"Monosyllable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Opinions on Whist) could not make up her mind to use the word 'Go.' Mounsey, from long practice, has got over this difficulty, and uses it incessantly. It is no matter what adjunct follows in the train of this despised monosyllable,—whatever liquid comes after this prefix is welcome. Mounsey, without being the most communicative, is the most conversible man I know. The social principle is inseparable from his person. If he has nothing to say, he drinks your health; and when you cannot, from the rapidity and carelessness ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... swore in consonants? There is scarcely a more harshly-sounding word in the Welsh language—admitted by a clever and satirical author to have "the softness and harmony of the Italian, with the majesty and expression of the Greek"—than the term crack, adopted from the Dutch. There is no Welsh monosyllable that contains, like the Saxon strength, seven consonants with only one vowel. There is no Welsh proper name, like Rentzsch, the watchmaker of Regent Street, that contains six consonants in succession in one syllable; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... down the avenue, and then with slow deliberation, and an occasional pause for thought, he walked towards me. When within half a dozen yards he stopped and took good stock of me, with brown eyes overhung by thick grizzled eyebrows. Then he offered a short, interrogative, authoritative bark, a mere monosyllable of inquiry. ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Dart putting much eloquence Into the monosyllable. "That's a bum monniker out of a French love story. It's the Roosian princess. It's Helga, that's who ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... Piper. His power of articulation was slowly returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... gaze from the clothespin, and turned his blue eyes wonderingly up to her. The corner of his mouth trembled, widened, his eyelids crinkled, and then he smiled delightfully, straight into the eyes of the nurse, stretched up a wavering pink hand, and patted her cheek. A soft, gurgling monosyllable, difficult of classification but easy to ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... remark, people were silent. It was known that the speaker had secret sources of information. In this case the monosyllable had a moral intention. Mr. Harford sometimes formed one of a little detachment which left the city shortly after noon on Sunday with the purpose of arriving as soon as possible at some public-house ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... first smile (for the convulsive movement in sleep that is popularly adorned by that name is not a smile) is an uncertain sketch of a smile, unpractised but unmistakable. It is accompanied by a single sound—a sound that would be a monosyllable if it were articulate—which is the utterance, though hardly the communication, of a private jollity. That and that alone is the real beginning ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... out to the club she sat between them, miserably indifferent to the glory of the spring day and refusing to contribute more than an occasional monosyllable to the conversation, which needed all the encouragement it could get ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... The monosyllable seemed to fill the room. It echoed and re-echoed in Diane's ears like the boom of a cannon. While her outward vision took in such details as the despair in Mrs. Eveleth's face, the folds of crape on her ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... boats and wheelbarrows." The native word for the country was something like Keugu, which the Chinese (as they still do with foreign words, as, for instance, Ying for "England") promptly turned into a convenient monosyllable Ngu, or Wu. The semi-barbarous King was delighted at the opening thus given him to associate with orthodox Chinese princes on an equal footing, and to throw off his former tyrannical suzerain. He annexed a number of neighbouring barbarian states hitherto, like himself, belonging to ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... plantations on each side. Here we met many of the natives, who were travelling to the beach with loads of provisions, and courteously bowed their heads as they passed by us, in sign of friendship, generally pronouncing some monosyllable or other, which seemed to correspond to the Otaheitean tays. The inclosures, plantations, and houses, were exactly in the same style as at Ea-oonhe, and the people had never failed to plant odoriferous shrubs round their dwellings. The mulberry, of which the bark is manufactured ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... doctor, "twins!" He repeated the monosyllable, converting it into a clarion-call that made me think ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... The monosyllable was curt. Telford was vainly seeking to nip Galletly's gossip in the bud. The name of Palmer conveyed no especial meaning to his ear. He knew where the Palmer homestead was, and that the plaintive-faced, fair-haired woman, whose name was Mrs. Fuller and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Michael was left alone with his father, he found that his best efforts at conversation elicited only monosyllabic replies, and at last, in the despairing desire to bring things to a head, he asked him if he had received his letter. An affirmative monosyllable, followed by the hissing of Lord Ashbridge's cigarette end as he dropped it into his coffee cup, answered him, and he perceived that the approaching storm was to be rendered duly impressive by the thundery stillness that preceded ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... king except the then most illustrious states, which, as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the Roman grandeur?—With my conjecture, the sense would be;—"let higher, or the more northern part of Italy—(unless 'higher' be a corruption for 'hir'd,'—the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see," &c. The following "woo" and "wed" are so far confirmative as they indicate Shakespeare's manner of connection by unmarked influences of association from some preceding ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Life, and what a very pretty picture he will lay before you. He lives in another world—has, as Sir Anthony Absolute says, a sun and moon of his own—a realm of fairies, with attending sprites to perform his every compassable wish. To him life is a most musical monosyllable; making his heart dance, and thrilling every nerve with its so-potent harmony. Life—but especially his life—is, indeed, a sacred thing to him; and loud and deep are his praises of its miracles. Like the departed ROTHSCHILD, "he does not know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... his chair behind the shelter of his hands, or gone down in any upheaval of primal emotions; and perhaps he saw in her answer, if not sympathy, for she was too impersonal for that, a candid understanding of the little scene and an appreciation of its dramatic quality. "Then," said he, after his monosyllable, "there is nothing left me but to go." When he had risen, he stood looking down at his wife's beautiful dusky head. Incredible to think it had ever lain on his breast, or that the fact of its cherishing there made no difference to her ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... narrating this incident he was asked what reply the lady had made to so uncourteous a speech. 'I don't remember,' said the Bibliotaph, 'it was long ago; but my opinion is that she would have been justified in denominating me by a monosyllable beginning with the initial letter of the alphabet and ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... dismayed by anything her mother said or did. She listened to her disjointed talk, or at least, turned her head towards her when addressed; replied in a few low words when necessary; and sometimes stopped her when she was rambling, or brought her thoughts back with a monosyllable, to the point from which they had strayed. The mother, however unsteady in other things, was constant in this—that she was always observant of her. She would look at the beautiful face, in its marble stillness and severity, now ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... with that monosyllable dismissed the subject from his mind for matters that gave him savage delight. "Say, we've had a good round-up," he went on—"a dandy haul. But we're going to do better—Oh yes, much better." Then his smile died out. He had almost forgotten the woman ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... through the mouth and expires through the nostrils, the oxygen of the inspired air does not enter the lungs where the pulmonary changes of the blood take place. The monosyllable Om thus acts as a substitute for the suspension of ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... a mean trollop? If she had been a gentlewoman, like myself, it had been some excuse; but a beggarly, saucy, dirty servant-maid. Get you out of my house, you whore." To which she added another name, which we do not care to stain our paper with. It was a monosyllable beginning with a b—, and indeed was the same as if she had pronounced the words, she-dog. Which term we shall, to avoid offence, use on this occasion, though indeed both the mistress and maid uttered the above-mentioned b—, a word extremely disgustful ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... memory of Dorothy Jackson, born Dorothy Quincy, to whose choice of the right monosyllable we owe the presence of our honored guest and all that his life has achieved for the welfare of the community." ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the monosyllable, but a thoughtful expression in the hard gray eyes indicated that Varr had found food for reflection in Nelson's story. What direction his thoughts were taking he did not choose to reveal at the moment, but shot another ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... monosyllable which I knew he could not quite catch. Silence again for some time, during which I shovelled valiantly and with great inward amusement. Oh, there is nothing like cracking a hard human nut! I decided at that moment, to have ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... eyes—the successful soldier taking his ease at his club. He felt inclined to break his promise, to tell the whole truth, to answer both the questions which Durrance had first asked. And again the pitiless monosyllable demanded his reply. ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... the first time. Fanny Brandeis would have given everything she had, everything she hoped to be, to be able to take back that monosyllable. She was gripped with horror at what she had done. She had spoken almost mechanically. And yet that monosyllable must have been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and thought. "Now I begin to understand you," Fenger went on. "You've decided ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... whispered back, compelled to the answer, subservient to his touch, to his words, and, to the full, conscious of her subservience. She felt the big breath he drew in answering her monosyllable. He held her unresisting, passive in his arms, watching her cheeks fire. She realised, in a kind of detached way, that he was holding her so that the tips of her toes only touched the floor, and somehow that seemed ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the muffled but eager monosyllable to a sharper one; and being reminded, felt in her lap, under her napkin, for her ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... publick, to be used and treated as they should think fit; he must go on in the same indifference, and allow the TOWN their usual liberty with his name, which I find they think they have much more room to sport with than formerly, as it is lengthened with the monosyllable SIR." ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... name of the other daughter; her mother had fancied that name; but the single monosyllable it had been shortened into somehow suited the proud-looking girl better than the whole name, with its ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... Chinese belong to the fourth root-race. They have reached the height of their possible intellectual advance. They have been stationary for untold centuries. Query: Does this account for their apparent inability to develop their language beyond the monosyllable? ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... gave him only the crisp monosyllable and changed the subject immediately. "What about this stage robbery? Have you been able to make ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... was not anxious to understand, if indeed her English ear detected all the hidden meaning of the monosyllable. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... appointed in better style. The stewards and the clerk of the course attend them to the starting-post. There they are now assembled. Guy Flouncey takes up his stirrup-leathers a hole; Mr. Melton looks at his girths. In a few moments, the irrevocable monosyllable will ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... The simple monosyllable was strangely expressive, but Dug McFarlane had no understanding of the thought that prompted it. It would have been difficult indeed, even with understanding, to have probed the depths of feeling prompting it. But Whitstone was incapable of seeing ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... but she learned on the other hand soon to recognise how at last, sometimes, patient little silences and intelligent little looks could be rewarded by delightful little glimpses. There had been years at Beale Farange's when the monosyllable "he" meant always, meant almost violently, the master; but all that was changed at a period at which Sir Claude's merits were of themselves so much in the air that it scarce took even two letters to name him. ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Lady Meed, a lady of importance, whose friendship means perdition, yet without whom nothing can be done, and who plays an immense part in the world. The monosyllable which designates her has a vague and extended signification; it means both reward and bribery. Disinterestedness, the virtue of noble minds, being rare in this world, scarcely anything is undertaken without hope of recompense, and ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... standing amongst them now, very drawn and pale in the dim halo of light thrown down from the hanging lamp. His answering monosyllable was cold ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the schooner careening over to the pleasant breeze, but no sign of the brig; but the three-masted vessel was overhauling them fast, and before long a gun said, Heave to, in the very emphatic monosyllable so well ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... slapped his knee as he uttered this meditative monosyllable, and continued to regard his niece with keener scrutiny, if that were possible, than before. 'It is John's temper—a very firebrand. My dear, you are very young, and you should not be above taking advice. Let me advise you to control that fiery passion. Temper doesn't ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... fertile in this sort of phrases, which spring up suddenly, no one knows exactly in what spot, and pervade the whole population in a few hours, no one knows how. Many years ago the favourite phrase (for, though but a monosyllable, it was a phrase in itself) was Quoz. This odd word took the fancy of the multitude in an extraordinary degree, and very soon acquired an almost boundless meaning. When vulgar wit wished to mark its ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... make it definite. If we read "drink up wormwood," what does it imply? It may be the smallest possible quantity,—an ordinary dose of bitters; or a pailful, which would perhaps meet the "madness" of Hamlet's daring. Thus the little monosyllable "up" must be disposed of, or a quantity must be expressed to reconcile MR. SINGER'S proposition with Mr. HICKSON'S canon and the grammatical sense ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?—that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?—that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking vessel from which a sharp fragment ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... the bank! It is a curious sight. The little shop-girl there, what is she but a roll of pink ribbon?—nay, she is but half-a-yard. And the poor infinitesimal porters and guards, how pathetically small seems their share in the great monosyllable Man, animalcules in that great social system which, again, is but an animalcule in the blood of Time. Still more infinitesimal seems the man who is a subdivision, not of a form of work even, but merely of a form of taste; the man ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... did not vouchsafe even a monosyllable in reply, and the tactless Kirk assumed the ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was triumph enough. I held back the triumph, however, wary of overconfidence. The gaffer laughed the high cackle of age, and Kyral broke in with a sharp, angry monosyllable by which I knew that my remark had indeed been repeated, and had lost nothing in the telling. But only the line of his jaw betrayed the anger as he said calmly, "Be quiet, Dallisa. Where did ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... which I put severely to Mrs. Walters: Had she told Georgiana of my foolish talk? She shook her head violently, and pressed her lips closely together, suggesting how impossible it would be for the smallest monosyllable in the language to escape by that channel; but she kept her eyes wide open, and the truth issued from them, as smoke in a hollow tree, if stopped in at a lower hole, simply rises and comes out at a higher one. "You should have shut ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... too short, as he said, to afford a belly. He rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with unremitting zeal, and if you greeted him with a "How well you are looking" he started and turned pale. In your WELL he read a grosser monosyllable. He had a round head, high above the ears, a crop of hair at once dense and silky, a broad, low forehead, a short nose, of the ironical and inquiring rather than of the dogmatic or sensitive cast, and a mustache as delicate ...
— The American • Henry James
... was by this monosyllable that Mr. Razumov got into the habit of referring mentally to the stranger with grey silky side-whiskers. From that time too, when walking in the more fashionable quarters, he noted with interest the magnificent horses and carriages ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... totally different song, for almost every month during the whole warm season. There are, I believe, seven kinds; but I have become familiar with only four. The first to be heard in my trees is the natsuzemi, or summer semi: it makes a sound like the Japanese monosyllable ji, beginning wheezily, slowly swelling into a crescendo shrill as the blowing of steam, and dying away in another wheeze. This j-i-i-iiiiiiiiii is so deafening that when two or three natsuzemi come close to ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... talking or writing politics, abandoned himself without reserve, and instructed Lady Firebrace regularly after every council. Taper looked grave at this connection between Tadpole and Lady Firebrace; and whenever an election was lost, or a division stuck in the mud, he gave the cue with a nod and a monosyllable, and the conservative pack that infests clubs, chattering on subjects of which it is impossible they can know anything, instantly began barking and yelping, denouncing traitors, and wondering how the leaders could be so led by the nose, and not see that which was flagrant to the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... lips seemed about to form the reproachful monosyllable "young." Without further greeting the visitor took off his hat and overcoat and hung them on a peg. "You make yourself at ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... intended Project: It is very well known that I at first set forth in this Work with the Character of a silent Man; and I think I have so well preserved my Taciturnity, that I do not remember to have violated it with three Sentences in the space of almost two Years. As a Monosyllable is my Delight, I have made very few Excursions in the Conversations which I have related beyond a Yes or a No. By this Means my Readers have lost many good things which I have had in my Heart, though I did ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and raised his golden scepter slowly before him. As his voice died away, Lylda rose to her feet and facing the judge bowed low, with hands to her forehead. Then she spoke a few words, evidently addressing the women before her. Each of them raised her hands and answered in a monosyllable, as though affirming an oath. This performance was repeated by ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... back through the woods, the birds are trilling among the trees. It is their merry morning lay, but it gives him no gladness. There is still ringing in his ears that harsh monosyllable, "no." The wild-wood songsters appear to echo it, as if mockingly; the blue jay, and red cardinal, seem scolding him ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... himself knew what wild rage lay back of that monosyllable. He was sure now; that diagram brushed away any lingering doubt. The lock had been trifled with, but the man who had done the work had not been sure ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... The clergy obeyed: but it was observed that the congregations made no responses and showed no signs of reverence. Soon in all the coffeehouses was handed about a brutal lampoon on the courtly prelates whose pens the King had employed. Mother East had also her full share of abuse. Into that homely monosyllable our ancestors had degraded the name of the great house of Este which reigned ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... auxiliary Verb added Strength to the Expression, as indeed it does. I own where the auxiliary Verb is brought close to its principal, and that a thin monosyllable, as in the Line just now referred to, the Verse is very rude and disagreeable. But to prove that the auxiliary Verb may be employed properly, I will produce an Instance in rhym'd Verse, as strong as that ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... rendered Bert's task, easier by diminishing the chances of detection, and as the twilight deepened into dusk, he gradually decreased the distance until, when it was fully dark, he had ventured to draw so near that he could hear the jingle of their trappings and an occasional monosyllable that passed between ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... influential form of practical force, compounded of strong will, strong sense, and strong egotism, which long waited for a strong monosyllable to announce its nature. Facts of character, indeed, are never at rest until they have become terms of language; and that peculiar thing which is not exactly courage or heroism, but which unmistakably is "Grit," has coined its own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... opportunity for no more than an occasional monosyllable in reply, he poured forth a flood of information about his estate: The architectural features of his house—the cost; the loveliness of his trees—the cost; the coloring of his flowers—the cost; the magnificence of his view, And all the while he studied his caller's face with sharp, furtive ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... won't do that, neither," Y.D. answered. "Think I need a body-guard for a little chore like that? Huh!" There was immeasurable contempt in that monosyllable. ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... the answer for which she had hoped and her eyes dropped at the curt monosyllable. She put the cup back on the tray and folded her hands in her lap with a faint little sigh of disappointment, her head drooping pensively. Craven knew instinctively that he had hurt her and hated ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... somewhat raised voice the squatting figure in the corner moved and rose slowly. Reb Moshe, with open mouth and stupid, glaring eyes, came into the light, and in his hoarse voice uttered the monosyllable "Hah!" ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... morning she saw her father's anxiety for the reply mounting to a pitch of fever. She consulted with Cornelia, who said, "No; never do such a thing!" and subsequently, with a fainter firmness, repeated the negative monosyllable. Arabella, in her wretchedness, became endued with remorseless discernment. "It means that Cornelia would never do it herself," she thought; and, comforted haply by reflecting that for their common good she could do it, she did it. She repeated an Irish message. Her father calmed immediately, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her, as on the previous day. But it was dark and gloomy, and there would be rain before night. She talked with the young girl, and began to make plans with her for going away. Gregorio ate nothing, and looked on, uttering a monosyllable now and then, and laughing frantically, two or three times. Nobody paid any attention to his laughter, now, for the household had grown used to it. It might break out just when a servant was handing him something; the man would merely draw back a step, and wait until the ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... ate, and ate little of any thing. Neither was he in the mood for talk; but Elgar, who had finished his solid meal, and now amused himself with grapes (in two forms), spared him the necessity of anything but an occasional monosyllable. The young man was elated, and grew more so as he proceeded with his dessert; his cheeks were deeply flushed; his ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... her infinite tiredness she was smiling faintly and her smile was the dedication of this moment to him. Every now and then she would ask him a question and he would answer—rather shortly—or she would make a statement which he would seal with a monosyllable. There were never any comments between them. In the absoluteness of their understanding, explanations ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... might have galloped in any direction without difficulty. Our driver was a lively intelligent young fellow, having a civil word of inquiry or of greeting for every Indian we encountered: these were by no means numerous however, and they seldom replied by more than a monosyllable, hardly appearing to ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... The single monosyllable—from Sara Van Decht—was the only speech which broke the amazed silence. She was leaning forward in her chair, gazing eagerly at the three men, her beautiful eyes eloquent with excitement—a crown of fire gleaming in her brown-gold hair. No one noticed ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... Dinsmore was sure that the impertinence of her monosyllable would be lost upon her elderly protege. "I'll make it clear to you, if I can. Millicent, you ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... monosyllable. There was a finality about it—definite, unalterable. She looked at him dry-eyed, her face tragically beautiful in its agony. But he seemed impervious to either its beauty or its suffering. There was no hint of softening in him. Without another word he swung round on his heel ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... is termed a Monosyllable; a word of two syllables, a Dissyllable; a word of three syllables, a Trisyllable; a word of four or more ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... with a distinct form for the plural. The ripe product of tendency, the infant heir of the eloquent ages, to whose birth the law of Aryan evolution groaned and travailed until but now, the most useful, if not the "mightiest," monosyllable "ever moulded by the lips of man," the "the," one and indeclinable, was born in the Anglo-Saxon mouth, and sublimed to its unique ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... the monosyllable shouted, almost shrieked, by him so menaced. "No!" he repeats; "never shall I consent to that. I am in your power, Gil Uraga. Put your pistol to my head, blow out my brains, as you say you can do with impunity. Kill me any way you wish, even torture. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... monosyllable by adding, "I helped Dr. Stone carry Turnbull out of the prisoners' ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... did not even look up. He merely flung a barbed "Well?" over his shoulder. It reminded Trotter of the preoccupied tail swish of a horse worried by a black-fly. The side flick of one casual monosyllable was plainly all he was worth. Trotter calmly ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... Latin grammar but with a new standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bash fulness. Tom, as you have observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address; but the difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr. or Mrs. Stelling was so great, that he even dreaded to be asked at table whether he would have more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he had almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart, that he would throw ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... commenced a conversation in French, which, however, though they spoke it fluently enough, I perceived at once was not their native language; the young man, however, took no part in their conversation, and when they addressed a portion to him, which indeed was but rarely, merely replied by a monosyllable. I have never been a listener, and I paid but little heed to their discourse, nor indeed to themselves; as I occasionally looked up, however, I could perceive that the features of the young man, who chanced to be seated exactly opposite to me, wore an air of constraint and vexation. This circumstance ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... monosyllable broke in on the smug recital. She caught Lad protectingly by the ruff and stared in mute dread at the lanky and red-whiskered officer. Lad, reading her voice as always, divined this nasal-toned caller had said or done something to make her unhappy. His ruff ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... reasons; not least because the actual Marguerite appears nowhere in the poem, and, except in the opening monosyllable, can hardly be said to be even rhetorically addressed. The poet's affection—it is scarcely passion—is there, but in transcendence: he meditates more than he feels. And that function of the riddle of ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... effect the monosyllable had upon him. The mask which he carried always with him fell suddenly away. He turned upon her with an abruptness almost disconcerting. His eyes were lit with fire, and there was a ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... or pronoun to which the participle relates is a passive subject, it should not have the possessive form; as, "The daily instances of men's dying around us remind us of the brevity of human life." "We do not speak of a monosyllable's having a primary accent." Change men's to men, ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... were by a growth of stiff, obstinate young birch-trees, laced together by grapevines. In the twilight, we now and then, to support ourselves, snatched at the touch-me-not stem of some ancient sweet-brier. Shaw, who was in advance, suddenly uttered a somewhat emphatic monosyllable; and looking up I saw him with one hand grasping a sapling, and one foot immersed in the water, from which he had forgotten to withdraw it, his whole attention being engaged in contemplating the movements of a water-snake, about five feet long, curiously ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... faculty were, until both were enlightened the following week, when the real author caused it to be published in the Cistula Literaria—an interesting journal, edited by a committee of the junior class—with a capital "N" and a superfluous "t" in the monosyllable referred to, as it appears in the present memoir. The conceit was Nott thought a bad one, and those who were not in the secret gave my hero more credit for his metrical skill, than he has ever ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... though it was a warm day in June—a clear-eyed, small-featured, diminutive old man, who had sat the whole time, taking no apparent interest in the proceedings. All eyes were turned upon him in a moment, and he quietly repeated the awful monosyllable—"eight!" Mr Gillingham Howard looked at the old gentleman with detestation in every feature, for he felt that the person, whoever he was, was actually robbing him of a thousand pounds; and he would have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... with certitude by whom the soul of your race was bartered and its elect betrayed—by the questioner or by the mocker? Patience. Remember Epictetus. It is probably in his character to ask such a question at such a moment in such a tone and to pronounce the word SCIENCE as a monosyllable. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... He had a daughter—Margaret. She was the most beautiful woman in the world...." I suspect my voice broke a little just there, for there was a shade of respectful sympathy in the monosyllable with which he filled the pause. "He swore she should never marry a Northerner, but she did; I guess, being a Bohun, she had to, after hearing she must not. There were two of us that loved her, but she ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... herself in the monosyllable. No words came to her lips, but to her eyes many tears, through which the pearls were visible. They whirled in her bewildered brain as a token that she was loved—loved by HIM, though but yesterday he had loved another. It ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... The monosyllable brought to her an overwhelming sense of the confession which her words had carried. She pressed the arm upon which ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... is no instance so striking as this of the immense difference that sometimes lies in the mere accent given one monosyllable. Until Mrs. Siddons revealed the real Lady Macbeth, every actress had replied, "We fail?" interrogatively, and then encouragingly, "Screw your courage to the sticking-point and we'll not fail." Such the commonplace reciters. When genius ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... earnest. Alas, he was. For on the morning of the following day, I went up to his tent on the roof and found nothing of Khalid's belongings but a pamphlet on the subject, 'Is Suicide a Sin?' and right under the title the monosyllable LA (no) and his signature. The frightfulness of his intention stood like a spectre before me. I clapped one hand upon the other and wept. I made inquiries in the city and in the neighbouring places, but to no purpose. Oh, that dreadful, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the broker's wrath has been appeased, and he returns to his chair with the disagreeable reflection that a heavy score is against him for the semi-annual settlement-day. Every repetition of that fatal monosyllable was a fresh mark of fifty cents or a dollar against his name. Generally, however, the Government brokers are more orderly than their neighbors in the Regular Board. Indeed, the whole proceedings are more decorous and respectful, the bidding, half the time, being carried on in ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... English, French, and German. It is easy to see how this should be. There are peculiarities in the vocal organization of every person, tending to produce peculiarities of pronunciation; for example, it has been stated that each child in a family of six gave the monosyllable, fly, in a different manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c.) until, when the organs were more advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation of this and similar words. Such departures from orthoepy are only ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... monosyllable and the ascending red increased the beauty of her face. "I have a brother who is condemned to die," she continued. "Condemn the fault, I pray you, and ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... in order to draw from it greater flexibility and feeling. The effect which he produces is irresistible and universal. Throughout the house the most profound silence is rigidly, but sympathetically enforced; so great is the apprehension of losing a single monosyllable in these interesting moments, which always appear too short. To this silence succeed shouts of acclamation and bursts of applause. I never knew any performer command the like ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... in his hand, and the half-frozen compound of black and red mud on his gaiters; but they were shy, and their enmity added to their shyness, so that even when he shook hands with them, and spoke good-naturedly, they did not get beyond a monosyllable. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some of maturer years, full-blown flowers among the opening buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear during the period when they never meet a single man without having his monosyllable ready for him,—tied as they are, poor things! on the rock of expectation, each of them an Andromeda waiting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... Alexander said to her: 'Miss Austin, do you know people say we are going to be married?' Annoyed at being talked of, and hurt at his brusque way of mentioning it, she was just going to give a sharp answer, when he added: 'Shall we make it true?' With characteristic straightforwardness she replied by the monosyllable, 'Yes,' and so they were engaged. Before her marriage she translated Niebuhr's 'Greek Legends,' which were published under her ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... which the first, a, signifies the principal of all, the creator, Brama; the second, u, the conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the destroyer, who puts an end to all, Chiven. It is pronounced like the monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three Gods. The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega mentioned in the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... be so ample as a monosyllable is sometimes. If it had been Harry's object to escape from a tragic or sensational situation he had achieved it triumphantly. The question was no longer who should have Blent, but where they should have dinner. Nothing in his manner showed that he had risked and succeeded in a hazardous ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... for her bonnet and shawl, and joined him. They had reached the summit of the hill before either of them broke silence, and then Oriana mechanically made some commonplace remark about the beauty of the western sky. He replied with a monosyllable, and sat down upon a moss-covered rock. She plucked a few wild-flowers, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... The monosyllable told her sensitive ear that while he admitted her consideration in going on with the subject, he was willing to recognize that there was no more to say, and have done with it. She gathered up her scruples and repugnances in a firm grasp. She would not let him throw his own ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... on; there were dinners and dances, there were laughter and light speech. Jim might merely answer her half-timid, half-confident "Good-morning" with only a jerk of his head; he might eat his breakfast in silence, and accord to Julia's brief outline of dinner or evening engagements only a scowling monosyllable. Yet the day proceeded, there was the baby to visit, a dressmaker's appointment to keep, luncheon and the afternoon's plans to be gotten through, and then there was the evening again, and Jim and herself dressing in adjoining rooms in utter silence, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... monosyllable voiced disillusionment. With a partial return to the academic calm of his normal life Bernard Graves candidly told himself that the actual basis of his resentment against Shelby was trivial; that the editor's outlook ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... of subscribed shares represented by those present as six hundred and eleven, Garnet explained that besides his own subscription he represented one of fifteen shares and another of ten for two ladies, and Champion unintentionally uttered a lurid monosyllable as Shotwell stuck him under the leg with a pin. They were the shares, Garnet added, that General Halliday ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... familiar abbreviation, Scup. But to the excursionists and fishermen of New York he is known only as Porgy, or Paugie, a form as obviously derived from the last syllable of his Indian name as the emphatic "siree" of our greatest orators is from the modest monosyllable "sir." Porgy seems to be the accepted form of the word; but letters of the old, unphonetic kind are poor guides to pronunciation. And a beautiful, clean-scaled fish is Porgy,—whose g, by-the-by, as I learned from a funny man in the heterogeneous crowd, is pronounced "hard, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Old Testament; and its lines are made of short English words like the short Roman swords. The first line of one of his finest poems, for instance, runs, "I have lived long enough to have seen one thing, that love hath an end." In that sentence only one small "e" gets outside the monosyllable. Through all his interminable tragedies, he was ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... she returned, adding quietly, "as you've seen." And when I had verified this assumption with a monosyllable, she continued, "He's an 'available,' but I should hate to ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... period is that of MODERN ENGLISH, or the period of lost inflections. E.g. stones, care, will, bind, help, each being a monosyllable. Modern English extends from A.D. 1500 to the present time. It has witnessed comparatively few grammatical changes, but the vocabulary of our language has been vastly increased by additions from the classical languages. Vowels, too, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... That little monosyllable was all he uttered; its tone seemed cold and unconcerned to an ear like Peter Hovenden's; and yet there was in it the stifled outcry of the poor artist's heart, which he compressed within him like a man holding ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... scorn. For heretofore, Henry Phipps had been an humble worshipper. She permitted several of his condescending remarks to pass without notice, but finally when he answered a question put by another groom with a bored monosyllable, the girl flew to the ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... up his monosyllable; "it's quite as important as all that. I don't wish to be overheard. Besides," she added with nonchalant irrelevance, "I do ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... sad, and she is so patient and so energetic," said Grace, using her favourite monosyllable in ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Harry and George, among these young people, then; and I dare say the reason why General Lambert chose to apply the monosyllable "Bo" to the mother of his daughters, was as a rebuke to that good woman for the inveterate love of sentiment and propensity to match-making which belonged to her (and every other woman in the world whose heart is worth a fig); and as a hint that Madam Lambert was a goose ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... accompanying grief. Perdita's name was for ever joined with his; their conjugal felicity was celebrated even by the authentic testimony of facts. They were continually together, nor could the unfortunate Evadne read the monosyllable that designated his name, without, at the same time, being presented with the image of her who was the faithful companion of all his labours and pleasures. They, their Excellencies, met her eyes in each line, mingling an evil potion ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... with the malformation, before described, shocked the propriety of the breakfast-table by a loud utterance of three words, of which the two last were "Webster's Unabridged," and the first was an emphatic monosyllable.—Beg pardon,—he added,—forgot myself. But let us have an English dictionary, if we are to have any. I don't believe in clipping the coin of the realm, Sir! If I put a weathercock on my house, Sir, I want it to tell which way the wind blows up aloft,—off from the prairies to the ocean, or ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... few that love requires. The poorest logic is the soundest reasoning—if it conclude for him. The visits to the parsonage were, meanwhile, continued. Upon my return, I gained no news. I asked if all were well there, and the simple, monosyllable, "Yes," answered with unusual quickness and decision, was all that escaped the doctor's lips. He did not wish to be interrogated further, and was displeased. I perceived this and was silent. For some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... said no more, but the little monosyllable was more eloquent than any disclaimer. Lady Hayes flushed, and knitted ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... she sung in a low undervoice, not looking up. Beyond her in the shade Daddy John mended a piece of harness. Daddy John was not a garrulous person and when she paused in her sewing to speak to him, he answered with a monosyllable. It was one of the old man's self-appointed duties to watch over her when the others were absent. If he did not talk much to his "Missy" he kept a vigilant eye upon her, and to-day he squatted in the shade beside her because the doctor and David had gone after antelope ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... also, and a man of great courage. Stout and hardy and of great courage at home, that is; in his own mind and heart, soul and body, that is. Young Captain Self-denial was a perfect hero at saying No! and at saying No! to himself. It is a proverb that there is nothing so difficult as to say that monosyllable. And the proverb is Scripture truth if you try to say No! to yourself. It takes the very stoutest of hearts, the most noble, the most manly, the most soldierly, and the most saintly of hearts to say No! to itself, and to keep on saying No! to itself to the bitter end of every trial ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... that the monosyllable, which matched the other's in curtness, was not at all the reply he had intended. "Thank you—yours," he amended; and a short pause followed, in which ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... they comes to take up the nets in the morning, why then I think I may hold on; but if so be they waits, why they'll then find me dead as a fish," said Smallbones, who seldom ventured above a monosyllable, and whose language if not considered as pure English, was certainly amazingly Saxon; and then Smallbones began to reflect, whether it was not necessary that he should forgive Mr Vanslyperken before he died, and his pros and cons ended with his ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... monosyllable indicated as much anger as the young man might have expected gratitude. ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
