"Misnomer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Physical deterioration, applied to America's school children, is a misnomer. No evidence whatever has been given that the percentage of children suffering from physical defects in 1907 is greater than the percentage of children suffering from such defects in 1857. On the contrary, the small proportion of defects that are not easily removable, as well as a vast ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... the girl is insipid. Miss COMPTON, as the good-hearted, knowing, fast lady, wins us, as she proves herself to be the real Robin Goodfellow, the real good fairy of the piece, Robin Goodfellow is a misnomer, unless the aforesaid Robin be dissociated from Puck: but it is altogether a bad title as applied to this piece for, as with Mr. CARTON's piece at the St. James's, Liberty Hall, it is a title absolutely thrown away. Mr. FORBES ROBERTSON is as good as the part permits, and it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... four who habitually sat with us was Giojoso, the seneschal, a lantern-jawed fellow with black, beetling brows, about whom the only joyous thing was his misnomer of a name. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... obtained, and to what plane of nature does it really belong? The answer to both these questions is contained in the reply that it is read from the akashic records; but that statement in return will require a certain amount of explanation for many readers. The word is in truth somewhat of a misnomer, for though the records are undoubtedly read from the akasha, or matter of the mental plane, yet it is not to it that they really belong. Still worse is the alternative title, "records of the astral light," which has sometimes been ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... called the, "city of homes," and well does she merit that comfortably sounding title, for it is not a misnomer. Unlike some other large American cities, the artisan and laborer can here own a home by becoming a member of a building association and paying the moderate periodical dues. Miles upon miles of these cosy little houses, of five or six rooms each, may be ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... your eyes—you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say "hand me the silver sugar tongs;" and, before you could discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of "the urn" for a tea kettle; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it; he neither did one nor the other, but by simply assuming that everything was handsome about him, you were ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... personal cast of its satire, together with its imprudent fondness for political allusions, has more than once all but occasioned its suppression. Both journals are published weekly, and both have a considerable circulation, though it must be owned that their title of "comic" is for the most part a sad misnomer. That the Russians are naturally devoid of humor no reader of Gogol or Griboiedoff, Pushkin, Kriloff or Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the medicinal virtues of these foods, or however appropriate the term "condimental" which has been applied to them, it is quite certain that their whilom designation "concentrated" was a misnomer. Their composition shows that they possess a degree of nutritive power considerably below that of linseed-cake, and but little, if at all, superior to that of ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... in the fine moonlight at night was like old times—old times that had been gone weeks only, but yet they were weeks so crowded with incident, adventure and excitement, that they seemed almost like years. There was no lack of cheerfulness on board the Quaker City. For once, her title was a misnomer. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were still off the ruddy cliffs which line the shore. A person first seeing this part of the coast would consider that Albion was a misnomer for England, as no walls of white chalk are to be seen rising from the blue ocean. As far as the eye can reach, various tints ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... selection" is a misnomer, as Darwin himself perceived. It means merely survival. "Selection" proper involves intention, and belongs to human reason. Selection by man we call artificial. Natural selection is the outcome of certain physical facts: 1. Environment: the complex ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... train reached the next station, where the conductor summoned reenforcements and invoked the majesty of the law in the form of an officer. The affray, from first to last, was most depressing and gave to the unwilling witness a feeling that civilization is something of a misnomer and ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... R. thus speaks is indifferently called egg and tongue, egg and dart, as well as egg and arrow. It seems to me that the egg is a complete misnomer, although common to all the designations; and I fancy that the idea of what is so called was originally derived from the full-length shield, and therefore that the ornament should be named the shield and dart, an association more reasonable than is suggested by any of the ordinary appellations. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... without democracy is as impossible as a shadow without light. The word "Socialism" applied to schemes of paternalism, and to government ownership when the vital principle of democracy is lacking, is a misnomer. As ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... observed that Shakespeare shows much judgment in the naming of his plays. From this observation several critics have excepted Julius Caesar, pronouncing the title a misnomer, on the ground that Brutus, and not Caesar, is the hero of it. It is indeed true that Brutus is the hero, but the play is rightly named, for Caesar is not only the subject but also the governing power of ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... one-half of whom a stranger never heard of—but that is national vanity; and lastly, I do not recollect to have seen a museum that had not a considerable portion of its space occupied by most execrable wax-work, in which the sleeping beauty (a sad misnomer) generally figures very conspicuously. In some, they have models of celebrated criminals in the act of committing a murder, with the very hatchet or the very knife: or such trophies as the bonnet worn by Mrs — when she was killed ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... cells so far considered may be quite properly termed wet cells because of the fact that a free liquid electrolyte is used. This term is employed in contradistinction to the later developed cell, commonly termed the dry cell. This term "dry cell" is in some respects a misnomer, since it is not dry and if it were dry it would not work. It is essential to the operation of these cells that they shall be moist within, and when such moisture is dissipated the cell is no longer usable, as there is no ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... second place, the genetic point of view is almost completely overlooked, one of cardinal importance in such a field. Thirdly, the whole subject of the unconscious is treated as non-existent. It is a complete misnomer to entitle a book on descriptive psychology "The Foundations of Character" when no notice whatever is taken of that region of the mind where the very springs of character take their source, and where the most fundamental ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... with, of course this very word "dead" is an absurd misnomer, as most of the entities classified under this heading are as fully alive as we are ourselves; the term must be understood as meaning those who are for the time unattached to a physical body. They may be subdivided into nine ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... intelligence, to respectability, and to honour, pour forth his swearing words. I have heard the man who has stood in official relation to the state, and who considered himself a "justice of the peace," break the holy commandment with impunity. I have even heard one, called by the misnomer, "lady," do disgrace to her sex by this sinful fault in conversation. In the household, with a group of little ones whose minds were just unfolding to receive first impressions, I have heard the parents swear as though they were licensed to do so by reason. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... interested me was that known as the "Ministry of Public Enlightenment," its head being Count Delyanoff. He was certainly a man of culture; but the title of his department was a misnomer, for its duty was clearly to prevent enlightenment in the public at large. The Russian theory is, evidently, that a certain small number should be educated up to a certain point for the discharge of their special duties; but that, beyond this, anything like the general ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... prefer these more general terms, because, if we speak of the mouth, we are at once reminded of the mouth in the higher animals, and in this sense the word, as applied to the aperture through which the Sea-Urchins receive their food, is a misnomer. Very naturally the habit has become prevalent of naming the different parts of animals from their function, and not from their structure; and in all animals the aperture through which food enters the body is called the mouth, though there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... whilst I display the hidden beauties of Canto First. You will notice that the author, who now sleeps with the unnumbered dead—a presumption on my part—has no dedication, no introduction, no preface. He scorned a dedication, that misnomer for gratuitous advertising. He wanted no patron, no Lord or Count somebody or other, who might, perhaps, insure the sale of one more copy. No. He determined to paddle his own canoe. And he did, you ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... during the middle of the nineteenth century as "American Lutheranism" was a misnomer, for in reality it was neither American nor Lutheran, but a sectarian corruption ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... of attack remained the ideal—if such a word is not a misnomer in such a case—of the British Navy, not merely as a matter of irreflective professional acceptance, but laid down in the official "Fighting Instructions." It cannot be said that these err on the side of ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... the devil they call me Kelly," he mused. "No episode that I ever heard of is responsible for that Milesian misnomer. Quand meme! It sounds prettier from you than it ever did before. I'd rather hear you call me Kelly than Caruso sing my ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... form; unfortunately, however, the latter term is used for a different kind of movement. To speak of a movement in sonata-form, containing three sections (exposition, development, and recapitulation) as in binary form, seems a decided misnomer. ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... children from the Workhouse. It was a very useful institution up to the time of its close in 1852, but like the Homes at Marston Green, where the young unfortunates from the present Workhouse are reared and trained to industrial habits, it was almost a misnomer to dub it an "orphan asylum."—An Orphanage at Erdington was begun by the late Sir Josiah Mason, in 1858, in connection with his Almshouses there, it being his then intention to find shelter for some three score of the aged and infantile "waifs and strays" ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... exquisitely enchanted with a little penny trumpet, and finding he can produce such harmony his own self, that he is blowing and laughing till he can hardly stand. If you could see his little swelling cheeks you would not accuse yourself of a misnomer in calling him cherub. I try to impress him with an idea of pleasure in going to see grandpapa, but the short visit to Bookham is forgotten, and the permanent engraving remains, and all his concurrence consists in pointing up to the print over the chimney-piece, and giving ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Ant—But of the insects of this order the most noted are the white ants or termites (which are ants only by a misnomer). They are, unfortunately, at once ubiquitous and innumerable in every spot where the climate is not too chilly, or the soil too sandy, for them to construct their ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... along until the pursuing and long visible disaster finally overtook the company in Centropolis, Illinois (this is not the real name of the city, but it is no more flagrant a misnomer than the one it boasts). They played a matinee here and an evening performance, to two almost empty houses; that gave them the coup ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... in Europe by the misnomer, American blight—is very destructive across the water, but does not exist extensively on this side. It is supposed to exist, in this country, only where it has been introduced with imported trees. It appears as a white ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... shrift in a book on public speaking, for, delude yourself as you may, public reading is not public speaking. Yet there are so many who grasp this broken reed for support that we must here discuss the "read speech"—apologetic misnomer as it is. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the disaffection of Mr. Weston, there were complaints of his delay in providing the necessary shipping; but at last the Speedwell, of sixty tons—miserable misnomer—was purchased in Holland for the use of the emigrants; and the Mayflower, of a hundred eighty tons—whose name is immortal—was chartered in England, and was fitting for their reception. The cost of the outfit, including a trading stock of seventeen hundred pounds, was but twenty-four hundred ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... was scarcely more than a paved court lying between high brick walls. But because we children wanted a garden so much, we called it by that name; and here and there a little of Mother Earth's bosom, left uncovered, gave us some warrant for the misnomer. Yet the spot was not without its beauties, and a less exacting child might have found content ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir John Linkwater, or Drinkwater,—but I think the jolly old knight could hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last,—while sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to the clerk. "Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the most indifferent fact in the world, "I was drunk last night. There ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the term "prig" as applied to Leslie was a misnomer; he hated the thought of the other word, which ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... I shall write a list of the subjects, and I only wish that I had duplicates, and I would send you the articles, for I am most uncomfortable at the notion of your being taken in to purchase a book that may, through this misnomer, lose its reputation in England; for of course it will be attacked as an unworthy attempt to make it pass for what ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... some who would tell us that the very name is a misnomer. Have we not been assured by the German critics and their English disciples that there were no patriarchs and no Patriarchal Age? And yet, the critics notwithstanding, the Patriarchal Age has actually existed. ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... East there is no hypocrisy about the matter. The tiger's den is barred and locked, and the British Government keeps the key, but the ape has an appointed day in the year on which he shall have his outing. They call it the Holi, which is a misnomer, for of all Hindu festivals this is the most unholy; but ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... as he was when a child, or as he would be when an old man,—is, when we know that every atom of his physical frame has changed again and again during the course of years, a popular delusion, or at least a misnomer used for convenience' sake; as when we say that the sun rises and sets, when we know that the earth moves, and not the sun. A man, therefore, according to this school, is really no more a person, one and indivisible, than is the coral with its million polypes, the tree with its million buds, or ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... females. There is a greater tendency of the male offspring to die earlier, and this is seen even before birth, in the proportion of three to two. For this reason the stronger sex as applied to men has been regarded by some authors as a misnomer. They are physically weaker in early life and succumb ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... Lax Precautions. The New York "Tribune" Dispatch. Montgomery Murmurs. Troops en route, and their Feelings. The Government on Wheels. Kingsville Misnomer. Profanity and Diplomacy. Grimes' Brother-in-law. With ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... to have devoted so many words to a mere matter of name. If a drama is good it signifies but little what we call it, or whether its title be exactly appropriate. In this case, however, we have to do with a vital defect and not merely with a misnomer. A play may be good in different ways; and what the preceding criticism is intended to bring out is the fact that the strength of 'Fiesco', such as it has, does not lie in the intellectual organization of the whole. The mind of Schiller, but little trained hitherto upon ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... is a misnomer, he really should be called "The Photographer," but that sounds so common, and his views are so uncommon that we called him The Delineator instead; besides, he always travels about with maps and charts (his ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... the right—it was not safe for any man to look upon such beauty. I was a hardened vessel in such matters, having, with the exception of one painful experience of my green and tender youth, put the softer sex (I sometimes think that this is a misnomer) almost entirely out of my thoughts. But now, to my intense horror, I knew that I could never put away the vision of those glorious eyes; and alas! the very diablerie of the woman, whilst it horrified and repelled, attracted in even a greater degree. A person ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Deity, with the Synthesis, the Begriff of Providence, our Agnostic takes refuge in the sentiment of an unknown and an unknowable. He objects to the countless variety of forms assumed by the perception of a Causa Causans (a misnomer), and to that intellectual adoption of general propositions, capable of distinct statement but incapable of ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... the misnomer is corrected," was all Mrs. Treadwell rejoined. So Lansing had passed through preparatory school and was ready for college before Markham could be brought to definite terms. The letter from The Forge was the first proposition, and now on that September day Lansing Hertford, prepared ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... science the word "stimulants" has become a misnomer as applied to alcoholics; the term, no doubt, came into use from the fact that under their use there is more endurance to both physical and mental ills, an endurance ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... text-books have not kept pace with the knowledge of its leading minds. Such is confessedly the case in the department of Medical Jurisprudence. This very term, Medical Jurisprudence, as now used in colleges, is generally acknowledged to be a misnomer. There is no reason why it should be so used. The leading medical writers and practitioners are sound at present on the moral principles that ought to direct the conduct of physicians. It is high time that their principles be more generally and distinctly inculcated on the younger members, ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... arrangement at the cardiac orifice of the esophagus, so that spasmodic stenosis at this level is not possible and the term cardiospasm is, therefore, a misnomer. It was first demonstrated by the author that in so-called cardiospasm the functional closure of the esophagus occurred at the diaphragmatic level, and that it was due to the "diaphragmatic pinchcock." Anatomical studies have ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... a misnomer for the extraordinary establishment, studio and domicile combined, at which we dismounted. It is not a hut, and neither in architectural motive nor the artistic proclivities of its inmates has it aught to do with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... and the Dutch clotted cream—a coagulated mass in which a spoon will stand upright—is manufactured from fresh-drawn milk, which is put into a pan, and stirred with a spoon two or three times a day, to prevent the cream from separating from the milk. The Scotch "sour cream" is a misnomer; for it is a material produced without cream. A small tub filled with skimmed milk is put into a larger one, containing hot water, and after remaining there all night, the thin milk (called wigg) is drawn off, and the remainder of the contents of the smaller vessel ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... important aboriginal settlement. We have no reliable data of the population at the time of the conquest. From documentary evidence Mr. Bandelier has shown that while Cholula was certainly a populous Indian pueblo, it is a misnomer to call it a city. It was a group of six distinct clusters, gathered around a common market. He estimates that its population may possibly have been thirty thousand. All explorers have mentioned the fertility of the plain in the midst of which this ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... and two-thirds of the Lower were French Canadians. A French-Canadian member was nominated for the speakership and elected unanimously. Both races were for the most part represented by members whose official title of 'Honourable Gentlemen' was not at all a misnomer. The French members of the Assembly were half distrustful both of it and of themselves. But they knew how to add grace and dignity to a very notable occasion. The old Bishop's Palace served as the Houses of Parliament and so continued ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... reflected Jack, "but it was a misnomer, for they have none, and they would not have pushed so far out from shore when they knew I expected to return so soon. All that proves that a party of devils have also a boat and are hunting for the one in which our new friends are groping ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... even to Lawless himself that the visit could not be protracted longer, and we accordingly rose and took our leave, our host (I will not call him entertainer, for it would be a complete misnomer) preserving the same tone of cool and imperturbable politeness to the very last. On reaching the hall we encountered the surly old footman, whose features looked more than ever as if they had been carved out of some very ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... for there was no one in all their number who could pay down the money that Simone could pay down; and as to argument, Griffo of the Dragon-flag was too busy a man to bother about other people's arguments. Yet Griffo left the Company of Death a misnomer, as far as he was concerned. Griffo had let the Reds ride onward to Arezzo and back to Florence, very much to Simone's annoyance and discomfiture. What, then, was the cause of Griffo's defalcation, and who had inspired him to this ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... half-past five o'clock, a.m., having been detained for horses, and rolled along very much at my ease, compared to what the travelling on this route was seven years ago—I was going to say, on this road, but it would have been a misnomer, for there was nothing but a miry, muddy, track then: now, there is a fine, but too narrow, macadamized highway, turnpiked—that is to say, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... often denounced by its opponents as British free trade; but we respectfully suggest that if its operations lead to so serious a destruction of British interests as is now alleged, the phrase is at least a misnomer. No! as the characteristics of the crisis are common to the United States, England, and France, so the causes of that crisis are to be sought in something which is also common to the United States, England, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... branches over the entire width and half the length of the roof. Ordinarily, of course, its foliage was as green as the leaves on the maples of the avenue or on the neighbouring elms, and the name of the Inn might have seemed to the summer or winter traveller an odd misnomer; but in autumn when the frost came early and the great mass of green flushed to a deep crimson it could not have been known more appropriately than as the Inn at the ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... electrotyping is as follows: The form is locked up very tightly, and is then coated with a surface of graphite, commonly known as blacklead, but it is a misnomer. This is put on with a brush, and may be done very evenly and speedily by a machine in which the brush is reciprocated over the type by hand-wheel, crank, and pitman. A soft brush and very finely powdered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... Cawthorne was, in some respects, a correct designation but in others a misnomer. It had rooms to let, or rather suites, and it had a clerk. So far, a hostelry. It had no dining room, no bar, no billiard room, no news-stand, no barber shop, no boot-black, no laundry—and in these respects, at ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... "Crow," as applied to the once powerful nation of mountain Indians, is a misnomer, the fault of some early interpreter. The proper appellation is "Sparrowhawks," but they ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... degree for each tooth and thirty-two teeth to a set. By arduous and painful processes, stretching over a period of years, we get our regular teeth—the others were only volunteers—concluding with the wisdom teeth, as so called, but it is a misnomer, because there never is room for them and they have to stand up in the back row and they usually arrive with holes in them, and if we really possessed any wisdom we would figure out some way of abolishing them altogether. They ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... "Range Finder" is a misnomer as a range finder is an instrument. The school uses the term "Range Estimator" when applied to an individual. The attention of the War Department has been ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... unrecognized element which comprehends the more essential force both in human beings and in the conception of a deity. In other words, it was an attempt at recognition, in the objects worshipped, of that missing female element which had always been worshipped, and without which a Creator becomes a misnomer—a meaningless, unexplained, ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... who occupy the eastern Caucasus, known as Daghestan, or Lezghistan, Klaproth says their name is a misnomer, just as Scythian or Tartar was used to indicate the natives of Northern Asia; adding, that they do not form one nation, as is proved by the number of dialects in use, which, however, would seem to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... lit. palace, but commonly meaning, in modern Arabic, an upper story or detached corps de logis (pavilion in the French sense, an evident misnomer in ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... says:—"The Malabar Whistling-Thrush (rather a misnomer, by the way) breeds on the slopes of the Nilghiris, never ascending higher than 6000 feet. The nest is always placed on some rock in a mountain torrent; it is a coarse and, for the size of the bird, a very large ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... in their political principles. Their notions on such subjects were generally crude and undefined, and living in a country where the whole construction of society and habits of feeling were decidedly republican, the term tory, when adopted by them, was certainly a misnomer. However, hated by, and hating as cordially, the republican party in the United States, they by no means unreasonably considered that their losses and their attachment to British institutions, gave them an almost exclusive ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... landscape and retire again. During this one day in which they rode to Amalfi and back, Uncle John afterward declared that they experienced seven different kinds of weather. They had sunshine, rain, hail, snow and a tornado; and then rain again and more sunshine. "Sunny Italy" seemed a misnomer that day, as indeed it does many days in winter and spring, when the climate is little better than that prevailing in the eastern and central portions of the United States. And perhaps one suffers more in Italy than in America, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... administering correction to John P. Hale, an insubordinate Democrat from New Hampshire, for the same offense, and at the time screaming that the "blood of our glorious battle-fields in Mexico rested on the hands of the President"; Mr. Clingman challenging the House with the broad statement that "it is a misnomer to speak of our institution at the South as peculiar; ours is the general system of the world, and the free system is the peculiar one," and Mr. Palfrey dryly responding that slavery was natural ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... predesigning consciousness may yet be simply organic, and whether a series of such actions are possible—and close on the heels of this question would follow the old, "Is logic the essence of thinking?"—in other words, "Is thinking possible without arbitrary signs? or how far is the word arbitrary a misnomer? are not words, etc., parts and germinations of the plant, and what is the law of their growth?" In something of this order I would endeavour to destroy the old antithesis of Words and Things, elevating, as it were, Words into Things, and living things too. All the nonsense of vibrations, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... discontent of the seething underside of the American system Socialism is a misnomer. Were there no Socialism there would be just as much of this discontent, just the same insurgent force and desire for violence, taking some other title and far more destructive methods. This discontent is a part of the same planless ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Jersey village, or rather city (for it had won municipal government some years before, in spite of the protest of far-seeing citizens who descried in the distance bonded debts out of proportion to the tiny shoulders of the place), was a misnomer. Often a person, being in Fairbridge for the first time, and being driven by way of entertainment about the rural streets, ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... according to the mildest modifications of any Christian creed, those three words make the odds much against them in the next—"Saviour of the world," quotha!—it were to be wished that he, or any one else, could save a corner of it—his country. Yet this stupid misnomer, although it shows the near connection between superstition and impiety, so far has its use, that it proves there can be little to dread from those Catholics (inquisitorial Catholics too) who can confer such an appellation on a 'Protestant'. I suppose next year he will be entitled ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... throwing up his left arm. He caught the knife thrust in the fleshy part of it, and the pain was like the red-hot sting of a gigantic wasp. It flashed through his brain then that the term cold steel was a misnomer. The next moment his right hand had brought down the heavy knob of his stout stick on the curly head of the Italian, and Pietro fell like a log at his feet. Standish set his teeth, and as gently as possible drew the stiletto from his arm, wiping its blade on ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... man, the Far Oriental artist is emphatically a realist; it is when he turns to nature that he becomes ideal. But by ideal is not meant here conventional. That term of reproach is a misnomer, founded upon a mistake. His idealism is simply the outcome of his love, which, like all human love, transfigures its object. The Far Oriental has plenty of this, which, if sometimes a delusion, seems also second sight, but it is peculiarly impersonal. His color-blindness to the warm, blood-red ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... a point of historical accuracy it should be noticed that, for the battle of the 28th November, the "Modder River" is a misnomer. The fighting, as will be seen in this chapter, took place on the banks of the Riet; but since the battle honours for the engagement have been given for "Modder River," the name has become officially recognised, and is therefore used here. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... that portion of Gomez's ragged army, under command of General Castillo, lined up to welcome us to their beautiful island, and to guide and guard our way to the Spanish strongholds. To call it a ragged army is by no means a misnomer. The greater portion of those poor fellows were both coatless and shoeless, many of them being almost nude. They were by no means careful about their uniform. The thing every one seemed careful about was his munitions of war, ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... anything he wanted. At present he was State Senator. He with others called himself a Republican—one of the great party of Lincoln to which the negroes after their enfranchisement united themselves. It was a fearful misnomer. The Republican party in the South, composed of ninety-nine ignorant negroes to one renegade white, about as truly represented the progressive party of Lincoln as a black vampire the ornithology of all lands. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the Army in France. The cases were at first labelled "Frost Bite," but as they were subsequently found to occur without any fall of the temperature to freezing point, this term was evidently a misnomer. Indeed, cases have occurred during the ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... a curlew in Australia, closely resembling the English bird, and it calls as that did over the Locksley Hall sand-dunes; but Australians are given to calling AEdicnemus grallarius Latham (our Stone Plover), the 'curlew,' which is a misnomer. This also drearily ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... language, obscenity, vulgarity. jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot; St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang. pseudology[obs3]. pseudonym &c. (misnomer) 565; Mr. So-and-so; wha d'ye call 'em[obs3], whatchacallim, what's his name; thingummy[obs3], thingumbob; je ne sais quoi[Fr]. neologist[obs3], coiner of words. V. coin words, coin a term; backform; Americanize, Anglicize. Adj. neologic[obs3], neological[obs3]; archaic; obsolete ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... protecting it from evil. My ears are prepared to hear a musical Indian name - "Laughing-Waters " at least; but, like a week's washing ruthlessly intruding upon love's young dream, falls on my waiting ears the unpoetic misnomer, "Nine-Mile Creek." Over good roads to Syracuse, and from thence my route leads down the Erie Canal, alternately riding down the canal tow-path, the wagon-roads, and between the tracks of the New York Central Railway. On the former, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... cannot be. A new factor has been introduced, it may be a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset calculation—a something in his character in virtue of which his second choice is different from his first. It is an utter misnomer to call it 'chance.' Even though he had tossed a coin and acted on the throw, his action would still be determined by the kind ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... the changes, by a great misnomer called Parliamentary Reforms, went, not in the intention of all the professors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, in my opinion, not very remote effect, home to the utter destruction of the Constitution ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... passed, Star's education commenced. The process called "gentling," was a complete misnomer for the series of buck jumps, of bites and kicks, with which the young lady received the slightest attempt to touch her. She had a horrible habit also of shrieking, really almost like a human being in ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... an action brought by one Joyce (a convict lately emancipated) against Thomas Daveny, a free man and superintendant of convicts at Toongabbie, for an assault; when the defendant, availing himself of a mistake in his christian name, pleaded the misnomer. His plea being admitted, the business was for that time got over, and before another court could be assembled he had entered into a compromise with the plaintiff, and nothing more was heard ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... we have called the attempt to do what we are told to do. The word is a misnomer; with our Captain as our Leader no hope is ever "forlorn"! But our Leader calls for men, men like the brave of old who jeopardised their lives unto the death in the high places of the field, in the day that they came to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... said the Reverend Doctor Opimian, dining with his friend Squire Gryll; 'a curiously complicated misnomer. We have an excellent old vegetable, the artichoke, of which we eat the head; we have another of subsequent introduction, of which we eat the root, and which we also call artichoke, because it resembles ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... volunteered to accept—for the name and rank of a separate nation, some trivial right of holding county meetings for local purposes of bridges, roads, turnpike gates. This privilege he calls by the name of "federalism;" a misnomer, it is true; but, were it the right name, names cannot change realities. These local committees could not possibly take rank above the Quarter Sessions; nor could they find much business to do which is not already done, and better done, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... not a passive state, it is an intensely active state—more active than physical resistance or violence. Passive resistance is a misnomer. Non-co-operation in the sense used by me must be non-violent and therefore neither punitive nor vindictive nor based on malice ill-will or hatred. It follows therefore that it would be sin for me to serve General Dyer and ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... us with quotations from a little pamphlet, entitled Historical Facts connected with Nantwich and its Neighbourhood. Now, after giving this work a most careful perusal, I cannot but think that the title of the book is, in this instance at least, a misnomer. The authoress, for it was written by a lady long resident in the vicinity, has evidently wrought upon the foundations of others; and taking the veteran Ormerod as a sufficient authority, has given full vent to her imagination, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... which we call oysters had always been remarkable. It occurred to Bruin, as he had now some trifling capital, that he would invest a portion in such articles as made up the fixtures and stock-in-trade of an oyster-merchant: the former expression is, however, a misnomer, for the stall and tubs included under the term fixtures would be more properly described as moveables. This was soon effected; and Bruin having chosen a semi-respectable thoroughfare, where he would have a chance of a customer or two from ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... always be a tendency to rhythmic swing like that of a river, which carries the stream of prices now on this side of the valley, now on that. But this fluctuation of general prices surely can be so greatly moderated in magnitude and in evil results as to make the word "crisis" almost a misnomer. It is toward the attainment of this irreducible minimum of uncertainty and disaster in business that efforts should ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... frequently called the English Switzerland. I have seen such an announcement made in the local Guide-books, and heard the opinion adopted by many of the inhabitants. I am inclined to think that the name is not a misnomer, for certainly the twin villages, with their miniature manor-houses and cottage-like country-seats, are not unsuggestive of a German box of toys. But there is very little of the foreigner in the inhabitants. Rarely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... "impersonal" characteristic of Buddhism and of the Orient, therefore, I am not willing to call "impersonality"; for it is a very defective description, a real misnomer. I think no single term can truly describe the characteristic under consideration. As regards the general social order, the so-called impersonal characteristic is its communal nature; as regards the popular religious thought, whether of Shintoism or Buddhism, its so-called impersonality ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... fortnight had passed since the night when I lost half-a-sovereign and found twelve hundred and fifty pounds in looking for it, and instead of that horrid hole, for which, after all, Eldorado was hardly a misnomer, a very different scene stretched away before us clad in the silver robe of the moonlight. We were camped—Harry and I, two Kaffirs, a Scotch cart, and six oxen—on the swelling side of a great wave of bushclad land. Just where we had made our camp, however, the bush was very ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... Owen, with a twitch about the corners of his mouth that seemed to be along the sarcastic order, as if deep down in his heart the lad thought the name might be a misnomer, according to his ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... Park Land to Wapping, by day and by night, I've many a year been a roamer, And find that no Lawyer can London indite, Each street, every Lane's a misnomer. I find Broad Street, St. Giles, a poor narrow nook, Battle Bridge is unconscious of slaughter, Duke's Place can not muster the ghost of a Duke, And Brook Street ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... this paper would be a misnomer, if I did not add a list of books which it may be ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... high artificer to raise His wordy monument—such lives as these Make death a dull misnomer and its pomp An empty vesture. Let resounding lives Re-echo splendidly through high-piled vaults And make the grave their spokesman—such as he Are as the hidden streams that, underground, Sweeten the pastures for the grazing kine, Or as ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... must have some name in going about, for people to pick up," he explained to Mugby High-street, through the Inn-window, "and that name at least was real once. Whereas, Young Jackson!—Not to mention its being a sadly satirical misnomer for Old Jackson." ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... misnomer of ble de Turquie shows the popular error. Yet the rapidity of its diffusion through Europe and Asia, after the discovery of America, is of itself sufficient to show that it could not have been indigenous to the Old World, and have so long ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... attractive menus that can be suggested for teas, but the following seems to demand as little home labor for satisfactory results as any other. The word tea, by the way, is something of a misnomer, as at these entertainments the beverages are almost invariably coffee or chocolate, or both, tea being left entirely out of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... abdomino-pelvic muscular apparatus, entirely or in part. For, in fact, neither the bladder nor rectum ever acts voluntarily per se any more than the stomach does, and therefore the name "detrusor" urinae, as applied to the muscular coat investing the bladder, is as much a misnomer (if it be meant that the act of voiding the organ at will be dependent upon it) as would be the name "detrusor" applied to the muscular coat of the stomach, under the meaning that this were the agent in the spasmodic effort ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... the field of doctrine were once entered, might be multiplied. The retranslation of the Nicene Creed and the more accurate punctuation of its sentences; the rendering of the word Sabbath in the Fourth Commandment into its English equivalent of Rest; the abolition of the curious misnomer under which we go on calling XXXVIII Articles XXXIX; the removal from the Catechism, or else the conversion into mother English of that sad crux infantum, the answer to the question, "What desirest thou of God in this prayer?" ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... up. He could not look at the sea any more. The name "House of the Sirens" suddenly seemed to him a terrible misnomer, now that he thought of Maddalena perhaps weeping ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens |
