"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smiled. The adjective "respectable" certainly did not fit the Bond Street young man. He looked slightly exotic! That, no doubt, had set Sir Seymour against him. He was not of the usual type of club man. He "intrigued" her terribly. As the Duchess of Wellingborough would have phrased it, she ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... The adjective 'positive' contains the same fallacy. Apparently Comte meant by the choice of it to convey the sense that he would limit research to phenomena in their orders of resemblance, co-existence and succession. But to ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... shuddered openly at the adjective "lively" as applied to a child; her belief being that though children might be seen, if absolutely necessary, they certainly should never be heard if she could help it. "We're not much used to noise, Jane and me," ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... query about this alleged derivation of the name of the city, a competent Hebrew scholar writes to me: "The nearest approach to Nauvoo in Hebrew is an adjective which would be transliterated Naveh, meaning pleasant, a rather rare word. The letter correctly represented by v could not possibly do the double duty of uv, nor could a of the Hebrew ever be au in English, nor eh of the Hebrew be oo in English. Students ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Hogan-Mogan. A popular corruption, or rather perversion, of the Dutch Hoogmogend-heiden, 'High Mightinesses', the title of the States-General. In a transferred manner it is used as a humorous or Contemptuous adjective of those affecting grandeur and show; 'high and mighty.' The phrase is common. Needham, Mercurius Pragmaticus, No. 7 (1648), speaks of the 'Hogan Mogan States of Westminster'. Tom Brown (1704), Works (1760), Vol. IV, lashes ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... those over which the trains thundered to and from New York, and the adjective, except to old inhabitants who had a curious fierce loyalty for the place, did not seemingly apply. Fairbridge could hardly, by an unbiassed person who did not dwell in the little village and view its features through the rosy glamour of home ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bit her lip but she returned his gaze steadily enough. "The adjective is somewhat strong. Perhaps I might have done what you say, a little bit—for which," with an accent of self-scorn, "I am sorry, as I have already ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... adjective: Kosovar (Albanian), Kosovski (Serbian) note: Kosovan, a neutral term, is sometimes also used as a ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... directly and clearly the impress of his character, and partly because, as will be seen, it was more continuous. I must, however, warn my readers against a possible illusion of perspective. To Fitzjames himself the legal career always represented the substantive, and the literary career the adjective. Circumstances made journalism highly convenient, but his literary ambition was always to be auxiliary to his legal ambition. It would, of course, have been injurious to his prospects at the bar had it been supposed that the case was inverted; and as a matter of fact his eyes ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... changed. He chooses his every word. You cannot guess the adjective from the substantive, nor the end of the phrase from its beginning. He is much given to inverting the natural English order of epithet and noun, that he may gain a greater emphasis for the epithet. ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... "H'm, the adjective appears to be an afterthought," grumbled the bachelor; then, when she merely laughed teasingly after the manner ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... resembling poetry, which to Quintilian, seems to have no visible aim but pleasure.[54] Occasional speeches relied much more on style than did those of the law court and senate, thus meriting Aristotle's adjective "literary," that is written to be read instead of spoken to be heard.[55] Cicero, like Quintilian, considers these less practical, as remote from the conflict of the forum, written to be read, "to be looked at, as it were, like a picture, for the sake of giving pleasure." ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind, and her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice of adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every atom of courage and will with which she had been ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they know more about it than we do in the North. Consequently they do not need our assistance, even if we were able to give it, and, therefore, without any fear of our being criticised for using the adjective "northern" we can limit our investigations and discussions to nut culture in the northern part of the United States with a full knowledge that our southern brethren can take care of themselves, and, in addition, can ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... garrison again was that of a man whose eccentricities and personality are closely associated with the life of the fort.[157] In reporting the casualties of the battle of Molino del Rey, September 8, 1847, the general commanding the American forces applied an adjective to only one of the dead. The report reads, "the service mourns the high-souled Scott, brevet lieutenant colonel 5th infantry".[158] This was Martin Scott, one of the most human, most lovable, and most energetic ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... newspaper devoted a whole page to the coming event. Adjective was piled on adjective, split infinitive on split infinitive. The dinner was to be given in the ballroom of the hotel.... The bank accounts of the assembled guests would total $400,000,000.... The terrapin had been specially imported from Baltimore.... The ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... inspiration could have impelled Jack to apply the adjective "wild" to that ill-behaved and disreputable river, which, tipsily bearing its enormous burden of mud from the far North-west, totters, reels, runs its tortuous course for hundreds on hundreds of miles; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... word I have taken leave to coin. The Latins have both substantive and adjective. Purpura—Purpureus. We make purple serve both uses; but it seems a poverty to which we have no need to submit, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... and looking at the boy's mother with a humorous suggestion of self-depreciation. Now, as formerly, he entertained the very friendliest sentiments towards all good women, yet maintained an expensively extensive acquaintance with women to whom that adjective is ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... examining Mr Pickering with furtive side glances. He was not handsome, nor, on the other hand, was he repulsive. 'Undistinguished' was the adjective that would have described him. He was inclined to stoutness, but not unpardonably so; his hair was thin, but he was not aggressively bald; his face was dull, but certainly not stupid. There was nothing in his outer man which his millions would not offset. As regarded his ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... a grammarian, I who never learned any language but by rote, and who do not yet know adjective, conjunction, or ablative. I think I have read that the Romans had a sort of horses by them called 'funales' or 'dextrarios', which were either led horses, or horses laid on at several stages to be taken fresh upon occasion, and thence it is that we call our horses ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... an adverb instead of an adjective. Thus on page 332, speaking of a tame frog on the bar ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... suffused with a beautiful pink or rosy tint, the dark shaft lines and pale edges of the feathers of the back giving it a striped appearance. The forepart of the top of the head is blackish, and the cap is brown, from which he gets the qualifying adjective of his name. In the best nuptial plumage the rosy coloring is heightened to an intense crimson, especially on the wings, tail coverts, and the under parts. The female's attire is paler and duller of tint, the pink being sometimes almost obsolete. Oddly enough, in summer ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... searched it in vain for a trace of the suffering Machin. It was, however, full of typographical traces of himself and his family. The description of the reception was disturbingly journalistic, which adjective, for Mr. Prohack, unfortunately connoted the adjective vulgar. All the wrong people were in the list of guests, and all the decent quiet people were omitted. A value of twenty thousand pounds was put upon the necklace, contradicting another ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... hollow below, and Lame Gulch was a flourishing mining-camp. All the rough-scuff of the countryside promptly gathered there, and elbowed, with equal indifference, the honest miner, the less honest saloon-keeper, and the capitalist, the degree of whose claim to that laudatory adjective was not to be so easily fixed. No one seemed out of place in the crazy, zigzag streets, no sound seemed foreign to this new, conglomerate atmosphere. The fluent profanity of the mule-driver, the shrill laugh of the dance-hall; the prolonged rattle and final roar of the ore-chute, the steady ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... of the historical period Viewed these imposing structures with as much astonishment as do we, and attributed them (of at least those in Argohs) to the Cyclopes, a mythical folk, conceived in this connection as masons of superhuman strength. Hence the adjective Cyclopian or Cyclopean, whose meaning varies unfortunately in modern usage, but which is best restricted to walls of the Tirynthian type; that is to say, walls built of large blocks not accurately fitted together, the interstices being filled ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... successive well-wired positions a great mass of heavy and other artillery is absolutely indispensable. And over ground deliberately wrecked and obstructed such artillery must take time to bring up. And yet—to repeat—how rapidly, how "persistently" all difficulties considered, to use the King's adjective, has the British Army pressed on the heels of ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... round me. Yes, you were! I felt it in my hair. And YOU too—you're always snoopin' and snoodgin'. Oh, yes, you want to know WHY I've got an extry copy-book and another 'Rithmetic, Miss Curiosity. Well, what would you give to know? Want to see if they're PRETTY" (with infinite scorn at the adjective). "No, they ain't PRETTY. That's all you girls think about—what's PRETTY and what's curious! Quit now! Come! Don't ye see teacher lookin' at ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... formerly no distinction between the verbal adjective and the present participle; but the Academy lays down one not ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... belief in witchcraft, and detailing his study of some bewitched children in Charlestown, one of whom he had taken into his own family, the better to observe the case. The king believed in it, and Queen Anne, to whose name we usually prefix the adjective "good," wrote to Governor Phips a letter which shows that she admitted witchcraft as a ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... positive reasons by which I there proved the reference to Satan, have not been invalidated by the objections of Hofmann in his Schriftbeweis i. 379. He says: As an adjective formed in a manner similar to [Hebrew: qlql] (Num. xxi. 6) must have an intransitive signification, it cannot mean "separated," but according to its derivation from [Hebrew: azl] [Hebrew: ezl], it means: "altogether gone away." But this argument has no force. The real import of the form of the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... certain periods, like that of the Alexandrian Greeks and their Roman imitators, to whom we shall recur in a later chapter, and the mediaeval Troubadours and Minnesingers. To the present day sentimentality in love is so much more abundant than sentiment that the adjective sentimental is commonly used in an uncomplimentary sense, as in the following passage from one of Krafft-Ebing's ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the old Saxon word for spirit and is still used in the Name of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Ghostly, the adjective form of the word, has been retained in the Prayer Book and means spiritual, e. g., in the Confirmation service one of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Ghost is called "ghostly strength," that ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... bright," he said contemptuously. "The average American is bright. If one prefixes no stronger adjective than that to his name, he accomplishes very little in life. Don't think me a pessimist," he added, smiling. "All over the country the Schools and colleges are instilling the principles of conservatism and practical ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... stretching away in all directions behind. Here lived Policeman T—— and B——. "First-class policemen" perhaps I should take care to specify, for in Zone parlance the unqualified noun implies African ancestry. But it seems easier to use an adjective of color when necessary. Among their regular duties was that of weighing down the rocking-chairs on the airy front veranda, whence each nook and cranny of Corozal was in sight, and of strolling across to greet the train-guard of the seven daily passengers; though ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... faith help me, as I speak truth. But who is the god of faith? Dius, say some, is the same as Deus (Plautus has Deus fidius, Asin i. 1, 18); and the god here meant is probably Jupiter (sub dio being equivalent to sub Jove); so that Dius fidius (fidius being an adjective from fides) will be the [Greek: Zeus pistios] of the Greeks. "Me dius fidius" will therefore be, "May Jupiter help me!" This is the mode of explication adopted by Gerlach, Bernouf, and Dietsch. Others, with Festus (sub voce Medius fidius) make fidius equivalent to filius, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... like one, and commanded him to attend to his duty. 'You be d—d for a——,' commenced the gallant cavalier; but, looking up in order to suit the action to the words, and also to enforce the epithet which he meditated with an adjective applicable to the party, he recognised the speaker, made his military salaam, and altered his tone. 'Lord love your handsome face, Madam Nosebag, is it you? Why, if a poor fellow does happen to fire a slug of a morning, I am sure you were ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... A word borrowed from Homer, signifying properly a round stone fit for rolling, or a stone that has been made round by rolling, as a pebble in the sea. It was originally an adjective, with [Greek: petros] understood. Most critics suppose it to be from [Greek: holos] and [Greek: trecho], totus teres atque rotundus. Liddell and Scott derive it from [Greek: eilo], volvo. See Theocr. ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... different environment and properly corseted and gowned would have been set down unquestionably as "a voluptuous beauty." Here in the laundry, in stocking-feet and an unbelted black shirt-waist turned far in at the neck, she was merely "mushy," to use the adjective of her detractors. The queen owed her nickname to the boss, with whom she was said to "stand in," being "awful soft after him." She was a sort of assistant to the foreman, bossing the job when he was not around, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... instance, is it indispensably necessary that a boy of seven years old should learn by rote, that "relative sentences are independent, i. e. no word in a relative sentence is governed either of verb, or adjective, that stands in another sentence, or depends upon any appurtenances of the relative; and that the English word 'That' is always a relative when it may be turned into which in good sense, which must be tried by reading over the English sentence warily, and judging how the sentence ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... closed piano by day. In this noble occupation I sometimes played at helping; but with only meagre success, my most brilliant catch being nothing more important than a "beautiful Io." The kind-hearted lepidopterist lingered with gracious emphasis upon the adjective, and assured me that the specimen would be all the more valuable because of a finger-mark which my awkwardness had left upon one of its wings. So—to the credit of human nature be it spoken—so does amiability sometimes get the better of the feminine scientific ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... as the world has ever seen; "La Morte Amoureuse," "Jettatura," "Une Nuit de Cléopâtre," etc., and then the very diamonds of the crown, "Les Emaux et Camées," "La Symphonie en Blanc Majeure," in which the adjective blanc and blanche is repeated with miraculous felicity in ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... aim and intelligent activity is enough to show its value—its function in experience. We are only too given to making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." We forget that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be conscious is to be aware of what we are about; conscious signifies the deliberate, observant, planning traits of activity. Consciousness is nothing which we have which gazes idly on the scene around one or which ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... three throats at once instead of one, expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary, although his song lacks the variety and the finish of his caged namesake. What tone of sadness in his music the man found who applied the adjective tristis to his scientific name it is difficult to imagine when listening to the notes that come bubbling up from the bird's ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... went (said he) to seek Father, with whom I found him an hour later in the great chamber, and both right deep in public matter, whereof I do love to hear them talk at times, but Milly and Edith be no wise compatient [the lost adjective of compassion] therewith. Anstace came with me to our chamber, and said she had list for ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... terminal "e" played an important part in grammar; in many cases it was the sign of the infinitive — the "n" being dropped from the end; at other times it pointed the distinction between singular and plural, between adjective and adverb. The pages that follow, however, being prepared from the modern English point of view, necessarily no account is taken of those distinctions; and the now silent "e" has been retained in the text of Chaucer only when required by the modern ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of bargain-counter words. A while ago the journalists had a furious run upon the adjective 'un-American.' Anybody or anything that displeased them was 'un-American.' They ran it into the ground, and in its place they have lately set up 'pessimist,' which certainly has a threatening appearance. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... for the less important role of Sempronius, which proved in every way a better disposition of affairs, for Mills was a plodder rather than a genius. He belonged to the order of actors to whom, in the present day, we apply the charitable word of painstaking, an adjective which shows very plainly the nature of the man, while it likewise allows the critic to escape the charge of unkindness. We all know the painstaking player, and always cheerfully acknowledge his virtues, but who shall blame us if, after giving him the benefit of his earnestness, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... be "newes," thus spelt and probably pronounced the same as in England. That the word is not derived from the English adjective "new"—that it is not of English manufacture at all—I feel well assured: in that case the "s" would be the sign of the plural: and we should have, as the Germans have, either extant or obsolete, also "the new." The English language, however, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... may be carried to a fantastic extreme must be admitted. In this it resembles Asceticism, to which further symptom of saintliness we had better turn next. The adjective "ascetic" is applied to conduct originating on diverse psychological levels, which I might as well begin by distinguishing from ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... you don't—of course. Used as a noun—you know what a noun is, don't you? It means the name of anything. Wight means a person—any creature. Originally it meant a fairy, a supernatural being. As an adjective it means brave, valiant, strong or powerful. Or, it used ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have either ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... descriptive word be a material noun, it may be regarded as changed to an adjective. The term "gold pen" conveys the same idea as "golden pen," ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... of the Court before which his Amelia stood her trial, he describes himself as an 'old gentleman.' The adjective seems hardly applicable to a man of forty five; but, to quote again from Mr Austin Dobson, "however it may have chanced, whether from failing health or otherwise, the Fielding of Amelia is suddenly a far older man than the Fielding of Tom Jones. The ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... a judgment of the qualities which such a diet entails. This word is derived, in fact, from the Latin adjective "Vegetus" (strong). The word "Vegetalism," which we oppose to the preceding one, admits only the establishing of a fact, that of the choice—exclusive or preferred—of the nutritious matters ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... action, or any arrangement, besides being such as to serve a practical purpose or express an emotion or transfer a thought, is such also as to afford the sui generis satisfaction which we denote by the adjective: beautiful. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... professional dancer at a Broadway restaurant! Hideous doubts began to creep like snakes into Bruce Carmyle's mind. What, he asked himself, did he really know of this girl on whom he had bestowed the priceless boon of his society for life? How did he know what she was—he could not find the exact adjective to express his meaning, but he knew what he meant. Was she worthy of the boon? That was what it amounted to. All his life he had had a prim shrinking from the section of the feminine world which is connected with the light-life of large cities. Club ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... The adjective did double duty; but the tone was unmistakeably tender and anxious. Hazel had met her with both hands stretched out; now she drew her along ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... perfectly, beautiful, wonderfully lovely?" cried Jessie, getting more excited with each adjective, and when the others laughed merrily at the extravagance of her description, she added, defiantly, "I don't care; it is! I'll leave it ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... any softening adjective, "I have learnt with pain and indignation that you have dishonoured yourself again by breaking the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics. With still greater pain and indignation do I learn that your name has become in a few short days a byword, that you have discarded ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... say that man is good, for man, they said, means only man, and good means only good, and the word is can't be construed to identify such disparate meanings. Mr. Bradley revels in the same type of argument. No adjective can rationally qualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the substantive, it can't be united with it; and if not distinct, there is only one thing there, and nothing left to unite. Our whole pluralistic procedure in using subjects and predicates ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Infinite with the Qualitative Infinite—the totality of existence with the infinitely perfect One. "Qualitative infinity is a secondary predicate; that is, the attribute of an attribute, and is expressed by the adverb infinitely rather than the adjective infinite. For instance, it is a strict use of language to say, that space is infinite, but it is an elliptical use of language to say, God is infinite. Precision of language would require us to say, God is infinitely good, wise, and great; or God is good, and his goodness is infinite. The ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... in the English language more deadly in its vague import than that apparently harmless adjective. As applied to a human being, it generally conveys every kind of odious significance, and curiously enough it is ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... national pride and justice! He forthwith called the attention of his chief officer to the indignity that had been thrust upon them. "Look," said he, in wrathful humiliation, "there's God Almighty given that adjective Dutchman a leading wind and allowed His own countryman to be jammed on a lee shore!" It was said that Barley never really forgave this unpatriotic act, though he still adhered to the belief that the God of British seamen was stedfastly on the side ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... seems to me to have very thoroughly discredited Pirkheimer's ungallant abuse. Sir Martin Conway bids us notice that Duerer speaks of his "dear father" and his "dear mother" and even of his "dear father-in-law," but that he never couples that adjective with his wife's name. It is very dangerous to draw conclusions from such a fact, which may be merely an accident: or may, if it represents a habit of Duerer's, bear precisely the opposite significance. For some men are proud to drop such outward marks of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Carlingford would have been horrified to hear, and grasped Mrs Smith's shoulder with a closer pressure. "What did she tell you?" said the doctor. "Let me have it word for word. Did she say she was going away?—did she speak of this—this—fellow?" exclaimed the doctor, with an adjective over which charity drops a tear. "Can't you tell me without any ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... meaning which Mr. Weller attached to this last-mentioned adjective, did not appear; but, as it was evident from the tone in which he used it that it was a favourable expression, Mr. Pickwick was as well satisfied as if he had been ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... President of the United States with that of her Majesty on an occasion like this. I was struck, both in what he said, and in what our distinguished guest of the evening said, with the frequent recurrence of an adjective which is comparatively new—I mean the word "English-speaking." We continually hear nowadays of the "English-speaking race," of the "English-speaking population." I think this implies, not that ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... the verb. Why it cannot be compared like the adjective. The verb is an adjective or name in the fourth degree. It does not represent an action. TO and DO. Shown how it does not represent an action, and how grammarians have been led to suppose that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... he lays aside rhyme, and writes in blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently postpones the adjective to the substantive, and the substantive to the verb; and leaves out little particles, a, and the; her, and his; and uses frequent appositions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations of style be conformable ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... pain is banished, pleasure is varied, not extinguished? I recollect, said I; but you spoke in admirable Latin, indeed, but yet not very intelligibly; for varietas is a Latin word, and properly applicable to a difference of colour, but it is applied metaphorically to many differences: we apply the adjective, varias, to poems, orations, manners, and changes of fortune; it is occasionally predicated also of pleasure, when it is derived from many things unlike one another, which cause pleasures which are similarly unlike. Now, if that is the variety you ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... wild roses are very nice. But nobody ever thinks of either of them if the name is abruptly mentioned in a gossip or a poem. On the other hand, there are tame tigers and tame cobras, but if one says, "I have a cobra in my pocket," or "There is a tiger in the music-room," the adjective "tame" has to be somewhat hastily added. If one speaks of beasts one thinks first of wild beasts; if of flowers one ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... charming as her father," replied Lady Laura, with whom that favourite adjective served for everything in the way of praise. To her the Pyramids and Niagara, a tropical thunderstorm, a mazourka by Chopin, and a Parisian bonnet, were all alike charming. "I suppose solidity isn't so nice in a girl," she went on, laughing; "but certainly Sophia Granger is not such a favourite ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... for a moment contemplated qualifying the word "missus" with some such adjective as "bonny," but a glance at Margaret's face nipped this poetical flower in the bud. After a moment she sat upright, gazing ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... the crew not on watch were taking it easy. Like unto their officers, submarine sailors are an unusual lot. They are real sailors, or machinist sailors—boys for whose quality the navy has a flattering, picturesque, and quite unprintable adjective. A submarine man, mind you, works harder than perhaps any other man of his grade in the navy, because the vessel in which he lives is nothing but a tremendously ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... enough to embrace the legitimate desires of a civilized and enlightened people determined in all their relations to pursue a conscientious and religious life. We can not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases. It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much disturbed by the thought of either isolation or entanglement of pacifists and militarists. The physical configuration ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take "ranch" eggs, how pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with "yard" eggs, such an "out in the open—let the rest of the world go by" impression they confer. And ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... could be heard the querulous monotone of Mrs. Hoopington and the sharp staccato barking of the fox-terrier. Vladimir, who did not understand a tithe of what was being said, sat fondling a cigarette and repeating under his breath from time to time a vigorous English adjective which he had long ago taken affectionately into his vocabulary. His mind strayed back to the youth in the old Russian folk-tale who shot an enchanted bird with dramatic results. Meanwhile, the Major, roaming round the hall like an imprisoned ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... ship out of soundings, Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings, Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle, Deaf to even the definite article— No verbal message was worth a pin, Though you hired an earwig ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... with the warm color coming and going beneath it, at the masses of blond hair drawn softly back from the high round forehead, at the large blue eyes beneath the long sweep of darker lashes, at the exquisite curve of the lips and the firmly modeled chin. Yes; Jim had seen truly; the ordinary adjective "pretty"—applicable alike to a length of ribbon, a gown, or a girl of the commoner type—could not be applied to Lydia Orr. She was beautiful to the discerning eye, and ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... which had slipped from the ruler's lips as mere form, and bids him widen out his conceptions of 'good.' Jesus does not deny that He has a right to the title, but questions this man's right to give it Him. The ruler thought of Jesus only as a man, and, so thinking, was too ready with his adjective. Conventional phrases of compliment may indicate much of the low notions from which they spring. He who is so liberal with his ascriptions of goodness needs to have his notions of what it is elevated. Jesus lays down the great truth which this man, in his confidence that he by his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... could find; for the teacher, though she was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart and affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word legibus (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third declension, legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this grammatical subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she had been Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had led to the end of Latin lessons at the Dovecot, ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... at heart, Mackworth laid it on in theatric outward appearance, in true line with the Kansas tradition of a sockless Jerry Simpson, who went without socks, as the adjective implies, and made Congress on that one platform of his sartorial lack ... of William Roscoe Stubbs, who rode into the office of governor partly on the fact that his daughter could make salt-rising bread ... a form of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... independence, indomitable will, and never-ceasing purpose to "get on," which is a characteristic of the New England women, and which may be summed up in the expressive adjective "capable." Armed with this power, she cheerfully teaches school, makes dresses, binds books, or "keeps house," considering no honest work degrading, and proving herself equally efficient ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... say that more women would have the courage to remain unmarried were there so euphonious a title awaiting them as that of "bachelor," which, when shorn of its accompanying adjective "old," simply means unmarried. ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... called Denmark," said the professor; "but it has this name in no other language. The Danes call it Danmark, the adjective of which is Danske; and the country is also called the Danske Stat, or Danish States. In German it is Daenemark; in French, Danemark; in Italian, Danimarca. It is bounded on the north by the ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... father beside her, and her mother and Doctor and Mrs. Strong in the back seat. Ten days afterward Marian's head of beautiful dark hair was muslin white. Now it framed a face of youth and beauty with peculiar pathos. "Striking" was perhaps the one adjective which would best ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... view awes one into silence. Even the "Isn't it lovely?" and "oh, how wonderful!" types of people can scarcely say more than "Niagara!" Strange, too, it is that one seldom hears the word "scrumptious." Perhaps the people have chosen the adjective we heard a German use, who on being asked how he enjoyed the view from ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... pigeon-holes and the new substantial, but mean-looking cloister, on the other side rose the church of polished white marble, a splendid specimen of pure Byzantine architecture, if I dare apply such an adjective to that fantastic middle manner, which succeeded to the style of the fourth century, and was subsequently re-cast by Christians and Moslems into what are ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... make a sad abuse of the adjective little, I am quite aware of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little, finical, affected,—all Japan is contained, both physically and morally, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Gloria used the adjective "little" whenever she asked a favor—it made the favor sound less arduous. But Anthony laughed again—whether she wanted a cake of ice or a marble of it, he must go down-stairs to the kitchen.... Her voice followed him ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... divorce from Catherine of Arragon and his marriage with Anne Boleyn. More's philosophy is best reflected in his Utopia, the description of an ideal commonwealth, modeled on Plato's Republic, and printed in 1516. The name signifies "no place" (Outopos), and has furnished an adjective to the language. The Utopia was in Latin, but More's History of Edward V. and Richard III., written in 1513, though not printed till 1557, was in English. It is the first example in the tongue of a history as distinguished ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... It is to be regarded as a contraction of that word; like lated for belated in Macbeth, iii. 3. 6, etc. Nighted ( dark, black) in Hamlet, i. 2. 68 ("thy nighted colour") is an adjective ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... through Harbottles, I remain unstirred by Old Mole. Not a single character, male or female, moved me to the least interest; they were all cold, dead people, and Mr. CANNAN talked over their bodies. Clever talk, certainly—he shall have that adjective again—but when it was over I had a wild mad longing to take to the Harbottle. Even Mr. HALL CAINE ... but this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... This Day wear Mourning Gowns, Declin'd Verbs, Pronouns, Participles, and Nouns. The Substantive seeming the limbed best Would set an hand to bear him to his Rest The Adjective with very grief did say Hold me by Strength or I shall faint away. Great Honour was conferred on Conjugations They were to follow ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... car, has been strangely varied. I think there is no manner of steed or vehicle which has not been used by us, at one time or another, even to the arch donkey and the low-backed car with its truss of hay, like that of the immortal Peggy. I thought at first that 'arch' was an unusual adjective to apply to a donkey, but I find after all that it is abundantly expressive. Benella, who disapproves entirely of this casual sort of travelling, far from 'answerable roads' and in 'backwards places' (Irish for 'behind the ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... As it was—having with all his three livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own—he remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not making any merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly, if any one alluded to it, that he made ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the dominie, "I trust you will excuse the adjective, but I should dearly love to hear Corry's jolly laugh just now. Poor fellow, I think I ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... recently called my attention to the necessity of changing some ordinary words in certain books because in some localities the boys applied the words to sexual organs. Even the little words "nuts," "stones," "balls" accompanied by the adjective "two" mean testicles in the widespread vulgar language; and a physician told me that a college graduate used one of these words the other day when seeking medical advice concerning her baby. Here is an intolerable situation that must be improved ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... Miss Adjective's counter!" cried Matty; "she keeps such a lot of dolls' things to dress up the figures of Noun. A ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... her name, it is easily accounted for. She was born on the twenty-ninth day of February, the year of her birth being bisextile. Unor means February, Unorna, derivative adjective, 'belonging to February.' Some one gave her the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... "accosting?" "Accost her, knight, accost!" in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakespearian in the phrase—"give a coasting welcome" ("coasting" being taken as the epithet and adjective of "welcome"), that had the following words been, "ere they land," instead of "ere it comes," I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, "that give welcome to a ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... go to Italian, and look at the word nicchia. Both from Alberti and from Baretti we find it to bear the meaning of "a charge, a duty, or an employment;" and if before this word we place the adjective piccola, we have piccola nicchia, "a small task, or trifling service to be performed." Now I think no one can fail to see the identity of the meanings of the expressions piccola nicchia and pique-nique; but it remains to show how the words themselves ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... fahscinating; ah! fahscinating! I like an ignoble cabin and a pipe, but the what's-his-name is fahscinating—ah! fahscinating." His infectious good-humour was better than any graces. Then his pride in his phrases was very fine to behold, and he regarded his repetition of his sonorous adjective as quite an original thing in the way of pure rhetoric. Tom Lennard was by inheritance a merchant, by choice a philanthropist; he was naturally religious, but he could not help regarding his philanthropic work ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Grey and Black Earth Colours: White Earth Colours: White Clay (China Clay): White Gypsum; Baryta: Magnesium Carbonate: Talc, Soapstone.—V., Organic Colours—1. Colours of Vegetable and Animal Origin: (a) Substantive (Direct Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Annatto; Turmeric: Safflower; (b) Adjective (Indirect Dyeing) Colouring Matters: Redwood; Cochineal; Weld: Persian Berries; Fustic Extract; Quercitron: Catechu (Cutch); Logwood Extract—2. Artificial Organic (Coal Tar) Colours: Acid Colours; Basic Colours: ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... not easy to guess why Nash employed this Italian word instead of an English one. Lento means lazy, and though an adjective, it is used here substantively; the meaning, of course, is that the idle fellow ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... old Spanish the article was often used before a possessive adjective that preceded its noun. This usage is now archaic ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... of American Indians, the word is used with a double signification,—a literal and narrow meaning, and a general and rather undefined application. It signifies not only physical remedies and the art of using them, but second-sight, prophecy, and preternatural power. As an adjective, it embraces the idea of supernatural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... trite words as "the castled crag" in relation to the Rhine, since no commonplace mind of the present day acquainted with his works but has fallen back on "the castled crag" to describe Drachenfels or Marksburg or Rheinfels, because, forsooth, its own English is too limited to supply a better adjective. So it is that conventional and inadequate English is perpetuated and individual force and expression are lost because people accept the ideas of others and will not seek ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... abuse of the adjective little; I am quite aware of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little, finical; affected,—all Japan is contained, both physically and morally, in these ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti |
