"Pronoun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... personal pronoun is used—in the first person only to obviate ambiguity in the sentence. Women use it more frequently than men. In the second person it is used to express emphasis, great familiarity, impertinence, or rebuke. The last two uses are frequent. Ordinarily the honorifics and the construction ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... beginning of the thirteenth century, this dialect had thrown off most of the old inflexions, and had become almost as flexionless as the English of the present day. Let us note a few of the more prominent changes. —The first personal pronoun Ic or Ich loses the guttural, and becomes I. —The pronouns him, them, and whom, which are true datives, are used either as datives or as objectives. —The imperative plural ends in eth. "Riseth up," Chaucer makes ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... object and transferring to another object the direct statement about light implied in the word 'light,' may be answered without difficulty. The passage under discussion runs[125], 'which above this heaven, the light.' The relative pronoun with which this clause begins intimates, according to its grammatical force[126], the same Brahman which was mentioned in the previous passage, and which is here recognised (as being the same which was mentioned before) through ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... in a dilemma. My modesty (?) is at variance with my love of verity. Oh, the inconvenience of that little pronoun, I! Would that I had in the first instance imitated the wily conduct of the bald-pated invader of Britain. How complacently might I not then have vaunted in the beginning, have caracoled through the middle, and glorified myself at the conclusion ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... persons on the stage give offence in the pronunciation of the pronoun possessive MY—speaking it in all cases with the full open Y, as it would rhyme to fly, which should only be when it is put in contradistinction to thy or his, or any other pronoun possessive: ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... it grew, as it were, without attributes. The sun is called the Self of all that moves and rests (Rv. I. 115, 1), and still more frequently self becomes a mere pronoun. But Atman remained always free from mythe and worship, differing in this from the Brahman (neuter), who has his temples in India even now, and is worshipped as Brahman (masculine), together with Vishnu and Siva, and other popular gods. The idea of the Atman or ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... stragglers left behind. It was not long before the wild people seized on them and strip's them, and those that had beards they knocked their braines out, and (as I remember) did eat them; but the queen saved T. Stump, and the other boy. Stump threw himself into the river Pronoun to have drowned himself, but could not sinke; he is very full chested. The other youth shortly died. He lived with them till 1636 or 1637. His narrations are very strange and pleasant; but so many yeares since have made me almost ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... Relative Pronoun, use "who" or "which," if the meaning is "and he" or "and it," "for he" or "for it." In other cases use "that," if euphony ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... sentiment and feeling; we value it as much as any nation; but we think that it must be spoken of symbolically and indirectly. We do not consider a man egotistical, if he will only give himself a feigned name, and write of his experiences in the third person. But if he uses the personal pronoun, he is thought to be shameless. There are even people who consider it more decent to say "one feels and one thinks," than to say "I feel and I think." The thing that I most desire, in intercourse with other men and women, is that they should talk frankly of themselves, their ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Druids, the sacred name of God was Hu[132]—a name which, although it is supposed, by Bryant, to have been intended by them for Noah, will be recognized as one of the modifications of the Hebrew tetragrammaton. It is, in fact, the masculine pronoun in Hebrew, and may be considered as the symbolization of the male or generative principle in nature—a sort of modification of the system ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... me, nor had I, in any way, acquired possession of her. But as I considered her possession the only sufficient reason for the continuance of my existence, I called her, in my reveries, mine. It may have been that I would not have been obliged to confine the use of this possessive pronoun to my reveries had I confessed the state of my ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... invidious comparisons beyond all tolerable bounds is the generic and vague nature proper to language and its terms. The first personal pronoun "I" is a concept so thoroughly universal that it can accompany any experience whatever, yet it is used to designate an individual who is really definable not by the formal selfhood which he shares with every other thinker, but by the special events that make up his life. Each man's memory embraces ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the involved and inverted sentences of 'Paradise Lost'; the linking of the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence—all this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and a source of unflagging delight. How I ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... you,' appears to apply the 'you' to those only who were out of bed and in Covent Garden Market on the night of conflagration, instead of the audience or the discerning public at large, all of whom are intended to be comprised in that comprehensive and, I hope, comprehensible pronoun. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... abrupt turn, that retrenching all superfluities of pronoun and conjunction, and marching at once upon the meaning of the sentence, had in it a military and Spartan significance, which betrayed how difficult it often is for a man to forget that he had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... his cigar leisurely: "We always manage to provide Captain Swendon with a boat when he wants it. We kin obleege him," with a slight stress on the pronoun. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... time to take stock of them. Fortunately she was induced at this time to jot down some impressions of her work, and these, which were never published, give the best idea of the remarkable change which had been wrought in the life and habits of Okoyong. It will be noticed that she does not use the pronoun "I." Whenever she gave a statement of her work she always wrote "we," as if she were a co-worker with a ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... the feeling that the first personal pronoun is being overworked, I remind you that this is more a confession than a lecture. You cannot confess without ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... my!" exclaimed Mrs. Talbot, her possessive pronoun stumbling and fainting away without reaching its object. "Must we have that bear in the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... close this record of personal experiences, written perhaps more to amuse and satisfy myself than for the perusal of others; more especially as this being a personal Diary I have been obliged by force of circumstances to use the pronoun "I" more than I would otherwise wish. The war seems played out so far as one can judge. It appears to be becoming now a guerilla warfare of small actions and runaway fights at long ranges; these furnish of course no new experiences or discoveries ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... boyhood, the origin and fitness of his nickname were apparent after two minutes' conversation with him. Buzz Werner was called Buzz not only because he talked too much, but because he was a braggart. His conversation bristled with the perpendicular pronoun, and his pet phrase was, "I says ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... room twirl under his feet. How one little pronoun can destroy a man! In his agony he saw Mrs. Kent and Kathleen sit down on the big couch, and painfully found his way to ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... take a pronominal prefix to denote the gender, i.e. the third personal pronoun, u (masculine), ka (feminine), i (diminutive). The great majority of inanimate nouns are feminine, and all abstract nouns. The sun (day), ka sngi, is feminine, the moon (month), u b'nai, is masculine. Sometimes the word ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... say on returning home, "I have framed such or such an act that will tie the hands of faction for ever; I have repressed this or that riot; I have, in short, saved the country by proposing such or such a measure for the public good, and by having it adopted." The pronoun I so agreeably tickles the ear of a man ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... every day. The morale severe of the Jansenists he strongly reprobated in discourse, and no person receded further from it in practice: but he was an admirer of the style of the gentlemen of Port Royal, and spoke with praise of their general practice of avoiding the insertion of the pronoun I in their writings. He thought the Bible should not be read by very young persons, or by those who were wholly uninformed: even the translation of the whole divine office of the church he thought should not be given to the faithful ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... dei tethnanai. Pater's translation: "whither he must go, to die." The pronoun should be first person—"whither I must go." Plato, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... reply. A local witticism past doubt—the cut-up of the place. Jack Miner, as I saw it, might own Pelee Island, Lake Erie or the District of Columbia, but no man's pronoun of possession has any business relation to a flock of wild geese, the same being about the wildest things we have left. I recalled the crippled goose which the farmer's boy chased around a hay-stack for the better ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... got into the personal-pronoun stage of human intercourse, there is but one thing left for the unfortunate third in the party to do. Yes, now that I think of it, there are two roles to be played. The usual conception of the part is to turn marplot—to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... you." Austin slightly stressed the pronoun. He had taken a reasonless liking for the young man, who from the first had smiled into his frowning face, and treated him as he treated others. Or perhaps Austin liked him because, although the Boy did a good deal of "gassin' with the gang," he had never hung about at clean-ups. At all ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... even the reviewers were ignorant of the authorship of "The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy" (1753) and "The Invisible Spy" (1755). Twenty years later, in fact, a writer in the "Critical Review" used the masculine pronoun to refer to the author of "Betsy Thoughtless." It is quite certain that Mrs. Haywood spent the closing years of her life in great obscurity, for no notice of her death appeared in any one of the usual magazines. She continued to publish until the end, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... is almost indispensable, with us, to impunity, although the mask can deceive no one, the journalists notoriously making their prints subservient to their private passions and private interests, and being impersonal only in the use of the imperial pronoun. The representative, too, in America, is privileged to teach, in virtue of his collective character, by the very men who hold the extreme and untenable doctrine of instruction! It is the fashion to say in America, that ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... separation implies sorrow. They were near enough to watch His every movement as He "kneeled down" and "fell on His face to the ground" They were near enough to hear the passionate cry of love and agony, "O, My Father." This is the only time we know of His using this personal pronoun in prayer to His Father. He thus showed the intensity of His feeling, and longing for that sympathy and help which the Father alone ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... from something your sister said; she isn't over fond of him, is she?" Nellie inquired, with a light laugh and a mischievous glance at the averted face on the pillow in the berth, as she emphasized the pronoun. "Come," she added, presently, "let us lay out the things we are likely to need during the voyage, and put our state-room in order, for there is no knowing how soon we may be attacked by the dread enemy ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... from me, Dora. Please don't," I said in Yiddish, with the least bit of authority. "I love thee. I love thee, Dora," I raved, for the first time addressing her in the familiar pronoun ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... at its height, hourly bulletins were posted in factories and workshops, and people meeting in the streets asked each other, "How is he?" without deeming it necessary to supply an antecedent to the pronoun. It was grammatically as well as spiritually a case of ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... apology is needed for the constant recurrence of the personal pronoun in these pages, let it be said that the recital of personal incidents, without circumlocution, necessarily ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... was delighted with the idea, and undoubtedly Dora would be equally delighted to receive a letter from him. It would show her that he remembered his promise, and also give her a chance to note his progress. Since Smith had learned that a capital letter is used to designate the personal pronoun, and that a period is placed at such points as one's breath gives out, he had begun to think himself something ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... disappears. Mr. Grout says: "So strong is the influence of this inclination to concord produced by the repetition of initials, that it controls the distinction of number, and quite subordinates that of gender, and tends to mould the pronoun after the likeness of the initial element of the noun to which it refers; as, Izintombi zake zi ya hamba, 'The daughters of him they do walk.'" These characteristics appear in the formation of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... forgiven much for having invented Christmas. What does it matter that a great poet and philosopher urges "the abandonment of the masculine pronoun in allusions to the First or Fundamental Energy"? Theology is not saddled upon pronouns; the best doctrine is but three words, God is Love. Love, or kindness, is fundamental energy enough to satisfy any brooder. And Christmas Day means the birth of a child; ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... growth (brimhana)—this being the meaning of the root brimh (from which 'Brahman' is derived). Of this Brahman, thus already known (on the basis of etymology), the origination, sustentation, and reabsorption of the world are collateral marks. Moreover, in the Taitt. text under discussion, the relative pronoun—which appears in three forms, (that) 'from whence,' (that) 'by which,' (that) 'into which'—refers to something which is already known as the cause of the origin, and so on, of the world. This previous knowledge rests on the Ch. passage, 'Being only this was in the beginning,' &c., up ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... long letters, recommending that one shd take occasion of ye Bishops' charges, under wh people writhed so much, to make one's defence, show that one was not so unsound as one seemed, and plead for sympathy. [Footnote: This fondness for the use of the indefinite pronoun very much characterised the Puseyite dialect, as I have somewhere read that it did the Jansenist. The phase which it marked may he seen fully developed in the tract 'On Reserve,' by Isaac Williams.] I was unwilling to leave what I was ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... but vitiated, all unconsciously, by many a scanning line. Setting up correctness, that humble merit of prose, as the central literary excellence, he is really a less correct writer than he may seem, still with an imperfect mastery of the relative pronoun. It might have been foreseen that, in the rotations of mind, the province of poetry in prose would find its assertor; and, a century after Dryden, amid very different intellectual needs, and with the need therefore ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... not read it. It is not meant for me." Then, after a pause, "At least I will only read this page which is open, and then look at the beginning to see whose it is; for, you know, I may need to send it back to him." The back she had seen vanish round the Far Away Turn demanded the masculine pronoun. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... "Methodist Know-Nothing Preachers," I discover that you are still the man you were at Madison, in 1847: you have a great deal to say about yourself, and make free use of the personal pronoun I! I advise—I believe—I am satisfied—I will not agree—I warn and caution—I fear, or I apprehend, etc. To parse the different sentences in your partisan harangue syntactically, little else is necessary but to understand the first person singular, and to repeat the rule as often ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... him only in symbolic words, designating him by some periphrasis: Pharaoh, "Pirui-Aui," the Double Palace, "Pruiti," the Sublime Porte, His Majesty,* the Sun of the two lands, Horus master of the palace, or, less ceremoniously, by the indeterminate pronoun "One." ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to ridicule; and Alfred Bunn, a few years after, surpassed even Marryatt in his flippant falsehood. Mr. Arthur Cunynghame, a Canadian officer, entertained his friends, in 1850, with a dainty volume, in which the first personal pronoun averaged one hundred to a page, and the manner of which was as stiff as the ramrods of his regiment. Of our more recent judges, the best remembered are Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley who gave to the world the details of her private experiences,—Mr. Chambers, of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... school-master, will cease to be a private adventurer under Socialism, concerned chiefly with the taking of a showy house and the use of a showy conveyance; he or she will become part of one of the greatest of all the public services in the coming time, the service of public health. Either he—I use this pronoun and imply its feminine—will be on the staff of one of the main hospitals (which will not be charities, but amply endowed public institutions), or he will be a part of a district staff, working in conjunction with a nursing organization, a cottage hospital, an isolation ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... pronoun out of it, strictly and austerely, desiring neither self-glorification nor self-advertisement. Yet his mind and attitude towards life seasoned and tempered the whole, giving it vitality and force. This was neither a "drum-and-trumpet history" designed to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... instructed in the use of the indefinite pronoun "one" as giving a refined and elegant touch to literary efforts, Rebecca painstakingly rewrote her composition on solitude, giving it all the benefit of Miss Dearborn's suggestion. It then appeared in the following form, which hardly ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... show you things to come." (John 16:13) The spirit of truth here mentioned is the holy spirit, the spirit of God, the invisible power operating upon the minds of those who are in covenant relationship with God. Jesus here used the masculine pronoun in speaking of the ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... by "we." She had never used the plural pronoun before, and I thought of that odious woman ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... meaning in Venetian, You! Heigh! To talk in Cio ciappa is to assume insolent familiarity or unbounded good fellowship with the person addressed. A Venetian says Cio a thousand times in a day, and hails every one but his superior in that way. I think it is hardly the Italian pronoun, but rather a contraction of Veccio (vecchio), Old fellow! It is common with all classes of the people: parents use it in speaking to their children, and brothers and sisters call one mother Cio. It is a salutation between friends, who cry out, Cio! ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... him eat," said Missy, smiling. By the pronoun "him," she meant to call attention to ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... own marriage. The following substance of a letter, written it is true by Wolsey, but dictated by his master, applies in every detail as well to Henry's own case as to Margaret's. If we change the pronoun, substitute London for Rome, king for queen, Katharine for Angus, all that he causes Wolsey to say becomes as applicable to himself ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... word either as a singular or plural, but not in the same sentence to do both: here, however, he was tied {121} to the singular, for, wanting a rhyme to contents, the nominative to presents must be singular, and that nominative was the pronoun of contents. Since, therefore, the plural die and the singular it could not both be referable to the same noun contents, by silently substituting die for dies, MR. COLLIER has blinded his reader and wronged his author. The purport of the passage ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... is the possessive pronoun "his"; and [Hebrew: אביו], Abiu (which we read "Abif") means "of my father's." Its full meaning, as connected with the name of Khūrūm, no doubt is, "formerly one of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... kinds, and all poetry falls into one or the other of these classes. ger asks: Which two? Brage answers: Diction and meter. What diction is used in poetry? There are three sorts of poetic diction. Which? One is to name everything by its own name; another is to name it with a pronoun, but the third sort of diction is called kenning (a poetical periphrasis or descriptive name); and this sort is so managed that when we name Odin, or Thor or Tyr, or any other of the asas or elves, we add to their name a reference to some other asa, or we make ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... very obscure. I have followed Nilakantha in translating it thus. The sense seems to be, that when crows hover behind an army, that is an auspicious sign; while it is an inauspicious sign if they are seen ahead. I am not sure that Nilakantha is right in taking the pronoun ye as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit. The very modesty which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some utterly insignificant and unworthy thing; a thing that has no business even to be, except in that utter privacy which is ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... be whether "most busy" applies to "sweet thoughts" or to Ferdinand, and whether the pronoun "it" refers to the act of forgetting or to "labour(s);" and I must confess that, to me, the whole significancy of the passage depends upon the idea conveyed of the mind being "most busy" while the body is being exerted. Every man with a spark of imagination must many ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... came straight from the bon Dieu? But yes, I am serious. Et toi?" he added sharply using for the first time the familiar pronoun, "are you afraid I will beat you like ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... you have no right to make any one else say words he did not say. If you leave out part of the passage, show the omission by dots; and in such a case, if you have to supply words of your own, as for example a noun in place of a pronoun, use square brackets, thus []. On the following page are examples of a ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... such as is not adopted in ordinary conversation. The other words printed in italics were so marked because, though good and genuine English, they are not the phraseology of common conversation either in the word put in apposition, or in the connexion by the genitive pronoun. Men in general would have said, 'but that was a circumstance they paid no attention to, or took no notice of;' and the language is, on the theory of the preface, justified only by the narrator's being the Vicar. Yet if any ear could suspect, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... remove such unbelief from the mind of Noah and the righteous, he repeats with stress the pronoun, "And I, behold, I do bring." Afterward he clearly adds that he will destroy all flesh that is under heaven and in the earth; for he excludes here the fishes whose realm is widened by the waters. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... pleasant figure in black, and she addressed him in the third person. "If Mr. Spinrobin will please to come down," she said, "Mr. Skale is waiting. Mr. Skale is always quite punctual." She always spoke thus, in the third person; she never used the personal pronoun if it could be avoided. She preferred the name direct, it seemed. And as Spinrobin passed her on the way out, she observed further, looking straight into his eyes as she said it: "and should Mr. Spinrobin have need of anything, that," indicating it, "is the bell that rings in the housekeeper's ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... danger," he asserted, using a pronoun not intended to convey politeness, but—Eastern of the East—counteracting that by courtesy of manner. "Do you ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... person springs to what belongs to—their life!" said Kenneth, using that wrong little pronoun that we shall never ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of the editorial we, which at the fag-end of passages sometimes dropped into I. [Upon my remarking upon this to Rossetti he remembered incidentally that a similar confounding of the singular and plural number of the pronoun produces marvellously suggestive effects in a very different work, Macbeth, where the kingly we is tripped up by the guilty I ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... eternal tendency in men as wholly indifferent to me. If I understand you aright, you have flung away the sanctions of orthodoxy. There is no other in the way. Treat words as they deserve. You'—and the speaker laid an emphasis on the pronoun which for the life of him he could not help making sarcastic—'you will always have ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... expedient to resort to the personal pronoun and therefore this final chapter is to be devoted to "you and me." There are facts you may want to know for sure and one of them is whether or not I live up ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... were many and yet but one. Though plural they were singular. The subjects of impersonal verbs, they represented the pronoun in such expressions as: it rains; it thunders. "It" was Elohim. Already among nomad Semites monotheism had begun. Yet with this distinction. Each tribe had separate sets of Its that guided, guarded, and scourged. Omnipresent but not omnipotent, any humiliation to the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who have reported them. They do not, for example, say "me is"; their natural reply to "are you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing sweetly and neatly, will have nothing but the nominative pronoun. "Lift I up and let I see it raining," she bids; and told that it does not rain resumes, "Lift I up and let I see ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Edinburgh. I got on mighty quick with that chapter - about five days of the toughest kind of work. God forbid I should ever have such another pirn to wind! When I invent a language, there shall be a direct and an indirect pronoun differently declined - then writing would ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... county's provincialisms. The book, publicly printed in 1853, was, of course, superseded by Mr. Parish's admirable collection, but Mr. Cooper showed the way. One of his examples of the use of the West Sussex pronoun en, un, or um might be noted, especially as it involves another quaint confusion of sex. En and un stand for him, her or it; um for them. Thus, "a blackbird flew up and her killed 'n"; that is to say, he ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... it left Dr. Bonar's hands. Besides the change of metaphors, the first personal pronoun singular is changed to the plural. There was strength, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... in future," said Longueville, "whenever you make use of the personal pronoun feminine, I am to understand ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... two clear kinds,— One that, by virtue of a half-grown brain, Lives in a silly world of his own making, A bubble, blown by himself, in which he flits And dizzily bombinates, chanting 'I, I, I,' For there is nothing in the heavens above Or the earth, or hell beneath, but goes to swell His personal pronoun. Bring him some dreadful news His dearest friend is burned to death,—You'll see The monstrous insect strike an attitude And shape himself into one capital I, A rubric, with red eyes. You'll see him use The coffin for his pedestal, hear ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... which I put into David Claridge's mouth was not Quaker speech. For instance, they would not have it that a Quaker would say, "Thee will go with me"—as though they were ashamed of the sweet inaccuracy of the objective pronoun being used in the nominative; but hundreds of times I have myself heard Quakers use "thee" in just such a way in England and America. The facts are, however, that Quakers differ extensively in their habits, and there grew up in England among the Quakers ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... are accustomed to them: scones, baps or bannocks with marmalade, finnan-haddie or kippered herrings for breakfast; tea,—of course we never touch coffee in the morning" (here Francesca started with surprise); "porridge, and we like them well boiled, please" (I hope she noted the plural pronoun; Salemina did, and blanched with envy); "minced collops for luncheon, or a nice little black-faced chop; Scotch broth, peas brose or cockyleekie soup, at dinner, and haggis now and then, with a cold shape for dessert. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... a confounded jackass!" said Mr Sidsby, without giving a local habitation or a name to the personal pronoun he. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... first person singular of the personal pronoun, and not until comparatively late in life did I learn to use "I" and "me" in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... The pronoun "you" has its equivocal aspects. Her expression, while marked enough, threw no clear light. Cope took the entire onus ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... nominative[1] (if one can give any name to a universal case), as far as nouns, adjectives, and articles are concerned. Their pronouns offer the sole survival of declension by case endings. Here France, the runner-up, is a trifle slow in the possession of a real, live dative case of the pronoun (acc. le, la, les; dat. lui, leur). England wins by a neck with one universal oblique case (him, her, them). This insidious suggestion is not meant to endanger the entente cordiale; even perfidious Albion would not convict the French nation of arrested development on the side-issue ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... with privacy.[365] Addressing Jesus by the title he himself bore, and which he regarded as one of honor and respect, he said: "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."[366] Whether his use of the plural pronoun "we" indicates that he was sent by the Sanhedrin, or by the society of Pharisees—the members of which were accustomed to so speak, as representatives of the order—or was employed in the rhetorical sense as indicating himself alone, is of little importance. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... certainly think they would perish," said Mrs. Breen, hazarding the pronoun, with a woman's confidence that her interlocutor would apply ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... may change their forms to indicate some change in sense or use, as, is, are; was, were; who, whose, whom; farmer, farmer's; woman, women. This is called /inflection. The inflection of a noun, adjective, or pronoun is called its /declension, that of a ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... word for metrical reasons, and sometimes, in the interests of clearness, ademonstrative or personal pronoun, or even a proper name ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... thee, Giles," said Stephen, changing to the familiar singular pronoun. "I have oft since thought what a foolish figure I should have cut had I met thee among the Badgers, after having given leg bail because I might not brook seeing thee wedded to her. For I was sore tempted—only thou wast free, and mine indenture ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... not know why he said "Pooh!" It merely notes, apropos of Miss Dickenson's last words, that the first person plural pronoun, used as a dual by a lady to a gentleman, sometimes makes hay of the thirdness of their respective persons singular. But if it had done so, this time, "Pooh!" was a weak counter-blast ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... roots of one or two syllables, could all be taken apart and put together like a piece of machinery. That the principles were fixed, philosophical, and regular, and that, although the language had some glaring defects, as the want of a feminine pronoun, and many redundancies, they were admirably adapted to describe geographical and meteorological scenes. That it was a language of woods and wilds. That it failed to convey knowledge, only because it had apparently never been applied to it. And that those philologists who had represented ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... crushed," returned Armitage absent-mindedly, in English; then, remembering himself, he repeated the affirmation in French, changing the pronoun. ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... over, to an imaginary hearer. That hearer is as present to me, always has been, as Stevenson's "friend of the children" who takes the part of the enemy in their solitary games of war. His criticism (though he is a most composite double-sexed creature who should not have a designating personal pronoun) is all-revealing. For talking it out instantly brings to light the weak spots in one's recollection. "What was it the little crocodile said?" "Just how did the little pig get into his house?" "What was that link in the chain ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... the pronoun, and, as Flora walked out of the room, she went up to Norman, who had been resting his ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... pronouns are connected with other words, or when they become subjects or objects of verbs, the first syllable only is used, or pronounced. In the third person of verbs the pronoun is entirely omitted. ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... Nigritian tongues. A New Testament, translated into this language, would or could be read by a third of the tribes of Central Africa. Asking my negro master what I was, he replied, "Kerdee," which means kafer ("infidel") in Bornou, the negro mistaking my individual self for the pronoun I, which is oomah. I laughed heartily at ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1 Thess. iv. 15-17). It was the frequent use of the pronoun "we" that had confused them—we who remain, we who are alive. The Thessalonians had inferred from this that the second coming of Christ would take place in their day. Hence, to correct this impression Paul thus writes in his second epistle. The two verses preceding the text show us Paul's ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... slightest pretensions to delicacy of sentiment, or liberality of mind. I should expect to find this vulgar prejudice only among the downright dames, who talk of my good man, and lay a particular emphasis on the possessive pronoun my; who understand literally, and expect that their spouses should adhere punctually to every coarse article of our strange ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... been so accustomed to regard Jack Frost as a member of the male sex that they could not get out of the habit. So they continually used the masculine pronoun, although the result was ludicrous. Visitors used to be quite electrified when Rilla referred casually to "Jack and his kitten," or told Goldie sternly, "Go to your mother and get ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... said Missy, with a smile. The pronoun him she used as a reminder of her intimacy with Nekhludoff. Kolosoff went on in a loud voice and lively manner to give the contents of the article against trial by jury which had aroused his indignation. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... languages there is no separate word for eye, hand, arm, or other parts and organs of the body, but the word is found with an incorporated or attached pronoun signifying my hand, my eye; your hand, your eye; his hand, his eye, etc., as the case may be. If the Indian, in naming these parts, refers to his own body, he says my; if he refers to the body of the person to whom he is speaking, he says your, &c. If an Indian should ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a slight emphasis on the pronoun. "We rather pride ourselves on making things comfortable and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... literature must include this consideration. If we are not in possession of the exact original of a translation, our conclusions must nearly always be discounted by the possibility that not only the subject matter but the comment on that subject matter came from the French or Latin source. The pronoun of the first person must be regarded with a slight suspicion. "I" may refer to the Englishman, but it may also refer to his predecessor who made a translation or a compilation in French or Latin. "Compilation" ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... is in the use of the word you as a singular pronoun that the popularising of what were once supreme distinctions is most markedly illustrated. This speaking of a single individual in the plural was originally an honour given only to the highest—was the reciprocal of the imperial "we" assumed by such. Yet now, by being ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... said quietly. She did not use the word "they." Those others did not count as far as she was concerned. Her use of the pronoun sounded significantly ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... said, "if I protest against your using the pronoun you did. No one will ever be able to associate the word 'defeat' with you. I do not understand your philosophy; but I know it is far better than mine. While I admit the truth of your words that I do professionally shut my eyes as far as possible to all the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... requires special attention. The shrug is a gesture used by the Latin race for expressing a multitude of things, both objectively and subjectively. It is a language of itself. It is, as circumstances require, a noun, adverb, pronoun, verb, adjective, preposition, interjection, conjunction. Yet it does not supersede the spoken language. It comes in rather when spoken words are useless, to convey intensity of meaning or delicacy. It is not taught, but ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... the Amiable Amanuensis and Adaptable Author, "you read your stuff aloud with emphasis and discretion, and I'll chuck in the ornamental part. Excuse me, that's my drink," I say, with an emphasis on the possessive pronoun, for the Soldierly Scribe, in a moment of absorption, was about to apply that process to my liquor. He apologises handsomely, and commences his recital. In the absence of a gong,—one ought never to travel ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... every good quality of masculine and feminine character, as also the impersonal life Principle. It is therefore proper to use the masculine, feminine or neuter pronoun when referring to Deity. As different phases of the one Love, we see manifested, the strong, all-protecting, intelligent father-love, the tender, restful, patient mother-love, the innocent, confiding, trustful child-love, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... compositions, I suppose, a personal narrative is the most wearying to the writer, if not to the reader; egotistical talk may be pleasant enough, but, commit it to paper, the fault carries its own punishment. The recurrence of that everlasting first pronoun becomes a real stumbling-block to one at last. Yet there is no evading it, unless you cast your story into a curt, succinct diary; to carry this off effectively, requires a succession of incidents, more varied ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... showed a slight streak of frivolity. Toward the end of the meal—the ice was being served—the elderly baronial councillor once more arose to his feet to propose in a second speech that from now on they should all address each other by the familiar pronoun "Du." Thereupon he embraced Innstetten and gave him a kiss on the left cheek. But this was not the end of the matter for him. On the contrary, he went on to recommend, in addition to the "Du," a set of more intimate names and titles for use in the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the personal pronoun be merely understood as attaching me to that band of thinkers, "of all countries, nations, and languages," whose pupil and creature I am—is simply that of science, of the organised knowledge of the race. It is drawn from the whole of experience, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I use the masculine pronoun in speaking of both the young birds; but I knew nothing as to the sex of either of them, though I came finally to believe that one was a male and ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... shooting and killing, the fortifying and ditching, the sweeping of the streets, the drilling, the standing guard, picket and videt, and who drew (or were to draw) eleven dollars per month and rations, and also drew the ramrod and tore the cartridge. Pardon me should I use the personal pronoun "I" too frequently, as I do not wish to be called egotistical, for I only write of what I saw as an humble private in the rear rank in an infantry regiment, commonly called "webfoot." Neither do I propose to make this a connected ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... to explain to the uninitiated reader that the terms "he" and "she" are indifferently used at sea, in reference to craft, but when the masculine pronoun is applied it is understood to refer more especially to the commanding officer of the vessel; while the pronoun "she" refers to the ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... more correctly than the ordinary peasant, others use the Gaelic idioms continually and substitute 'he' or 'she' for 'it,' as the neuter pronoun is not found ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... children had in addressing one another changed the homely singular pronoun to the more polite, if less grammatical, second person plural. The boy laughed, nodded his head, and said, ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one could find comfort in the Bible,' Esther went on, with a tender thrill in the voice that uttered the beloved pronoun. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the "Great-Tree People,"—literally, "those of the great log." It is derived from karonta, a fallen tree or piece of timber, with the suffix kowa or kona, great, added, and the verb-forming pronoun prefixed. In the singular number it becomes Niharontakowa, which would be understood to mean "He is an Oneida." The name, it is said, was given to the nation because when Dekanawidah and Hiawatha first ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... hirundo (swallow) from aer (air). One had to know the meaning of the word before one searched for it! The grammars were written in a barbarous Latin of inconceivably difficult style. Can any man now readily understand the following definition of "pronoun," taken from a book intended {664} for beginners, published in 1499? "Pronomen . . . significat substantiam seu entitatem sub modo conceptus intrinseco permanentis seu habitus et quietis sub ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... pronoun was so pregnant with surprise, contempt, anger, and indignation! "Yes, it is I, your ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... the primary room the other day," Bernice began in explanation. "The teacher asked him what 'cat' was. I guess he was not paying attention. He looked all around, and finally said he did not know. She told him it was a noun. 'Then,' he said, after some deliberation, 'kitten must be a pronoun.'" ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... gets in the front where all can see— "Now turn the spot-light right on me," He says, and sings in tones sonorous His own sweet halleluiah chorus. Refrain and verse are both the same— The pronoun I or his own name. He trumpets his worth with such windy tooting That louder it sounds than cowboys shooting. This man's a nuisance wherever he goes, For the world soon tires of the chap who blows. Whether mighty in station or hoer of corn, Unwelcome's ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... autou Herodiados] for [Greek: tes thygatros autes tes Herodiados]. Here a first copyist left out [Greek: tes] as being a repetition of the last syllable of [Greek: autes], and afterwards a second attempted to improve the Greek by putting the masculine pronoun for the feminine ([Greek: AUTOU] for [Greek: AUTES]). The consequence was hardly to ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... who was crucified. That the women as well as the soldiers were present at the descent of this angel, appears not only from there being nobody else, by whom these uncommon circumstances could have been related, but also by the pronoun personal ye, inserted in the original Greek, which in that language is never done, unless it be emphatically to mark such a distinction, or antithesis, as there was on this occasion, between them and the Roman guard. Here, however, the author ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... beg your pardon. I humbly beg your pardon, as Mary says, but I can't help laughing to think how she's outwitted us." (She was going to have said, "outwitted you," but changed the pronoun.) ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell |
