"Neuter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Terence—classically managed—as it could be done in Oxford—and well acted, would be more unbecoming the gravity of our collected wisdom, or more derogatory to the dignity of our noble "theatre," than the squalling of Italian singers, masculine, feminine, and neuter—is a question which, when I take my M.A., I shall certainly propose in convocation. Thus much I am sure of, if a classical play-bill were duly announced for the next grand commemoration, it would "draw" almost as well as the Duke; the dresses might be quite as showy, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... mumbling (23) used of wings; the word is confined to the mouth whether as a manner of eating or of speaking: crunch (28) where the frosts crunch the grass: whereas they only make it crunchable. maligns (54) used as a neuter verb without precedent, chinked (58) of light passing through a chink: and note the homophone chink, used of sound. And ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... "accidents,'' from the Latin neuter plural accidentia, casual events), the term for the grammatical changes to which words are subject in their inflections as to gender, number, tense and case. It is also used to denote a book containing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... leaves of trefoil, or clover. Others have imagined the Trinity like a triangle; or they have referred to the three qualities of space,—height, breadth, width; or of fire,—form, light, and heat; or of a noun, which has its masculine, feminine, and neuter; or of a government, consisting of king, lords, and commons; or of executive, legislative, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... old language there was no neuter gender, the gods must always appear either as female or male. For apparent reasons, in all the translations, through the pronouns and adjectives used, the more important ancient deities have all been ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... unknown criminal, absolutely perspired and fumed in pleading for the defendant; the company demurred; the orator grew urgent; wits began to smoke the case, as active verbs; the advocate to smoke, as a neuter verb; the 'fun grew fast and furious;' until at length delinquent arose, burning tears in his eyes, and confessed to an audience, (now bursting with stifled laughter, but whom he supposed to be bursting with fiery indignation,) 'Lo! I am he ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... or feminine'? This necessity for endowing inanimate though active things, such as rivers, with sex, is obviously a necessity of a stage of thought wholly unlike our own. We know that active inanimate things are sexless, are neuter; we feel no necessity to speak of them as male or female. How did the first speakers of the human race come to be obliged to call lifeless things by names connoting sex, and therefore connoting, not only activity, but also life and personality? ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... fell out betwixt the protestors and resolutioners, Mr. Blair was at London, and afterward for the most part remained neuter in that affair; for which he was subjected to some hardships; yet he never omitted any proper place or occasion for the uniting and cementing these differences, none now in Scotland being more earnest in this than he ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the Father and I." 17:3—"And this is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ." The content of saving faith includes belief in Jesus Christ equally with the Father. 10:30—"I and my Father are one." "One" is neuter, not masculine, meaning that Jesus and the Father constitute one power by which the salvation of man is secured. 2 Thess. 2:16, 17—"Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father...comfort ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... as yet been able to learn very little. With the steady progress of Phi-oo in English, however, my ignorance will no doubt as steadily disappear. I am of opinion that, as with the ants and bees, there is a large majority of the members in this community of the neuter sex. Of course on earth in our cities there are now many who never live that life of parentage which is the natural life of man. Here, as with the ants, this thing has become a normal condition of the race, and the whole of such eplacement as is necessary falls upon this special and by no ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... and accordingly lived in peace with his neighbours, whom he never pretended to frighten. Moreover, in spite of courtiers and counsellors, statecraft and politics were unknown in Yvetot; thus the king remained neuter during the various wars that raged around him, though he could bring an army of one hundred and twenty royal troops into the field. The seriousness of these disquisitions has been occasionally enlivened ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... France, and which was regarded as its most precious ornament, should, in reward of his services, be transferred to that of England.[*] Impatient also of acquiring that distinction in Europe, to which his power and opulence entitled him, he could not long remain neuter amidst the noise of arms; and the natural enmity of the English against France, as well as their ancient claims upon that kingdom, led Henry to join that alliance which the pope, Spain, and Venice had formed against the French monarch. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... great general, in ancient times, in search of glory, landed his troops on the hostile coast, and then burnt all his ships: they must conquer, or die. You have, ladies, already embarked in this design; there is no remaining neuter now; your name and undertaking are in every mouth; you must press forward and justify your cause: and justified it shall be, if you persevere; it cannot be otherwise. The benevolence you contemplate is as superior to that already in operation, as the interest of the soul is to that ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... was so imprudent as to reveal the secret, and it enabled the Protestants to raise a formidable army in defence of their religion and liberties. But the Electors of Cologne and Brandenburg, and the Elector Palatine, resolved to remain neuter. Notwithstanding this secession, the war might have been ended at once, had the confederates attacked Charles while he lay at Ratisbon with very few troops, instead of wasting time by writing a manifesto, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... services during the Revolution would far transcend the prescribed limits of this sketch. The principles of civil and religious freedom which he received in his parental, as well as in his collegiate training, would not allow him to remain neuter or indifferent, when a cruel, invading foe was trampling on the just and dearest ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... strength, it has always an advantage over its enemies; and the timid, the doubtful, or indifferent, for the most part, determine in favour of whatever wears the appearance of established authority. The people, indeed, remained perfectly neuter; but the Jacobins, the Committees of the Sections, and their dependents, might have composed a force more than sufficient to oppose the few guards which surrounded the National Palace, had not the publication of this summary outlawry at once paralyzed all ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the longer you keep the subject at all before your mind. I remember well how many long years it was before I could look into the faces of some of the difficulties and not feel quite abashed. I fairly struck my colours before the case of neuter insects. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... me one day that the neuter larvae inhabit an invisible, neutral territory, something like a little island, which is beseiged on all sides by the good and evil spirits. The larvae cannot long hold out and are soon forced into one or the other ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' Who are to be baptized? Now, notice, if I may venture upon being slightly technical for a moment, that the word 'nations' in the preceding clause is a neuter one, and that the word for 'them' in this clause is a masculine, which seems to me fairly to imply that the command 'baptizing them' does not refer to 'all nations,' but to the disciples latent among them, and to be drawn ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... 860; cowardice &c. 862; half measures. waverer, ass between two bundles of hay; shuttlecock, butterfly; wimp; doughface [obs3][U. S.]. V. be irresolute &c. adj.; hang in suspense, keep in suspense; leave "ad referendum"; think twice about, pause; dawdle &c. (inactivity) 683; remain neuter; dillydally, hesitate, boggle, hover, dacker[obs3], hum and haw, demur, not know one's own mind; debate, balance; dally with, coquet with; will and will not, chaser-balancer[obs3]; go halfway, compromise, make a compromise; be thrown off one's balance, stagger ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... [c,]apal, etc.; this obscure passage was, I think, entirely misunderstood by Brasseur. The word [c,]apal is derived from the neuter form [c,]ape of the active tin [c,]apih, I shut up or enclose, and means "that which is shut up," lo cerrado, and [c,]apibal, the active form in the next line, means "that which shuts up," i. e., gates or doors. ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... sake of correctness, particularly in an errata page, the alteration of the couplet I have just sent (half an hour ago) must take place, in spite of delay or cancel; let me see the proof early to-morrow. I found out murmur to be a neuter verb, and have been obliged to alter the line so as to make it a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... 'nugget'—pace Archbishop Trench—was a Californian importation. When speaking of a goldfield a colonist says 'on.' Thus you live 'on Bendigo,' but 'in' or 'at' Sandhurst—the latter being the new name for the old goldfield town. To 'shout' drinks has no connection with the neuter verb of dictionary English. A 'shicer' is first a mining claim which turns out to be useless, and then anything that does so. There is room for a very interesting dictionary of Australianisms. But I have no time to collect such a list. The few words which I have given will serve as an indication ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... persuasion of the greater scripturalness of episcopacy that turns the second generation of dissenting manufacturers in our busy Lancashire into churchmen? Certainly such conversions do no violence to the conscience of the proselyte, for he is intellectually indifferent, a spiritual neuter. ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... suffixes -meme and -ngo are added to neuter verbs. The first has an active meaning, the ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... Cases of neuter ants, divided into castes, with intermediate gradations (which I imagine are rare) interest me much. See "Origin" on the driver-ant, page 241 (please ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... to nouns that sex has to individuals, but while there are only two sexes, there are four genders, viz., masculine, feminine, neuter and common. The masculine gender denotes all those of the male kind, the feminine gender all those of the female kind, the neuter gender denotes inanimate things or whatever is without life, and common gender is applied to animate beings, the sex ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... natural a presumption, the Hollandish "Nieuws" occurs, as a neuter substantive, in the sense of "niewe tijding," or "nouvelles," and, of course, the English "news," as perfect as can be wished. It is true that the "Nieuws-Boek" now circulates under the modest name of "Nieuws-Papieren," or of "Nieuws-Verteller:" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... my opinion of the word, I hold it is to be taken neither in the sense of the neuter nor of the passive, but of the active, inasmuch as the word "naphal" is often used in the sense of the active, though it does not belong to the third conjugation, in which almost all transitive verbs are found. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... over in a couple of sentences. I only find Lamarck's name twice in the 1859 edition of the 'Origin,' once on p. 242, where Mr. Darwin writes: "I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck;" and again, p. 427, where Lamarck is stated to have been the first to call attention to the "very important distinction between real affinities and analogical or adaptive resemblances." How far from demonstrative is the particular case which ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the birds that are on the trees. Hail to Thee, O Author of the totality of all forms. The ONE who art alone, yet numberless through Thy extended arms: watching over all humanity when it sleeps, seeking the good of Its creatures."[87] I have used the neuter It and not He, the Egyptian idea of the highest deity was, that it was androgenic not masculine. Although it would seem that this Hymn, of which I have cited but a small portion, applied to Ammon-Ra, yet it expressly says, that: Its name ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... here an explanation of the 'battalia' of Jeremy Taylor and others? Did they, without reflecting on the matter, regard 'battalion' as a word with a Greek neuter termination? It is difficult to think they should have done so; yet more difficult to suggest any other explanation. ['Battalia' was sometimes mistaken as a plural, which indeed it was originally, the word being derived through the Italian battaglia, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the synthesis or "embrace" of the two opposed forces of expansion and contraction. Nothing whatever exists in a single entity but in virtue of its being thesis, antithesis, and synthesis and in humanity and natural life this takes the form of sex, the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter, or third, forgotten sex spoken of by Plato, which is not the absence of the life of sex, but its fulfilment and power, as the electric fire is the fulfilment and power of positive and negative in ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon |
