"Polysyllabic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manner which is very much to the detriment of the latter, the Englishman, on the other hand, launches the most fiery denunciations against those of his countrymen who are responsible for Indian policy. Their want of enterprise is characterised by the appalling polysyllabic adjective "hebetudinous," which it is perhaps as well to explain means obtuse or dull, and they are told that they "are infected with the Babu spirit, and cannot see ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... shortness of Saxon words becomes a reason for their greater force. One qualification, however, must not be overlooked. A word which in itself embodies the most important part of the idea to be conveyed, especially when that idea is an emotional one, may often with advantage be a polysyllabic word. Thus it seems more forcible to say, "It is magnificent," than "It is grand." The word vast is not so powerful a one as stupendous. Calling a thing nasty is not so effective ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... presently see how their labours resulted. But in the first place a special feature of the situation has to be noted. The Japanese language was then undergoing a transition. In order to fit it to the Chinese ideographs for literary purposes, it was being deprived of its mellifluous polysyllabic character and reduced to monosyllabic terseness. The older words were disappearing, and with them many of the old traditions. Temmu saw that if the work of compilation was abandoned solely to princely ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... comfortable in the small harbour, and the fishing something to remember all one's life. That part of New Zealand is famous for a fish something like a bream, but with a longer snout, and striped longitudinally with black and yellow. I am ignorant of any polysyllabic prefix for it, only knowing it by its trivial and local appellation of the "trumpeter," from the peculiar sound it makes when out of water. But no other fish out of the innumerable varieties which I have sampled in all parts of the world could ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... the cuckoo which has ousted the legitimate nest-holder, The whistle of the railway guard dispatching the train to the inevitable collision, The maiden's monosyllabic reply to a polysyllabic proposal, The fundamental note of the last trump, which is presumably D natural; All of these are sounds to rejoice in, yea, to let your very ribs re-echo with: But better than all of them is the absolutely last chord of the apparently inexhaustible ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... hexameters, which, whatever cavilling critics may say, are delightfully adapted for epic narrative in any fairly polysyllabic language. And Swedish, which is the most sonorous of all Germanic tongues, and full of Gothic strength, produces the most delectable effects in the long, rolling line of slow-marching dactyls and spondees. The tempered ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen |
