"Vocabulary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perfect as we would like," said Estra, holding up four disks similar to the ones which still lay in the explorers' translating machines. He proceeded to open the little black cases and make the exchange. "There will be words used which I did not see fit to incorporate in the original vocabulary, but which you will have to understand perfectly if this announcement is to mean ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... to you—and I have already done so, I see—that, since I have been here, I have had daily lessons in English with a cultivated English woman; and in consequence I have been learning to enlarge a very meagre vocabulary, and have begun to appreciate possibilities in my own language ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... a time when a remark like that would have had me snookered. But long association with Jeeves has developed the Wooster vocabulary considerably. Jeeves has always been a whale for the psychology of the individual, and I now follow him like a bloodhound when he snaps ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... had given him some understanding of the elements of style. He perceived that some combinations of words were illogical, and that others were unlovely to the ear; and at the same time he acquired a vocabulary and a knowledge of grammar and punctuation that his earlier education had failed to give him. He read new novels at his writing-table, and took pleasure in correcting the mistakes of their authors in ink. When he had done this, he would hand them ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... become almost one of those conventionalities of amorous expression which belong to the vocabulary of self-abandonment. Every woman who utters it, when torn by the almost terrible extravagance of a great love, believes that no one before her has ever said it, and that in her own ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... The vocabulary consists of fewer than 700 words. Over half of these are found in popular primers. Therefore, the child should have no difficulty in reading this historical story after completing a ...
— The Bird-Woman of the Lewis and Clark Expedition • Katherine Chandler
... evening little Nan arrived. She was a very pretty, dimpled, brown-eyed creature, of just three years of age. She had all the imperious ways of a spoilt baby, and, evidently, fear was a word not to be found in her vocabulary. She clung to Hester, but smiled and nodded to the other girls, who made advances to her, and petted her, and thought her a very charming baby. Beside Nan, all the other little girls in the school looked old. She was quite two years the youngest, and it was soon very evident that she would establish ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... printed was issued in the City of Mexico in 1571. It was published as that of Father Luis de Villalpando, but as he had then been dead nearly twenty years, it was probably merely based upon his vocabulary. It was in large 4to, of the same size as the second edition of Molina's Vocabulario de la Lengua Mexicana. At least one copy of it is ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... Consequently he declines to classify this form of oratory separately, reducing Aristotle's three kinds of oratory to two. It is valuable, to his mind, as the wet-nurse of the young orator, who enlarges his vocabulary and learns composition from its practice.[56] Aristotle includes it in rhetoric; for in its field of eulogy, panegyric, felicitation, and congratulation, it too uses the available means of persuasion to prove some person or thing praiseworthy or ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... way in which she had handled the old reprobate who was her husband; and by her skill in making buckskin shirts. She was a dead shot, and it was said of her that even "Calamity Jane," Deadwood's "first lady," was forced "to yield the palm to Mrs. Maddox when it came to the use of a vocabulary which adequately searched every nook and cranny of a man's life from birth ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... showed a manly kindness, equally removed from boyish weakness and haste, while the girl betrayed, in her smile and half averted looks, the bashful tenderness of her sex. Neither spoke, unless it were with the eyes, though each understood the other as fully as if a vocabulary of words and protestations had been poured out. Hist seldom appeared to more advantage than at that moment, for just from her rest and ablutions, there was a freshness about her youthful form and face that the toils of the wood do not always permit to be exhibited, by ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... satisfied himself, as he said, that the world was too small for any particular use. At the end of his travels he had a little of his fortune left, a vast amount of experience, the constitution of a red Indian, and a vocabulary so vast and so peculiar that it stunned and fascinated the stranger. Halford was a New York lawyer, gray, clean-shaven, and sharp of feature. His "game" had made him famous and might have made him wealthy, but he cared neither for fame nor wealth. ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... were unmoved by this appeal and, his vocabulary being limited, he merely repeated: "I guess ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... its author as one of the most accomplished chemists of his time. Believing the black rock of the Schlossberg at Stolpen to be the same as Pliny's basalt, he applied this name to it, and thus originated a petrological term which has been permanently incorporated in the vocabulary of science. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that were gone seemed suddenly to have slipped away. It was as if they stood again by the brook in the park on that April morn when first he had dared to word his presumptuous love. Even the vocabulary of the Republic was forgotten, and the interdicted title of "Mademoiselle" fell ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Annie's vocabulary was emphatic, rather than choice. Entirely without education, she made no pretense at being what she was not and therein perhaps lay her chief charm. As Howard stooped to kiss ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... of stories depicting the picturesque life of the early days which made California known the world over and gave it a romantic interest enjoyed by no other community. They were fresh and virile, original in treatment, with real men and women using a new vocabulary, with humor and pathos delightfully blended. They moved on a stage beautifully set, with a background of heroic grandeur. No wonder that California and Bret Harte became familiar household words. When one reflects on the fact that the exposure to the life depicted had occurred more than ten years ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... Medical Jurisprudence at Dartmouth and various other colleges and medical schools, was another erudite scholar, who made a permanent impression on all he met. While yet at college, his words were so unusual and his vocabulary so full that a wag once advertised on the bulletin board on the door of Dartmouth Hall, "Five hundred new adjectives ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... beyond reasoning and beyond decency. He launched upon the stolid committee a rushing torrent of insult and invective. The veneer of dignity that had come to him with wealth and position slipped from him, as the old skin slips from a snake, and he went back to the vocabulary of his youth for terms sufficiently blasphemous and obscene to express his opinion of the strike, the strikers, the committee and its sponsors. He did not stop until his breath failed ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... century the title held. Adaptive Indian, Catholic Mexican, acceptive dragoon, one and all respected and believed in it. But then came the miner and the cowboy, and with them the new vocabulary. Monte San Mateo slinks in unmerited shame to hide its heralded deformity as Baldhead Butte. What devilish inspiration impelled the Forty-Niners to damn Monte San Pablo to go down to eternity as Bill Williams' Mountain? Who but an iconoclast would ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... horrified at the idea—shrank from it with invincible repugnance. The moment the first dawn of comprehension vaguely illuminated their periphrastic approaches he blazed out in a fury, cursed them frightfully, called them all the contemptuous names in his rather limited vocabulary, and swore he would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... is not referred to by Irving, who for some unexplained reason failed to meet the genial Scotsman at breakfast. Perhaps it is to his failure to do so that he owes the semi-respectful reference to himself in Carlyle's "Reminiscences." Lacking the stimulus to his vocabulary of personal acquaintance, Carlyle simply wrote: "Washington Irving was said to be in Paris, a kind of lion at that time, whose books I somewhat esteemed. One day the Emerson-Tennant people bragged that they had engaged him to breakfast with us at a certain ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... grades and varieties. There are those who recognize parents and familiar faces, and exhibit some evidence of affection for them, acquire a limited vocabulary, and then cease, no progress possible even with the alphabet. They attain the size and age of two or three years and there stop altogether, as if a permanent brake were applied to the wheels of their growth. Some higher types may even come to speak connected ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... household. It was a strange combination which wrought into one individual, so to speak, by marriage—her disposition and character and mine. She poured out her prodigal affections in kisses and caresses, and in a vocabulary of endearments whose profusion was always an astonishment to me. I was born reserved as to endearments of speech and caresses, and hers broke upon me as the summer waves break upon Gibraltar. I was reared in that atmosphere ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... proficient in their common language the pleasures of their companionship grew correspondingly, for now they could converse and aided by the mental powers of their human heritage they amplified the restricted vocabulary of the apes until talking was transformed from a task into an enjoyable pastime. When Korak hunted, Meriem usually accompanied him, for she had learned the fine art of silence, when silence was desirable. She could pass through the branches ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to see is the rise of a man of genius, with a rich poetical vocabulary and a deep instinct for poetical material, who will throw aside resolutely all the canons of verse, and construct prose lyrics with a perfect mastery of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... suggested and judgment approved was forgotten or destroyed, and love, all-conquering, unconquerable love, reigned over every thought, feeling, and emotion. I sunk upon my knees before him,—I encircled his neck with my arms,—I called him by every dear and tender name the vocabulary of love can furnish,—I wept upon his bosom showers of blissful and relieving tears. Thus we knelt and wept, locked in each other's arms, and again ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... was achieved in only two years, and succeeded her first child, which was brought from Sacramento at considerable expense by a Mr. William Dodd, also a teamster, on her seventh birthday. This, by one of those rare inventions known only to a child's vocabulary, she at once called "Misery"—probably a combination of "Missy," as she herself was formerly termed by strangers, and "Missouri," her native State. It was an excessively large doll at first—Mr. Dodd wishing to get the worth of his money—but time, and perhaps ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... it may, the beauty of Florentine Renaissance painting must be sought, very often, not in the object which the picture represents, but in the mode in which that object is represented. Our habits of thought are so slovenly in these matters, and our vocabulary so poor and confused, that I find it difficult to make my exact meaning clear without some insistence. I am not referring to the mere moral qualities of care, decision, or respectfulness, though the recognition thereof adds undoubtedly ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... of being carotte. The noun has become a verb. From the very start of his passion for Madame Schontz, Arthur was on his guard, and he was, therefore, very rat, to use another word of the same vocabulary. The word rat, when applied to a young girl, means the guest or the one entertained, but applied to a man it signifies the giver of the feast who ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... been afloat," was the graceful parenthetical apology which a distinguished naval officer used to make, when by mistake he let drop one of "those big words which lie at the bottom of the best man's vocabulary," in conversation with sensitive persons whose ears he feared it might offend. I ought possibly, at the end of the following anecdote, to make some such excuse to the scrupulous reader, whose notions of propriety it will perhaps slightly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... studied marks the difference in rank. In fact, when a person can read intelligently and with appreciation such selections as appear in this volume he can read anything that is set before him. There may be some things that will require effort and perhaps explanation, but it is merely a question of vocabulary and parallel information. Besides the stories, there are selections in every department of literature except those that have been passed in the progress of the plan of grading. The legendary heroes, the myths and the stories of classic ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... area. The main force of Shere Singh was posted on the right bank of the river, but a strong brigade of four thousand men occupied the island, and erected batteries. These batteries commanded the only available ford, or "nullah," as it is called in the vocabulary of the country. The opposite town of Rumnugger was favourably situated for defence; it was flanked by a grove, and by the bend in the river. This position Shere Singh had skilfully fortified. On the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... really got any name," he confessed. "If only I had the poetic vocabulary I'd give him a ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... and the naturalists of to-day.—The study of animals, plants, rocks, and of natural objects generally, was formerly called "natural history"; but this term is tending to disappear from our vocabulary and to give place to the term "natural sciences." What is the reason of this change, and to what does it correspond? for it is rare for a word to be modified in so short a time if the thing designated has ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that, when he heard his Roman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate could supply,—I cannot help thinking that he ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The battles, sieges, fortunes, that he has passed," to ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... sniffing a customer, was immediately up and doing. Annersley inspected the horses and finally chose a horse which Young Pete roped with much swagger and unnecessary language, for the horse was gentle, and quite familiar with Young Pete's professional vocabulary. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... friends of the urban scholar can bear witness, the dog undoubtedly could utter a howl, which, assisted by the hand of the master in closing the jaw at certain inflections, might be intelligibly construed into two words not to be repeated. Such a dog, with such an anathema in his vocabulary, would have hanged any witch in England ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... viii., pp. 386. 524.).—In The Adventures of the Gooroo Paramartan, a tale in the Tamul language, accompanied by a translation and a vocabulary, &c., by Benjamin Babington London, 1822, is the following: "Fanam or casoo is unnecessary, I give it to you gratis." To which the translator subjoins: "The latter word is usually pronounced cash by Europeans, but the Tamul orthography is used in the text, that the reader may not ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... the negroes, though with many variants, became largely standardized into the predominant plantation type. The traits which prevailed were an eagerness for society, music and merriment, a fondness for display whether of person, dress, vocabulary or emotion, a not flagrant sensuality, a receptiveness toward any religion whose exercises were exhilarating, a proneness to superstition, a courteous acceptance of subordination, an avidity for praise, a readiness for loyalty of a feudal sort, and last but not least, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... say it yet; she's a hussy! she's a hussy!" shrieked the woman, whose vocabulary was insufficient for her rage. The chair rapidly descended until it struck the water with a splash, pushing the waves on either side and letting the scold down, down into the cold liquid. She gave utterance to a yell when she found the water coming up over her ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... must go much further to-day." "Go, then," said she, "with good luck, my children! a pleasant journey!" On entering the inn at Senas, two or three bronzed soldiers were sitting by the table. My French vocabulary happening to give out in the middle of a consultation about eggs and onion-soup, one of them came to my assistance and addressed me in German. He was from Fulda, in Hesse Cassel, and had served fifteen years in Africa. Two other young soldiers, from the western border of Germany, came ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... many ice cream sodas. Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He really disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as it was frequent. He shouted at Tinka, "Well, kittiedoolie!" It was the only pet name in his vocabulary, except the "dear" and "hon." with which he recognized his wife, and he flung ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... talks so little, he has quite a considerable vocabulary. This morning he used a surprisingly good word. He evidently recognized, himself, that it was a good one, for he worked in in twice afterward, casually. It was good casual art, still it showed that he possesses a certain quality of perception. ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... scraped off the back of the Greenland or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan. Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan's tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... never be interrupted in its operations; whilst it wishes to use its hands, we should not be impatient to make it walk; or when it is pacing, with all the attention to its centre of gravity that is exerted by a rope-dancer, suddenly arrest its progress, and insist upon its pronouncing the scanty vocabulary which we have compelled it to learn. When children are busily trying experiments upon objects within their reach, we should not, by way of saving them trouble, break the course of their ideas, and totally prevent them from acquiring knowledge by their own experience. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... waddle away with his fat friend into the stackyard—where they may take sweet counsel together in the "fause-house." Let him, with open mouth and grozet eyes, say what he chooses of "Pretty Poll," as she clings in her cage, by beak or claws, to stick or wire, and in her naughty vocabulary let him hear the impassioned eloquence of an Aspasia inspiring a Pericles. But, unless his crown itch for the Crutch, let him spare the linnet on the briery bush among the broom—the laverock on the dewy braird or in the rosy cloud—the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... visiting with them, and, as usual, disagreeing with Keith's mother, who evidently felt one of her dark spells approaching. Wishing to express her disagreement at some particular point quite forcibly, but wishing also to keep the listening boy from enriching his vocabulary with a term of doubtful desirability, she took the precaution to spell out the ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... at the weeds, digging with their pangas, carrying loads: to and fro, or solemnly pushing a lawn mower, blankets wrapped shamelessly about their necks. They were harried about by a red-faced beefy English gardener with a marvellous vocabulary of several native languages and a short hippo-hide whip. He talked himself absolutely purple in the face without, as far as my observation went, penetrating an inch below the surface. The Kikuyus went right on doing ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... does," said the School-master, who had overheard. "I saw him reading Webster's Dictionary last night. I have noticed, however, that generally his vocabulary is largely confined to words that come between the letters A and F, which shows that as yet he has not dipped very ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... existed to support. No editor ever had such a contributor as Brougham in the long history of editorial torment since the world began. He scolds, he storms, he hectors, he lectures; he is for ever threatening desertion and prophesying ruin; he exhausts the vocabulary of opprobrium against his correspondent's best friends; they are silly slaves, base traitors, a vile clique "whose treatment of me has been the very ne plus ultra of ingratitude, baseness, and treachery." He got the Review and its ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Translator's Note.—The word immortality—Unsterblichkeit—does not occur in the original; nor would it, in its usual application, find a place in Schopenhauer's vocabulary. The word he uses is Unzerstoerbarkeit—indestructibility. But I have preferred immortality, because that word is commonly associated with the subject touched upon in this little debate. If any critic ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and began to rail; the voice was painfully audible to Emmeline, who just then passed through the hall. Miss Derrick gave as good as she received; a battle raged for some minutes, differing from many a former conflict only in the moderation of pitch and vocabulary due to their being ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... with an unconcerned shrug; for one had to speak to him more emphatically. I therefore selected from the Portuguese vocabulary of abuse, which is as massive and opulent as that of any Romance language whatever, a few juicy morsels, and swore that if this carelessness happened again I would shut the fellow up in the dark chamber and give him twenty-four ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... should perhaps interpolate yet another caveat. I did not, of course, as a child, use or even know of the vocabulary of the metaphysicians. I did, however, entertain thoughts which I could not then express, but which the words given above most nearly represent. There is one exception. In talking about "a naked soul" I am not interpreting my childish ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... acid sentiment and the intolerable vows of repentance. Again, though he knows his subject, and can patter flash with the best, his incorrigible respectability leads him to ape the manner of a Grub Street hack, and to banish to a vocabulary those pearls of slang which might have added vigour and lustre to his somewhat tiresome page. However, the thief cannot escape his inevitable defects. The vanity, the weakness, the sentimentality of those who are ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... given in this book omit such words as in your opinion are beyond the vocabulary of ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... the tests of excellent work that such work is economic, that is, that there is nothing redundant in order or in vocabulary, and at the same time nothing elliptic—in the full sense of that word: that is, no sentence in which so much is omitted that the reader is left puzzled. That is the quality you get in really good statuary—in ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... unpleasant impression this rusticity might otherwise have made. He generally spoke the dialect of Nuremberg, though when with Daniel he never spoke anything but the most correct and chosen High German. His natural, acquired culture and the wealth of his vocabulary were ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... words, and formless monotony of sentence, with the endless repetition of the connective "and." Language should be fresh, vital, varied. It should have some dignity. Much reading, writing, and speaking are necessary to secure an adequate vocabulary, and a readiness in putting in firm form a variety of sentences. Concreteness of expression and occasional illustration are more needed in speech than in writing, and the brief anecdote or story is welcome and useful ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... to notice a poor miserable day- labourer such as I am? how will she be justified in the beau monde, when even the sight of such a wretch ought to fill her with horror? Henceforth let hysterics be blown to the winds, and let nerves be discarded from the female vocabulary, since a lady so young and fair can stand this shock ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... not think the things she thought, and had no vocabulary or phrases or imagery whereby to express their own thinkings. God does not hurry such: have we enough of hope for them, or patience with them? I suspect their teachers must arise among themselves. They too must have an elect of their ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... a spelling lesson of ten words is given each day from the spoken vocabulary of the pupil. Of these ten words two are selected for intensive study, and in the spelling book are made prominent in both position and type at the head of each day's lessons, these two words being followed by the remaining eight words in smaller type. Systematic ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... of the sort in my vocabulary, so must return to my usual style, gentlemen," said Tom. "The long and the short of it is, when I was a prisoner at Trullyabister, I discovered that I was not the only poor wretch whom the ogre had nabbed. There ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... He began to read strange books that Pendleton had loaned him, and the more he read the gloomier he looked. His vocabulary changed. In the course of fourteen days, I remember, the word "salvation" did not pass his lips and I could have prayed as good a prayer as he prayed any night as we knelt together. The time came, indeed, when I seriously considered making ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... in which, after a device borrowed from the "Lexiphanes" of Lucian, the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the difficult words with which he had overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary. In the end Crispinus with his fellow, Dekker-Demetrius, is bound over to keep the peace and never thenceforward "malign, traduce, or detract the person or writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Jonson] or any other eminent man transcending you in merit." One of the most ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... I suppose, from you," said Charles Osmond. "I wish you could have seen her delight over it. Words absolutely failed her. I don't think any one else noticed it, but, her own vocabulary coming to an end, she turned to ours, it was 'What HEAVENLY person ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... is a gaumer, or cowherd,—another word for your Alpine vocabulary,—the burgher whose cattle he will drive to the pasture has probably arranged ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... real training in the use of words; it teaches one what words are musical, sonorous, effective; while the necessity of having to fit words to metre increases one's stock of words and one's power of applying them. When I came back to writing prose, I found that I had a far larger and more flexible vocabulary than I had previously possessed; and though the language of poetry is by no means the same as that of prose—it is a pity that the two kinds of diction are so different in English, because it is not always so in other languages—yet it made the ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... church suppers to get the long, lazy youth through the seminary. He could still speak enough Swedish to exhort and to bury the members of his country church out at Copper Hole, and he wielded in his Moonstone pulpit a somewhat pompous English vocabulary he had learned out of books at college. He always spoke of "the infant Saviour," "our Heavenly Father," etc. The poor man had no natural, spontaneous human speech. If he had his sincere moments, they were perforce ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... phonograms found in the words of the reading lessons are taught. Such phonograms as "ound" from "found", "un" from "run", "ight" from "bright", "est" from "nest", "ark" from "lark", etc., may be taught as soon as these sight words are made a part of the child's reading vocabulary. ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... individuals in the gilded drawing-room at home, the more do they crave after the unshackled enjoyment of their animal vulgarity abroad. Their principal characteristics are a love of large plaids, and a choice vocabulary of popular idiomatic forms of speech; and these will sufficiently define them in the saloons of the theatres and in the cigar divans. But they are not ever thus. By no means. At home (which does not naturally indicate their own house), having donned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... string them together as if they were her own. The girls weren't clever enough to know the real from the sham, but Mr Rawdon knew it at once. He saw how—how—" (she paused, groping in her extensive vocabulary for a word to express her meaning) "how meretricious ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... This was regular! One wiser than the rest—one who thought himself schooled in the vernacular, because he had once witnessed a Frontier Week celebration at Cheyenne—seized upon this opportunity to air his vocabulary. ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... course, that "romantic" is a dangerous word, more overworked than any other in the vocabulary of criticism, and very difficult to define. But in contrast with its opposites it can be made to mean something definite. Now, the romanticism of the juniors is not the opposite of realism; it sometimes embraces realism too lovingly for the reader's ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... English scholars could readily quit their native land to study at Paris, the French vernacular literature was the common property of the two peoples, and French words began to force their way into the stubborn vocabulary of the English language, which for two centuries had almost entirely rejected these alien elements. In dwelling, however briefly, on the new features which were transforming English civilisation during this memorable period, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Isn't it about time that you were turning your faces back toward Fifth Avenue? Hame is hame, be 't ever sae hamely. Don't you marvel at the Scotch that flows so readily from my pen? Since being acquent' wi' Sandy, I hae gathered a muckle new vocabulary. The dinner gong! I leave you, to devote a revivifying half-hour to mutton hash. We eat to live in ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... at all ridiculous to them.' Trent laid aside the pen with an appearance of relief and rose to his feet. 'Let me explain. A people like our own, not very fond of using its mind, gets on in the ordinary way with a very small and simple vocabulary. Long words are abnormal, and like everything else that is abnormal, they are either very funny or tremendously solemn. Take the phrase "intelligent anticipation", for instance. If such a phrase had been used in any other country in Europe, it ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... Democrats, has emboldened members of the same party to introduce it in the Federal Capital. But the other day, MR. SUMNER, of Massachusetts, made, in his place in the U. S. Senate, one of the most incendiary and inflammatory speeches ever uttered on the floor of either House of Congress! The vocabulary of Billingsgate was exhausted in denouncing all who dared to justify the institution of slavery—using, over and over again, such terms as "hireling, picked from the drunken spew of an uneasy civilization in the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... to toss words and a smile at it all, now. There have been times when either would have been impossible from very heart-break. There, again, is another of the phrases to which experience has been my only vocabulary. My patients used to talk to me about their broken hearts. I took the temperature and wrote a prescription. I added that she would be better to-morrow; I would call again in a week. I assured her ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... I have exhausted my small stock of legal words, and must go on in my own language instead of in the lawyer's. The end of the thing was simply this. All the money went back to Mr. Noel Vanstone's estate (another legal word! my vocabulary is richer than I thought), for one plain reason—that it had not been employed as Mr. Noel Vanstone directed. If Mrs. Girdlestone had lived, or if George had married me a few months earlier, results would have been just the other way. As it is, half the money has been ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... marks in the paradigms and vocabulary lists have been supplied or regularized. Other errors and anomalies are listed at the end of the text. Bracketed text is in the original unless ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... that years ago," jeered David. "I believe in words, too. Sensible words from Nora explaining how you and she happened to drift in here at the eleventh hour. You haven't a sensible word in your vocabulary." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... language in the sense that man has; their vocabulary is probably limited to a dozen howls, barks, and grunts expressing the simplest emotions; but they have several other modes of conveying ideas, and one very special method of spreading information—the ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... an orator that has had no parallel on this continent. He found no adequate satisfaction in relating the experiences of a slave; his soul burned with a holy indignation against the institution of slavery. Having increased his vocabulary of words and his information concerning the purposes and plans of the Anti-Slavery Society, he was prepared to make an assault upon slavery. Instead of being the pupil of the anti-slavery friends who had furnished him a great opportunity, his close reasoning, blighting ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... preamble. It must be given up. For on what principle does it stand? This famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a description of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive (but too comprehensive!) vocabulary of finance,—a preambulary tax. It is, indeed, a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to the imposers ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and continued his old habit of taking a cup of coffee with milk and sugar at dinner. Without professing temperance, he drank sparingly in a community where alcoholic stimulation was a custom. With neither refinement nor an extended vocabulary, he was seldom profane, and never indelicate. With nothing of the Puritan in his manner or conversation, he seemed to be as strange to the vices of civilization as he was to its virtues. That such a man should offer little to and receive little from the ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... unrivalled in man's musical world. In the great chorus are voices from the lowest bass of the croaking bullfrog, squatting in the marshes, to the myriads of tiny green tree tenors, between which are millions of altos, contraltos, sopranos, coloraturas and other voices not yet in our musical vocabulary. These are accompanied by all the sounds of our orchestra and innumerable others of such delicate shades and gradations as to defy the ear of man. If we listen to one of these concerts, we will ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... Dinus, and a young man called Otare, who turned out to be his son. They had brought a fresh supply of dainties, and what was still more important, some pictorial dictionaries and drawings which would enable us to learn their language. As the structure of it was simple, and the vocabulary not very copious, and as we also enjoyed the tuition of the young man, who was devoted to our service, and conducted us in most of our walks abroad, at the end of a fortnight we could maintain a conversation ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... last, and their disappearance was a disaster. Party, as the term is used in the constitutional vocabulary, was not yet developed; and no organisation possessed the alternate power of presenting ministers to the Crown. The main lines that divided opinion came to light in the debates of September, and the Assembly fell into factions that were managed by their clubs. The ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... preau, pre and prairie were evolved naturally enough, and came thus early to be applied in France to that portion of the pleasure garden set out as a grassy lawn. The word is very ancient, and has come down to us through the monkish vocabulary of ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... That's a ... I...." Stevens' ready vocabulary failed him and he turned to Brandon, who was still staring narrow-eyed into the plate, watching the ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... the neighborhood. The Indian shook his head in surprise. There was no "waugee" nearer than the remote mountain-ridge to which he pointed. Pomfrey was obliged to be content with this. Even had his vocabulary been larger, he would as soon have thought of revealing the embarrassing secret of this woman, whom he believed to be of his own race, to a mere barbarian as he would of asking him to verify his own impressions by allowing ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... established metaphor, is a vessel par excellence) should admit Jack upon quarterdeck, yet, what with talking against lords and aristocracy, jobs and abuses, and searching through no very refined vocabulary for the strongest epithets to apply to those irritating nouns-substantive, his bile had got the better of his understanding, and he became fuddled, as it were, by his own eloquence. Thus, though as innocent of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the outskirts of the betting ring, searching a limited vocabulary for language with which to garnish his emotions, felt a nudge at his ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... word which must be stricken from the vocabulary of parents, teachers and friends, who hope to awaken the indifferent girl. It is the word hopelessly. Hopelessly dull, hopelessly bad, hopelessly indifferent! Experience teaches that these must ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... in glittering uniform, with an inflamed, almost purple face, leaped madly forth from the opposite side of the mast and began laying about him vigorously with an iron pin, making use meanwhile of a vocabulary of choice Spanish epithets such as I never ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... there. She had a thousand questions for him to answer, whenever he came, about birds, trees and flowers and the things she read in her books. The words she could not understand in them she marked, so that she could ask their meaning, and it was amazing how her vocabulary increased. Moreover, she was always trying to use the new words she learned, and her speech was thus a quaint mixture of vernacular, self-corrections and unexpected words. Happening once to have a volume of Keats in his pocket, he read some of ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... habit,—I said to our company a day or two afterwards,—worse than that of punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories,—fast or slow. Man's chief end was to be a brick. When the great calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being a good deal cut up. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... said that slaveholders regard their slaves not as human beings, but as mere working animals, or merchandise. The whole vocabulary of slaveholders, their laws, their usages, and their entire treatment of their slaves fully establish this. The same terms are applied to slaves that are given to cattle. They are called "stock." So when the children ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 'd! Ah knowed parrots could talk an' use de mos' obstreperous vocabulary at dat," declared the negro cook, "but Ah done suspected dat dey was men, fo' shuah ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... said. "But that's not his vocabulary, you see. What Charlie is doing is simply repeating the thoughts of those around him. He jumps from mind to mind, simply repeating whatever he receives." His face assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad taste in his mouth. "That's ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... be a grinning barefoot coloured maid with coffee, rolls, and a plate of luscious fruit. Anne's untuned ear could make little of the girl's voluble replies to her questions, for the West Indian negroes used one gender only, and made a limited vocabulary cover all demands. But she gathered that it was about half-past-five o'clock, and that the loud bell ringing in the distance informed the world of Nevis that it was ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... were presumptuous to assert; but that he constantly approached such an ideal, and that he sometimes seized its vital principle, the varied and expressive forms yet conserved in his studio at Rome emphatically attest. He had obtained command of the vocabulary of his art; in expressing it, like all men who strive largely, he was unequal. Some of his creations are far more felicitous than others; he sometimes worked too fast, and sometimes undertook what did not greatly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... or omission was, in fact, a piaculum, or sacrum commissum—terms of the ius divinum which seem to suggest, if I may use the expression, the obverse side of holiness. It is now well known that cleanness and uncleanness, holiness and its opposite, can be expressed in religious vocabulary by the same terms, for in both cases there is something beyond the ordinary, something dangerous, uncanny; thus we are not surprised to find that such words as I have just mentioned can be used to ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... upon the continent of Europe, and a process of incorporating foreign nouns and verbs commenced that speedily reached enormous proportions. Within ten years from the establishment of the World Republic the New English Dictionary had swelled to include a vocabulary of 250,000 words, and a man of 1900 would have found considerable difficulty in reading an ordinary newspaper. On the other hand, the men of the new time could still appreciate the older English literature.... Certain minor ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... that [Greek: apo] does not take a nominative case, would be incapable of writing any two or three consecutive verses of the Apocalypse. The book, after all allowance made for solecisms, shows a very considerable command of the Greek vocabulary, and (what is more important) a familiarity with the intricacies of the very intricate syntax ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... bonds of the Calvinistic theology in which his youth was trammelled, but it had secured him against the conscious ethicism of the prevailing Unitarian doctrine which supremely worshipped Conduct; and it had colored his vocabulary to such strange effects that he spoke of moral men with abhorrence; as more hopelessly lost than sinners. Any one whose sphere tempted him to recognition of the foibles of others, he called the Devil; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... these, and these alone, is what will give us part in the holy value of life. The choice and the refusal of them is the Yea and the Nay of all that makes life worth living; and is the source, to the positivists, of the solemnity, the terrors, and sweetness of the whole ethical vocabulary. 'What then are the alternative pleasures that life offers me? In how many ways am I capable of feeling my existence a blessing? and in what way shall I feel the blessing of it most keenly?' This is the great life-question; it may be asked indifferently by any individual; and ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... Composition and Rhetoric. Revised 1.20 An inductive course with abundant application of principles. Kellow's Practical Training in English .80 Helpful in its study of vocabulary, grammar, and structure. Spalding's Principles of Rhetoric 1.08 A supremely interesting presentation of the essentials. Strang's Exercises in English. Revised .56 Examples in syntax, accidence and style, for criticism ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... inspired Adelaide, who joined her in a flow of vituperative wit at the expense of their mother and other relatives, incidentally brought in. Instead of being aghast, I enjoyed it, and was feverish with a desire to be as brilliant, for my vocabulary was deficient and my sense of inferiority was active during the whole of my visit in Belem. I blushed often, smiled foolishly, and was afflicted with a general ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... time he would be the grim Protestant Flagellant, pursuing the idea of self-castigation. That he was immolating Ruth on the altar of his conscience never broke in upon his thought for consideration. The fanatic has no such word in his vocabulary. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... profession of transport agents for the imperial troops they may have been amalgamated into a fresh caste with other Hindus and Muhammadans doing the same work, just as the camp language formed by the superposition of a Persian vocabulary on to a grammatical basis of Hindi became Urdu or Hindustani. The readiness of the Charans to commit suicide rather than give up property committed to their charge was not, however, copied by the Banjaras, and so far as I am aware ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... our ideal of clear thought, the ability to use clearly and efficiently the language by which the steps and conclusions of thought are formulated and expressed. Thought proceeds, where it is precise and logical, by words; unless a man's vocabulary is wide, unless his understanding of the language is exact, his thoughts must inevitably be vague and muddled. Moreover, he will be unable to transmit his thoughts clearly and readily to others. The most important tool for the carrying on of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... readers may not stumble in pronouncing any unfamiliar names to be met with in the stories, the editor has prepared and included in the volume a Pronouncing Vocabulary of Difficult Names. To which is added a collection of Shakespearean Quotations, classified in alphabetical order, illustrative of the wisdom and genius of the ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... their dens, and do not yield to unmanly cowardice. Strange that I have given you the counsel last which should have been given first! But do not, I beseech you, lose any time in seeking her. Assure her of your long and unwavering devotion. Constancy is the most valued word in a true woman's vocabulary. You have staked too much happiness to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... poor relations, social workers, and others of that ilk—which proved tremendously diverting to her amanuensis, especially when it transpired that Mrs. Gosnold had a mind and temper of her own, together with a vocabulary amply adequate to her powers of ironic observation. This last gift came out strongly in her diary, a daily record of her various interests and activities which she dictated, interspersing dry details ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... Where are the Boulevards? where are the Champs Elysees? I asked myself; and feeling bound to apologise for the appearance of the city, I explained to my valet that we were passing through some by-streets, and returned to the study of a French vocabulary. Nevertheless, when the time came to formulate a demand for rooms, hot water, and a fire, I broke down, and the proprietress of the hotel, who spoke English, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... indicated; but it was nameless, and it took long inquiry and deduction,—the faculty of "taking a hint,"—to christen it. It is plain that different vocations and occupations had not only implements but a vocabulary of their own, and all have become almost obsolete; to the various terms, phrases, and names, once in general application and use in spinning, weaving, and kindred occupations, and now half forgotten, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... vocabulary in exclamations and in questions, she stood silent, watching the sun as it sank beneath the waters, thinking that life is well worth living if it can give us such glorious spectacles, notwithstanding all the difficulties ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... of the book he describes his journey on a special mission for the Canadian Government to the Hudson Bay forts and Indian camps in the valleys of the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers. Sir William, as a writer, has the rich vocabulary of the cultivated Celt; he presents many striking word pictures of the natural scenery of the regions he traversed. He was almost the first to proclaim the possibilities of the settlement of the Saskatchewan prairies, now receiving such an influx of population ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... was published in Belgium in 1841, which is even more misleading and unintelligible than the Portuguese School Book. The English vocabulary contains some amazing words, such as agridulce, ales of troops, ancientness sign, bivacq fire, breast's pellicule, chimney black money, infatuated compass, iug (vocal), window, umbrella, etc. At the end of this vocabulary are ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... base that they cannot discover and reverence his greatness and his goodness, they have at least shrunk from encountering the certain indignation of mankind. This day—disfranchised by stupid power as he was; branded, as he was, in the perverted vocabulary of usurpers as rebel and traitor—his death has even in distant lands moved more tongues and stirred more hearts than the siege of a mighty city and the triumphs of ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... date of the original introduction of this word into our vocabulary in either of the senses in which it is equivocally used by Falstaff in 1 Henry IV., Act. V. Sc. 3.? In the sense of fire-arms, pistols seem to have been unknown by that name as late as the year 1541; for the stat. 33 Hen. VIII. c. 6., after reciting the murders, &c. committed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... contemptible creature!" But such words were far enough beyond Miaki's vocabulary, so he ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... Giovanna's charitable disposition that we make the acquaintance of two weird sisters, who live not far from us in Calle Falier, and whom we know to this day merely as the Creatures— creatura being in the vocabulary of Venetian pity the term for a fellow-being somewhat more pitiable than a poveretta. Our Creatures are both well stricken in years, and one of them has some incurable disorder which frequently confines her to the wretched cellar in which they live with the invalid's husband,—a ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... 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
... Rifle. The word nomenclature means the vocabulary of names or technical terms which are appropriate to any particular topic. In this case the topic is the rifle. This instruction will be a few lectures or talks by your company officers on the rifle. ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... by arraignment, except by the exploded cry of "the bloody shirt," or claimed that a single thing stated by me as fact was not true. I referred to the "tenderfoot" who would not hurt anyone's feelings, who would banish the word "rebel" from our vocabulary, who would not denounce crimes against our fellow-citizens when they occurred, who thought that, like Cromwell's Roundheads, we must surrender our captured flags to the rebels who bore them, and our Grand Army ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... rose abruptly, put on his hat, and approached the young lady. He placed himself before her picture and looked at it for some moments, during which she pretended to be quite unconscious of his inspection. Then, addressing her with the single word which constituted the strength of his French vocabulary, and holding up one finger in a manner which appeared to him to illuminate his meaning, "Combien?" he ...
— The American • Henry James
... had been brought up in a fairly small city by female relatives who were one and all school-teachers, who had watched over your vocabulary (unsuccessfully) as they hung over your morals; if you had been taught, not in so many words, but insidiously, that breaking the Ten Commandments (any one or the entire ten), split infinitives, and chewing gum, were one in the sight of God, ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... hesitation and without servility. And his eyes slowly searched Rainey's face with appraising pertinacity for a second or two. His English, save for the oddness of his idioms and a burr that made r's of most his l's, and sometimes reversed the process, was almost perfect. His vocabulary showed study. "You are not hating me because you are Californian and I Japanese," he said. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... traveller, has taken some pains to compile a vocabulary of the various dialects of the Pacific races with whom he has sojourned, which, when published, will form another link in the chain by which the scholar may trace the spread of the Asiatic tribes along the northern seaboard of America. With the publication ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... finally destroy, nor indeed to any material extent alter the national features of Prydyn. This is evident from the manner in which the conquerors thought fit to incorporate into their own geographical vocabulary many of the local names, which they found already in use; and above all from the purely ancestral character which the native chieftains exhibited on emerging from the Roman ruins in the fifth century. Indeed to permit the defeated princes, ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... their catechism; fasting and praying long, weary hours in their own study,—truly they were "pious and painful preachers," as Colonel Higginson saw recorded on a gravestone in Watertown. Though I suspect "painful" in the Puritan vocabulary meant "painstaking," did it not? Cotton Mather called John Fiske, of Chelmsford, a "plaine but able painful and useful preacher," while President Dunster, of Harvard College, was described by a contemporary divine as "pious ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... one wealthy and influential personage whose own origin was such that Mr. Mackenzie's might have been pronounced aristocratic by comparison. To all such vapourings Mr. Mackenzie responded in the Advocate in kind. He had a large vocabulary of Billingsgate at his command, and as his temper became thoroughly aroused he proved that he could fully hold his own in this sort of wordy warfare. He followed the example of his antagonists, invaded the sanctities of private life, and descended to outrageous personalities. The persons thus ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Children who compare their handwriting with a scale, which enables them to tell what degree of improvement they have made over a given period, are much more apt to improve than are children who are merely asked to fill up sheets of paper with practice writing. A vocabulary in a modern language will be built up more certainly if students seek to make a record in the mastery of some hundreds or thousands of words during a given period, rather than merely to do the work which is assigned from day to day. A group of boys in a continuation school have little ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy |
