"Stutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eloquence, that stammering voice of his often gives utterance to noble things so basely as to defile them, and that frequently, when what he has to say presents not the slightest difficulty, he begins to stutter or even becomes utterly tongue-tied. Come now! Suppose I had said nothing about the statue of Venus, nor used the phrase which was of such service to you, what words would you have found to frame ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... place of the rest of the speech. A cold fury had gripped him. He pointed at Gerald, began to speak, found that he was stuttering, and gulped back the words. In this supreme moment he was not going to have his dignity impaired by a stutter. He gulped and found a sentence which, while brief enough to insure against this disaster, was sufficiently long ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... local Bluebeard. Oh, I was as frank as George Washington. And I told him also that there isn't a man inside the U.S.A. that would treat a black as he treats his wife. I think that surprised him some, for he began to stutter, and then of course I had the advantage. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... virtue That really desert you; You've nuts, but not crack ones, Half empty and black ones; With oranges, sallow— They can't be called yellow— Some pippins well-wrinkled, And plums almond-sprinkled; Some rout cakes, and so on, Then with business to go on: Long speeches are stutter'd, And toasts are well butter'd, While dames in the gallery, All dressed in fallallery, Look on at the mummery, And listen to flummery. Hip, hip! and huzzaing, And singing and saying, Glees, catches, orations, And lists of donations, Hush! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Occasionally, it is true, physical defects have been actually conquered, individual peculiarities have been in a great measure counteracted, by rhetorical artifice, or by the arts of oratorical delivery: instance the lisp of Demosthenes, the stutter of Fox, the brogue of Burke, and the burr ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... references or even of experience that conspired against her every effort at employment. It was the lack of luster to the eye, an absolutely new tendency to tiptoe, a furtive lookout over her shoulder, a halting tongue, that, upon the slightest questioning, would stutter for words. Where there were application-blanks to be filled in she would pore inkily over them and, after a while, slyly crunch hers up in her hand and steal out. She was still pinkly and prettily clean, and her hair with its shining mat of plaits, high of gloss, but one Saturday half-holiday, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... bought myself a second-hand, elderly, but still spry think-mobile with only a slight inclination to stutter, and a pompous-looking eraser with a little fringe of black whiskers on its chin, and I'm beginning ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... The stutter of the auto-rifle cut him off. The President Elect's knuckles were white as he clutched the piece's forearm and grip; the torrent of slugs continued to hack and plow the general's body until the magazine was empty. "Burn that," he said curtly, turning his back on it. ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... "Stutter," suggested Willard, with solicitous helpfulness. The girl broke into a little trill of mirth, too liquid for laughter; being rather the sound of a brooklet chuckling musically over its ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... rarer and farther off, so that the vocabulary might get bigger and bigger; and, all the while, the constant use of the vocabulary, such as it was, in actual talk, as well as in reading and writing. First, let the pupil stutter on anyhow, only using his stock of words; correctness would come afterwards, and in the end elegance and force. Always practice rather than rule, and leading to rule; also connexion of the tongue being learnt with ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... and the greatest interest was manifested throughout the proceedings. Manchester was represented by Mr. W. R. Callender (Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee), and by Messrs. Pooley, J. H. Clarke, T. Briggs, Rev. Geo. Huntington, Rev. W. Whitelegge, Messrs. Armstrong, Stutter, Neild, Crowther, Stenhouse, Parker, Hough, W. Potter, Bromley, etc. Mr. Mortimer Collins, the Secretary of the Association, was also present. The districts were severally represented by the following gentlemen: Stockport—Messrs. Constantine and Leigh; Rochdale—Mr. ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... was so startled by this sudden thought, that he even neglected his customary stutter. Bandy-legs would have been quick to draw attention to this remarkable fact, had he been present to notice it, as he ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... of the river-bank, the cavalry dismounted; we watered our horses, waited, and wondered what was happening. And every moment the tumult grew louder and more intense, until even the flickering stutter of the Maxims could scarcely be heard above the continuous din. Eighty yards away, and perhaps twenty feet above us, the 32nd Field Battery was in action. The nimble figures of the gunners darted about as they busied themselves in their complicated process of destruction. The ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... being well acquainted with Mr. Charles H. Webb, a truly funny "funny man," who had homes in New York and Nantucket. His slight stutter only added to the effect of his humorous talk. His letters to the New York Tribune from Long Branch, Saratoga, etc., were widely read. He knew that he wrote absolute nonsense at times, but nonsense is greatly needed in this world, and exquisitely droll nonsensical ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Willoughby went to him to put him on the wrong track: Mrs. Mountstuart swept into the drawing-room. Willoughby quitted the Rev. Doctor, and hung about the bower where he supposed his pair of dupes had by this time ceased to stutter mutually:—or what if they had found the word of harmony? He could bear that, just bear it. He rounded the shrubs, and, behold, both had vanished. The trellis decorated emptiness. His idea was, that they had soon discovered ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was well and strongly knit. His hair was yellow or sandy; his face red, which got him the name of Rufus; his forehead flat; his eyes were spotted, and appeared of different colours; he was apt to stutter in speaking, especially when he was angry; he was vigorous and active, and very hardy to endure fatigues, which he owed to a good constitution of health, and the frequent exercise of hunting; in his ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... it, now, I tell you," warned the other, forgetting to even stutter in his indignation. "I'm going to tell you about it just when I'm good and ready. ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... ought to make you stutter an' choke! Eunice sent your grandma a pair o' pullets no longer ago ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... broke down from inability to express the concepts fluttering in his beer-excited, beer-sodden brain, and, with a stutter or two, made ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... in the very first word, so that the whole might be revealed by a single electric discharge, so to speak. Yet every word and all that partook of the nature of communication by intelligible sounds seemed to be colourless, cold, and dead. Then you try and try again, and stutter and stammer, whilst your friends' prosy questions strike like icy winds upon your heart's hot fire until they extinguish it. But if, like a bold painter, you had first sketched in a few audacious strokes the outline of the picture you had in your soul, you would then easily have been ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... called for another. Some soldiers entering, with a girl or two, and finding a clergyman seated with his glass in this not over-reputable den, began to chaff. He answered gently and good-naturedly, but with a slight stutter—enough to hint at fun ahead; and they improved upon the hint. By nine o'clock Parson Jack was silly drunk; at eleven, when the premises were closed, the police found him speechless; and the rest of the night he ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... him, sitting next to him at table, on one hand, while a lady (Mrs. McLane) was on his other hand, and the French minister next to her; and as Mr. Izard got on with his communication, his voice kept rising, and his stutter bolting the words out loudly at intervals, so that the minister might hear if he would. He said he had a great mind at one time to have got up, in order to put a stop ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Stuff plenigi. Stumble faleti. Stump trunkrestajxo. Stun duonesvenigi. Stupefy malspritigi. Stupefaction mirego. Stupendous mireginda. Stupid malsprita. Stupidity malspriteco. Stupor letargio. Sturdy harda. Sturgeon sturgo, huzo. Stutter balbuti. Stye (pig) porkejo. Style stilo. Style (fashion) fasono. Stylish stila. Subaltern subulo. Subcutaneous subhauxta. Subdivide redividi. Subdue submeti, venki. Subject (gram.) subjekto. Subject regato, regnano. Subject objekto. Subject (lit.) temo. Subject ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... that their smoke was not all converted into flame, while Browning was a man whose radically prim and conventional ideas, heavily overladen with emotion, acquired the semblance of profundity because they struggled into expression through the medium of a congenital stutter—a stutter which was no doubt one of the great assets of his fame. But neither Chapman's obscurity nor Browning's obscurity seems to be intrinsically admirable. There was too much pedantry in both of them and too little artistry. It is the function of genius to ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... out of the chair. "Oh, I never seed a man that could be as big a fool when he tried. I do know that—" Here she was interrupted by the unheralded entrance of Mose Blake, the stuttering boy with the tea-cup. He nodded at Starbuck and began to stutter. "Mother sent me atter—atter ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... west was vaingloriously justifying the younger man's analogy of a gigantic Spanish omelette. Meanwhile, the younger man declaimed in a high-pitched pleasant voice, wherein there was, as always, the elusive suggestion of a stutter. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... avoided saying anything to that young man, because, I, too, at times, had a rather bad impediment in my speech. It asserted itself especially when I heard any one else stutter, or when the weather was going to change; the men who knew me well said they could always foretell a storm by my inability to talk. From my own experience, however, I knew that when a stammerer heard another man stammer, he imagined that he was being made fun of, and all the fight in him ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... the momentary stutter of two machine guns. Ah! McGee testing and warming his guns as he climbed. Oh, the fool! ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... the words or not, the young Lenape saw me stutter in my invitation. There might have been a quiver in his face,—at my father's gesture he had turned toward me,—but there was none in his walking. He came straight on toward our fire and through it. ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... curious sickly feeling at the pit of his stomach. He was relieved beyond words to see the figure rise to his knees and stagger to his feet, dripping mud and filth, and swearing at the pitch of his voice. He paid no attention to the stutter of laughter round him as he retrieved his mud-encrusted rifle, and looked about him for his cap. The laughter rose as he groped in the thin mud for it, still cursing wildly; and then the sergeant noticed that the man who had lost his cap a minute ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... effect of it would be almost instantaneous; therefore taking the cup, began to discharge my bottle into it, telling him he was now qualified to drink with the Cham of Tartary. I had no sooner pronounced these words than he took umbrage at them, and after several attempts to spit, made shift to stutter, "A f—t for your Chams of T—Tartary! I am a f—f—freeborn Englishman, worth th—three thousand a-year, and v—value no man, d—me." Then, dropping his jaw, and fixing his eyes, he hiccuped aloud, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... have never heard a Chinaman stutter you have something to live for, and although we discovered that our cook was a shameless rascal he was worth all he extracted in "squeeze," for whenever he attempted to utter a word we became almost hysterical. He sounded exactly like a worn-out phonograph record buzzing on a single ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... for a moment, her countenance swollen by grief, and her poor eyes so scorched by watching that no tears could come from them. Then she began to stutter disjointed words: "Look at him, madame. It fills one with pity. Ah! my God, his poor cheeks, his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... his chin beginning to quiver, and the great tears rolling down his face, 'I know you ca-can't, and I ou-oughtn't to have ask-asked it, bu-but I d-did love you so much, that I f-forgot how impossible it was f-for one like you to lo-love one li-like me. I am so small and insig-insignificant, and st-stutter so. I wish I was dead,' and laying his head upon the horse's neck, he ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... communicated, rather than acquire any new degree; as if it were derived from the Latin sto; for example, stand, stay, that is, to remain, or to prop; staff, stay, that is, to oppose; stop, to stuff, stifle, to stay, that is, to stop; a stay, that is, an obstacle; stick, stut, stutter, stammer, stagger, stickle, stick, stake, a sharp, pale, and any thing deposited at play; stock, stem, sting, to sting, stink, stitch, stud, stuncheon, stub, stubble, to stub up, stump, whence stumble, stalk, to stalk, step, to stamp with the feet, whence to stamp, that is, to make ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... smile and answered the call. He sprawled in his chair, his elbow on the table, and listened for a few moments. "But don't stutter so, Joe!" he adjured. "Take your time, ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... repeated Eben to himself, unconsciously imitating Jethro's stutter. "Godfrey, I'll hev to git that ticket ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... recognising with a blush and a shrug that she was unteachable, irreformable. Indeed she was, poor lady; but it is never fair to read by the light of taste things that were not written by it. Greville Fane had, in the topsy-turvy, a serene good faith that ought to have been safe from allusion, like a stutter or a faux pas. ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... asked him if he knew the "Five Vowels." He held down his head; he could not recollect it; all the songs of the good old days were mixed up in his head. As they made up their minds to leave him alone, he seemed to remember, and began to stutter ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... 'Would get in a passion when couldn't have his own way; have heard him stutter; always in some scrape or other after first went to college; eyes blue; hair brown; sharp enough when he pleased, but always heard he hated books; short for his age when first went to sea, and thin; had grown three or four inches when he came back; should have thought ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... stutter so awfully. Is it lawful at night and in darkness to enter a strange abode and to ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Jove! wish he could see us at some of our wines. Don't we just "splice the main brace" as Emil says,' answered Dolly, the dandy, carefully spreading a napkin over the glossy expanse of shirt-front whereon a diamond stud shone like a lone star. His stutter was nearly outgrown; but he, as well as George, spoke in the tone of condescension, which, with the blase airs they assumed, made a very funny contrast to their youthful faces and foolish remarks. Good-hearted little fellows both, but top-heavy ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... he could only stutter and point at the sack with 'is finger, and Henery Walker, as was getting curious, lifted up the other end of it and out rolled a score of as fine cabbages as you could wish ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... scarce can tell, for Cupid's arrows Have made my brain like any sparrow's. When you come near, my foolish heart Goes pit-a-pat with throb and start, And when I try my love to utter, My fairest speech is but a stutter. How to propose is all my task, Whether to write or just to ask, And ere I solve the problem knotty I really fear I shall go dotty. Oh, lady fair, in pity stop And list while I the question pop. 'Tis here on paper; think it over, And let me be your ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... aren't many people who stutter so badly," said Bob. "And in the second place, Miss Berwick told us that she saw some radio apparatus on his desk when she was ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... which are self-revealing in a quite unusual and always charming way, and the recollections of his friends, have made the personality of Lamb more familiar to us than any other in our literature, except that of Johnson. His weaknesses, his oddities, his charm, his humour, his stutter, are all as familiar to his readers as if they had known him, and the tragedy and noble self-sacrifice of his life add a feeling of reverence for a character we ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... pasteboard that admit them to their nightly banquet. The stage struck always copy the traits of the leading actor of the hour, whoever he may be, and grunt and bluster in imitation of "Ned"—meaning Forrest—or quack and stutter a la "Bill"—that is, Macready—as the wind of popular favor veers and changes. It is curious, at a representation of the "Gladiator," to winnow these young gentlemen from the mass by the lens of an opera glass. There you may see the knit brows, the high shirt collars, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... to stutter and stammer, and to grow red in the face, as is his wont when at all excited. 'W—what do you mean by ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... ancient squire for his paladin, or of an old subaltern for a superior officer, bound him to Ferragut. The books that filled the captain's stateroom recalled his agonies upon being examined in Cartagena for his license as a pilot. The grave gentlemen of the tribunal had made him turn pale and stutter like a child before the logarithms and formulas of trigonometry. But just let them consult him on practical matters and his skill as master of a bark habituated to all the dangers of the sea, and he would reply with the self-possession ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as good a route as the Trust's. I worked on the two surveys. Personally I think both outfits are crazy to try to build in from here. I had to tell Gordon that, too. You see I'm a volunteer talker. I should have been born with a stutter—it would have saved me a lot ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... joke is on the original April Fool, for the Senator has fooled him by being one of the brightest men of the State, and certainly its most gifted orator— the Demosthenes of Nevada, in fact. Surely a true son of April Fool should stutter and stumble, and stammer and shy in the most pitiful manner. Well, anyway, the Senator can always have the consolation that he has "put one over" ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... felt than told, Then first in all its bright array, Did I thy "frozen form" survey; And, goodness! what a great big steeple! What sights of houses! and such people!! And then I thought, did I not stutter, But verse could, like some poets, utter, How much I'd ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... eaten the fresh honey, grow Drunk with divine enthusiasm, and utter With earnest willingness the truth they know; But if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter 750 All plausible delusions;—these to you I give;—if you inquire, they will not stutter; Delight your own soul with them:—any man You would instruct may profit if ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... after forcing his way to the front in politics, should transfer his activities to the City and become in a short four years its most commanding figure is unheard of. And Mr. McKenna had the misfortune to enter public life with the handicap of a stutter. He set himself to cure it by reading Burke aloud to his family, and he cured it. He was then told by his political friends that he spoke too quickly to be effective. He cured himself of this defect too, by rehearsing his speeches to a time machine—an ordinary stop-watch, ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... Stutter and Wibberly, two of the sceptics, happened to be caught that very afternoon by Bloomfield in the act of "skulking" dinner—that is, of answering to their names at the call-over, and then slipping off unobserved to enjoy a rather more elaborate clandestine meal in their own study. ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... hand, James," cried several voices, and the author in question had got so far as to make an allusion to a solitary horseman who was approaching, when he was interrupted by a tall gentleman a little farther down with a slight stutter ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dost teach man's tongue to stutter; He goes reeling in the gutter Who hath deigned to kiss thy lips; Hears men speak without discerning, Sees a hundred tapers burning When there are ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... the kitchen of Cromarty House; and learned to run, or, I should rather say, to limp, errands—for he had risen from the fever that ruined him to run no more—with great fidelity and success. He was fond of church-going, of reading good little books, and, notwithstanding his sad stutter, of singing. During the day, he might be heard, as he hobbled along the streets on business, "singing in into himself," as the children used to say, in a low unvaried under-tone, somewhat resembling the humming of a bee; but when night ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... stutter. I'm not really stupid. You don't like me any better than I like you. I can see that. We're to be as decent as possible to each other—you from 'common humanity,' and I because I ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... the vein,' Sir David went on. 'It's a natural peculiarity—as you might limp or stutter or be left-handed. I believe it comes and goes, like intermittent fever. My son tells me that his friends usually understand it and don't haul him up—for the sake ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... other hand, regards a knowledge of French as immoral and only knows enough of it to order himself a drink. He is also gifted with a slight stutter, which under the stress of a foreign language becomes chronic. So when we evacuate a billet William furnishes the Babe with enough money to compensate the farmer for all damages we have not committed, and then effaces himself. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... with his clenched fist, slapping him and kicking him, I do not know, but the religious man fell at the feet of his furious executioner who, being now the prey of the most stupendous rage, could scarcely get his tongue to stutter and continued to kick the priest, without seeing where he kicked him. Getting deeper and deeper in the abyss and perhaps not knowing what he was about, this petty chief made straight for a sabre lying ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... purpose, and in expectation of that perilous and supreme day, it lavishes wealth upon him, and clothes him in purple and ermine. That day arrives, that hour, unique, pitiless, and solemn, that supreme hour of duty; the man in the red gown begins to stutter the words of the law; suddenly he perceives that it is not the cause of justice that prevails, but that treason carries the day. Whereupon he, the man who has passed his life in imbuing himself with the pure and holy light of the law, that man who is nothing unless ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... sees a masked Toreador coming along, and I decides to arsk him all about it. The language question didn't worry me any. I can pitch the cuffer in any bat from Tamil to Arabic, an' the only chap I couldn't compree was a deaf-an'-dumb man who suffered from St. Vitus' Dance, which made 'im stutter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... under than above the middle size; his countenance was swarthy, and by no means genial in expression. He had a peculiar thickness of speech, not quite a stutter. Latterly, excesses told upon him, producing their usual effects: the quick intelligence of his face was lost; his features were sullied by unmistakable signs of an ever-degrading habit; he was old before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... in a cassock, with woolly hair and a petulant expression on his face, had already raised his hand. He said, with a stutter, that his name was Ducretot, priest and agriculturist, and that he was the author of a work entitled "Manures." He was told to send ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... with an inflection of the voice, a bend of that curious long thin body which seems to be embodied gesture, she can suggest, she can portray, the humour that is dry, ironical, coarse (I will admit), unctuous even. Her voice can be sweet or harsh; it can chirp, lilt, chuckle, stutter; it can moan or laugh, be tipsy or distinguished. Nowhere is she conventional; nowhere does she resemble any other French singer. Voice, face, gestures, pantomime, all are different, all are purely her own. She ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Toby was certainly agile enough when it came to acrobatic stunts, and such things as boys are fond of indulging in, his vocal cords often loved to play sad pranks with his manner of speech. As the reader has already discovered, Toby was fain to stutter in the most agonizing fashion. When one of these fits came upon him he would get red in the face, and show the greatest difficulty in framing certain words. Then all of a sudden, as though taking a grip on himself, Toby would stop short, draw in a long ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... curious fact that Great Britain takes the lead in Europe in the prevalence of stuttering; the language is probably a factor in this evil pre-eminence, for it appears that the Chinese, whose language is powerfully rhythmic, never stutter. One authority has declared that "no nation in the civilized world speaks its language so abominably as the English." We can scarcely admit that this English difficulty of speech is the result of some organic ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... in his hand, crying, "To arms!" And then upon the silence of astonishment that cry imposed, this young man poured a flood of inflammatory eloquence, delivered in a voice marred at moments by a stutter. He told the people that the Germans on the Champ de Mars would enter Paris that night to butcher the inhabitants. "Let us mount a cockade!" he cried, and tore a leaf from a tree to serve his purpose—the green ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... stronger as the latter weakened. Thus, in Like Will to Like a certain Hance enters half-intoxicated, roaring out a drinking song until the sudden collapse of his voice compels him to recite the rest in the thick stutter of a drunken man. He carries a pot of ale in his hand, from which he drinks to the health of Tom Tosspot, giving the toast with a 'Ca-ca-carouse to-to-to thee, go-go-good Tom'—which is but an indifferent hexameter. At the suggestion of Newfangle 'he danceth as evil-favoured as may be demised, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... and explanation is very simple. The medium (particularly the young medium) may become panic-stricken by the thought that "perhaps this is merely the result of my own imagination or fancy, instead of spirit power," and the result will be that he will begin to halt and stumble, stammer and stutter, instead of allowing the message to flow through him uninterrupted. This is particularly true when the message is of the nature of a test of identity, and where the vocal organs of the medium are being employed in the manifestation. It occurs far more frequently ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... Whatever was absurd about him stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest of the character. He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a shuffling trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he was always in a hurry; he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in hysterical tears. His oratory resembled that of justice Shallow. It was nonsense—effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. Of his ignorance many anecdotes ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... vague and tremulous aspirations and awakenings, but undisciplined, uninformed, with many inherited incapacities and obstacles to weigh me down. I was extremely bashful, had no social aptitude, and was likely to stutter when anxious or embarrassed, yet I seem to have made a good impression. I was much liked in school and out, and was fairly happy. I seem to see sunshine over all when I look back there. But it was a long summer to me. I had never ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... should have for after-dinner reading, I instantly answered, 'Juan and Haidee.' My selection was not adopted, and feeling there was something wrong somewhere, I did not press it, attempting even some stutter of apology, which made matters worse. Perhaps I was given a bit of 'Childe Harold' instead, which I liked at that time nearly as well; and, indeed, the story of Haidee soon became too sad for me. But very certainly by the end of this year, 1834, I knew my Byron pretty well all ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... attention of the chief, and having thought out in advance his answers to certain pertinent questions, he did not stutter when they were asked. Yes, he had been hired to drive the ear south, and he had overheard enough to make him suspicious on the way. He knew that they had stolen the car. He was not absolutely sure that they were the diamond thieves but it would be easy enough to find out, ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... have experienced here this time, is the manner in which I am stopped in the streets by working men, who want to shake hands with me, and tell me they know my books. I never go out but this happens. Down at the docks just now, a cooper with a fearful stutter presented himself in this way. His modesty, combined with a conviction that if he were in earnest I would see it and wouldn't repel him, made up as true a piece of natural politeness ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... equivalent. The lawyer knocked him down. By George, I'd like to have seen it! From the way Bowles tells it, he must have knocked him down so incessantly in the next five minutes that Von Blitz's attempts to stand up were nothing short of a stutter. Moreover, he wouldn't let Von Blitz stab him worth a cent. Bowles says he's got Von Blitz cowed, and the whole town is walking in circles, it's so dizzy. Von Blitz's wives threaten to kill the lawyer, but I guess ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchandler's, bookkeeper there that used to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow he was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and disorderly and refusing to go with ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the man quite understood; his face, the expression of which till then had been gloomy, and hard, now expressed stupefaction, doubt and joy, and became absolutely wonderful. He began to stutter like a madman. ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... reserve the word "stammering" for mispronunciation or incorrect speech, this stutter being anatomical (due to malformation of one or more organs of articulation) or developmental (due to incorrect functioning of the organs of articulation resulting in certain cases of immaturity, such as lisping). ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Rick was so excited it was hard to sit still. As they began the crossing of the Little Choptank River, Steve gave them instructions. "When we get opposite the creek mouth, the engine is going to stutter and kick up a lot of smoke. The boat will drift into the smoke and out again. You'll have a few seconds to go over. I'll pretend to work on the motor, and finally get it started, but running rough. Then I'll take off and ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... him, look him in the face, and answer sensibly, not staring about or laughing, but audibly and distinctly, your words in due order, or you'll straggle off, or stutter, or stammer, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... senseless din; Whilst every tuneless knave doth rend the soul Of harmony, the more he hath refus'd To sing; ere Bacchus set him by the ears With common sense, his dull and morning guide; And stutterers speak fast, and quick men stutter, And gleams of fitful mirth shine on the brow Of moody souls, and careless gay men look Fierce melodrama on their friends around; While talk obscene and loyalty mark all; Then good or bad emotions meet the eye, Like a mosaic floor, whose black and white Glistens more keenly, moisten'd ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... achieve no more than a stutter. He was an extremely little man, dressed in the Sunday garb of a civilian—fustian breeches, moleskin waistcoat, and a frock of blue broadcloth, very shiny at the seams. His hat had fallen off in the struggle, and his eyes, timorous as a hare's, seemed to plead for mercy while he ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... either among us or getting ready to land on us. Our Faculty had thirty-two profs and thirty-three pairs of spectacles. It also had two good average heads of hair and considerable whiskers. It could figure out a perihelion or a Latin bill-of-fare in a minute, but you ought to hear it stutter when it tried to map out the daily relaxations of a college full of husky young hurricanes, who had come to school to learn what life looks like from the inside. Fairy tales in the German and tea ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... average American actor does not. The real reason is that the English actor works for less money—he is the cheaper article. Certainly no one will accuse the average English actor of speaking English. The hemming and hawing, the aristocratic stutter, the dropping of h's and picking them up at the wrong time, have never been popular in the United States, except by way of caricature. Nothing is more absurd than to take the ground that the English ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... nails, really performed prodigies of travel, all the more appreciated because unexpected. A stone-quarry for which we were searching was not found, but a teamster was, who, while everything solemnly stood still and waited, and amid the agonies of an indescribable stutter, finally managed to enlighten us somewhat as to its whereabouts. These adventures served to put us in excellent humor, so that when the road was found barricaded by a barbed wire fence, it only served to give one of the party an opportunity to air his views upon the subject—to argue, in fact, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... puzzle to know what he's at; I could pity him, if it were madness: I never yet knew him to play a tune through, And it gives me more anger than sadness To hear his horn stutter and stammer to utter Its various abortions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... alluded to it just enough to encourage constancy and rebuke despair. As she ceased, his admiring and grateful consciousness of his cousin's rare qualities changed the tide of his emotions towards her from himself, and he exclaimed with an earnestness that almost wholly subdued his stutter, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lectures come on this day two weeks. O heaven! I cannot "speak"; I can only gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashionables,—being forced to it by want of money. In five weeks I shall be free, and then—! Shall it be Switzerland? shall it be Scotland? nay, shall it be America ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... evinced that the inward and universal master, at all times, and in all places, speaks the same truths. We are not that master: though it is true we often speak without, and higher than him. But then we mistake, stutter, and do not so much as understand ourselves. We are even afraid of being made sensible of our mistakes, and we shut up our ears, lest we should be humbled by his corrections. Certainly the man who is apprehensive of being corrected and reproved by that uncorruptible reason, and ever goes ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... babble, gabble, jabber, tattle, twaddle, blab, gossip, palaver, parley, converse, mumble, mutter, stammer, stutter.> (With this group compare the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... very properly condemned half a score of weekday miserable sinners to penal servitude or the rope. Nobody laughs at the judge. Everybody will be laughing at the scornful man down half-way to his knee-cape with a stutter of an apology for having done his duty to his country, after stigmatizing numbers for inability or ill-will to do it. But Ormont's weapon is the sword, not a pen! Lady Charlotte hunted her simile till the dogs had it or it ran ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... livid for a moment, and I really thought he was frightened; but after an ineffectual effort or two to steady his voice, he managed to stutter out passionately: ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... thrash of a million branches, the hoarse booming of the wind, lend to the tiny chamber an air of comfort such as no carpets nor arras could induce. The rain, too, is hastening to add its insolence to the stew. That stutter upon ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... grumphs, squeaks, like an old sow with a litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter the Outer or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have put Cicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter. The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the long vacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have we seen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more gash than another, and those three in the centre seem to ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... trouble with the sentence forty nations are trying to stutter out now, is that there is no predicate, no verb, ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... of his and them glowering eyes that made him powerful with the redskins. But he was mighty quiet always. I've seen Cap'n Evan Shelby roaring at him like a bull and Jim just staring back at him, as gentle as a girl, till the Cap'n began to stutter and dried up. But, Lordy, he had a pluck in a fight, for I've seen him with Montgomery.... He was eddicated too, and could tell you things out of books. I've knowed him sit up all night talking law with Mr. Robertson.... He was always thinking. Queer thoughts ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... (Prussia) tickling the soles of the feet of a little child is thought to occasion stuttering; in Italy the child will learn to stutter, unless, after it has been weaned, it is given to drink for the first time out of a ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the motor-impulse. I knew a boy (feeble-minded, to be sure) who took from three to eight seconds for answering even the simplest question; then came a regular explosion of utterance. Yet he did not stutter or stammer. When he had only yes or no to answer, the interval between question and answer ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... master in charge. It is Mr. Fillet, the housemaster of Bramhall House, where, as you know, we were paying guests—a fat little man with a bald pate, a soft red face, a pretty little chestnut beard, and an ugly little stutter in his speech. Bless him, the dear little man, we called him Carpet Slippers. This was because one of his two chief attributes was to be always in carpet slippers. The other attribute was to be ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... in sore danger," said the man, and again and again there came the stutter. "Now I am a Catholic: you see how much I t-trust you sir. I am the only one in this house. I was entrusted with a m-message to Mr. Maxwell to put him on his guard against a danger that threatens him. I was to meet him this very ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the same language by the candidate. His former fellow-students, and any one present that wishes, stand as opponents. This disputation, whatever may have been its merits in former days, has degenerated in the present into a mere piece of acted mummery, where the partakers not only stutter and stammer over bad Latin, but even help themselves, when their memory fails utterly, with the previously written notes of their extempore objections and answers. The principal requisite for the attainment of the Doctor's degree, when the necessary amount of time has been given, in the Philosophical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... in my class who used to stutter. The teacher said it was because he thought so far ahead of what he said he got all tangled up." The boy reached in his basket for a handful of berries and chewed them thoughtfully. "She was always after him to talk slower, but I guess it didn't ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... and hoot like an owl, From the coffin shape with its brooding face That stands on the stair, (you know the place,) Saying, "Click, cluck," like an ancient hen, A-gathering the minutes home again, To the kitchen knave with its wooden stutter, Doing equal work with double splutter, Yelping, "Click, clack," with a vulgar jerk, As much as to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... that this lantern-jawed operator had a swift and sure sending finger, and when the answer came it was, in contrast, labored and ragged. It was as if two men talked, one in rapid and clear-clipped syllables—the other in a stutter. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... some years after his removal to New York, an old acquaintance remarked, "You seem to stutter more in New York than you did here, Mr. Travers." To this the brief reply at length came, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... body; and on getting to the top, took the wrong course, and rushed along rightward instead of leftward. Rightward, the first thing they come upon is a mass of Austrians still ranked in arms; fifty-two men, as it turned out, with their Captain over them. Slight stutter ensues on the part of the Four Grenadiers; but they give one another the hint, and dash forward: "Prisoners?" ask they sternly, as if all Prussia had been at their rear. The fifty-two, in the darkness, in the danger and alarm, answer "Yes."—"Pile arms, then!" Three of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the dignity of office, and solemnly inquired of Mr Stutter, the Premier, whether he was aware that a new party had lately been formed in the House, consisting of Messrs. Telson, Parson, Bosher, King, and Wakefield, called the "Skyrockets," whose object was to look after the interests of the juniors all over the school, and who would be glad to receive ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... could even stutter a reply a motor footman had leaped down from the box and opened the door of the limousine. Miss Hawker-Sponge fluttered out, contrived her most ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... interminable hours, at last he heard the clear word of command, the clatter of things falling and the immediate roar of the explosions. In reply, rifle fire began to break out along the German first trenches, whilst, overhead, a star-shell burst into blossom; then the stutter of machine-guns joined in the chorus. The sentry flattened himself like a poultice against the side of the trench. Fosse 19 had, among other disadvantages, the reputation of being open ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... she might gad and shop for a half-day at a time. But the more I think it over the more unnatural and inhuman it seems. Yet to hunt for help, in this busy land, is like searching for a needle in a hay-stack. Already, in the clear morning air, one can hear the stutter and skip and cough of the tractors along the opalescent sky-line, accosting the morning sun with their rattle and tattle of harvests to be. And I intend to be in on ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... squatted for a moment, doubled sharply back, and darted past Yermolai into the bushes.... The harriers rushed in pursuit. 'Lo-ok out! lo-ok out!' the exhausted horseman articulated with effort, in a sort of stutter: 'lo-ok out, friend!' Yermolai shot... the wounded hare rolled head over heels on the smooth dry grass, leaped into the air, and squealed piteously in the teeth of a worrying dog. The hounds crowded about her. Like an arrow, Tchertop-hanov ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... black, wet night at reckless speed without a light, their hearts filled with anxiety, for a rumor had reached them that two Salvation Army lassies had been killed by shell fire. The night was full of the sound of war, the distant rumble of the heavy guns, the nervous stutter of machine guns, the tearing screech of a barrage ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... fellows, full of good humour, cheerful, and untiring. The elder was disposed to be argumentative with his countrymen, but he could not quarrel. Nature had given him an uncontrollable stutter, and, if he tried to speak quickly, spasm seized his tongue, and he had to break into a laugh. Few men in China, I think, could be more curiously constructed than this coolie. He was all neck; his chin was simply ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... heard him, though Johnny did not know that. Horses and men tilted heads comically and stared up at the great, swooping thing that came buzzing like a monstrous bumblebee that has learned to stutter. Then the horses squatted cowering away from it, and scattered like drops of water when a stone is thrown into ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... shocked at having unintentionally wounded the feelings of a person who (except as Romeo), was every way deserving of their respect. Of course they could not swallow all their foolish words, and Abbot bowed and was gone before they could stutter an apology. I have no doubt that his next appearance as Romeo was hailed with some very cordial, remorseful applause, addressed to him personally as some relief to their feelings, by my indiscreet partisans. My friend G——, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... There was a pulse of red darkness in Beardsley's brain as all the mental and emotional equations of his being sang a sharp alarm. For subtly, ever so subtly ECAIAC's deep-throated tone had changed ... nothing like those other times, rather it was a halting stutter of puzzlement, erratic and querulous, with overtones of immediacy as if some formless presence were ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... doth leanness, hirsuteness, broad veins, much hair on the brows," saith [1294]Gratanarolus, cap. 7, and a little head, out of Aristotle, high sanguine, red colour, shows head melancholy; they that stutter and are bald, will be soonest melancholy, (as Avicenna supposeth,) by reason of the dryness of their brains; but he that will know more of the several signs of humour and wits out of physiognomy, let him ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... was seated in his easy chair, and had wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, when he had made two or three journeys to the door to see that his terrible hosts of the Rue des Bons Enfants had not followed him home, he began to stutter out his adventure. He told how he had been stopped in the Rue des Bons Enfants by a band of robbers, whose lieutenant, a ferocious-looking man nearly six feet high, had wanted to kill him, when the captain ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... most striking figures in the French Revolution, born at Guise, in Picardy; studied for the bar in the same college with Robespierre, but never practised, owing to a stutter in his speech; was early seized with the revolutionary fever, and was the first to excite the same fever in the Parisian mob, by his famous call "To arms, and, for some rallying sign, cockades—green ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
