the Brothers' Club, which was especially intended to direct patronage towards promising writers of the Tory persuasion. The institution, in modern slang, differentiated as time went on. The more aristocratic clubs became exclusive societies, occupying their own houses, more devoted to gambling than to literature; while the older type, represented by Jonson's ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... had told his friend Greystock, the lady's cousin, that Mr. Camperdown the lawyer intended to "jump upon" that lady. Making such allowance and deduction from the force of these words as the slang expression requires, we may say that John Eustace was right. Mr. Camperdown was in earnest, and did intend to obtain the restoration of those jewels. Mr. Camperdown was a gentleman of about sixty, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... 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, covering the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... is coming home!" said Beatrice. "How you will learn to talk sea slang! And how happy grandmamma will be, especially if he comes in time for her great affair. Do you hear, Alex? you must practise your steps, for grandmamma is going to give a grand party, Careys and Evanses, and all, on purpose to gratify Fred's great ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... the tolls trouble and the failure of arbitration, and an unknown President had just come in. Presently an unknown Ambassador arrived. Mexico got worse; would we not recognize Huerta? They send Carden. We had nothing to say about the tolls—simply asked for time. They were very friendly; but our slang phrase fits the situation—"nothin' doin'." They declined San Francisco[47]. Then presently they began to see some plan in Mexico; they began to see our attitude on the tolls; they began to understand our attitude toward concessions and governments run for profit; they began dimly to see that ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... from a convent in Brussels," he continued, feeling for his little brass box, "and to use the slang of our professional class, her people knew my people. That was the way we talked. If a thing was good, we called it 'ripping.' If it was unpleasant, we said it was 'beastly.' I believe the slang has changed since then, but the silly artificial spirit of it will never change. Why can't ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... infer from this how inconsistent with good manners is heat and exaggeration in conversation. It is a just complaint among refined and cultivated people that many, even of the well-educated young women of the present day, talk too loudly and vehemently; are given to exaggeration of statement and slang expressions. The greatest blemish of the conversation and manners of the young people of to-day is obtrusiveness and exaggeration. By obtrusiveness I mean a style of speech and manners that attracts attention ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... twelve hours, when the wagons had left too early, or had been overcrowded, or, after violent fighting, had stood waiting in line at the munitions depot behind the lines. Happy fellows, some of them, with broken arms or legs, the war slang, "a thousand-dollar shot," on their pale, yet laughing lips—enviously ogled by the men with slight wounds or the men sick with typhoid fever, who would all gladly have sacrificed a thousand dollars and a limb into the ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... breeze with dilating nostrils, and the wild look of her set him to wondering how such a gentle mother could have such a gypsy daughter. Perhaps it was the father—yes, the old man had been an Apache in his youth according to the slang of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... said the tall woman, in broken Gypsy slang, 'hear how they jabber (hunelad como chamulian), truly we will make them pay for the noise they raise in the house.' Then coming up to me, she demanded with a shout, fearing otherwise that I should not understand, whether I would not wish ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... notion. Much to our loss, for myself I prefer his 'Sea- Words and Phrases along the Suffolk Coast' (in the scarce 'East Anglian,' 1868-69 {81}) to half his translations. For this "poor old Lowestoft sea- slang," as FitzGerald slightingly calls it, illustrates both his strong love of the sea and his own quaint lovable self. One turns over its pages idly, and lights on dozens of entries ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... once—good fellow, bad fellow, cleverest chap I ever knew. Tremendous fop—ladies loved him—cheeks like roses—tongue like sulphuric acid. Beautiful to look at. Clothes like a fashion-plate—got any fashion-plates in Chaudiere? 'who's your tailor?'" he added, in the slang of the hour, with a loud laugh, then stopped suddenly and took off his hat. "I forgot," he added, with upturned eyes and a dramatic seriousness, "your tailor saved my life to-day-henceforth I am the friend of all tailors. Well, to continue. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... line of stuff!" She had never before employed Felicity's brand of slang. It came unpleasantly from her tongue. "The wages of sin and ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... What an unnatural transformation! He, who had said luxury was hurrying the civilized world to destruction, wore a pearl in his scarf-pin worth thousands of dollars if it was worth a cent. He had all the latest slang of a Bond Street Nut. (By the way, over here when one talks of a "nut" it doesn't mean a swell, but a youth who is what they'd call "dotty" or "bunny on the 'umph" in a London music hall.) And though his eyebrows still had that heavenly arch which must have made his early reputation, the rest ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... which 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
... power in their turn over ideas, we must, in education, attend to the language of children as a means of judging of the state of their minds; and whenever we find, that in their conversation with one another, they have any slang, which turns moral ideas into ridicule, we may be certain that this must have arisen from some defect in their education. The power of shame must then be tried in some new shape, to break this false association of ideas. Shame, in a new shape, affects the mind with surprising force, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... known how the lark in its zenith, children at play out-of-doors, good witches and jolly old parents have all been compared—how aptly!—with this very same Gladsome Beast. Only one "crab" he has (if I may use slang for a moment to make myself perfectly clear), only one drawback, and that is that in the gladness of his heart he spoils the cabbages of the Old Man Who Looks After Fairyland,—and of course ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... into tears. "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 a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... denying that 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 in her arms bundles which might have fatigued ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... the box, and in a powerful but not very musical voice began to sing a hymn full of cowboy slang. His singing had a quality not usual in street singers, and a crowd quickly gathered about him. His song was long and not without a rude poetry. He began his address at last by issuing a defiance to his enemies. This would mean little in an Eastern village, perhaps, but in a mining camp, ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... of "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 Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon |
