"Dictionary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the bench, dusty and neglected, Psyche spies something. She runs to see. With a little cry she picks them up, and shakes and smooths them. They are the Talaria. (Do you know what Talaria are? Look up Mercurius in Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.) ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... course. But it's bound in russia, and I am so fond of the smell of russia. But that's nothing. It's a Miller's Dictionary, and it is in four huge volumes, 'with plates.' I should think you could look out all about every kind of mill there ever ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... you select that disgustful equivalent out of all the dictionary?' King snapped. 'Isn't "wife" good enough ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... life has a numerical signification; and such is the reverence paid to dreams, that a large book exists of several hundred pages, called "Libro dei Sogni," containing, besides various cabala and mystical figures and lists of numbers which are "sympathetic," with directions for their use, a dictionary of thousands of objects with the numbers supposed to be represented by each, as well as rules for interpreting into numbers all dreams in which these objects appear,—and this book is the constant vade-mecum of a true lottery-player. As Boniface lived, ate, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... we should involve ourselves in the intricate question respecting natural genius—a metaphysical point, which we shall not in this place stop to discuss. Till the world has an accurate philosophical dictionary (a work not to be expected in less than half a dozen centuries), this question will never be decided to general satisfaction. In the mean time, we may proceed ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... that is!" says Mrs. Bethune, with a sneer. "It ought to be expunged from every decent dictionary. Fortunately," with a rather insolent glance at Randal, who is so openly a friend of Tita's, "very few people use ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... had, she indicated, never studied. He had skipped from one emotion to another. Especially—she hesitated, then flung it at him—he must not guess at pronunciations; he must endure the nuisance of stopping to reach for the dictionary. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... editions."—Worcester's Universal and Critical Dict., w. Bear. In five, out of seven good American editions of the Bible among my books, the latter text is, "The barren hath born seven;" in two, it is as above, "hath borne." In Johnson's Quarto Dictionary, the perfect participle of bear is given erroneously, "bore, or born;" and that of forbear, which should be forborne, is found, both in his columns and in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... what you read in their novels. It requires the greatest curiosity, or the greatest habitude, to discover the smallest connexion between the sexes here. No familiarity, but under the veil of friendship, is permitted, and Love's dictionary is as much prohibited, as at first sight one should think his ritual was. All you hear, and that pronounced with nonchalance, is, that Monsieur un tel has had ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... indulges in it; and, that bein' so, the same form o' words'll do for everybody, more or less, in proposin' it; just as (when you come to think) the same Marriage Service does for all when they come to the scratch. If all men meant different to all women, there wouldn't be enough dictionary to ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to arguing with gentlemen of that sort, where's the good of it? You can never bring them to the point, say what you will; all you can get from them, is a farrago of fine words, that you can't understand without a dictionary." ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... "roam" and "home" in attempted rhyme. But the crowning splendour of impossible assonance is attained in the "Worlds-girls" atrocity. Mr. Crowley needs a long session with the late Mr. Walker's well-known Rhyming Dictionary! Metrically, Mr. Crowley is showing a decided improvement of late. The only censurable points in the measure of this piece are the redundant syllables in lines 1 and 3, which might in each case be obviated by the substitution of "I've" for "I have", and the change of form in the first ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... profound bow, and told her (in English), that he was not sufficiently acquainted with the French language to comprehend what she had said to him, expressing his regret that he had not his French and English dictionary with him. Scarcely had he pronounced the word dictionary, when the lady, by a most astonishing display, which in England would have disgraced the lowest of the frail sisterhood, exclaimed, "Behold the Dictionnaire Universel, which has been opened by the learned of all nations."{39} Dr. E—, on ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... pound?" asked Sir Robert Peel in an interrogative mood futile as Pilate's. "What is a book?" I ask, and the dictionary answers with its usual dogmatic air, "A collection of sheets of paper, or similar material, blank, written, or printed, bound together." At this rate my first book would be that romance of school life in two volumes, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... But there is another question, and it is, What's a word in? There is never a poor fellow in this world but must ask it now and then with a blank face, when aground for want of a meaning. And the answer is—a dictionary, if you have it. Unfortunately, there may be a dictionary, and one may have it, and yet the word may not be there. It may be an old dictionary, and the word a new one; or a new dictionary, and the word an old one; a grave dictionary, and the word a slang one; a slang dictionary, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... a few words which I look upon as reliable. Nothing would be easier than to make a whole dictionary, for the natives are always ready to talk, but I have only taken words which I got from one and tested with others ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... a primer, some child's readers, numerous picture books, and a great dictionary. All of these he examined, but the pictures caught his fancy most, though the strange little bugs which covered the pages where there were no pictures excited his wonder and ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Peanuts, I guessed; but to make sure I called to a colored woman who was hoeing not far off. "What are these?" "Pinders," she answered. I knew she meant peanuts,—otherwise "ground-peas" and "goobers,"—and now that I once more have a dictionary at my elbow I learn that the word, like "goober," is, or is supposed to ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... residence in Ceylon, under Yatramulle Unnanse, a learned Buddhist for whom he cherished a life-long respect, and he had gained an insight into the Sinhalese character and ways of thought. In 1869 he published the first P[a]li text ever printed in England, and began to prepare a P[a]li dictionary, the first volume of which was published in 1872, and the second and concluding volume in 1875. In the following year it was awarded the Volney prize by the Institute of France, as being the most important philological work of the year. He was a frequent contributor to the Journal of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... I, "in the first place, I should not dream of putting books like Schiller's dramas into their hands, as is the ordinary course, before they were able to translate pretty fluently, gathering the sense of what they read without the aid of a dictionary. I say nothing against the masterpieces of the great German classic. I like Schiller, myself. But, what boy or girl can appreciate the poetry of his descriptions, and the grandeur of his verse, when every second word they meet with is a stumbling-block, that ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... "Boiled Gorge."—This is a literal translation of the German gesottne Gurgeln, an apparently forgotten article of diet. Finding no account of it in any German dictionary, I applied to Dr. Moll, who writes as follows:—"Gurgel denotes a particular part of the neck, in human beings the front part, comprising the hyoid bone, the larynx and trachea, the pharynx and the upper part of the oesophagus, the thyroid body, and the adjoining muscles. As far as ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... dictionary is based on Webster's New International Dictionary, and therefore conforms to the best present usage. It presents the largest number of words and phrases ever included in a school dictionary—all those, however new, likely to be needed ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... gradually became known and esteemed in his native land, where a Santalistan Society was formed to aid his undertakings. In 1882 he was duly ordained as clergyman by a bishop of the State Church. In 1873 he published a grammar and in 1904 a dictionary of the language of Santalistan. I do not share your faith. The memorable speech which Bjrnson delivered to the students in Christiania on October 31, 1877, the anniversary of Luther's posting his theses in Wittenberg, revealed that after a hard inner struggle he had freed himself ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... in Encyclopaedia Biblica (London and New York); Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible (Edinburgh and London); Jewish Encyclopedia (New York ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... flinched from his face. They were searching him through and through. Margaret wondered if he had no sense of the ridiculous, that he could, to such an audience, pour forth such a string of technical definitions. They sounded strangely like dictionary language. She wondered if anybody present besides herself knew what the man meant or got any inkling of what his subject was. Surely he would drop to simpler language, now that he had ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... boy—the friendless Sam—with, whom we began our story, had become the famous Doctor Samuel Johnson! He was universally acknowledged as the wisest man and greatest writer in all England. He had given shape and permanence to his native language, by his Dictionary. Thousands upon thousands of people had read his Idler, his Rambler, and his Rasselas. Noble and wealthy men, and beautiful ladies, deemed it their highest privilege to be his companions. Even the king of Great ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of us," said Herbert. "Even that wretched decoction, Fuller, and that mere dictionary, Driver, never gave cause for imputations like these. What has the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his left hand resting upon it, - 'if I MIGHT rise to order, I would suggest that "barbers" is not exactly the kind of language which is agreeable and soothing to our feelings. You, sir, will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there IS such a word in the dictionary ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... I met in the forests an English gentleman, who informed me he was just returning from a two weeks' tour through Sikkim. It was Colonel Manwaring of H. M.'s Indian army, who was engaged in compiling under government orders a dictionary of the Lepcha tongue. Salutations over, Briton like, he pressed me at once to drink, asked if I would try a native beer, and upon my assenting ordered a quantity of chi (a drink made of fermented millet) from a hut near at hand. It proved a nutritious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... contemporaries: "To cheesemongers and others! Ready for delivery, at a halfpenny per pound, forty tons of foundered literature; viz., Mrs. Trollope's 'Unsatis-factory Boy,'[131] 'Master Humphrey's Clock' (refer to the second meaning in 'Johnson's Dictionary': 'an unsightly crawling thing'!), Captain Marryat's 'Alas, Poor Jack'! and Turpis Ainsworth's ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... "ENLIGHTENED" usurers who are to purchase the church confiscations, I, who am not a good, but an old farmer, with great humility beg leave to tell his late lordship, that usury is not tutor of agriculture; and if the word "enlightened" be understood according to the new dictionary, as it always is in your new schools, I cannot conceive how a man's not believing in God can teach him to cultivate the earth with the least of any additional skill or encouragement. "Diis immortalibus sero," said an old Roman, when he held one handle of the plough, whilst Death held the other. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Professor and the most learned Grecian at Paris, has just issued the first number of a Dictionnaire du Style poetique dans la Langue Grecque. This dictionary is in fact a concordance of Greek, Latin, and French poetry. It offers a complete and curious illustration of the origin and growth of figurative words and phrases, and of their transfer from one language to another. The word anchor, for instance, was one ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Eric, laughing; "I shall bring out a new Duncan-dictionary, in which. [Greek: chezchochezons chos] very nice ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... back by my side, talking all the way of Daphne's many adorable qualities. He exhausted the dictionary for laudatory adjectives. By the time I reached his door it was not HIS fault if I had not learned that the angelic hierarchy were not in the running with my pretty cousin for graces and virtues. I felt that Faith, Hope, and Charity ought to resign at once in favour ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... shockingly frank in the language employed, the volume evoked such a tirade of rancorous condemnation as perhaps bears no parallel in the history of letters. From contemporary criticisms might be compiled an Anthology of Anathema comparable to Wagner's Schimpf-Lexicon, or the Dictionary of Abuse suggested by William Archer for Henrik Ibsen. Some of the striking adjectives and phrases employed in print would include the following, as applied either to the ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... The dictionary defines a symbol as "something that stands for something else and serves to represent it, or to bring to mind one or more of its qualities." Now this world is a reflection of a higher world, and that of a higher world still, and so on. Accordingly, everything is a symbol of something ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... peculiar directness of phrase means but one thing,—freedom from the influence of convention. The cowboy respects neither the dictionary nor usage. He employs his words in the manner that best suits him, and arranges them in the sequence that best expresses his idea, untrammeled by tradition. It is a phase of the same lawlessness, the same reliance on self, that makes for ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... declares that Mark Lemon "always spoke of it to me as a project of himself and Henry Mayhew," wherein he is followed by the "Dictionary of National Biography;" and the Hon. T. T. a Beckett gives the exclusive honour to Henry Mayhew (wherein he is followed by the same authority in the notice of the latter writer), but admits the further ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... read my mail," said Beatrice. "Some of the best exchanges are out about this time in the month. When you didn't come, I tried to correct proof with Frances, but we couldn't either of us remember the printers' marks; and our Webster's dictionary, that has them in the back, got lost in the shuffle ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... prophecy, no type of breakfast had been published. In fact, it took as much time and research to arrive at that great discovery as at the Copernican system. True it is, reader, that you have heard of such a word as jentaculum; and your dictionary translates that old heathen word by the Christian word breakfast. But dictionaries, one and all, are dull deceivers. Between jentaculum and breakfast the differences are as wide as between a horse-chestnut and chestnut horse; differences in the time when, in the place ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... it. The above, nevertheless, deserves the space we give it here, as it shadows forth one of the essential elements of Khalid's spiritual make-up. But this slight symptom of that disease we named, this morbidness incident to adolescence, is eventually overcome by a dictionary and a grammar. Ay, Khalid henceforth shall cease to scour the horizon for that vague something of his dreams; he has become far-sighted enough by the process to see the necessity of pursuing in America something more spiritual than peddling crosses and scapulars. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... in the play—'In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such word as fail.' Without stopping to discuss the reliability of a lexicon that omits words in that careless manner, I must say that in the dictionary of fat men who aspire to gymnastics that word distinctly occurs. I had my misgivings, but was over-persuaded by my friends. They said gymnastics would develop muscular strength, thus enabling me to hold my flesh in case it attempted to run away. They added, as an additional incentive, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... is still extant, and has been repeatedly printed: but the claim of Eudocia to that insipid performance is disputed by the critics. See Fabricius, Biblioth. Graec. tom. i. p. 357. The Ionia, a miscellaneous dictionary of history and fable, was compiled by another empress of the name of Eudocia, who lived in the eleventh century: and the work is still ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Mrs. Mallowe, in a tone of one who has successfully tracked an obscure word through a large dictionary. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their fhape and luftre have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the fineft fimile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I will fhow you a fingle word which conveys ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... such easy thing. The fact that there are a hundred thousand words in the English dictionary does not make it easier. It is not those who know the most words that can necessarily best express themselves. Neither is it true that, because feeling is real, it can therefore speak. "Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh" has no such sense as that. Many ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... danced along gaily for a time. Two or three purchasers put up frame houses at the Landing and moved in, and of course a far-sighted but easy-going journeyman printer wandered along and started the "Napoleon Weekly Telegraph and Literary Repository"—a paper with a Latin motto from the Unabridged dictionary, and plenty of "fat" conversational tales and double-leaded poetry—all for two dollars a year, strictly in advance. Of course the merchants forwarded the orders at once to New York—and never heard ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... statue by Rysbach in the centre of the garden commemorates him. It was erected in 1737 at a cost of nearly L300. Mr. Miller, son of a gardener employed by the Apothecaries, wrote a valuable horticultural dictionary, and a new genus of plants ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... If Webster's "American Dictionary of the English Language" had not been made wholly in New England, it would not have lacked so many words that do duty as native-born or naturalized citizens in large sections of the United States, and among these words is the one that stands at the head of the present chapter. I know ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... be a blessing in the parish in which they are elected to serve. They have not been brought by chance into connection with the Incumbent of their parish, for chance is not a word to be found in the Christian's dictionary. ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... strong was the opposite opinion, and so generally were petrifactions regarded as so many proofs of a universal deluge, that Voltaire felt himself constrained, first in his Dissertation drawn up for the Academy at Bologna, and next in his article on shells in the Philosophical Dictionary, to take up the question as charged with one of the evidences of that Revelation which it was the great design of his life to subvert. And with an unfairness too characteristic of his sparkling but unsolid writings, we find him ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... useful and showed so much skill, that Saint Laurent made him become an abbe. Thus raised in position, he passed much time with the Duc de Chartres, assisting him to prepare his lessons, to write his exercises, and to look out words in the dictionary. I have seen him thus engaged over and over again, when I used to go and play with the Duc de Chartres. As Saint Laurent grew infirm, Dubois little by little supplied his place; supplied it well too, and yet pleased the young Duke. When Saint Laurent died ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... every intelligent reader will be able to add to this list; but no more space can be allowed for the subject in this dictionary. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... his pronunciation was very bad, as was that of all Alsace, which had become a part of France. Nor was it possible to get books. I borrowed a Meidinger's grammar, French and German, from my friend Mr. Everett, and sent to New Hampshire, where I knew there was a German dictionary, and procured it. I also obtained a copy of Goethe's 'Werther' in German (through Mr. William S. Shaw's connivance) from amongst Mr. J. Q. Adams's books, deposited by him, on going to Europe, in the Athenaeum, under Mr. Shaw's care, but without giving him permission to lend ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... remainder of the year 1615 among the Hurons, studying the people, learning the language, and compiling a dictionary. Champlain, his expedition ended, returned to Huronia and remained there until the middle of January, when he and Le Caron set out on a visit to the Petun or Tobacco Nation, then dwelling on the ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... to me that in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" the opinion of the Jesuit Richeome, on atheists and idolaters, has not been refuted as strongly as it might have been; opinion held formerly by St. Thomas, St. Gregory of Nazianze, St. Cyprian and Tertullian, ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... temperamental stenographer and understood the moods and tenses of his most temperamental employer fully. It was all in knowing how to manage him. James was most deferential, and knew when to keep still and not ask questions. This was one of the mornings when he went to the dictionary himself when he wasn't sure of a word rather than break the ominous silence. Not that Mr. Reyburn was a hard master, quite the contrary, but this was James's first place straight from his brief course at ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... each outfit had worked on the band There was only three head of them left; When Nig Add from L F D outfit rode in,— A dictionary on ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... of philology have just been enriched by the publication at Tubingen of a dictionary of six of the dialects of Eastern Africa, namely, the Kisuaheli, Kinika, Kikamba, Kipokomo, Kihian, and Kigalla. This is accompanied by a translation of Mark's Gospel into the Kikamba dialect, and a short grammar ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... The life of that stranger to success, the forlorn John Fitch, was written sympathetically and after assiduous research by Thompson Westcott in his "Life of John Fitch the Inventor of the Steamboat" (1858). For the pamphlet war between Fitch and Rumsey see Allibone's Dictionary. ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... fat crumb, Broncov, your sidekick?" Charon frowned, trying to collect his wits in the dread presence. "He didn't ask about you. He took me for an illegitimate son of Joe Stalin's, so how would he know you and I are pals? I bought this red tie and hired a sleeping dictionary to catch onto the ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... I think of it!" Pinkey declared, returning. "I ain't got words—they ain't none in the dictionary. My Gawd! what ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... Companion was as much a family institution as the dictionary. "How do you think you are going to be really educated, Jimmy, unless you read good things? Your father and I were brought up on the Companion and you'll keep right on with it. I'll get cheaper coffee, Papa, and we can give up cream. Ten per cent. That will make a difference of twenty cents ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... We had contrived a code already with the aid of a pocket Portuguese-English dictionary, of which Fred and Monty each possessed ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... word was not in Haynes's own dictionary of conduct. After his first few moments of despair, on gaining his room, the turnback had risen from his chair, his face showing a courage and resolution worthy of ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... you thought so. Washington has a very peculiar habit of using big words, just because they sound so imposing," went on the professor. "He spends all his spare time consulting the dictionary." ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... worlds. [Footnote: Notes do not seem necessary here; a good English dictionary will give better explanations than could be given except by very ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... wedding presents, the furniture and the silver spoons given her by her parents, the wearing apparel of the family, even the flour, tea, coffee and sugar, the children's school books, the Bible and the dictionary, were carefully noted. On this list, still in existence, are "underclothes of wife and daughters," "spectacles of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony," "pocket-knives of boys," "scraps of old iron"—and the law took all except the bare necessities. In this hour of extremity the guardian ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of 1798 arrived his joy was great. A box of books had come. Among them was a General Dictionary which he regarded as a real treasure. Reading was now his principal occupation. He found the making of many experiments irksome and seemed, all at once, "quite averse to having his hands so much in water." Presumably these ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... parish of Kendal, about two miles east of Windermere. The following extract from Lewis's Topographical Dictionary further explains the allusion in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... termination of this word in o marks it as Spanish; and accordingly, on reference to Baretti's dictionary of that language, I find the word "SILO, a subterraneous granary." But, Sir, this discovery only raises another question, and one which I wish much to see solved. A Spanish substantive must be for the most part the name of something existing at some time or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... we had a dictionary, like that of Hoogeven for Greek, arranging words according to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... delightful when transfused into some form of art. I have no desire to underrate the services of laborious scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of Lempriere's Dictionary is of far more value to us than Professor Max Muller's treatment of the same mythology as a disease of language. Better Endymion than any theory, however sound, or, as in the present instance, unsound, of an epidemic among adjectives! And who does not feel that the chief ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... to stop with our nearest neighbor. But we pay it frequent visits. Yesterday, as we sat there, we received a call from two Indians, in extreme undress. They walked in with perfect freedom, and sat down on the floor. We shall endeavor to procure from Victoria a dictionary of the Haidah, Chinook, and other Indian languages, by the aid of which we shall be able to receive such visitors in a more satisfactory manner. At present, we can only smile very much at them. Fortunately, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... England has dominated American literature. Even those writers of the South and West who are freshest in their material and vehicle are still permeated by the tone, the temper, the method, the ideals, of the New England school. And certainly Allibone's dictionary of authors shows that an enormous proportion of American writers are to this day of New ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... a French Reader," said Oscar, taking one down from the shelves. "It has a dictionary at the end. I won't give you a lesson. You may take as much as you have time for, and at the same time three or four of the irregular verbs. You are going about three times as fast as I did when ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... tower of help to us. If we cannot prove it, we cannot make out our case. But our contention is, that the Church did not undertake to put women in, and it did undertake to fill up the capacities and relations of the body with men. Now, look at it. No man goes to the dictionary to find the meaning of the word "layman." There is not a man that can find out the meaning of our Restrictive Rules from the dictionary. No living man can make out the meaning of a word in the Restrictive Rules ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... unwritten; the great deeds are undone; in no biographical dictionary will you find the name of our cousin the curate. Is his life, therefore, lost? ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... who come back again perfectly unmoved. When quite young he had always been well behaved and thoughtful. At college it had never happened to him in the midst of his lessons to go off in a dream, his face buried in his hands, his elbows on a dictionary and his eyes looking into the future. He had never been assailed by temptations with regard to the unknown and by those first visions of life which at the age of sixteen fill the minds of young men with trouble and delight, shut up as they are between the four walls of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... added,) I learnt from Dr. James, whom I helped in writing the proposals for his Dictionary and also a little in the Dictionary itself. I also learnt from Dr. Lawrence, but was then ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Occidental philosophy, whichever may be presented to the mind, as an unfailing guide, should be distrusted, if that philosophy prescribes the abandonment of lover, friend, relative, neighbor, brother, companion. That is, if we accept the dictionary meaning of the word ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... laughed merrily, but her expression became somewhat puzzled. "Really, what a very strange question! Why, not unless it might be little Sammy Worrell; he can certainly use the longest words I ever heard of outside a dictionary. Why, may I ask? Are you ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... precipitate to say that there are no basic principles nor firm rules in painting, or that a search for them leads inevitably to academism. Even music has a grammar, which, although modified from time to time, is of continual help and value as a kind of dictionary. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... subserves his own selfish interests and enables him to be sure of his own paternity and safeguard the laws of inheritance. The precepts which were primarily addressed to the man, as the very form of the Greek words demonstrate, were tacitly transferred to the woman. When, in a standard dictionary of the English language, I look out the word "virtue," which etymologically means "manliness"—the manliness which would scorn to gratify its own selfish passions at the cost of the young, the poor, and the weak, at the cost of a woman—I find one of its meanings defined, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... without a name, who received from it forty thousand ducats yearly, and would have received more, if their agents had been more faithful. There the place fades out of history, and you find in your Swinburne, "that the locality has never been thoroughly examined"; in your Smith's Dictionary, that "the whole subject is very obscure, and a careful examination still much needed"; in the Cyclopaedia, that the site of Sybaris is lost. Craven saw the rivers Crathis and Sybaris. He seems not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... education. Yet the College Catalogue for the years 1854 to 1861 shows a list of names rather distinguished in their time. Alexander Agassiz and Phillips Brooks led it; H. H. Richardson and O. W. Holmes helped to close it. As a rule the most promising of all die early, and never get their names into a Dictionary of Contemporaries, which seems to be the only popular standard of success. Many died in the war. Adams knew them all, more or less; he felt as much regard, and quite as much respect for them then, as he did after ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... make its contribution to the English tongue. The rich crop of slang that springs up on the frontier is not wholly to be deplored. The crudeness and vigor of cowboy speech are marks of youth: they are also promises of growth. Language can not live by dictionary alone. It tends to form new variants with every change of habitat. The French of the Canadian habitant has absorbed Indian and English words, and adapted old terms to new uses;[303] but it is otherwise a survival of seventeenth ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... reads anything but newspapers and scientific publications." Too gloomy a view, let us hope; yet with something in it. And a letter, a very little later, gives us interesting hints of his method in verse composition, which was to hunt a Dictionary (Richardson's) for good but unusual words—Theophile Gautier's way also, as it happens, though probably he did ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... first edition of The Giaour he had used this word as a trisyllable,—"Bright as the gem of Giamschid,"—but on my remarking to him, upon the authority of Richardson's Persian Dictionary, that this was incorrect, he altered it to "Bright as the ruby of Giamschid." On seeing this, however, I wrote to him, "that, as the comparison of his heroine's eye to a 'ruby' might unluckily call up the idea of its being blood-shot, he had better change the line to "Bright as the jewel of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Sunday-school lessons as needfully as he conned the tasks to be prepared for Monday's schoolroom. The portion of the old Union Question Book appointed for next Sunday was gone over under the mother's eye, the references were looked up, the Bible Dictionary and Concordance consulted. Then a Psalm or part of a chapter in the New Testament was committed to memory, and four or five questions in the catechism were added to the sum of knowledge to be inspected by the Sunday-school teacher and "audited" ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... to begin with, this poor man's name need not delay us long seeking it out. In shorter time, and with surer success than I could give you the dictionary root of his name, if you will look within you will all see the visual image of this poor man's name in your own heart. For our hearts are all as full as they can hold of all kinds of desires; some good and some bad, some asleep and some awake, some alive and some ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... away and succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of as the fruit of abolition. Hearing the word in this connection very often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I found it was "the act of abolishing;" but then I did not know what was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not dare to ask any one about its meaning, for I was satisfied that it ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... certainly indicates a trill, but it seems difficult to take it always to mean such. However, perhaps fashion desired that trills should thus be made out of place. I have never been able to find an explanation of this sign, not even in the musical dictionary of J. J. Rousseau. This dictionary none the less contains a great deal of precious information. Does it not inform us, among other things, that the copyists of former times were veritable collaborators? When the author indicated the altos with the basses, ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... derivation nothing can be ascertained, Modern lexicography of the best repute does not acknowledge it, and for a long time it remained unnoticed, even by the compilers of glossaries of strange and cant terms. Thus, it is not to be found in "Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," published in 1796. This is a coarse, but certainly a comprehensive work, and from its omitting to register "gag," we may assume that the word had no ascertained existence in Grose's time. In the "Slang Dictionary; or, The Vulgar Words, Street Phrases, and 'Fast' ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... he will be astonished to find how large a proportion of these names represent men of Scottish birth or Scottish descent. In these pages it is obviously impossible to mention every Scot who has achieved distinction—to do so would require a large biographical dictionary. We can here only select a few names in each class from early colonial times to the ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... valuable scientific serials now issuing from the New York press, is The Dictionary of Mechanics, Engine Works, and Engineering, edited by OLIVER BYRNE, and published by D. Appleton and Co. Of this work we have thirteen numbers, which bring the subjects, in alphabetical order, to the article on "Etching," the last number completing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Sage, restored to their country and native tongue by a jealous Spaniard who will not endure being laughed at. Another Jesuit (and it may be noticed that Spanish Jesuits of the seventeenth century often displayed a very liberal and modern mind), Father Feijoo, wrote a kind of philosophical dictionary entitled Universal Dramatic Criticism, a review of human opinions which was satirical, humorous, and often extremely able. The historian Antonio de Solis, who was also a reasonably capable dramatist, ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... this unprincipled monarch. The King himself, and his friends, are safe enough at a kind of high table; though which IS Heliogabalus (he being a consumptive-looking character in his coins in the Classical Dictionary) your critic has not made out. The earth having opened down below, the heads of some women, and of a man with a beard and his hair done up like a girl, are tossing about in a quantity of rose-leaves, which had doubtless been strown on the floor, as Martial tells us was the custom, dum regnat rosa. ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... Marie on a grey afternoon when she returned from a lecture, for which, a year ago, she would have needed a dictionary, but which now entered her brain glibly and was at home there. All that afternoon she had been listening to an exotic discourse on "Woman and her Current Philosophy"; and now—here was Osborn's letter, suggesting calmly, proprietorially ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... which I have represented by the unmarked vowels A, E, I, O, and U, Swettenham and Clifford in their Malay Dictionary represent by the vowels with a circumflex accent. The sound which I have indicated by U they indicate by A. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... slightly failed upon the ear, made a crescendo, emulated Niagara, surpassed that very American effort of nature, wavered, faltered to Lodore, died away to a feeble tittup like water dropping from a tap to flagstones, rose again in a final spurt that would have made Southey open his dictionary for adjectives, and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... explain away coincidences to men who were the victims of them is likely to need more sympathy than he will get. The dictionary defines them clumsily as instances of coinciding, apparently accidental, but which suggest ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... through the book locating the words of the message by page, line and word. That's what the three columns mean. Our only problem is to discover which is the book they both have. They often employ the Bible or a dictionary or—" ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... Conventions, State Legislatures, and Congress. Many of the leading men were advocates of women's rights. Governor Robinson, S. N. Wood, and Erastus Heath, with their wives, were constant and efficient workers. Mrs. Robinson wrote a book on "Life in Kansas." "Allibone's Dictionary of Authors" says: "Mrs. Robinson is an accomplished lady, the wife of Governor Robinson. She possessed the knowledge of events and literary skill necessary to produce an interesting and trustworthy book, and one which will continue to have a permanent value. The women of Kansas ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... whose studies we might have supposed would scarcely have led him to such an investigation." This layman was "Astruc, doctor and professor of medicine in the Royal College at Paris, and court physician to Louis XIV." The quotation is from the article "Pentateuch" in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," which, of course, lies on the table of the least instructed clergyman. The sacred profession has, it is true, returned the favor by giving the practitioner of medicine Bishop Berkeley's "Treatise on Tar-water," ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... way of dabbling in politics through loiterings at the village store, the boy had acquired some technical terms, and insisted that this was what best befitted their case. As he could not spell the word, and she couldn't find it in the dictionary, though she searched all the "Cor" columns through, she adopted phonetic spelling with the above result. Also, since there was as much variety in "time" as there was in clocks, the guests were advised to regulate their arrivals by the biggest one visible. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... be thought originals by setting them in the smoke. You may in the same manner give the venerable air of antiquity to your piece, by darkening it up and down with old English. With this you may be easily furnished upon any occasion by the dictionary commonly printed ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... for America, and there made certain preparations. This took but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is out of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Matthew Paris's Historia Major, and the Latin text of Asser's Alfredi Regis Res Gestae in Saxon characters, cut by John Day, the printer. He also, says Strype, 'laboured to forward the composing and publishing of a Saxon Dictionary.' His great work, De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae et Privilegiis Ecclesiae Cantuariensis, cum Archiepiscopis eiusdem 70, which, if not written by him, was produced under his immediate supervision, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... up from his six-weeks nap, and come out into society again. He is a nocturnal traveller, very bold and impudent, coming quite up to the barn and outbuildings, and sometimes taking up his quarters for the season under the hay-mow. There is no such word as hurry in his dictionary, as you may see by his path upon the snow. He has a very sneaking, insinuating way, and goes creeping about the fields and woods, never once in a perceptible degree altering his gait, and, if a fence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... China have not deemed it worth while to compile such a work as the "Slang Dictionary," it is no less a fact that slang occupies quite as important a position in Chinese as in any language of the West. Thieves have their argot, as with us, intelligible only to each other; and phrases constantly occur, even in refined conversation, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... which purifies the water and is breathed by the fish. The water need not be changed for years. The swamps and slow streams afford great numbers of plants. If you know the plants get pond weeds, Canadian water weed, ludwigia, willow moss, or tape grass. (Look in the dictionary for official names of the plants or get special books from the library.) Take some tape grass (vallisneria) to your teacher or doctor and ask him to show you under his microscope how the sap flows and the green coloring matter is deposited. The simplest form of vegetation ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... what a superior book it is," and she began descending the ladder; but Priscilla charged upon her and she retreated to the top again. "Why," she wailed to the terrified freshman, "did you not say you wanted a dictionary before she came back? Let me give you some advice at the beginning of your college career," she added warningly. "Never choose a room-mate ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... icicles. Thatched roofs are always hung with "daglets" in frost; thatch holds a certain amount of moisture, as of mist, and this drips during the day and so forms stalactites of ice, often a foot or more in length. "Clout" is a "dictionary word," a knock on the head, but it is pronounced differently here; they say a "clue" in the head. Stuttering and stammering each express well-known conditions of speech, but there is another not recognised in dictionary language. If a person has been made a butt ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... see him now, going away in custody, despised by the congregation. He never said who was the real offender, though he smarted for it next day, and was imprisoned so many hours that he came forth with a whole churchyard-full of skeletons swarming all over his Latin Dictionary. But he had his reward. Steerforth said there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and we all felt that to be the highest praise. For my part, I could have gone through a good deal (though I was much less brave than Traddles, and nothing like so ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... for gamalote, a plant like maize, with a leaf a yard long and an inch wide. This plant grows to a height of two yards and a half, and when green serves for food for horses (Caballero's Dictionary, Madrid, 1856).—Stanley. ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... had exhausted these resources one o'clock had arrived. The steamer had not. The office clerk replied to all inquiries with the languid national "saytchas" which the dictionary defines as meaning "immediately," but which experience proves to signify, "Be easy; any time this side of eternity,—if perfectly convenient!" Under the pressure of increasingly vivacious attacks, prompted by hunger, he finally condescended to explain that ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... No; he pull'd down an English dictionary; when (if you'll believe me! he found my definition of stylish living, under the word "insolvency;" a fighting crop turn'd out a "dock'd bull dog;" and modern gallantry, "adultery ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... for a preposition in any dictionary is the general one which serves in the majority of cases. The finer shades of meaning and real or apparent exceptions can merely be touched upon ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... hour went by before Jane felt quite sure that they could none of them spell Psammead. And they could not find it in the dictionary either, though they looked. Then Jane hastily finished ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... Tanderagee, County Armagh, Ireland, to his beloved parishioner, Deborah Johnson, on the occasion of her departure for Melbourne, South Australia, June 16, 1875. The third book was a fairly good dictionary, appendixed by a copious glossary of the Greek and Roman mythologies. The fourth was Vol. XII of Macmillan's Magazine, May ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... in the jungles. It is gregarious, living in herds, usually called sounders, the derivation of which has often puzzled me as well as others; but McMaster says it is to be found in Bailey's English Dictionary, of which the fifteenth edition was published in 1753 as (among hunters) a herd or company of swine. An old boar is generally the chief, but occasionally he gets driven from the herd, and wanders solitary and morose, and is in such a case an awkward ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... "I'll trust no lawyer; I might put the question to some chap who has been fee'd. But we both studied a little Latin when boys, and between us we'll undermine the meaning." Tom assented, and to work they went. Jack had the most Latin; but, do all he could, he was not able to find a "nolle" in any dictionary. After a great deal of conjecture, the friends agreed it must be the root of "knowledge," and that point was settled. As for "prosequi" it was not so difficult, as "sequor" was a familiar word; and, after some cogitation, Jack announced his discoveries. "If this thing were in English, now," he ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... titles, which were fascinating: "Arabian Nights," "Representative Men," "Plutarch's Lives," "Modern Painters," "Romany Rye"—a name that made him shudder, for it meant some terrible kind of whiskey to his mind—"Lavengro," a foreign thing, "Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases," "The Stem Dictionary," "Working Principles of Rhetoric"—he wondered what rhetoric meant—"The Fur Buyers' Guide," "Stones of Venice," "The French Revolution," "Sartor Resartus," "Poe's Works," "Balzac's Tales," ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... have been advocated. It is held to be of disciplinary value, especially in strengthening the memory. Though this is true, it is hardly a good reason for studying history, as the memory can be perfected on almost anything, on the dictionary, poetry, formulae, family records, gossip, or cans on grocery shelves, some of which may indeed be of more practical value than dates. In college, at least, history should aim to explain social tendencies and processes in a rational way rather than to develop the memory. The latter method tends ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Venice, that on entering the states subject to Austria, he had his Johnson's Dictionary taken from him, and could never recover it; so jealous is the government of English principles and English literature, that all English books are prohibited ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... about the whole thing and protectively pervert the original spelling of "Rabbit" to "Rarebit" in their culinary guides. We have heard that once a club of ladies in high society tried to high-pressure the publishers of Mr. Webster's dictionary to change the old spelling in their favor. Yet there is a lot to be said for this more genteel and appetizing rendering of the word, for the Welsh masterpiece is, after all, a very rare bit ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... Royal Geographical Society. [*These chapters are based upon sundry reports and other official papers, and I have largely drawn upon those storehouses of accurate and valuable information, Newbold's "British Settlements in Malacca," and Crawfurd's "Dictionary of ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the abstract and general premise, 'All desires must be fulfilled'! Nevertheless, Mr. McTaggart solemnly and laboriously refutes the syllogism in sections 47 to 57 of the above- cited book. He shows that there is no fixed link in the dictionary between the abstract concepts 'desire,' 'goodness' and 'reality'; and he ignores all the links which in the single concrete case the believer feels and perceives ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... I wish you'd publish an expurgated dictionary with most of the words left out, and exact definitions of the conditions under which one may use the remainder. But I've got on a siding. What ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... gave birth to at least six languages: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Roumanian, and English, and besides, Latin and French have influenced and enriched the literature and languages of every other modern nation. The dictionary of Latin words contained, for instance, in Russian or German would be a very large volume indeed. It is a fact that all modern attempts at making an artificial language, and their name is legion, especially since the acknowledged success of Esperanto, are ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... Mine for that," said Melville, smiling. My young readers may like to know that, while Herbert was prospering financially, he did not neglect the cultivation of his mind. Among the books left by Mr. Falkland were a number of standard histories, some elementary books in French, including a dictionary, a treatise on natural philosophy, and ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... heritage, of which for a long time Johann Christoph Gottsched might not unjustly be counted the guardian. It was a thoroughly conservative linguistic stewardship, which received gigantic expression in Adelung's Dictionary—with all its deficiencies, the most important German dictionary that had been compiled up to that time. Clearness, intelligibleness, exactitude were insisted upon. It was demanded that there should be a distinct difference between the language of the writer and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... deciphering the strange terms, and presently the country was placed in possession of The History of Russia, Notes on the Northern Islands, Universal Geography, A Compendium of Dutch Literature, Treatises on the Art of Translation, a Dutch-Japanese Dictionary and so forth, the immediate result being a nascent public conviction of the necessity of opening the country,—a conviction which, though not widely held, contributed materially to the ultimate ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... principal object of your thoughts; never lose sight of it. Attend minutely to your style, whatever language you speak or write in; seek for the best words, and think of the best turns. Whenever you doubt of the propriety or elegance of any word, search the dictionary or some good author for it, or inquire of somebody, who is master of that language; and, in a little time, propriety and elegance of diction will become so habitual to you, that they will cost you no more trouble. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... drinking-house, arrested their attention: "Stoot? Stoot?" queried one of them; but the rest were as much in the dark as he, and I was as deficient in French as they in English. The befogged one pulled out his dictionary and read over and over all the French synonyms of "Stout," but this only increased his perplexity. "Stout" signified "robust," "hearty," "vigorous," "resolute," &c., but what then could "London ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... youngster who happened to come in received the book thundering on his head. One day, just as the trap had been adroitly laid, Mr Lawley walked in unexpectedly. The moment he entered the schoolroom, down came an Ainsworth's Dictionary on the top of his hat, and the boy, concealed behind the door, unconscious of who the victim was, enunciated with mock gravity, "Crown him, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... the resemblance of the larva's artificial covering to the mino, or straw-raincoat, worn by Japanese peasants. I am not sure whether the dictionary rendering, "basket-worm," is quite correct;—but the larva commonly called minomushi does really construct for itself something much like the ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... Lawford with fumbling fingers opened Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine.' He had never had much curiosity, and had always hated what he disbelieved, but none the less he had heard occasionally of absurd and questionable experiments. He remembered even to have glanced over reports of cases in the newspapers concerning disappearances, loss of ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... the very aged man was going to die, and every one but the aged man thought the other, the very aged man, wouldn't die. I do this to explain it to you. He, the man who was really going to die, was—I will look in the dictionary" (He looks in the book, and gives out with much confidence), "was two thousand and eighty-eight years old. Well, the other man was—well, then, the other man 'at knew he was going to die, was about four thousand and two; not nearly so old, you see." (Here Charles whispers ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... of course. There was a good deal of truth in what he said, but he used words I didn't like; they came out of some blackguard's dictionary, so I told him to be quiet, and when he wouldn't be quiet, we sung him down with a verse ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... New Testament, John Reuchlin did for the Old. After studying in France and Italy, where he learned to know Pico della Mirandola, he settled at Stuttgart and devoted his life to the study of Hebrew. His De Rudimentis Hebraicis, [Sidenote: 1506] a grammar and dictionary of this language, performed a great service for scholarship. In the late Jewish work, the Cabbala, he believed he had discovered a source of mystic wisdom. The extravagance of his interpretations of Scriptual passages, based on this, not only rendered much of his work nugatory, but ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and the assortment of ornamental walking-sticks. The woodwork had been stained to match the oak of the barbarous writing-table, which held a distorted bronze lamp, with the base composed of a heavily draped feminine figure, a massive desk set, also of bronze, a pile of newspapers, a dictionary, and several dull-looking books with worn covers and dog's eared pages. She noticed that the chairs were all large and solid, with deep arms and backs upholstered in red leather, which looked as if it would never ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... import to youth was gratifying if sometimes disconcerting; who towered, an unruffled Gulliver, over their Lilliputian controversies, in which bats were waved and fists brought into play and language used on the meaning of which the Century dictionary is silent. On one former occasion, indeed, Mr. Bentley had found moral suasion, affection, and veneration of no avail, and had had to invoke the friendly aid of a park policeman to quell one of these incipient riots. To Mr. Bentley baseball was as a sealed book. The tall man's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... complete and authentic dictionary ever published on silk terms, from the raw silk to the finished broad and narrow silks, including weaves, styles, patterns, effects, colors, trade-marks, etc. Bound in cloth, 93 ...
— Theory Of Silk Weaving • Arnold Wolfensberger
... tell you all the things that the Twins and their father and mother did on that island, it would make a book as big as the dictionary; so I can only tell you a very little about the wonderful days that followed. In the first place, they soon found out that it was a wonderful island. Small as it was, it had the most astonishing ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... residences of white officials. To understand how I have been occupied, you must know that "Misi Mea" has had another letter, and this time had to answer himself; think of doing so in a language so obscure to me, with the aid of a Bible, concordance, and dictionary! What a wonderful Baboo compilation it must have been! I positively expected to hear news of its arrival in Malie by the sound of laughter. I doubt if you will be able to read this scrawl, but I have managed to scramble somehow up to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... use words you can understand; that is all I have to say. I cannot undertake to be Mr. Richmond's dictionary. Uncompromising means different things at different times. It isn't a word for you, Tilly," the mother added, with a smile at ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... of the word "strained?" The verb to strain is susceptible of two essentially different interpretations; and the question is as to which of the two is here intended? On referring to Johnson's Dictionary, we find, amongst other synonymous terms, To squeeze through something; to purify by filtration; to weaken by too much violence; to push to its utmost strength. Now, if we substitute either of the two latter meanings, we shall have an ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... Chinese I have adopted Wade's system as used in Giles's Dictionary, for Tibetan the system of Sarat Chandra Das, for Pali that of the Pali Text Society and for Sanskrit that of Monier-Williams's Sanskrit Dictionary, except that I write s instead of s. Indian languages however offer many difficulties: it is often hard to decide whether Sanskrit or vernacular forms are more suitable and in dealing with Buddhist subjects whether Sanskrit or Pali words should ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... biographical dictionary of artists, a gallery of pen portraits and of beautiful scenes, sketched by the painters and multiplied by the engraver. It is in all respects a work of art, and will meet the wants of a large class whose tastes are in that ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... powers of the uses of the signs, dictionaries give most important aid to the student. The key-words of the meanings, viz., the names of the objects or actions depicted, are often exceedingly rare in the texts. Doctor Brugsch's great Dictionary (1867-82) frequently settles with close accuracy the meanings of the words considered in it, supplying by quotations the proof ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... humanity, into the only asset—a producer—that is worth while to any country. The obstacles he faces at the beginning seem unsurmountable; but at St. Dunstan's the spirit of the place grips him and the word "cannot" disappears from his dictionary. But at first he has much to unlearn. All his old methods of work have to be forgotten. He is, in a sense, a child again, born the day his sight was taken from him. But though his sight is lost, if he ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... As sub-editor under Dr. Patrick, and also as a very copious contributor, he took part in the preparation of the new edition of ‘Chambers’s Encyclopædia.’ He took a large part also in preparing ‘Chambers’s Gazetteer’ and ‘Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary.’ Meanwhile he was writing articles in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ articles in Blackwood’s Magazine and The Bookman, and also reviews upon special subjects ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... philology by persons unacquainted with the alphabet; but here is page after page of criticism, which one may read from end to end, looking for something which the writer knows, and finding nothing. Not his own language, for he has to look in his dictionary, by his own confession, for a word[D] occurring in one of the most important chapters of his Bible; not the commonest traditions of the schools, for he does not know why Poussin was called "learned;"[E] not the most simple canons of art, for he prefers Lee ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... truth and nothing but the truth on this important subject, I propose to present, or quote from standard authors on both sides of the question, and try the whole by the standard of divine truth. 1st. Buck's Theological Dictionary, to which no doubt thousands of ministers and laymen appeal to sustain their argument for the change, says: "Under the christian dispensation the Sabbath is altered from the seventh to the first day of the week." The arguments for the change are these: 1st. "The seventh day was observed ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... anyway. Your first answer will be: "Feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling." But that is merely a recital of the different forms of sensing. What is a "sense," when you get right down to it? Well, you will find that the dictionary tells us that a sense is a "faculty, possessed by animals, of perceiving external objects by means of impressions made upon certain organs of the body." Getting right down to the roots of the matter, we find that ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... may achieve a reputation with only a single type, created and re-created in varying forms. And the very greatest do not contrive to create more than half a score genuine separate types. In Cerfberr and Christophe's biographical dictionary of the characters of Balzac, a tall volume of six hundred pages, there are some two thousand entries of different individuals, but probably fewer than a dozen genuine distinctive types. No creative ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art; Porter's Progress of the British Nation; McCullough's Commercial Dictionary; Encyclopaedia Americana; London Economist; De Bow's Review; Patent Office Reports; Congressional Reports on Commerce and Navigation; Abstract ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the singularly representative character of the only dinner I have had an opportunity of attending since I was elected. Literature and Learning represented by yourself, Dr. Dictionary Smith, Lecky and Lord Acton; the Church by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Dean Stanley; political life by Lord Derby and Spencer Walpole; the Law by Lord Romilly, and the Dukes by the Duke of Cleveland—and there was no one else. It was very pleasant, and there were not ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... judicium. * * The sentence of the law, pronounced by the court, upon the matter contained in the record." 8 Blackstone, 895. Jacob's Law Dictionary. . Tomlin's ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... must have formed to the Pilgrims not only a dictionary but a perfect encyclopaedia of useful knowledge. Things spiritual and things temporal were explained therein. Scientific, historic, and religious information were dispensed impartially. Much and varied instruction was given in Natural History, though viewed of course from ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... her. "Azuba," he said, rather testily for him, "if you use that word again I don't know as I won't make you eat a dictionary. My wife may be famous and she may be a platform speaker, but I'm blessed if I'll have her notorious, not if I can ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... common or rare; and, in the second place, they must be in perfect condition. All the classics are there—one complete set of Valpy's in good russia, and many separate copies of each, valuable for text or annotation. The copies of Bayle, Moreri, the Trevoux Dictionary, Stephens's Lexicon, Du Cange, Mabillon's Antiquities, the Benedictine historians, the Bollandists' Lives of the Saints, Graevius and Gronovius, and heavy books of that order, are in their old original morocco, without a scratch or abrasure, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... as seeds of national weakness, all depressing patronymics, and when godfathers and godmothers will soberly and earnestly debate the interest of the nameless one, and not rush blindfold to the christening. In these days there shall be written a 'Godfather's Assistant,' in shape of a dictionary of names, with their concomitant virtues and vices; and this book shall be scattered broadcast through the land, and shall be on the table of every one eligible for godfathership, until such a thing as a vicious or untoward appellation ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson |
