"Unpronounceable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... engagement into which they were entering. Some fifteen or twenty recruits being thus obtained, they were given high-sounding names, such as Mark Antony, Scipio Africanus, etc., their own barbaric appellations being too unpronounceable, and then marched down in a body to the cathedral to be baptised. Some might be Mohammedans, and the majority certainly believers in fetish, but the form of requiring their assent to a change in their religion was never gone through; and the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... The more unpronounceable of the Aztec names are shortened in many instances out of consideration for the patience of the reader; thus 'Popocatapetl' becomes 'Popo,' 'Huitzelcoatl' becomes 'Huitzel,' &c. The prayer in Chapter xxvi. is freely rendered from Jourdanet's French translation of Fray Bernardino de Sahagun's ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... the sciences there are many almost unpronounceable names—names very much resembling those of Welsh villages; and my uncle being very fond of using them, his habit of stammering was not thereby improved. In fact, there were periods in his discourse when he would finally give up and swallow his ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... towns and cities another process of replacement is going on. Its index is written large in the signs over shops and stores and clearly in the lists of professional men in the city directories and in the pay roll of the public school teachers. The unpronounceable Slavic combinations of consonants and polysyllabic Jewish patronymics are plentiful, while here and there an Italian name makes its appearance. The second generation is arriving. The sons and daughters are leaving the factory and the construction gang for the counter, the ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... beading is stylish in certain quarters—this "department" newly added just prior to my arrival. But before the beaders could begin work the goods had to be stamped, and before they could be stamped Mr. Rogers (he was middle-aged and a dear and an Italian and his name wasn't "Rogers," but some unpronounceable thing the Germans couldn't get, so it just naturally evolved into something that began with the same letter which they could pronounce) had to concoct a design. He worked in the cage at a raised end of the cutting table. He pricked the pattern through paper with a machine, at a small table ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... with an unpronounceable foreign name, had come up from New York to grace the occasion. But personally he lacked every grace himself, his fine voice being the one thing that redeemed him from utter insignificance in mind and appearance. Nevertheless he was vain beyond measure, and ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... and kept on gallantly for a couple of chapters, getting over the unpronounceable names with unexpected success, she thought, for her listener did not correct her once, and lay so still she fancied he was deeply interested. All of a sudden she was arrested in the middle of a fine paragraph by Mac, who sat bolt upright, brought both feet down with a thump, and ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... just carted Bill Glutts off in a patrol wagon," announced Andy. "The keeper of the store, a Bohemian with an unpronounceable name, went along. He declared Glutts would have to pay the bill in full, and even then he wanted him put in prison for life or beheaded, ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... unpronounceable name was probably more insane than usual this week or two back, and may get back upon his bearings by and by, but he was over the sanity-border when he shot the President. It is possible that it has taken him the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... appearance to the eye, and, what is a much greater sin in an international language, offer grave difficulties of pronunciation to speakers of many nations. Words ending with a double consonant are very frequent, e.g. nostr patr; and these will be unpronounceable for many nations, e.g. for an Italian or a Japanese. Euphony is one of the strongest of the many strong points of Esperanto. In it the principle of maximum of internationality has been applied to sounds as well as forms, ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... said, as he reverentially held the solemn symbol of his religion before her, "art thou well advised of the solemnity of the words thou art called upon to speak? If so, swear to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Swear by the Holy Symbol which I support; by the unpronounceable name of the Father, by the flesh and blood, the resurrection and the life of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesu; by the Holy Spirit; by the saving and glorious Trinity; by the goodly army of Saints and Martyrs; daughter, swear, and the blessing or the curse be with you ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... or somewhere thereabouts, I was enjoying academic life with you at Oxford; and now here I am, encamped at some unpronounceable place beyond Umbala. You won't be much the wiser for that. What do you know about Umbala? I didn't myself know that there was such a place till a month ago, when we were ordered to march up here. But one lives and learns. Marching over India has its disagreeables, of which dysentery and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... retired to give some necessary directions, Waverley seized the opportunity to ask, whether this Fergus, with the unpronounceable name, was the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... in international affairs and it did not wish to take any interest in international affairs. It certainly did not wish to be disturbed by them, and at this moment of the exciting Irish deadlock the Wilhelmstrasse, the Ball Platz, the Quai d'Orsay and similar stupid, meaningless and unpronounceable places intruded themselves disturbingly in British homes, much as the writing on the wall vexatiously disturbed Belshazzar's feast, and were similarly resented. Belshazzar probably ordered in a fresh troupe of dancers to remove the chilly effect of the stupid, meaningless and unpronounceable ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... forbid!" said I. "I hope this Mr. —-, with the unpronounceable name, will disgust them with his eloquence; for B—- writes me word, in his droll way, that he is a coarse, vulgar fellow, and lacks the dignity of a bear. Oh! I am certain they will return quite sickened with the Canadian project." Thus I laid the flattering unction to ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... I selected a servant apiece who were destined forever to wage war on Kazimoto in hopeless efforts to prevent his giving Fred the best end of everything. Mine was a Baganda who called himself Matches, presumably because his real name was unpronounceable. Will chose a Malindi boy named Tengeneza (and that means arrange in order, fix, make over, manage, mend—no end of an ominous name!). They were both outclassed from the start by Kazimoto, but to add to the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... life was the same as the outline of those of his ancestors and successors. They are all described in the same terms. The formula is the same. Enoch lived, Mahalaleel, and all the rest of the half- unpronounceable names, they lived, they begat their heirs, and sons and daughters, and then they died. And the same formula is used about this man. He walked with God, but it was while treading the common path of secular life that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... a variegated crew; men who had been added to the Team in every corner of the world. There was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman, the Arab jeep-driver who had joined them in Basra. There was the wiry little Greek whom everybody called Alex Unpronounceable. There was an Italian, and two Chinese, and a cashiered French Air Force officer, and a Malay, and the son of an English earl who insisted that his name was Bertie Wooster. They had sworn themselves to ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... own mind on these matters, was plain enough from the looks of astonishment our discontent provoked; and now a lively discussion ensued on the relative merits of various bays, creeks, and inlets along the coast, each of which, with some unpronounceable name or other, was seen to have a special advocate in its favor, till at last the colonel lost all patience, and jumping into the boat, ordered the men to push ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... faded—Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift among them; as well as the human drama of the feud between CETEWAYO (terror of my nursery!) and the witch-doctor Zikali. Whether the old careless rapture is altogether recovered is another matter; at least the jolly unpronounceable names are still there, and the picturesque speech. Most of the names, that is; Allan of course, and others, but I for one should have welcomed rare Umslopogaas—or however he is rightly spelt—and Curtis, for personal reasons my favourite of the gallant company that have so often kept ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the reviewers take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling him that he is shallow and ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... other hand, one did hear of the "Tsarevitch," although he was generally spoken of in French as "Le Prince Heritier"—rather a mouthful. How we arrived at that extraordinary misspelling, "Czar" (which is unpronounceable in ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... eyes, and laughed very much as a peach might do, if it were possible for a peach to laugh. He could only say a horrible bon jour, and make the superfluous intimation that he could not speak French; and when Madame George gave him his choice of a dozen unpronounceable dishes, he looked so utterly blank and baffled that Suzette took the liberty of ordering dinner ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... me one of my best friends and one of my happiest associations. It was on it that I met Mackenzie Murdoch. I'll always swear by Murdoch as the best violinist Scotland ever produced. Maybe Ysaye and some of the boys with the unpronounceable Russian names can play better than he. I'll no be saying as to that. But I know that he could win the tears from your een when he played the old Scots melodies; I know that his bow was dipped in magic before ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... To the Home Rule of Mr. Gladstone, with his weakness for cutting down trees, must be opposed Home Ruralisation. What a fine platform cry—"a truly rural London!"—with the unique advantage of being unpronounceable by demagogues in drink. The poor would welcome the policy as a boon. They are not by any means so unpoetical as Gissing would make out. Only the other day a baby was found buried in a window flower-box; which is practically the idea ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... posterity,—as epitaphs, for example, written for their own monuments by monarchs, whereby we have lately become possessed of the names of several great conquerors and kings of kings, hitherto unheard of and still unpronounceable, but valuable to the student of the entirely dark ages. The letter which St. Peter sent to King Pepin in the year of grace 755 I would place in a class by itself, as also the letters of candidates, concerning which I shall dilate more fully in a note at the end of the following poem. At present, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... never can commit a crime; and next, of course, that they can never be convicted of one. Suppose we found a straggling barbarian, a Varangian, like this slumberer, perhaps a Frank, or some other of these foreigners bearing unpronounceable names, while they dishonour us by putting on the arms and apparel of the real Roman soldier, are we, placed to defend an important post, to admit a man so suspicious within our postern, when the event may probably be to betray both the Golden Gate and the hearts of gold who guard it,—to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Bastard Zulu race. The brothers had found him wandering about the country in a state of semi-starvation, and he had served them faithfully for some years. They had christened him Otter, his native patronymic being quite unpronounceable, because of his extraordinary skill in swimming, which almost equalled that of the animal after which ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... of humour, if there be a best in that abounding book, is that where Gulliver, in the unpronounceable country, describes his parting from his master the horse. "I took," he says, "a second leave of my master, but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have been censured for ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... whether M. Dessault was Consul or Envoy; I incline to think the latter. The translation in the Catholic World speaks of Sir Arthur, but Mr. Scott's 'M. Arture' is much more vraisemblable. He probably had either a surname to be concealed or else unpronounceable to French lips. Scott must have had some further information of the after history of Mademoiselle de Bourke since he mentions her marriage, which could hardly have taken place when Pere Comelin's book was published ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the station or we may miss Mr. Hunter. When we arrive there we find there is no sign of him, whereat the attentive stationmaster is greatly distressed. He advises us to hire a trap and drive to some place with an unpronounceable name, where Mr. Hunter is sure to meet us; visitors often do that, he says. I try to discover why we can't drive all the way, but his answers are not enlightening; "big hill," he replies, and I don't see why the trap can't go up a hill! ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton |
