"Slangy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hawed. It must be remembered that Myrtle was a member of an Excellent Family, and had been schooled in the Proprieties, and it was not to be supposed that she would crave the Society of slangy old Gus, who had an abounding Nerve, and furthermore was as Fresh ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... same slangy and casual Clarence they had known, though rather subdued, but he had moods of sombre silence at times which none of them dared to interrupt, when his eyes seemed to be looking upon sights they had seen and would fain forget. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... you don't convince me, WILLIS, with your scientific chat, And my slangy daughter, Phyllis, says you're talking through your hat; For, while many drug-concoctors merit death by sus. per coll., I believe the best of doctors is our old ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... to "doll up," to quote the slangy Tom, for Reef Harbor was one of the most fashionable of Maine coast resorts and the knockabout clothing they had been wearing at Beach Plum Point would never ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... established by actual experience in human consciousness. They hold that in absence of proof in experience—actual "facts"—these premises are not established, and that all structures of reasoning based upon them must partake of their insecurity. These people are like the slangy "man from Missouri" who "wants to be shown"—nay, more, they are like the companion of the above man—the Man from Texas, who not only says: "You've got to show me," but who also demands that the thing be "placed in my hand." And, after all, one has no right to criticize these ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... such slangy words about it, Jimmy-boy," sighed Theodora. She couldn't bear to dampen their hopes any further, and perhaps Aunt Elizabeth might manage it if the colt sold well. But Theodora had her painful doubts, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... jail," laughed Nancy, immensely amused, after all, by this romantic and slangy youth. "It's a beautiful school. It's Pinewood Hall. It's at Clintondale, on Clinton River. And ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... self-evident strength and manliness in his physiognomy with something delicate and evasive, some hindering element of reflection or doubt, was repeated in his character. On the one side he was a robust, healthy Etonian, who could ride, shoot, and golf like the rest of his kind, who used the terse, slangy ways of speech of the ordinary Englishman, who loved the land and its creatures, and had a natural hatred for a poacher; and on another he was a man haunted by dreams and spiritual voices, a man for whom, as he paced ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all right—at least, if she chose.... Pater had always been worrying about slang and careless pronunciation. None of them ever said "cut in half" or "very unique" or "ho'sale" or "phodygraff." She was awfully slangy herself—she and Harriett were, in their thoughts as well as their words—but she had no provincialisms, no Londonisms—she could be the purest Oxford English. There was something at any rate to give her German girls.... She could say, "There are no rules for ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... kiss with an affectionate caress. Hubert's slangy praise was dearer to her than any ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... or not, it wasn't any pipe-dream!" said Morgan, so earnestly that the flippancy of his slangy speech did not seem out of place. "It was a woman's voice, but it wasn't the voice of any ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... she returned, "there won't be much for me in that. I shall never change—I shall be always just the same. The same old mannered modern slangy hack," she continued quite gravely. "Mr. Longdon has ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... any other country in the world could produce such a slangy, jollying, devil-may-care host as these vociferous American soldiers. How he longed to ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... blue, joined them on the way downstairs. Richard felt a sensation of anger. It was poor taste to involve a casual stranger like Ida Tabor in this rather delicate family discussion. But he thought that the little widow showed excellent sense in her rather slangy fashion. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... be our language; but if we first hear Chinese, we will learn that with almost equal facility. If whatever speech we hear is well spoken, correct, and beautiful, so will our language be; if it is vulgar, or incorrect, or slangy, our speech will be of this kind. If the first manners which serve us as models are coarse and boorish, ours will resemble them; if they are cultivated and refined, ours will be like them. If our models of conduct and ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... who was the nearest to the scene of what had just happened, neither fainted, nor became unduly excited. She had seen too many emergencies in the work of taking moving pictures to become "rattled," which is not used in a slangy sense at all, but merely to indicate that one's nerves vibrate too rapidly. Consequently, after her first scream, Alice was almost as calm and collected as could be expected ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... his slangy nephew put it, and satisfied himself of the identity of Mrs. Huntington. Molly was greatly interested in the occurrence. Mr. Kinsella was different from anyone she had ever seen before and Pierce's ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... hero of the press Whose slangy tongue and insolent address Were spiced to rouse on Sunday afternoon The man with yellow journals round him strewn. We laughed and dozed, then roused and read again, And vowed O. Henry funniest of men. He always worked a triple-hinged surprise ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... the "comic" cartoons of the newspapers have an extraordinary fascination for children. Every child wants to read the funny page, though the funny page is not for childish reading. The humor is coarse, slangy, and distinctly vulgar; very clever frequently and thoroughly enjoyable to those whom ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... dream they could write. I've got a little pocket-book full that I've collected. I've left it in London, but I'll show you some day. But bless you, nobody talks about their feelings at the front. We're a pretty slangy lot in the trenches, and when we're in billets, we read novels and rag each other—and sleep—my word, ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... protection of the bearded sex; and it was not merely a humorous idea with him that whatever might be the defects of Southern gentlemen, they were at any rate remarkable for their chivalry. He was a man who still, in a slangy age, could pronounce that word with a ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Algonquin magi, May have reclined "sub tegmine fagi;" For when across the Sapper's Bridge, The prospect was a fine beech ridge, And "Gibson's corner," in old time, For squirrel hunting was most prime, "Prime" is a somewhat slangy phrase For these high philologic days, And in connexion, be it stated, With a spot to science dedicated. J.H.P. Gibson's astral lecture Will place this fact beyond conjecture. Bound that old spot now thronged by all, Has many a chipmonk met his ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... which the hero is an adventurer, sometimes a rogue. He sees the common humanity, and the redeeming traits even in these. His plots usually have a turn of surprise at the end; sometimes the very last sentence suddenly illuminates the whole story. His style is quick, nervous, often slangy; he is wonderfully dextrous in hitting just the right word or phrase. His descriptions are notable for telling much in a few words. He has almost established a definite type of short story writing, and in many of ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... had brought back Euphrosyne's smiles, and roused a new and fierce ambition to excel in all their young breasts, he dropped the lesson, with a few gay slangy words, and went his way, leaving a stir behind him of which he was quite unconscious. And there was no Englishman looking on who might have told the charmed and conquered maidens that they had just been coached by one of the most famous of English athletes, born with a natural ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... really only at teas, with the Stanley strain in her uppermost. There are so many girls nowadays who are quite unpresentable at tea, with their untrimmed laughs, their awful dispositions of their legs when they sit down, their slangy disrespect; they no longer smoke, it is true, like the girls of the eighties and nineties, nevertheless to a fine intelligence they have the flavor of tobacco. They have no amenities, they scratch the mellow surface of ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... full o' sich feller-scholars and sich young ladies, if yer keer to go a gunning for 'em," said Rupert with dark and slangy significance. "Ef I'd known she was comin' back I'd"—he stopped and brought his sunburnt fist against the seam of his trousers with a ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... are too slangy. It may be all right just for fun, in talking to girls, but some day you will be sorry. ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... We shall bring it up from the hall. It's a beautiful picture—you'll just admire him! And to think— we haven't unpacked the books, Grandy's father's books—" she smiled over her shoulder at Dulcie as she always smiled when she quoted that slangy young person, "That will ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... Though this slangy style of talk was not at all to Patty's liking, she saw no reason to reject the offered friendship because of it. The Van Ness sisters might prove to be interesting companions, in spite of their unconventional ways. So ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... away; And striplings, downy of lip and chin,— Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,— Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore, Then at the rifle his right hand bore, And hailed him, from out their youthful lore, With scraps of a slangy repertoire: "How are you, White Hat?" "Put her through!" "Your head's level!" and "Bully for you!" Called him "Daddy,"—begged he'd disclose The name of the tailor who made his clothes, And what was the value he set on those; While Burns, unmindful ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... Dickenson," he said sourly, "a little of that commonplace, slangy quotation may be tolerated sometimes after the mess dinner if it's witty—mind, I say if it's witty—but such language as this seems to me quite out of place, especially if spoken in the hearing of the men when ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... Coach, with the team-Captain, and the excited Human Encyclopedia, watched T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. show his samples of drop-kicks. And the success of that happy-go-lucky youth, after his nervous tension wore off, may be attested by the Slave-Driver's somewhat slangy remark, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... smiled at the fashionable sunlight in the Park, the dusty cavalcades; and I loved to shock my friends by bowing to those whom I should not bow to. Above all, the life of the theatres—that life of raw gaslight, whitewashed walls, of light, doggerel verse, slangy polkas and waltzes—interested me beyond legitimate measure, so curious and unreal did it seem. I lived at home, but dined daily at a fashionable restaurant: at half-past eight I was at the theatre. Nodding familiarly to the doorkeeper, I passed up the long passage to the stage. Afterwards supper. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... haid an' shout: "Oh, Br'er Fox, you surely is a liar—dat you is; De lettuce days is done gone by—an' all de leaves is friz; You'll hafter try anudder way—mah name is Leery Liz!" (Ol' Br'er Rabbit slangy, ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... became a never-ending round of politics and society functions, followed by, on Mrs. Dott's part, sleepless nights and "nerves" and fretful worriment concerning Gertrude. Gertrude did not appear to worry. She grew gayer and more gay, more careless in her manner and more slangy in her speech. Mr. Holway continued to call and Cousin Percy to dance solicitous attendance. John Doane's name was never mentioned in his fiancee's presence. She would not speak, or permit others ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... out of intense feeling or labored thought. That was Emerson's way (in spite of his expansiveness), and Thoreau's also. You read them by pithy sentences, not paragraphs. They assail you by ideas, not by insidious structures of thought. The second is an easy-going comment on life, often slangy or colloquial and frequently so undignified as not to seem literature. Mark Twain and Josh Billings wrote that way; Ring Lardner writes ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... me—I'm going!" exclaimed Flossie, flirting out of her chair and picking up her books. "But I want to say one thing while I'm on my way," observed the slangy youngster: "You're all just as tiresome as you can be! Why don't you own up that you'd never have given the old woman a thought if it wasn't for May Van Ramsden and her friends—and Helen?" and she beat a retreat in ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Doubtless he thought of her constantly because his freedom of action was limited. He hadn't diversion enough. Books and fiddling, these carried him but halfway through the boredom. Where was she? Daily he had called her by telephone; no answer. The Jap shook his head; the slangy boy in ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... cried Hale impolitely. He is a trifle prone to strong and even slangy expressions when puzzled. 'Tell me how ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... through the swinging boughs—Jem and Jerry, bare-legged, sunburned schoolboys, fishing in the brook and frying trout over the old stone fireplace; Nan and Di and Faith, in their dimpled, fresh-eyed childish beauty; Una the sweet and shy, Carl, poring over ants and bugs, little slangy, sharp-tongued, good-hearted Mary Vance—the old Walter that had been himself lying on the grass reading poetry or wandering through palaces of fancy. They were all there around him—he could see them almost as plainly as he ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... misunderstandings, the machine-made pathos, the dull mechanic round of repartee, the innocent infant who intervenes in a divorce suit (like the Queen's Proctor), the misprised mother-in-law, the bearded spinster sighing like a furnace, the ingenuous and slangy young person of fifteen with the well-known cheek, and the even more stereotyped personages preserved in Mr. Jerome's "Stage-land." They all come, if not from Sheffield, from a perpetual tour in the provinces. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... know. He didn't care very much for duck shooting. In five years he had not visited the club; and why he had come here this year for a week's sport he scarcely knew, except that he had either to go somewhere for a rest or ultimately be carried, kicking, into what his slangy doctor called ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... I have ever asked you to do such a thing," she insisted, fearlessly. "To see him trying to act as fit as twenty-five, wearing juvenile shirts and ties, struggling to be brisk, slangy, to oblige everyone and step along, you know. Oh, don't turn him away just yet; he is honest and he tries. I can't tell him, and can't you see his old face quiver when he opens his envelope and finds ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... And our own continent contributes Canadians, Mexicans, citizens from every State in the Union. In addition, you run everywhere into soldiers and sailors. The bits of talk you overhear in the street are so exciting that you become a professional eavesdropper, strong-languaged, picturesquely slangy, pungent narrative. Sometimes the speaker has come up from Arizona, or New Mexico or Texas, sometimes down from Alaska, Washington or Oregon, sometimes across from Nevada or Montana or Wyoming. And with many of them—at least with those that live west of the rocky mountains—San Francisco is always ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... question raised by the Declaration of Independence as to whether all men are born equal. The warmth we have in hand is what the old lady called "Fahrenheat," and, from a thermometric point of view, Beachdale, if I may be a trifle slangy, as I sometimes am, has heat to burn. There are mitigations of this heat, it is true, but they generally come ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... he had a reputation for Herculean strength and uncanny skill. Yet the gay Captain had been strongly attracted by the beauty and grace of the unspoilt, unsophisticated, budding woman, with her sweet freshness and dignity (so quaintly enhanced by lapses into the slangy, unfettered schoolgirl ...). Not that he was a marrying man at all, of course.... Yes—Dam had it weightily on his mind that he might come down from Sandhurst at any time and find Lucille engaged to ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... really extraordinary dimples, and an expression at once gay and saucy and sweet and appealing withal. Her voice was very sweet, her unusually finished pronunciation and enunciation giving a curious effect to her slangy speech. She wore her clothes jauntily, carried herself with charming grace, and her great dimples made her ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... "Don't get slangy, Neddy. You aren't used to it and it isn't becoming. Besides, we may never get these little souvenirs out ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... says that all has turned out better than could have been expected. You see, as she says, Mr. Egremont has been used to good women in his own family, and would not like to see her in a slangy fast set. All her own gaieties have been under Lady Kirkaldy's wing, or that of Mrs. William Egremont's relations, and only in a quiet moderate way. Her father gets his own old set about him, and they have not been very choice, but they are mostly elderly men, and gentlemen, and know how to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impervious alike to the cheapness of Florrie's wit and the vulgarity of her taste. Her beauty had not only blinded him to her mental deficiencies; it had actually deluded him into a belief in her intelligence. He treated her slangy sallies as if they were an original species of humour; he accepted the sweeping comment of her ignorance as if it had been an inspired criticism of life. While she chattered, parrotlike, to the judge, who was obviously impressed by her appearance, Algernon listened to her ejaculatory ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... to speak the very best English, and to say that a word is slangy or common interdicts its use. Sometimes, when the weather is fine and things go smoothly, he is in an excellent and communicative humour, and talks a good deal as we travel. A few days ago I remarked, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... the pen of the mysterious writer, Pasquin Leroy, and occupied constant public attention. Unlike the realm of Britain,—where the 'golden youth' enfeeble their intellects by the perusal of such poor and slangy journalism that they have lost both the art and wit to comprehend brilliant political writing,—the inhabitants of this particular corner of the sunny south were always ready to worship genius wherever even the smallest glimmer of it appeared,—and the admiration Leroy's writings ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... expect Frank Catlin. He was a fair specimen of the Younger Set, a sort of modified Jack Carter, and called upon her about once a fortnight. No doubt he would hint darkly as to his riotous living during the past few days and refer to his diet of bromo-seltzers. He would be slangy, familiar, call her by her first name as many times as he dared, discuss the last dance of the Saturday cotillion, and try to make her laugh over Carter's drunkenness. Blix knew the type. Catlin was hardly out of college; but the older girls, even the young women ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... to talk at headlong speed, and with considerable eloquence, of Sorell's virtues and accomplishments. Constance, who had been brought up in a southern country, liked the eloquence. Something in her was already tired of the slangy brevities that do duty in England for conversation. At the same time she thought she understood why Falloden, and Meyrick, and others called the youth a poseur, and angrily wished to snub him. He possessed besides, in-bred, all the foreign aids to the mere voice—gesticulation ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me," asserted Tom with slangy emphasis. "Shall I go on ahead and telephone for a car, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... "Gee!" exclaimed the slangy Bobby. "What's got Old Dimple now? What have I ever done to him—except massacre the Latin language?—and that's a 'dead ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... by Claire, he told of his affection for the Schoenstrom "prof" and his wife. The practical, slangy Milt of the garage was lost in the enthusiastic undergraduate adoring his instructor in the university that exists as veritably in a teacher's or a doctor's sitting-room in every Schoenstrom as it does in certain lugubrious stone hulks recognized ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... much harm done, of course," she concluded. "This Mary-creature isn't what you might call bad, when all is said and done. I've been questioning your children and the Blythes, and from what I can make out there's nothing much to be said against the child except that she's slangy and doesn't use very refined language. But think what might have happened if she'd been like some of those home children we know of. You know yourself what that poor little creature the Jim Flaggs' had, taught and told the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cynical males; but the literary shrew rattles out her libels, and, in order to show how very virtuous she is, she usually makes her articles unfit to be brought within the doors of any respectable house. Not that she is ribald—she is merely so slangy, so audacious, and so bitter that no "prudent" man would let his daughters glance at a single article turned out by our emphatic shrew. As to men—well, those ignoble beings fare very badly at her hands. I do not know exactly what she wants to do with the poor things, but on paper ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... with a curious fitness, and suits you more and more every year. I am afraid it is not very good for you. I don't mean for your morals; I don't care the least about them, I am a dog of the world; I mean for your manners. It makes you slangy, inert, rude, lazy. And yet what perfect gentlemen you can be still, and what grace there is in your careless, weary ease, when you choose to be courteous; and you always do choose, that I must say for you, when you find a woman who is really ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... me that, I recalled vividly the picture of her, in my garden, on the last afternoon of her life, eating the strawberries which she had brought me for tea. I remembered the little slangy tone in her voice when she had asked me whether I didn't think life was rather rotten. That was the tone in which she had said to him, "Oh, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... she exclaimed. "It's funny. I can't help being a bit slangy. You do take everything so seriously. Of course you can see that the Prince is waiting to make a fool of himself over Lucille. He has been trying more or less all ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not enough to prevent her feeling a little slacker. He would have to do the patriotic work for both of them, tell her all about himself, and let her share everything with him in imagination. She also expressed her affection for him in shy and slangy terms. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Jimsy suddenly realized what his rival was trying to do. To use a slangy but expressive phrase, Le Roy, the veteran aviator, was trying to rattle ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... pun, Winthrop. At least, not a slangy one. It's quite unsuited to your style of beauty. But, really, wasn't it all delightful? Did you ever see such riding, and ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... of conversation which may not be ill-natured and yet does harm. Idle gossiping, talking about things that are not worth while or speculating about affairs which are not our business and of which we know little or nothing. Akin to this is fashionably slangy conversation concerning the latest thing in books, magazine articles, trivial plays. For even the "tone" of school or college conversation a student is responsible. She can make her school seem cheap or cultivated. The remarks which visitors overhear as they go ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... of them had been inclined to have what the slangy Agnes called a "crush" on Ruth, they had quickly discovered that she had no use for that sort of thing. She made friends of boys as she made friends of girls—and that was all. And, really, she had never cared greatly to go out much or be with boys. She only had endured ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... coming out of the cannery, he was interviewed by his fellow workmen, who were very angry and incoherently slangy. He failed to comprehend the motive behind their action. The action itself was strenuous. When he refused to ease down his pace and bleated about freedom of contract, independent Americanism, and ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... noisy and slangy and romping and boisterous; her way was beset with reproofs and demerits and minor punishments, but she had never yet been guilty of any actual felony. For three years, however, St. Ursula's had been holding its breath waiting for the ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... pleasant chum Compared with slangy laureates of the slum. Hist! There's a tenor twitter, A tremulous twangle of the minor strings. 'Tis SERAPHIN, sleek Amateur, who sings, 'Glide ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... conversations of many of the "chewing-gum caretakers" to discover with what carelessness some people select caretakers for their children. The language they use is not only ungrammatical but oftentimes both slangy and profane. The flirtations carried on with many of the park policemen and bystanders lead us to feel that many people arrive at the idea that their little folks "will grow up some way." If the caretaker is a student, a young woman of culture, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler |
