"Solecism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hindered any more intimate conversation, and Richard had certainly committed a solecism in giving Cicely's letter the precedence over the Earl's. The Queen, however, had recalled her caution, and inquired for the health of the Lord and Lady, and, with a certain sarcasm on her lips, trusted that the peace of the family was complete, and that they ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other restoratives than fond words and caresses. Under this treatment, nevertheless, she recovered perhaps as quickly as under any which the faculty might have prescribed. She was, still, however, much more distressed than mere consciousness of the grave solecism she had committed could explain. But I had no other clue to her trouble, and could only hope that in repudiating this she ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... moleco. Soil tero. Soil malpurigi. Soiled malpura. Soire vesperkunveno. Sojourn resti. Sol (music) G. Solace komforti. Solar suna. Solder luti. Soldier soldato. Sole sola. Sole (fish) soleo. Sole (of the foot) plando. Sole (of boot, etc.) ledplando. Solecism solicismo. Solely sole. Solemn solena. Solemnity soleno. Solemnize solenigi. Solfa notkanti. Solfeggio notkanto. Solicit petegi. Solicitor advokato. Solicitous petega, zorga. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... extreme frugality, or rather parsimony; but who, with fear of running into profuseness, never arrives to the magnificence of living. This kind of genius writes indeed correctly. A wary man he is in grammar, very nice as to solecism or barbarism, judges to a hair of little decencies, knows better than any man what is not to be written, and never hazards himself so far as to fall, but plods on deliberately, and, as a grave man ought, is sure to put his staff before him. In short, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... professional solecism on the part of Fulton, the English butler, at Derek Pruyn's, but it was wrung from him in sheer joy ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... other, in the obligations of ultimate decision there can be no difference. In the language of the Constitution, "all the legislative powers" which it grants "are vested in the Congress of the United States." It would be a solecism in language to say that any portion of these is not included ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... was even the cause of a complete change in his way of writing. With the object of reaching the plainest sort of people, he began to employ the popular language, not recoiling before a solecism, when the solecism appeared to him indispensable to explain his thought. This must have been a cruel mortification for him. In his very latest writings he made a point of shewing that no elegance of language was unknown to him. But ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... presume the same law holds with regard to ladies. It often is so felt; but we are inclined to say that it never produces half the discomfort or half the feeling of implied inferiority that is shown by a great man who desires his visitor to be seated while he himself speaks from his legs. Such a solecism in good breeding, when construed into English means this: "The accepted rule of courtesy in the world require that I should offer you a seat; if I did not do so, you would bring a charge against me in the world of being arrogant and ill-mannered; I will obey the world; but, nevertheless, I will ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... SOLECISM, the name given to a violation of the syntax or idiom of a language, as well as to an incarnate absurdity of any kind, whether in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... independent nation, are very well founded. It will serve too, Sir, to show that your suspicions on another point are groundless. To suppose that France would go to war for our independence, and yet not wish to see that independence recognised, is a solecism in politics. Surely every acknowledgment of this kind raises our hopes and depresses those of the enemy, and places the justice of the war, both on the part of France and of us, in a fairer point of view. But, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also.... A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government." But Marshall was mighty and his view prevailed, though from time to time other men, clinging to Jefferson's opinion, likewise opposed the exercise by the Courts of ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... and gathered for battle. One sporting character emitted an appalling "View Halloo" and there were a few "Yoicks" and "Gone Aways" to support his little solecism. Lucille, rushing to Dam, encountered the fleeing reptile and with a neat stroke of her putter ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... results, their causes, and their immediate and probable effects, his mind's eye will be irresistibly drawn, not to spitting-boxes, tobacco, two-pronged forks, or other conventional bagatelles, the particulars of each of which, as a solecism in polite manners, can be corrected and canvassed by any waiter from the London Tavern, Ludgate Street, and by every grisette from America Square to Brompton Terrace, who may choose to display their acquired gentility "for the nonce;" and it is the absence ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... hesitated, wondering whether her request might not be a social solecism, like asking a ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... and however I may deserve from master Would-be, yet T'have one fair gentlewoman thus be made The unkind instrument to wrong another, And one she knows not, ay, and to persever; In my poor judgment, is not warranted From being a solecism in our sex, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... rather demonstrative; for when we would expose a particular error, we exhibit it in contrast with the established principle which it violates. He who formed the erroneous sentence, has in this case no alternative, but either to acknowledge the solecism, or to deny the authority of the rule. There are disputable principles in grammar, as there are moot points in law; but this circumstance affects no settled usage in either; and every person of sense and taste will choose to express himself in the way least liable to censure. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... herself. How these school-girls must despise her! What was she to do? Wait for the girls to whisper and chatter as all girls will, however trained? Or go at once to the Miss Stone with whom she had most to do, tell her the solecism of which she, Rose, had been guilty in the best behaved of schools, and abide by Miss Stone's decision, though it should be that she and her sisters would in future dispense with the services of Miss Rose ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... "amidst," "scarce" for "scarcely." "Whose," he says, is the proper genitive of "which" only at such times as "which" retains its quality of impersonification. Well! I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me. I never learned grammar; and not only Sir Hugh Evans but even Mrs. Quickly might puzzle me about Giney's case and horum ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... than, when some name crosses one, to go and get acquainted with the owner of the name: and this Biographie really has found places for people whom one would have thought almost too small for so comprehensive a work—which sounds like a solecism, or Bull, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... padding and periphrasis ('there is every reason to believe' ... 'as far as the male sex is concerned we may feel sure') betrays the loose thought. It begins with 'in short' and proceeds to be long-winded. It commits what even schoolboys know to be a solecism by inviting us to consider three 'alternatives'; and what can I say of 'the women doubtless would be largely spared,' save that besides scanning in iambics it says what Freeman never meant and what no-one outside of an Aristophanic comedy could ever suggest? 'The women doubtless ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... thought, leave a great gap between. Montesquieu said, he often lost an idea before he could find words for it: yet he dictated, by way of saving time, to an amanuensis. This last is, in my opinion, a vile method, and a solecism in authorship. Horne Tooke, among other paradoxes, used to maintain, that no one could write a good style who was not in the habit of talking and hearing the sound of his own voice. He might as well have said that no one could relish ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the complexion of his models, and is not to be accused of artificiality, but to be credited with a true sincerity of selection in juxtaposing his soft corals and carnations and gleaming topaz, amethyst, and sapphire hues. The most exacting literalist can hardly accuse them of solecism in their rendering of nature, true as it is that their decorative sense is so strong as to lead them to impose on nature their own sentiment instead of yielding themselves to absorption in hers, and thus, in harmonious and sympathetic concert with her, like ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... respectfully to urge, as a sentiment, every day gaining a wider spread, and a deeper root, in the best feelings of freemen, that slavery is alike derogatory to the present enlightened condition of man, and a solecism in the institutions of our country: without, in any degree, wishing to appeal to the prejudices, either sectarian or geographical, of any portion of your honourable body, your memorialists cannot consent to withhold themselves from the influence of the irresistible ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... unofficial, English, Spanish, French, and Venetian. No higher criminality has been discovered in him than that he may have been aware of the project of an acquaintance to influence by means of Spanish gold the King's policy. If he were guilty of worse than this, it is a solecism in the history of treasons that in the course of three centuries not a tittle of evidence of it should have ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... sea. The tumulus near Mersyn, the port of Tarsus, was plainly visible. Two hours from Mersyn are the ruins of Pompeiopolis, the name given by Pompey to the town of Soli, after his conquest of the Cilician pirates. From Soli, on account of the bad Greek spoken by its inhabitants, came the term "solecism." The ruins of Pompeiopolis consist of a theatre, temples, and a number of houses, still in good preservation. The whole coast, as far as Aleya, three hundred miles west of this, is said to abound with ruined ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... to my fellow-passengers, was how he put it—I could follow the thought in his mind, and knew his compliment to be such as we pay foreigners on their proficiency in English. I dare say this praise was given me immediately on the back of some unpardonable solecism, which had led him to review my conduct as a whole. We are all ready to laugh at the ploughman among lords; we should consider also the case of a lord among the ploughmen. I have seen a lawyer in the house ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it until that desolating issue of the Signal announced the Earl's retirement; that Jos Curtenty could not possibly have foreseen what was about to happen; and that, anyhow, goosedriving was less a crime than a social solecism, and less a social solecism than a brilliant eccentricity. Bursley was hurt, and logic is ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... but with the handle as I describe, many of us, I think, would be still more glad; and if these remarks lead in any degree to such results, they at least of all the book will have been worth the writing, and will probably be its best claim to a white stone in Israel, as removing one more solecism from ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... as never before. The one invaded Irving's premieres at the Lyceum. The other sang paeans in praise of the Bancrofts. The French plays, too, were the feigned delight of all the modish world. Not to have seen Chaumont in Totot chez Tata was held a solecism. The homely mesdames and messieurs from the Parisian boards were 'lionised' (how strangely that phrase rings to modern ears!) in ducal drawing-rooms. In fact, all the old prejudice of rank was being swept away. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... speaking to you, sister. The least solecism one makes in speaking irritates you; but you make strange ones in conduct. Your everlasting books do not satisfy me, and, except a big Plutarch to put my bands in [Footnote: To keep them flat.], ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... the force and absorbing effect it came to Ben-Hur. He was an Arab, whose interest in the consequences was but general; on the other hand, Ben-Hur was an Israelite and a Jew, with more than a special interest in—if the solecism can be pardoned—the truth of the fact. He laid hold of the circumstance with a ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... dative for the nominative, I would have crossed his loof with a tight leathern strap, Mr. Saddletree; there is not a boy on the booby form but should have been scourged for such a solecism ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... included, in his picture of a domestic menage, "a wife not too learned..." She is not willing to lose a woman's birthright of love and devotion, but is not quite sure how far it might be affected by her ability to detect a solecism. Hence, she offers a great deal of subtle flattery to masculine self-love. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... stairways of the bravest effect. I shall never forget the impression of majestic chastity that I received from the great nave of the building on my former visit. I then decided to my satisfaction that every church is from the devotional point of view a solecism that has not something of a similar absolute felicity of proportion; for strictly formal beauty seems best to express our conception of spiritual beauty. The nobly serious character of San Zenone is deepened by its single picture—a masterpiece of the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James |
