"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... noble or good thing of any kind, than the stupidest Bosjesman. The thing is but a boy in years, and is addled with drink. To do its company justice, even its company is ashamed of it, as it drawls its slang criticisms on the representation, and inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardour to fling it into the pit. Its remarks are so horrible, that Mr. Goodchild, for the moment, even doubts whether that IS a wholesome Art, which sets women apart on ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... rather nice. You'll find a bunch of clippings in my second drawer there. Be sure and show them to your father, and don't fail to keep him in touch with your work: he can help you once he's aroused to what you can do. By the way, you must boil the slang out of your system. It's charming, but it won't do. First thing you know it will be slipping in to your ink-pot and corrupting your manuscripts. You know better; I don't! As you go on Nan Bartlett can probably save ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... not only "the best" foreigners (as the phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang), but some of "the best" English ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... naturally brings about him a train of satellites, who make it their business to minister to his importunate cravings. With them the phraseology of the initiated degenerates into a hard business sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant of respect towards literature as a vehicle of knowledge may linger in the conversation of their employers, has never belonged to theirs. They are dealers who have just two things to look to—the price of their merchandise, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... in tones of piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told; oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the growling and commotion on the bank, that my bullet has indeed told, and that something is hit. We soon get the frightened ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... ran up the staircase, a burst of laughter followed her in the midst of which she distinguished the retort: "Well, I own to the slang, but I inherited the oak, and the sticks were all ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... her capital letter, had divined this near-at-hand truth along with the rest. Lowell, almost the greatest and finest realist who ever wrought in verse, showed us that Elizabeth was still Queen where he heard Yankee farmers talk. One need not invite slang into the company of its betters, though perhaps slang has been dropping its "s" and becoming language ever since the world began, and is certainly sometimes delightful and forcible beyond the reach of the dictionary. I would not have any one go about for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Griff in vain more than once, and they had only really met at a Castleford dinner-party. In fact, Clarence's youthful spirits, and the tastes which would have made him companionable to Griff, had been crushed out of him; and he was what more recent slang calls 'such a muff,' that he had perforce drifted out of our elder brother's daily life, as much as if he had been a grave senior of fifty. It was, as he owned, a heavy penalty of his youthful fall that he could not help his brother ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... governmental machine which will work without effort on the part of the people, we can sit at home while elections run themselves so well that only what the good people desire in political action will necessarily result. We want the equivalent of what, in the slang of practical mechanics, we call a fool-proof machine, because anybody can run it and no fool can interfere with its normal operation. So these political reformers are hunting a corrupt-politician-proof machine for government. ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... Wright at the Bowery Theatre, on Wednesday evening, was a singular melange of politics and impiety—eloquence and irreligion—bold invective, and electioneering slang. The theatre was very much crowded, probably three thousand persons being present; and what was the most surprising circumstance of the whole, is the fact, that about one half of the audience were ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... determine, his bed in the middle of the room, and his surplice on whose original purity he had so prided himself, drenched with ink. If he is matriculated he laughs at the beasts (those who are not matriculated), and mangles slang: wranglers, fops, and medalists become quite "household words" to him. He walks to Trumpington every day before hall to get an appetite for dinner, and never misses grace. He speaks reverently of masters and tutors, and does not curse even the proctors; he is merciful to his wine-bin, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... grate to let them pass, eyeing John Ayliffe with considerable attention as he did so. Locking the grate carefully behind him, he lighted them on with his lantern, muttering as he went in the peculiar prison slang of those days, various sentences not very complimentary to the tastes and habits of young John Ayliffe, "Ay, ay," he said, "clerk be damned! One of Tom's pals, for a pint and a boiled bone—droll I don't know him. He must be twenty, and ought to have been in the stone pitcher often enough ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... despised Concha's frankness. It was just as people believed; she was very attractive, very pretty, but absolutely lacking in scruples. As for himself, he heaped insults on himself in the slang of his Bohemian days, comparing himself with all the horned ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a weak smile on his lips. "I'm no boob!" Obviously, he meant this lapse into the slang of the Tenderloin to convey his intimate knowledge of police methods. "You can't soft-soap me! You don't want explanations! You want me to get myself in bad. But you won't get anything out of me. I ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... Cossie accompanied him to the same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against the slap-dash untidy menage, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative gesture, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... who frequent such dens. Each member should report daily, and if he is not familiar with the 'flash' dialect in which thieves converse (which is very improbable, if chosen as suggested), should take care to provide himself with a copy of GROSE'S Slang Dictionary or Vocabulary of Gross Language, which will the better enable ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... not essentially faults, were not likely to improve a full-sized novel. He would too much abound in description; the want of evolution of character—his character is not bad in itself, but it is, to use modern slang, rather static than dynamic—naturally shows itself more; and readers who want an elaborate plot look for it longer and are more angry at not being fed. But for the short, shorter, and shortest kind—the story which may run from ten to a hundred pages with no meticulous limitations on either ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... seldom that Frank used slang, but just then he was in want of a better expression by means of which to give vent ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... is a small circumstance to me—or, that it is a trifling sum to pay to be saved the embarrassment of proposing to Geoffrey, myself—or, take it any way you like, only, don't bother your pretty head an instant more about it. In the slang of the day: 'Forget it,' completely and utterly, as a favor to me if for no ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... was the jolliest little fellow in the world,' and Lieschen was the only 'good-natured body going,' and knew no end of Mahrchen. The boy spoke a very odd mixture of Lieschen's German and of English, pervaded by stable slang, and was altogether a curious study of the effects of absentee parents; nevertheless Honora and Lucilla both took a considerable fancy to him, the latter patronizing him to such a degree that she hardly allowed him to eat the much-needed breakfast, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wouldn't be wasted; and this in spite of the heroine's pleasant abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets and shoes—as these things sketched themselves to Milly—and something rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and the occasional freedom of her slang. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... circuit—to give it a better name. Oh, I've been through all the steps! As soon as I felt a little secure about mother, I ventured to New York in answer to advertisements in The Reflector, and went out 'on the road' at 'fifteen per.'" These slang phrases seemed humorous as they came from her smiling lips, but Douglass knew some little part of the toil and discomfort ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... of inventing an arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose of disguising references to functions and parts of the body regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common. Such private slang, growing up independently in families, and especially among women, as well as between lovers, is now almost universal. It is not confined to any European country, and has been studied in Italy by Niceforo (Il Gergo, 1897, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... which our ancestors amused themselves, from the novels of Swift's coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the delectable author of the New Atlantis, to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the London Spy and several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collection at the British Museum, you may see, besides ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when we come upon them in our reading of Latin. When, for instance, the slave in a play of Plautus says: "Do you catch on" (tenes?), "I'll touch the old man for a loan" (tangam senem, etc.), or "I put it over him" (ei os sublevi) we recognize specimens of Latin slang, because all of the metaphors involved are in current use to-day. When one of the freedmen in Petronius remarks: "You ought not to do a good turn to nobody" (neminem nihil boni facere oportet) we see the same use of the double negative to which we are accustomed in illiterate English. The rapid ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... his mood, Mr. Todd's speech was choicest English or the cosmopolitan, technical slang of the sea, mingled with wonderful profanity. But one habit of his early days he never dropped: he wore, in the hottest weather, and in storm and battle, the black frock and choker of the clerical profession. Standing now with one foot on the fore-hatch, waving his long arms ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... and joined their friends in the debris heaps. The protection of the debris heaps was not quite so good as that afforded by the mines, and the music of the cannon the troglodytes had always with them. But there was more liberty and comfort in the caves, which were dry as dust and—no slang intended—not too dusty. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the Ladies' Benevolent Society was cast, coined and made ready for current circulation, the tale of poor Alice Orville's imaginary shame and ruin. Yet faster flew those Christian ladies' Christian fingers for the poor heathen, while they thus discussed the slang and ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... agitation which was then beginning to make itself felt. The rise of the irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery made the South overbearing and truculent; it produced that class of politicians known as "Northern men with Southern principles," or, in the slang of the day, as "doughfaces;" and it had not yet built up a strong, vigorous, and aggressive party in the North. The lack of proper social opportunities, and this deterioration among men in public life, led to an increasing violence and roughness in debate, and to a good deal of coarse dissipation ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... evening, when Diana had left him, and he had been thinking seriously of his own career, and those many transactions of his troubled life which, in the slang denomination of the day, would be called "shady," he derived some scrap of comfort ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Bridge that evening, and by unspoken consent everyone sat in the hall. It was a cold night, and the roaring fire was pleasant to hear, and in the expressive slang of ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... a dirty job; but Johnny and I were vulgar enough to like it. I like young people because theyre not too afraid of dirt to live. Ive grown out of the mud pies; but I like slang; and I like bustling you up by saying things that shock you; and I'd rather put up with swearing and smoking than with dull respectability; and there are lots of things that would just shrivel you up that I think ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... sticks in front of the chief, and under it they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the slang goes, ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... carped and criticised and caviled, told half truths and solid lies, and the august and astute Committee listened with open ears, and the phonographer dotted down every word. So the meanest gossip and slang of the camp was raked into a heap ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... judges; but, quite the contrary—a sensible, well-informed, gentlemanly personage. But, then, he had no great friends, no patrician weaknesses; he knew nothing about racing, or betting, or opera-dancers, or slang in general. In short, he seemed flat and insipid to Bab, who had been compared to the beautiful Lady Mary Manvers by the soft and persuasive tongue of Lady Mary Manvers's dear friend. Yet, in her secret heart of hearts, Bab drew comparisons by no means disadvantageous to Edward Leslie. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... present exhibition or the unquestionable evidences. There was the lost and hardened female, uttering the wild screams of intoxication, or pouring forth from her dark, filthy place of confinement torrents of polluted mirth; the juvenile pickpocket, ripe in all the ribald wit and traditional slang of his profession; the ruffian burglar, with strong animal frame, dark eyebrows, low forehead, and face full of coarseness and brutality; the open robber, reckless and jocular, indifferent to consequences, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... York, and let myself as the 'Eminent and Graceful Queen of Terpsichore, imported from Paris at a cost of Forty Thousand Dollars in Gold.' And then I'll make a tour of the New England States. Or I'll learn to play the banjo and get off slang phrases, and then I'll appear as 'The Beautiful and Gifted Artist, ANNETTA BRUMMETTA, who has, by her guileless vivacity, charmed our most Fashionable Circles.' Or I'll go as Assistant Teacher in a Select Boarding School for Young Ladies. I ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... to his expressed surprise and he laughed and said, "D'you know, Rosalie, I don't believe I've ever before heard you use slang." ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... flank of Borrow. They are the three volumes of "Pugilistica," given me years ago by my old friend, Robert Barr, a mine in which you can never pick for half an hour without striking it rich. Alas! for the horrible slang of those days, the vapid witless Corinthian talk, with its ogles and its fogles, its pointless jokes, its maddening habit of italicizing a word or two in every sentence. Even these stern and desperate encounters, fit sports for the men of Albuera and Waterloo, become dull ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one kind of bait and he used to say: "It beats all how it draws." I saw this verified at Ottawa, Kansas, Chautauqua. Giving a Saturday evening lecture he baited the platform with slang, satire and humor. Sunday afternoon an hour before time for his lecture the people were hurrying to the auditorium. When presented to the great audience he said: "Record! Record! Record!" I remember the sermon as one of the sweetest and most powerful I ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... fulfilment of the highest social duties, are poorly performed, and, indeed, little understood. Not many of those who think at all think beyond the line of established custom and routine. They may take pains in their letters to obey the ordinary rules of grammar, to avoid the use of slang phrases and vulgar expressions, to write a clear sentence; but how few seek for the not less imperative rules which are prescribed by politeness and good sense! Of those who should know them, no small proportion habitually, from thoughtlessness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... this word was probably a reminiscence of the Oriental corruption failsuf. It recalls to my mind a Hindu who was very fond of the word, and especially of applying it to certain of his fellow-servants. But as he used it, bara failsuf,— "great philosopher"—meant exactly the same as the modern slang "Artful Dodger"! ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in half an hour, perhaps less. I don't want you to tell Sam unless he has to know. Don't let him risk defeat by attempting a rescue in case I don't show up. Tell him I'm playing off my own bat. That's a bit of English slang ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... you want to get looking at that for?" she asked Anna-Felicitas, when she had edged through the crowd staring at the Vaterland, and got to where Anna-Felicitas stood listening abstractedly to the fireworks of American slang the young man was treating her to,—that terse, surprising, swift hitting-of-the-nail-on-the-head form of speech which she was hearing in such abundance ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... this high opinion of themselves can scarcely be wondered at; they were low fellows, but masters at driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of the coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed as his unquestionable right; ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... onomazeto] is the phrase of Dio Cassius. "Levissume transfuga" is the translation made by the author of the "Declamatio in Ciceronem." If I might venture on a slang phrase, I should say that [Greek: automalos] was a man who "went off on his own hook." But no man was ever more loyal as a political ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... American performance of Miss MARGARET MOFFATT at the opening of the First Act was as good as anything in the play. But happily this is not one of those imported creations that overwhelm my uninstructed intelligence with exotic colour and exotic slang. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... I request that you will not indulge in slang out of your proper sphere—the kitchen. (Aside.) He's right! I am "squiffy"—in fact, I never was "squiffier." Fetch my smoking cap! (Exit DIBBS, R.) It would be rash of me to assert that I was not "off color" and as to being prepared ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... her boarding-house less than a week definitely to like him. Every night when he sat down to dinner he brought news with him- news and jokes and new slang. Newspaper-office anecdote and talk gave a journalistic air to the gathering when he was present, and there was novelty in it. Soon every one was intimate with him, and interested in what he was doing. Galton's good-natured patronage of him was a thing to which no one was ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... light came into his eyes. His gaze took account of Alice's lips and the delicate, rounded whiteness of her neck and chin. Her like he had never met before. The girls he had known giggled; this one smiled. His sweetheart used slang and talked of cattle like a herder, but this woman's voice, so sweet and flexible, made delightfully strange music ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... appellation "Poivriere" or "pepper-box" was derived from the term "peppered" which in French slang is applied to a man who has left his good sense at the bottom of his glass. Hence, also, the sobriquet of "pepper thieves" given to the rascals whose specialty it is to plunder helpless, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... that he could scarcely speak. This was a new experience. At first it attracted him, but the hopeless vulgarity of the girl at his side, her tawdry clothes, her sordid, petty talk, her slang, her miserable profanity, soon began to revolt him. He felt that he could not keep his self-respect while such a girl ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... slang expression with the general significance of the English "gone to smash," but also a hundred other and wider meanings, impossible to render ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the gallery responded—how heartily, those who were present have never forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more. The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies, boxes; they answered, as it were, antiphonally. Faces were seen ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... pamphleteer, who jumbles together French, English, Latin phrases, with slang and fashionable words, invented words, intermingled with short rhymes. Style, metre, rhyme, language, art of every kind, at an end; beneath the vain parade of official style there is only a heap of ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... equipped to such a high point of pedestrianism that a cynical person might have been reminded of loud calls for wine at some hostelry in the land of opera bouffe. He was speaking fluently, though with a detestable accent, in a rough-and-ready, pick-up dialect of Parisian slang, evidently under the pleasant delusion that he employed the French language, while Pere Baudry contributed his share of the conversation in a slow patois. As both men spoke at the same time and neither understood two consecutive words the other said, it ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... union. It is a thing that must be. But it is remarkable that while the French mind is agog to apprehend every fact and detail it can about the British, to make the wisest and fullest use of our binding necessities, that strange English "incuria"—to use the new slang—attains to its ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... know," answered Grace doubtfully. "She is an enigma. She speaks the most precise English, with absolutely no trace of slang. But she looks as though the whole world were her natural enemy. Elfreda named her the Anarchist. I am rather ashamed to say we call her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... my feet, mentally at least. I don't suppose any one could set me permanently on my physical, corporeal pins. Beg pardon for the slang, Conny, I don't forget how you and Sybil used to lecture me for that, and my other vices. Poor sis, she had given up the drink talks latterly, given me over as hopeless, and so I am. Con., I have made ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... watchwords of a wrangling match. Fulbert, meantime, made no secret of his contempt for both brothers as mere choristers instead of schoolboys, and exalted himself whenever he detected their ignorance of any choice morceau of slang; while their superior knowledge on any other point was viewed as showing the new-fangled girlish nonsense of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so; for there was a time still near in her memory, though unknown to any now upon the farm except her brother, when the Mains of Glashruach was the talk of Daurside because of certain inexplicable nightly disorders that fell out there; the slang rows, or the Scotch remishs (a form of the English romage), would perhaps come nearest to a designation of them, consisting as they did of confused noises, rumblings, ejaculations; and the fact itself was a reason for silence, seeing ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... at her husband's indorsement—"All right. Wade in." "It's nothing but Jim's slang," she said, with a laugh and a slightly heightened color. "He ought not to have sent you by that short cut; it's a bother, and even dangerous for a stranger. If you had come directly to US by the road, without ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... a fig for order or logical sequence or congruity, or for striking a key of expression and keeping it, but becomes simply the most spontaneous and unstudied of human beings. He has at his command the whole vocabularies of the English and Scottish languages, classical and slang, with good stores of the French, and tosses and tumbles them about irresponsibly to convey the impression or affection, the mood or freak of the moment; pouring himself out in all manner of rhapsodical confessions and speculations, grave or gay, notes of observation and criticism, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he had ever met with the phrase—which is doubtful—had certainly never heard it addressed to himself; conceivably he might have once come across it in turning over the pages of a slang dictionary. A tragic expression traversed his bewildered features—and ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the source for the natural and semisynthetic narcotics. Poppy straw concentrate is the alkaloid derived from the mature, dried opium poppy. Qat (kat, khat) is a stimulant from the buds or leaves of Catha edulis that is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), ephedrine, ecstasy (clarity, essence, doctor, Adam), phenmetrazine ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... entirely his own. He played strange tricks with the English language, heaped words upon words, strung adjective to adjective; mingled passages of Ruskinesque description with jerky fragments of modern slang. These mannerisms grew with his growth, but in the seventies they were not sufficiently marked to detract from the pure pleasure which we enjoyed when we listened to his preaching as ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... of Ages? Surely we might appeal to them, in the name of their own brothers and others with whom they are intimately thrown, to work out these higher possibilities of their own womanhood; not to lower it by picking up slang words from their brothers—a woman ought to be above coarsening and vulgarizing God's great gift of speech—not to engage in games or romps that involve a rude rough-and-tumble with boys, which may develop a healthy hoyden, but is utterly destructive of the gracious ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... whom the slang term was new, looked at the speaker with a slightly puzzled expression; but Edward, who fully understood it, drew himself up with ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... said Louise. She liked to use a bit of slang when it was perfectly safe—as in very good company, or among those she loved; at other times she ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... war of independence our great-great-grandfathers, not yet having ceased to think of themselves as Englishmen, used to distinguish themselves as "Continentals," while the king's troops were known as the "British." The quaint term "Continental" long ago fell into disuse, except in the slang phrase "not worth a Continental" which referred to the debased condition of our currency at the close of the Revolutionary War; but "American" and "British" might still serve the purpose sufficiently whenever ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... words in spite of usage and fashionable taste; and that, therefore, when he can get a brighter tint, a more expressive form, by means of some strange—we must call it—Carlylism; English, Scotch, German, Greek, Latin, French, Technical, Slang, American, or Lunar, or altogether superlunar, transcendental, and drawn from the eternal nowhere—he uses it with a courage which might blast an academy of lexicographers into a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... "is Army slang. Your 'striker' is a private soldier, whom you hire at so many a dollars a month to do the rougher work in your quarters. You make whatever bargain you choose with the soldier. At this post the bachelor officers usually pay a striker ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in those casernes. And then, those visits, or rather ruthless inroads, called in the slang of the place {23} "straw-plait hunts," when, in pursuit of a contraband article, which the prisoners, in order to procure themselves a few of the necessaries and comforts of existence, were in the habit of making, red-coated battalions were ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... slang term for the mouth, has been well "threshed out"—as it is called. Of "My Prooshian Blue," as his son affectedly styled his parent, Mr. Lang correctly suggests the solution, that the term came of George IV's intention of changing the uniform of the Army to Blue. ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... stereotyped in modern slang, and yet the idea could not but have existed under other words in the days of those flush individuals, Midas and Croesus. The first of these moneyed gentlemen found gold too plenty for comfort, while the latter, by his unfortunate end, proved that even at that early ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seen a camera, had never heard of a photograph, had not the least idea of what the process of sketching might be which he so boldly approved; nay, the very phrase embodying his encouragement of the project was foreign to his vocabulary,—a bit of sophisticated slang which he had adopted from his companion's conversation, and ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... at once change the whole habit of their minds, nor without some effort refrain from that abuse of their opposites in which they are accustomed to indulge when they have it all to themselves. Now every subject seems laboured—for in the pedantry of party spirit no partisan will speak but in the slang or cant of his own craft. Knowledge is not only at one entrance, but at every entrance quite shut out, and even literature itself grows perilous, so that to be safe they ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... beg me not to turn out." Is turn out a slang phrase here, or is it a term commonly used in speaking of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... good deal about our slang. They used to be fond of quoting in superior derision in their papers our, to them, utterly unintelligible baseball news. Mr. Crosland, to drag him in again, to illustrate our abuse of "the language," quotes from some tenth-rate American author—which is a way they have ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... tree-climbing episode in his martial career, which, as it happened, had taken place in full view of his retainers, among whom it remained the greatest of jokes. Indeed, he wanted to kill a man, the wag of the party, who gave him a slang name ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... have noted "Stonewall Jackson," and "Robert E. Lee," and one Ohio boat was labeled "Little Phil." Literature we found represented to-day, by "Octave Thanet"—the only case on record, for the Ohio-River "cracker" is not greatly given to books. Slang claims for its own, many of these knockabout craft—"U. Bet," "Git Thair," "Go it, Eli," "Whoa, Emma!" and nondescripts, like "Two Doves," "Poker Chip," and "Game ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... seized the opportune moment when the whale's side was presented just after the blow, sending his lance quivering home all its length into the most vital part of the leviathan's anatomy. Turning his happy face to me, he shouted exultingly, "How's dat fer high?"—a bit of slang he had picked up, and his use of which never failed to make me smile. "High" it was indeed—a master-stroke. It must have pierced the creature's heart, for he immediately began to spout blood in masses, and without another wound went into his ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... sunny France. It isn't the place that counts when the anchor goes down or up, it's the Who and the When; and in view of what has filled all the foregoing pages I trust that the reader will sympathize with Rosina and pardon my slang if I state that Genoa appeared to her upon this occasion very much more ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... which reduced language to abstract generalization. His own vocabulary is concrete and vivid, and of a purity which makes one wonder how even the Quarterly Review could have ventured to apply to him the epithet "slang-whanger." ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... treasury." On the following evening Lord Durham, son-in-law of the premier, assuming that he was the party pointed at, attacked what he called "the bishop's gross and virulent invective—his malignant, calumnious, and false insinuations—his well-known powers of pamphleteering slang." Here the noble lord was called to order, and the Earl of Winchelsea moved that the words "false insinuations" and "pamphleteering slang" should be taken down. After some observations from Earl Grey, Lord Holland, and the Duke ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... scribe! whose vivid genius strays 'Mid Drury's stews to incubate her lays, And in St. Giles's slang conveys her tropes, Wreathing the poet's lines with hangmen's ropes; You who conceive 'tis poetry to teach The sad bravado of a dying speech; Or, when possessed with a sublimer mood, Show "Jack o'Dandies" dancing upon blood! Crush bones—bruise flesh, recount each festering ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... his pen, in words that bite like acid, he etches for us the fools and knaves, the wife-beaters and adulterers, the cardsharpers and gamesters, the grovelling sycophants with their petty struggles for precedence or favour, their slang, their gluttony and drunkenness, their moral and ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... rebus agendis—sent into this world not for talking, but for doing; not for counsel, but for execution. On that field he was a portentous man, a monster; and, viewing him as such, I am disposed to concede a few words to what modern slang denominates his "antecedents." ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Both sides are squeezed by the gate-keeper —a very lucrative post in all yamens—before they are allowed to present their petitions. It then becomes necessary for plaintiff and defendant alike to go through the process of (in Peking slang) "making a slit," i.e., making a present of money to the magistrate and his subordinates proportionate to the interests involved. In many yamens there is a regular scale of charges, answering to our Table of Fees, but this is almost always exceeded in practice. The case is then ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... that for the moment you are back in the United States. You see American jitneys scooting through the jungle; you watch five-ton American tractors hauling heavy loads along the sandy roads; you hear American slang and banter on all sides, and if you are lucky enough to be invited to a meal you get American hot cakes with real American maple syrup. The air tingles with Yankee ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... come in naturally, and yet each bring us one step nearer to the journey's end, is now one of the lost arts of earth. But this is not all. A considerable portion of it must be pronounced decidedly slow. We use the word not in its slang application, but in the sense in which Goldsmith used it in the first line of "The Traveller," or rather, as Johnson told him he used it, when he said to him,—"You do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean that sluggishness of mind which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the city the constant street noise puts a nervous tax upon the children; the proximity of so many bright and moving objects taxes the eyes; the splash of gaudy and gross advertisements creates a fevered imagination; slang, profanity, and vulgarity lend a smart effect; the merchant's tempting display often leads to theft, and the immodest dress of women produces an evil effect upon the mind of the overstimulated adolescent boy; ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... dell, or river, or the sea,—the trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,—I know no other word in our language (bookish and pedantic terms out of the question), but hanging woods, the sylvae superimpendentes of Catullus; yet let some wit call out in a slang tone,—"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence it is that so many dull pieces have had a decent run, only because nothing unusual above, or absurd below, mediocrity furnished an occasion,—a spark for the explosive materials collected ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... undertake the journey to the Front in the true spirit of the French Poilu, and, no matter what happened, "de ne pas s'en faire." This famous "motto" of the French Army is probably derived from one of two slang sentences, de ne pas se faire des cheveux ("to keep one's hair on,") or de ne pas se faire de la bile, or, in other words, not to upset one's digestion by unnecessary worrying. The phrase is typical ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... lost soul who is plunging with accelerated speed down the steep road to ruin. His companions compare notes about him, and all his bodily symptoms are described with truculent glee in the filthy slang of the bar. So long as the wretch has money he is received with boisterous cordiality, and encouraged to rush yet faster on the way to perdition; his wildest feats in the way of mawkish generosity are applauded; and the very men who drink at his expense go on plucking him and laughing ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... this: My friend Sir J. L., with a large cluster of intellectual qualities, and another of social qualities, had one point of character which I will not call bad and cannot call good; he never used a slang expression. To such a length did he carry his dislike, that he could not bear head and tail, even in a work on games of chance: so he used obverse and reverse. I stared when I first saw this: but, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... their language more easily than they could learn ours. Occasionally, however, an Eskimo will startle all hands by rolling out an English phrase or sentence, and, like a parrot, he seems to have a special aptitude in picking up from the sailors phrases of slang or profanity. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... other way about. For metal in its literal sense was originally a scientific word, and in that sense may have been pronounced carefully by people who would pronounce it carelessly when they used it in a colloquial transferred sense approaching to slang. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... earful that time," spoke Bud, in picturesque, western slang. "We'll have to let the bottle-breaker wait for a spell, until we size up this rustler question. We may have to get up a sheriff's posse ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... boat, even the lightest, they would certainly have escaped in it." Cabral's pilot also, who had been with him before to that same island, declared that of the two great mountain peaks which he had noticed at the two ends of the island, east and west, only the Eastern was now standing. The slang name of "Azores" or "Hawks" now began to take the place of the old term of "Western" islands, from the swarms of hawks or kites that were found in the new discovered St. Michael, and in the others which came to light soon after. For the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... crusading hero of the song, and put the slang for "sergeant" in his stead, Jacqueline leaned back on the gunwale quite contented. She fell to gazing on the transparent emerald of the inshore, and plunged in her hand. The soft, plump wrist ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... not themselves use slang understand and even appreciate it. The American brand is generally pithy, compact, and expressive, and not always vulgar. Slang is at its worst in contemptuous epithets, and of those the one that is lowest and most offensive seems likely to become a permanent, recognized addition to the language. ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... back to the man, and the mystery surrounding his appearance and disappearance. What did the woman mean by "halibi"? She supposed it must be a slang word, so it would be no use looking in a dictionary; perhaps ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... the Prince had just seen, very elegant with his stick and eyeglass, and his careless, disdainful air; and who had said, like a man accustomed to every magnificence, fatigued with luxury, blase with pleasure, and caring only for what is truly pschutt (to use the latest slang): "Pretty ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... to an oracle; treasure up his cant phrases; echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey lore; and, above all, endeavour to imitate his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back thrusts his hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, and ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... ourselves," said she, struck by the phrase that fell from his lips. It was not Anne's habit to use slang, but somehow George's way of putting the situation into words was so aggravatingly complete that she almost resented his prior use of an expression that she had never used before in her life. It did sum up the business, neatly and compactly. Strange that she had never thought of that admirable ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... even the same courtesy shown to the weaker sex either. I have heard young men and young women—young ladies, I suppose I ought to say—who address each other in a 'hail-fellow-well-met' sort of manner, but what can you expect," in a disgusted tone, "when the girls talk slang, and ape their young brothers? I think the 'sweet madame' of our great-grandmothers' times preferable to these slipshod manners. I would rather see our girls live and die in single blessedness than marry one of ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... wish the coster's irony to appeal as coarsely in the school as it does in the tap room; but does it appear at all? Is the child taught to sympathize at all with his father's admirable cheerfulness and slang? I do not expect the pathetic, eager pietas of the mother, with her funeral clothes and funeral baked meats, to be exactly imitated in the educational system; but has it any influence at all on the educational system? Does ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... in grit—it will return to par and slang tomorrow. Keep a record of all you do to send to me, and above all—win the cup. With whom are ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... of us that is usually conscious is dissociated and the submerged part takes the stage. When we forget our surroundings in concentration or absent-mindedness, a part of us is dissociated and our friends say that we are "not all there," or as popular slang has it, "Nobody home." When a mood or system of complexes drives out all other moods, one becomes "a different person." But if this normal dissociation is carried a step farther, we may lose the power to put ourselves together again, and then we may truly ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... but I like to see what is going on; and" (with an heroic attempt at sea-slang) "I like ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... newer comedy. Unlike Plautus, he draws his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude; Terence for the few. Plautus delighted in a noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence confines himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian, and other great critics. He aspired to the approval of the good, rather than the applause of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... river for many miles. The California mining system a gambling or lottery transaction. Miner who works his own claim the more successful. Dr. C. a loser in his mining ventures. Another sleep-killer. Bowling-alleys. Bizarre cant phrases and slang used by the miners "Honest Indian?" "Talk enough when horses fight". "Talk enough between gentlemen". "I've got the dead-wood on him". "I'm going nary cent" (on person mistrusted). All carry the freshness of ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. Real fairies never preach or talk slang. At the end, the little boy or girl wakes up and finds ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... an idea of rushing into anything thoughtlessly. Burns, 32, 22. O.N. rammr, vehement, and stam, stiff, hard, unbending. Cp. Cu. ram, strong, and rammish, violent, and American slang rambunktious, obstreperous. ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... North against each other, and—Heaven save the mark!—by the very politicians who have been most bitter in their denunciation of "geographical parties." Here comes a little Western lawyer, with unlimited resources of slang and slender capital of ideas, barely redeemed from being an absolute blackguard by the humanizing influences of a New England college, but showing fewer and fewer symptoms of civilization as he forgets the lessons of his collegiate life; and he delights an audience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... (goat face), using an ugly slang word for a foreigner's Japanese mistress; and they would pretend that ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... with an air which would have befitted a grand duchess, leaving her astonished auditors to look at each other a moment in silence, and then to express themselves fully and freely and unreservedly with regard to American effrontery, American manners, and American slang, as represented by ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... gives a new and delightful form to what seer or singer has shown us; in the former we have merely a translation which misses the music and adds no marvel. As for subject, Mr. Image protested against the studio-slang that no subject is necessary, defining subject as the thought, emotion or impression which a man desires to embody in form and colour, and admitting Mr. Whistler's fireworks as readily as Giotto's angels, and Van Huysum's roses no less than Mantegna's ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... metric system, 'meg' means million. So a megabuck is a million bucks, if you'll pardon the slang." ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... not bad," he said calmly, "but even your slang is a gentleman's. Your Excellency should imagine having been born a swine. That's the point. I should recommend more of silence, and if you happen to speak,—a brief articulation, roughly conceived and expressed. Don't bother at all with the person ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... story says that a commander when asked of what material his fortifications were built, called up his troops, and said: 'There!—every man's a brick.' Here we have the 'living walls' of the Romans—two old stories blended into one, and the whole greatly strengthened by a modern slang expression. When thus changed to suit the times, jests, instead of growing old, rather grow new again. Not unfrequently, a single joke becomes, in this manner, the parent of scores of others. I think that it is Mr. Wendell Phillips, who, in a lecture on Lost Arts, declares that there were ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... impossible to put themselves at ease among those with whom they would like to associate. They are painfully aware of their own surplus ego; they are constrained and awkward; they feel that in some way they are outsiders, that, as the slang phrase puts it, they do not belong. It is probable that more social failures are due to this trait than to ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Beautiful—if you'll excuse me for being highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class lecture, and read some of my best poetry—not the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But say, when I get out in the tall grass, there's nothing will take but a lot of cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge in it here, he'd get the gate so fast it would make his ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the humiliating position without a struggle and made up her mind to try at once to mold his character. She would begin by getting him to cut the slang ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... of writing "homely verse," With country phrases, jokes and slang; With "jiminies!" "by hecks!" and such, With "backwoods" odor, taste and tang— This thing, I say, of making light Of country life is funny—Not! I'd like to know where we would be If farms were all to go ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... was moored." "Handled his fives well" of course refers to the "sparring" of the cabman who wanted to fight Mr. Pickwick. "Friend in the green jemmy" refers to Mr. Winkle, who, we are told in Chapter I., "wore a new green shooting-coat," &c. "Pig's whisper" is slang for a very brief space of time. Bartlett says the Americans have "pig's whistle" the ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... all! The child was utterly transformed. There was no sign of his mother's hand upon his clothes, his neatly brushed hair or his shiny face. His eyes, too, seemed to have grown bigger. Alfred had been a vulgar little boy, addicted to slang and immoderately fond of noisy games. Burton tried to call him back to his mind. It was impossible to connect him in any way with the child whom, through a crack in the door, he could see standing upon a chair the better to scrutinize closely the few ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no misgivings about themselves, and they passed judgment on others with entire assurance. In their slang all with whom they came into contact were either "hearses" or "live Mollies." There was nothing racial, local, or social in this division. A family might be divided, one member being a live Molly, and all the rest the most dismal of hearses. Occasionally a stranger might be brought ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... for frivolity and excitement, which exhibits itself in many forms in our popular literature. To meet the public taste, our books and periodicals must now be highly spiced, amusing, and comic, not disdaining slang, and illustrative of breaches of all laws, human and divine. Douglas Jerrold once observed of this tendency, "I am convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw about all things. After all, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... two low-looking half-breeds in gaudy shirts, and wearing their black hair long and unkempt, were filling in the time waiting for breakfast, shooting "crap dice." The only words spoken between them were the filthy epithets and slang they addressed to the dice as they threw them, and the deep-throated curses as ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... were eventually hung at Tyburn Turnpike, in the presence of a vast crowd. According to Mr. J.T. Smith, in his "Streets of London," a Whig mug-house existed as early as 1694. It has been said the slang word "mug" owes its derivation to Lord Shaftesbury's "ugly mug," which the beer cups ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sailor, and his knowledge of sea-life, of seamen, and of sea-slang, is generally attributed to the instructions of his brother, the master of a ship. This brother was subsequently lost at sea, and Dibdin is said to have written Poor Tom Bowling as his elegy. Dibdin's sea-lore was, therefore, altogether second-hand and theoretical; and his songs, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... no corrections are made, except in flagrant cases of slang or grammar, though all bad slips are mentally noted, for introduction at a more favorable time. It will mean that the teacher will respect the continuity of thought and interest as completely as ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... omnipresent and all-pervading goddess, was Jovita! Smiling, joyous, indefatigable in suavity and attention; all-embracing in her courtesies; frank of speech and eye; quick at repartee and deftly handling the slang of the day and the locality with a childlike appreciation and an infantine accent that seemed to redeem it from vulgarity or unfeminine boldness! Few could resist the volatile infection of her presence. A smile was the only tribute she exacted, and good-humor the rule laid down for her guests. ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... reads Berlioz's scores before hearing them played can have no real idea of their effect. The instruments appear to be arranged in defiance of all common sense; and it would seem, to use professional slang, that cela ne dut pas sonner, but cela sonne wonderfully. If we find here and there obscurities of style, they do not appear in the orchestra; light streams into it and plays there as in the facets ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Frank consoled her, "Alice and Dick will revel in these vulgar westernisms. See if they don't. Why Mother, it's by slang that a language is enriched, didn't ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... did not require much imagination to suppose that the war would add to the number of their clients, whether their claims had real foundation or not; what they wanted above all things was some one of undoubted position who would "boom the movement," in the slang of the day. They laid all their plans to get their man in the author of Raymond, and they got him. Such is his thesis for what ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... sounded no more like Mrs. Percifer than it fitted me; but mistaking my smile of irony for one of encouragement, he babbled on. I wish I could do justice to his "charmin'" accent and his perfectly unstudied manner of speech, a mixture of British and American colloquialisms, not to say slang. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... is that dancing chit Slang and suggestiveness serve her for wit, And impudence for beauty. Yet frigid 'Form' melts at her cockney spell, 'Form,' which votes valsing with the reigning belle An ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... "I know that you wanted to use that particular expressive bit of our particularly expressive slang. What I mean is this: People study religion nowadays—that is, English-speaking people—with the Catholic Church left out. Yet she claims the allegiance of over three hundred million people. Without her, Christianity would be merely pitiful. She alone stands firm on her foundation. ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... "An extremely interesting slang word, by the way," Marshall said. "'Shoot.' Superficially an invitation to violence. I wonder—" A glance from Malone was sufficient. "Getting back to the track, however," he went on, "I should begin by saying that Her Majesty ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a bit of slang, and I like to use bits of English slang when I can; they'll be so useful to know by-and-by when I am scolding my people. Not ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... his passion, in a diatribe which beats in abomination any slang that was ever ranted out of a tub by a mountebank saint, he harps back upon the prodigious attractiveness of his mistress, in the following pathetic, though not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... have no permanence. They are addressed to a special class of readers,—a class generally neither of highly cultivated taste, nor of acute critical perception. Their writers are rarely men of sufficient talent to win for themselves recognition out of their own narrow set. What in the slang of the day are called "sensation" sermons are no exception to the common rule. Their momentary effect, depending upon exaggeration and extravagance, is no indication of worth. We should no more think of criticizing them in a literary journal, than of criticizing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... glint of dark youthful passion in Lorna's face. Lane felt rise in him a desire to bid her sharply to omit slang and profanity from the conversation. But the desire faded before his bewilderment. All had suffered change. What had he come home to? There was no clear answer. But whatever it was, he felt it to be enormous and staggering. And he meant to find out. Weary ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Slang Phrases.—"A Rowland for an Oliver" is no slang phrase of the eighteenth century; it is a proverbial expression as old as the days of the romances of Roland and Olivier. The other two were phrases put into the mouths of two characters (Dr. Ollapod, in Colman's ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... "this is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really must hear more ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... left alone, neither the first nor the second nor'-wester of brandy-and-water could arouse him from his sullen mood. He told me frankly, and in his own sea-slang, that he could not disintegrate the idea of a lawyer from that of the devil, and that he was assured that neither I nor my cause would prosper if I permitted the interference of a land-shark. I was even obliged to assume a little the authority of a master, in ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Jim; "slang Billy. What's he here for, I'd like to know! I only want you to go round 'em every day, and see that they're ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... "Only you mustn't slang Harrow. And you'd better get it into your silly head that it's the best school in this or any other ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... life,—or, to use a phrase that is perfectly clear to us all, the things that help us in getting a living. The vast majority of men and women in this world measure all values by this standard, for most of us are, to use the expressive slang of the day, "up against" this problem, and "up against" it so hard and so constantly that we interpret everything in the greatly foreshortened perspective of immediate necessity. Most of us in this room are confronting this problem of making a living. At any rate, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... headwinds—working towards Copenhagen. We rounded the Scaw in a thick mist, saw the remains of four ships that had run aground upon it, and were nearly run into ourselves by a clumsy merchantman, whom we had the relief of being able to abuse in our native vernacular, and the most racy sea-slang. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... drawing himself into the smallest space possible. "No, Redhead! The devil dragged the man who did that down to the lower regions long ago, on account of my tongue. It's his son. The younger, the sharper. This stripling made Casper Rubling,—[Dice, in gambler's slang]—poor wretch, pay for his loaded ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... knew. Tremendous fop—ladies loved him—cheeks like roses—tongue like sulphuric acid. Beautiful to look at. Clothes like a fashion-plate—got any fashion-plates in Chaudiere? 'who's your tailor?'" he added, in the slang of the hour, with a loud laugh, then stopped suddenly and took off his hat. "I forgot," he added, with upturned eyes and a dramatic seriousness, "your tailor saved my life to-day-henceforth I am the friend ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... up a good deal of slang from the nature of his associates, and she set to work to improve his language, and teach ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... behind,—a sled that worked on its runners no longer, but that sunk with every fresh drift to the main-boards themselves. Wadded with clothing, shouting in a mixture of French and English and his own peculiar form of slang, Ba'tiste tried in vain to force the laboring animals onward. But they only churned uselessly in the drift; their hoofs could find no footing, save the yielding masses of snow. Puffing, as though the exertion ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... part there. She remembered this Jose very well, having met him more than once in former days with Guy. A Parisian Castilian, more Parisian than Spanish, he spoke with exquisite finish the classic tongue, and with the free-and-easy manner of a frequenter of the boulevards, chatted in the slang of the pavement or of the greenroom; he was an eminent virtuoso and collector, an author when the desire seized him, but only in his own interest, liberal in his opinions, lavish in his disposition, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... General Jackson, 'who was all brimstone but the head, and that was aqua-fortis,' and swore if anyone abused him he ought to be 'set straddle on an iceberg, and shot through with a streak of lightning.'" Somewhere between the dignified despair of Daniel Webster, and the adulatory slang of these gentry we must look for the actual truth about Jackson's administration. The fears of the statesman were not wholly groundless, for it is always hard to count in advance upon the tendency of high office to make men more reasonable. The enthusiasm of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various |
