"Spelt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... write me a note of two pages that shall not have one fault of grammar, nor one word spelt wrong, nor anything in it that is not good English? You may take for a subject the history ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... ii., p. 393.).—Sir John Denham spelt this word Peel-garlick—it may be found in one of his Directions to a Painter—but the passage in which it appears is scarcely fit for quotation. The George of the couplet referred to was Albemarle, who had been wounded during the fight in the part of his person which Hudibras alludes to when ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... Culled from gardens where fountains splashed And golden carp in the shadows flashed, Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads, Which ladies threw as the last of fads. Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt, Hand on heart, and daintily spelt Their love in flowers, brittle and bright, Artificial and fragile, which told aright The vows of an eighteenth-century knight. The cruder tones of old Dutch jugs Glared from one shelf, where Toby mugs Endlessly drank the foaming ale, Its froth grown dusty, awaiting sale. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... and improvements, which Forester had ordered in the boat, were completed at the time promised. Marco said that it would require a crew of eight to man the boat properly: six oarsmen, a bowman, and a coxswain. Marco pronounced this word as if it was spelt coxen. This is the proper way to pronounce it. It means the one who sits in the stern, to steer the boat and direct the rowers. In fact, the coxswain is the commander ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... have groaned as I thought of my note. Was it possible that I had spelt "advertisement" wrongly, and yet I had the paper before me; my handwriting was neat and legible, but evidently Mrs. Morton was drawing some comparison between my letter and appearance, and I did not doubt that the former had not prepossessed ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play, Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey, Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze, Tiny sandy-pipers, and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cheap-Jack van," she wrote,—"gayly-dressed people, tricked off in smart finery, and larking like a lot of Ramsgate tradesmen on the public road. One of the impudent creatures made a trumpet of his great ugly fist and spelt out the name of the hotel at which they were stopping, and then put his hand to his ear, as if to listen for the response. Expecting me to tell them anything about myself! But I flatter myself that I was a match for them. I just got out my umbrella and shot it up in their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... letter, we would state that the mistake was due to the handwriting of the child's mother, making the name appear to be spelt with one "e" instead of two, and thus ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... salubrious, and picturesque purlieus of the forest. With regard to the name "fengfield," although I am pretty familiar with the records of the forest extant for the last five hundred years past, I do not remember that it is ever so named or spelt in the muniments of the manor or forest. It is so written by Risdon, and in some few other documents entitled to little weight, and from which no safe inference can be drawn. Whatever be the etymological origin of the term, it should be assumed as indisputable by any one who may ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... name with Bruce. That he had dined at a house in London, where were three Bruces, one of the Irish line, one of the Scottish line, and himself of the English line. He said he was shewn it in the Herald's office spelt fourteen different ways[385]. I told him the different spellings of my name[386]. Dr Johnson observed, that there had been great disputes about the spelling of Shakspear's name; at last it was thought it would be settled by looking at ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... on to the idea of a special development or sub-species of the English language for elementary teaching and foreign consumption. It would be English, very slightly simplified and regularised, and phonetically spelt. Let us call it Anglo-American. In it the propagandist power, whatever that power might be, state, university or association, would print not simply, instruction books but a literature of cheap editions. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... instance; and, contemplating it with a despondent air, would declare it to be the most difficult word in the English language to pronounce. 'Ow you say 'im?' 'Penknife,' I explained. He would bid me write it down; then having spelt it, he would, with much effort, and a sound like sneezing - oh! the pain I endured! - slowly repeat 'Penkneef.' I gave it up at last; and he was gratified with his success. As my explosion generally occurred about five minutes afterwards, Monsieur Vincent failed to connect cause and effect. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Martin d'Alost (Thierry), en Latin Theodoricus Martinus." The article is too long for insertion in your pages, but it contains an account of the title-page of one of his editions, in 4to., in which the name is spelt Mertens:—"Theo. Mertens impressore." Two other title-pages have "Apud Theod. Martinum." So it appears that the printer himself used different modes of spelling his own name. Erasmus wrote a Latin epitaph on his friend, in which a graceful allusion ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... in its own place, but a good telephone service makes its markets handy to all those outliars. I have spelt it that way to be witty. The village executes orders on, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Either Franky, on his back, on the floor, was screaming and dangerously waving his legs, or an infuriate Bessie was chasing him round the table. The spelling-book was more often used as a weapon of attack than a primer, and Bessie's voice screaming out the information that C A T spelt Cat could be heard in ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... At once the spirit indicated a desire to use the alphabet. As we went over the letters, (always a slow method, but useful when you want to observe excitable people,) my visitor kept saying, "Quicker. Go quicker." At length the spirit spelt out the words, "I know not his name." "Was it," said the gentleman,—"was it a—was it one of my household?" I knocked yes, without hesitation; who else could it have been? "Excuse me," he went on, "if I ask you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... were shrieking with laughter over the capers of a clown arm-in-arm with a tame bear, followed by a couple of monkeys skilfully mimicking their very strut, Ned was behind one of the vans scribbling with pencil a few frantic, ill-spelt words that, when the crumpled envelope arrived at the Bunk, were wept over and laughed over in tumultuous joy. The penny thrown him went for a stamp; the letter was pushed, with trembling haste, into a letter-box, ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... purely sentimental reason, such as at her age might well appeal to her. A whisper had reached her to the effect that, hard and unsympathetic as her Aunt Mercy was, romance at one time had place in her life—a romance which left her the only sufferer, a romance that had spelt a life's disaster for her. To the adamantine fortune-teller was attributed a devotion so strong, so passionate in the days of her youth that her reason had been well-nigh unhinged by the hopelessness of it. The object of it was her own sister's husband, Joan's father. It was said ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Rebecca said, pinching his ear and looking over to see that he made no mistakes in spelling—"beseech is not spelt with an a, and earliest is." So he altered these words, bowing to the superior knowledge ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the dug-outs, were innumerable white crosses, leaning at all angles, in the mud. They were the last resting-place of our dead heroes. On each cross a comrade had written a short inscription, and some of these, though simple, and at times badly spelt, revealed a pathos and a feeling that almost brought tears to the eyes. For all its slime and mud it was the most beautiful cemetery I have ever seen. On some of the graves were a few wildflowers. No wreaths; no marble headstones; no elaborate ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... answer'd. When departs The fierce soul from the body, by itself Thence torn asunder, to the seventh gulf By Minos doom'd, into the wood it falls, No place assign'd, but wheresoever chance Hurls it, there sprouting, as a grain of spelt, It rises to a sapling, growing thence A savage plant. The Harpies, on its leaves Then feeding, cause both pain and for the pain A vent to grief. We, as the rest, shall come For our own spoils, yet not so that with them We may again be clad; for ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... spelling being no great matter in general. Put it as you please; though Nelson has as great a contempt for their boasted philosophy and learning as I have myself. I fancy you will find all the English spelt right. How do ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... influence of an Irish character." It was written, Dr. Whitely Stokes believed, by an Irishman in the ninth century or thereabouts. The script appears to him to be "old Irish, rather than Anglo-Saxon, and the large numbers of commemorations of Irish saints and the accuracy with which the names are spelt, point to an Irish origin." This calendar places the feast of our Lady's Conception on the 2nd May. In the metrical calendar of Oengus, the feast is assigned to the 3rd May, and in his Leabhar Breac, the scribe adds the Latin note, "Feir mar Muire et reliqua, i.e., inceptio ejus ut alii putant—sed ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... you at all, Bebee," said the good old man, as she knelt at his feet on the bricks of his little bare study, where all the books he ever spelt out were treatises on the art ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... beautiful, by the side of me on the back seat of the Democrat; his uncle Josiah sot in front; and Ury drove. Ury Henzy, he's our hired man, and a tolerable good one, as hired men go. His name is Urias; but we always call him Ury,—spelt U-r-y, Ury,—with the emphasis ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... rather, it permitted the worst passions of the most ignorant to be played upon by interested adventurers, when the political power of Ireland had passed for ever out of the hands of the restraining classes. Democracy spelt anarchy, and the word patriotism was degraded in a way that had no ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... other sex. And upon this occasion, was first instituted in London, that famous cry of "FLOUNDERS." But the criers were particularly directed to pronounce the word "Flaunders," and not "Flounders." For, the country which we now by corruption call Flanders, is in its true orthography spelt Flaunders, as may be obvious to all who read old English books. I say, from hence begun that thundering cry, which hath ever since stunned the ears of all London, made so many children fall into fits, and women miscarry; "Come buy my fresh flaunders, curious flaunders, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... readily yield to the power of analysis. They call tobacco, Ussama. Ussa, means to put (anything inanimate). Ma, is a particle denoting smell. The us, in the first syllable, is sounded very slight, and often, perhaps, nearly dropt, and the word then seems as if spelt Sa ma. The last ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... and I have placed all the letters of the alphabet cut out of pasteboard by my bedside, and on one occasion (my door was locked, by the way, and I fully satisfied myself no one was in hiding) found, on awakening in the morning, the following word spelt out of them—"Merivale." It was not until some days afterwards that I remembered associations with this word, and then it all came back to me in a trice—it was the name of a man who had once wanted me to join him in an enterprise in ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... but I find no authority in pure Greek to allow me to suppose that that game was known to Peisistratos. I should be too happy to send you a drachma or so, but I have no coins in my possession current at Athens at the time when Pisistratus was spelt Peisistratos.—Your affectionate father, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Peden, the Covenanter, was undoubtedly on the Border in the 'killing times,' and is said to have escaped from the hunters when preaching on Peden Pike by intervention of a mist, but as in old maps this rounded hill west of Otterburn is spelt Paden, the derivation seems doubtful. Peden's Cleuch on the north side of Carter seems undoubtedly to ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... times is to spell Raphael's name in England as the modern Italians spelt it, Raffaelle, a word of four syllables, and yet to pronounce this Italian word as if it were English, as Raphael. Vasari wrote Raffaello; he himself wrote Raphael on his pictures, and has signed the only autograph letter we have ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... caressing when she remembered his figure and his voice—some of the little gestures, some turns of speech, his sturdy contempt for what he called "yobs," which she discovered to be the word "boys" spelt in an unfamiliar way. Those were the things she loved. The rest she had exploited. The mixture of pleasure and tactics filled her with delicious ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... kind of Pride and High Stomach made me determine to earn my livelihood in a bold and original manner. They had taught me to read at the Great House (though I knew not great A from a bowl's foot when I came into it) and so one of the first things I had spelt out was a chap-book ballad of Mary Ambree, the female soldier, that was at the siege of Ghent, and went through all the wars in Flanders in Queen Bess's time. 'What woman has done, woman can do,' cries I to myself, surveying my bold and masculine lineaments, my flashing black eyes, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... curtain it spelt disgrace, that the eldest grand-daughter—at the ripe age of twenty-two—should be neither wife nor mother. It would need a very advanced suitor to overlook that damning item. Doubtless a large dowry would be demanded by way of compensation; ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... who call these caskets by that name. I imagine it to be the Spanish name, properly spelt buxeta. The king of Calicut's betel box is called buxen in the Barcelona MS. of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... at his earnest wish had been given charge of it. On weekdays, as a rule he hoisted two flags—an ensign on the gaff, and a single code-flag at the mast-head; but on Sundays he usually ran up three or four, and with the help of the code-book spelt out some message to the harbour. Sometimes, too, if an old friend happened to take up her moorings at the red buoy below, he would have her code-letters hoisted to welcome her, or would greet and speed ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... constables, in quite an imposing array. The crowd was so great that they had to hold the session in the meeting-house The magistrates belonged to the highest legislative and judicial body in the colony. Hathorne, as the name was then spelt, was the ancestor of the gifted author, Nathaniel Hawthorne—the alteration in the spelling of the name probably being made to make it conform more nearly to the pronunciation. Hathorne was a man of force and ability—though ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... he has borrowed from the Spanish. Many stray words of Spanish and Italian were then affectedly used in common conversation, as we have seen French used in more recent times. The Quarto spell the word Mallicho. Our ancestors were not particular in orthography, and often spelt ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... Bishop of Worcester, so eminent for his prophecies, when by his solicitations and compliance at court he got removed from a poor Welsh bishopric to a rich English one, a reverend dean of the Church said, that he found his brother Lloyd spelt ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... which I have tried to portray that part of my earlier life which was spent in piloting emigrant and government trains across the Western Plains, when "Plains" meant wilderness, with nothing to encounter but wild animals, and wilder, hostile Indian tribes. When every step forward might have spelt disaster, and deadly danger was likely to lurk behind each bush or thicket that ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... thing about this letter was that Inger had written and spelt it all herself. Isak was not so learned but that he had to get it read for him down in the village, by the man at the store; but once he had got it into his head it stayed there; he knew it off by heart when he ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Bianca, a famous Curtezan. Mrs. Gwin. Anne Quin (or Quyn, Gwin, Gwyn as the name is indifferently spelt) was a famous actress of great personal beauty. She is constantly, but most erroneously, confounded with Nell Gwynne, and the mistake is the more unpardonable as both names twice occur in the same cast. When Nelly was acting Florimel in Dryden's Secret Love, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... that direction. They were leaving the valley, and entering on the high and broken uplands, when Lady Mabel spied a low cross by the roadside. Though rudely formed, it was of stone, and not of wood, like most of those in such places, and a short inscription was carved upon it. Faintly cut, badly spelt, and with many abbreviations, it was an enigma to her scholarship, and L'Isle had to decipher it for her: "Andreo Savaro was murdered here. Pray for his soul." "It is only one of those monumental crosses," ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... mainly shelf-ice, known as the Great Ross Barrier. Confusion arose when "Barrier" came to be applied to the seaward ice-cliff (resting on rock) of an extensive sheet of land-ice and when it was also employed to designate a line of consolidated pack-ice. Spelt with a small "b" the term is a convenient one, so long as it carries its ordinary meaning; it seems unnecessary to give it ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... again, and we might have had a wonderful seance but for Gowing's stupid interruptions. In answer to the alphabet from Carrie the table spelt "NIPUL," then the "WARN" three times. We could not think what it meant till Cummings pointed out that "NIPUL" was Lupin spelled backwards. This was quite exciting. Carrie was particularly excited, and said she hoped nothing ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... a ring to the value of a hundreth Frankes. After dinner he tooke his leaue and returned vnto his lodging, and the next day departed, and was two days at Douer, and there he tooke his leaue of such lords as were there, and so tooke the sea in a passager, [Footnote: Generally spelt passenger, as in the letter of the Earl of Leicester 1585. Quoted by Nares.] and arriued at Calais and from thence went to Sluce, and there he spake with the French king and with his Vncles, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... altogether recovered is another matter; at least the jolly unpronounceable names are still there, and the picturesque speech. Most of the names, that is; Allan of course, and others, but I for one should have welcomed rare Umslopogaas—or however he is rightly spelt—and Curtis, for personal reasons my favourite of the gallant company that have so often kept secret rendezvous with me behind the unlifted lid of a desk at preparation time. And now have we really come at long last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... reticules the fair lady now extracted a very greasy and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief request: "Read this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon." I took the paper. It was a clumsily worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for five thousand francs, failing which sum the thing which Madame had lost ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... some station on the east coast—the folk in Cawsand and Kingsand couldn't tell me where. But they told me a child had been born; which was new to me. They weren't sure that it was alive, and were wholly vague about the father—called him Chandon, to be sure, but supposed the name to be spelt with an 'S' as pronounced; told me he was an officer in the Navy, reputed to be an earl's son. Gossip had arrived no nearer. She was respectable, all agreed; no doubt about her marriage lines; and the register confirmed it, with ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in Anaho is what concerns us here. The devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it was judged fit to interpose what we should call a close season; for that end, in Polynesia, a tapu (vulgarly spelt "taboo") has to be declared, and who was to declare it? Taipi might; he ought; it was a chief part of his duty; but would any one regard the inhibition of a Beggar on Horseback? He might plant palm branches: it did ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... home people, even Peter wrote, a most characteristic epistle with only about half the words wrongly spelt, and finishing with a spirited drawing of the Scotia attacked by pirates, an abject figure crouching in the bows being labelled "You!" How I miss that young brother of mine! I ache to see his nubbly features ("nubbly" is a portmanteau ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... frequent variation of the symbols denoting the vowel-sounds. Throughout the whole of the period to which the work relates the symbols i and y, in particular, are constantly interchanged, whether they stand alone, or form parts of diphthongs. Consequently, words which are spelt with one of these symbols in a given text must frequently be looked for as if spelt with the other; i.e. the pairs of symbols i and y, ai and ay, ei and ey, oi and oy, ui and uy, must ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... two or three letters which he wrote in his youth to a lady. The raillery of them was natural and well enough for a mere man of the town; but, very unluckily, several of the words were wrongly spelt. Will laughed this off at first as well as he could; but finding himself pushed on all sides, and especially by the Templar, he told us, with a little passion, that he never liked pedantry in spelling, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... and I will always watch over him, and see that he is not led into any temptations. Besides, if Hans came here, he might ask me to let him have some flour on credit, and that I could not do. Flour is one thing and friendship is another, and they should not be confused. Why, the words are spelt differently, and mean quite different things. Everybody can ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... 1754, at Bellow Mill, in the parish of Auchinleck, Ayrshire. His father, John, was a miller and millwright, as well as a farmer. His mother's maiden name was Bruce, and she used to boast of being descended from Robert Bruce, the deliverer of Scotland. The Murdocks, or Murdochs—for the name was spelt in either way—were numerous in the neighbourhood, and they were nearly all related to each other. They are supposed to have originally come into the district from Flanders, between which country and Scotland a considerable intercourse existed in the middle ages. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... bargain, and, it is said, will give no more than 20,000 for the pictures.(152) If that is not accepted, Lord Orford make (may) take them back. He gets an estate of near 10,000 pounds a year by his mother's death. Her will is all wrote in her own hand, and not one word, even her own name, rightly spelt. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... drawing the lad with gentle force to his bosom, "my little old man, does this mean that you have come to the end of all self-service?—that self is never going to be spelt with a capital S any more? Will it be that way if I ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... "Meywaldt" changed to "Meyenwaldt" [ to match 2 other instances in text, note also spelt as "Meyenvaldt" ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... the music; for every one was singing, and I joined in, though I didn't know the air. Opposite me were two great tablets with golden letters on them. I can read a little, thanks to my friend, the learned raven; and so I spelt out some of the words. One was, 'Love thy neighbor;' and as I sat there, looking down on the people, I wondered how they could see those words week after week, and yet pay so little heed to them. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... is by no means a very significant one; since, although the Vey alphabet, the invention of a man now living, so far differs from the Mandingo, as to be spelt by the syllable rather than the letter, it is anything but an independent creation of the Negro brain. Doala Bukara, its composer, an imperfect Mahometan, had seen Mahometan books, and, although he was no Christian, had seen an English Bible also. He knew, then, what spelling or writing ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... only feel pepper and brandy. I know not whether Wordsworth will forgive the stimulant tale of "Thalaba",—'tis a turtle soup, highly seasoned, but with a flavour of its own predominant. His are sparagrass (it ought to be spelt so) and artichokes, good ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... publications ... and, do you know, I suspect the title-page is all that boasts such novelty,—see if the book, the inside leaves, be not older evidently!—a common trick of the 'trade' to this day. The history of this and 'Justrozzi,' as it is spelt,—the other novel,—may be read in Medwin's 'Conversations'—and, as I have been told, in Lady Ch. Bury's 'Reminiscences' or whatever she calls them ... the 'Guistrozzi' was certainly 'written in concert with'—somebody or other ... for I confess the whole ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... has not been traced to revelation; there was no grammatical Sinai, with a dictionary instead of tables of stone. Indeed, we do not even know certainly when correct spelling began, which word in the language was first spelt the right way, and by whom. Correct spelling may have been evolved, or it may be the creation of some master mind. Its inventor, if it had an inventor, is absolutely forgotten. Thomas Cobbett would have ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... in the international language, or omitted? If it is omitted, many useful words, which it is desirable to adopt and which are ordinarily spelt with a c, will have to be arbitrarily deformed, and this deformation may amount to actual obscuring of their sense. E.g. cento hundred; centro centre; cerbo brain; certa certain; cirkonstanco circumstance; civila ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... discipline had been fostered by fourteen years of service under Nero. They had come to love the emperors' vices as much as they once reverenced their virtues in older days. Moreover Galba had let fall a remark, which augured well for Rome, though it spelt danger to himself. 'I do not buy my soldiers,' he said, 'I select them.' And indeed, as things then stood, his ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... regarded by Sapps Court, when she visited her niece, Mrs. Rackstraw, or Ragstroar, Michael's mother, as distinctly superior. Aunt M'riar especially had been so much impressed with a grey shawl with fringes and a ready cule—spelt thus by repute—which she carried when she come of a Sunday, that she had not only asked her to tea, but had taken her to pay a visit to Mrs. Prichard upstairs. She had also in conversation taken Aunt Elizabeth Jane ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of that work," said Vincent. "Tunstall would lend me the money, poor fellow, an he had it; but his gentle, beggarly kindred, plunder him of all, and keep him as bare as a birch at Christmas. No—my fortune may be spelt in four letters, and ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... no, I'm not—that is so far as Socialists have gone. I describe myself as a 'Humanist.' Socialism as we had it before the war was synonymous with revolution. Its creed, 'Revolution before evolution,' spelt destruction and anarchy. It aimed to get what it wanted by force instead of striving to get it by constitutional means. I broke with them just there—and yet—and yet," he mused, as if to himself, "they were hounded down as outlaws of society for ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... took to the same wagon once more, but, instead of James Grayden, I was to have for my driver a young man who spelt his name "Phillip Ottenheimer" and whose features at once showed him to be an Israelite. I found him agreeable enough, and disposed to talk. So I asked him many questions about his religion, and got some answers that sound strangely in Christian ears. He was from Wittenberg, and had been educated ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be much obliged by any one of your readers informing me what peculiar names are given to the male and female ferret? Do they occur any where in any author? as by knowing how the words are spelt, we may arrive ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... mediaeval name for a chestnut horse, as Bayard for a bay, and Lyard for a grey. From this proverb has been corrupted our modern phrase "to curry favour." The word is sometimes spelt Fauvelle. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... ability to finish his series, and with him loss of self-confidence was a fatal sign. The June weather was hot, he was out of health, and unable to sleep at night, but he declined to send for a doctor. His brain grew confused, and at last even the power to work, that power which for him had spelt pride and happiness throughout his whole life, seemed ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... than Tennyson never existed. As scrupulous a purist in language as Cicero, Chesterfield and Macaulay in prose, as Virgil, Milton, and Leopardi in verse, his care extended to the nicest minutiae of word-forms. Thus "ancle" is always spelt with a "c" when it stands alone, with a "k" when used in compounds; thus he spelt "Idylls" with one "l" in the short poems, with two "l's" in the epic poems; thus the employment of "through" or "thro'," of "bad" or "bade," and the retention or suppression ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... well, though at first I made some awful mistakes in the names of places mentioned by witnesses in courts of justice and elsewhere. For instance, at the assizes, a man swore that he resided at a place which he pronounced Monothosluin, and so I spelt it in my report. "Cot pless me, Sur!—sure inteed, and you have not spelt hur right," remarked Mr. Morgan, the foreman; and for my edification he set it up thus,—Mynyddysllwyn. I almost turned my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the town felt this severely. The attache told me that England was believed to be behind this boycott for commercial purposes, and that as Austria manufactured a great deal expressly for the Turkish market a prolonged boycott must spell ruin. How easily we thought it spelt ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... of 1841 spoke at length, and was followed by Mr. D'ISRAELI (he spelt it with an apostrophe in those days): a good Disraelian ring about the last sentence of ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... has letters addressed to the Poste Restante in the name of Bryant." And I spelt it as the detective carefully ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... to the floor unheeded. Ghoul-like he bent over the pages of delicate writing, the intimate, passionate cry of a soul seeking for its mate. They were no ordinary love-letters. Mostly they were beyond the comprehension of the creature who spelt them out word for word, seeking all the time to appraise their exact monetary value to himself. But for what he had heard he would have found them disappointing. As it was, he gloated over them. Two thousand pounds a year his ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... acts, since he touched the pockets of the people. The odium, however, fell chiefly on his ministers, especially those who received the name of the Cabal, from the fact that the initials of their names spelt that odious term of reproach, not unmerited ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the famous town in Persian Mesopotamia which however is spelt with the lesser aspirate. See p. 144. The Geographical works of Sdik-i-Ispahni, London Oriental Transl. Fund, 1882. Hamdan (with the greater aspirate) and Hamdun mean only the member masculine, which may be a delicate piece ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Hoveden's well-known and valuable enumeration of the Irish episcopal sees at the same period, of which Mr. Riley observes: "Nearly all these are mis-spelt ... they are in a state of almost hopeless confusion." And then, to make confusion worse confounded, his note on the Bishop of Ossory (p. 352.) says "In the text, 'Erupolensis' is perhaps a mistake for 'Ossoriensis.'" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... pretty name, and she thought it very probably meant 'Child of Adam.' No one, who had not some good blood in their veins, would dare to be called Fitz; there was a deal in a name— she had had a cousin who spelt his name with two little ffs— ffoulkes—and he always looked down upon capital letters and said they belonged to lately-invented families. She had been afraid he would die a bachelor, he was so very choice. When he met with a Mrs ffarringdon, at a watering-place, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... proofs of the existence of agriculture at this period. Language rather favours the negative view. Of the Latin-Greek names of grain none occurs in Sanscrit with the single exception of —zea—, which philologically represents the Sanscrit -yavas-, but denotes in the Indian barley, in Greek spelt. It must indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated plants, which so strongly contrasts with the essential agreement in the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude the supposition of a common original agriculture. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to-day." Then there was a very favorite "lesson", which proved an excellent way of teaching spelling. We used to write out lists of all the words we could think of, which sounded the same but were differently spelt. Thus: "key, quay," "knight, night," and so on; and great was the glory of the child who found the largest number. Our French lessons—as the German later—included reading from the very first. On the day on which we began German we began reading Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell," and the verbs given ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... spelt the name correctly, or has unconsciously deprived his fat beau of the letter "r," I cannot say; but experience tells me that the latter is probable. I have been trying all my life to get my own name spelt correctly, and have only very ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... failing to spell defied, when Lincoln telegraphed the right letter to a young lady by putting his finger with a significant smile to his eye. Many years later, however, and after his entrance into public life, Lincoln himself spelt apology with a double p, planning with a single n, and very with a double r. His schooling was very irregular, his school days hardly amounting to a year in all, and such education as he had was picked up afterwards by himself. His appetite ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... there," he said, with as much certainty as if the pansies by the door-stone spelt her name, and, knocking, he asked ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... corner anywhere in this planet where English is spoken (or French) in which The Martian won't be bought and treasured and spelt over and over again like a novel by Dickens or Scott (or Dumas)—for Josselin's dear sake! What a fortune my publishers would make if I were not a man of business and they were not the best and most generous publishers in the world! And all Josselin's publishers—French, English, German, and what ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... But on your part, no curtailing. If your letters are as long as the Bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection. I shall read them with the dispositions with which Arlequin, in Les Deux Billets, spelt the words 'Je t'aime,' and wished that the whole alphabet had entered ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... older than the oldest European living languages. "Riches" is most unquestionably in its original acceptation in our language a noun singular, being identically the French "richesse," in which manner it is spelt in our early writers. From the form coinciding with that of our plural, it has acquired also a plural signification. But both words "have been adopted bodily into the language," and thus strengthen my argument that the process of manufacture is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... Bible, and the Declaration of Independence are certainly unsafe. The preamble to the North Carolina law declares, that the Alphabet has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction; I suppose it is because freedom may be spelt out of it. A storekeeper in South Carolina was nearly ruined by having unconsciously imported certain printed handkerchiefs, which his neighbors deemed seditious. A friend of mine asked, "Did the handkerchiefs contain texts from scripture? or quotations from ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... spelt by th' unlettered Muse,[14] The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... spelt as above, it is probable that the name of this Lizard was really intended to have been Proterosaurus—from the Greek proteros, first; and saura, lizard: and this spelling ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... them in the educated spelling of their own period, which would offer no obstacle of any kind to a modern reader. Not only, however, for the sake of uniformity, but because I am so convinced that this is the right method of dealing with badly spelt texts that I wish the experiment to be made for the first time by a better philologist than myself, I have fallen back on modern spelling. Whatever its disadvantages, they seem to me as nothing compared with the absurdity of preserving in texts printed for the second, third, and ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... reins were drawn over his horse's head and a pursuivant held them on either side. The man was dressed as a layman, in a plumed hat and a buff jerkin, such as soldiers or plain country-gentlemen might use; and in the hat was a great paper with an inscription. Anthony spelt it out. ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... shall well remember) should be sent into our parts of South Wales, there to put down both heresy and sedition: which sedition, methinks, your Ladyship's favour allowing, shall point at Sir Owain Glendordy [the name is usually spelt thus in contemporary records]; and the heresy so called, both your Ladyship and I, your humble son and servant, do well know what it doth signify. So no more at this present writing; but praying our Lord that He would have your ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... to have been 1347. The men who treasonably delivered up the place were afterwards hanged by the French party when they regained possession of the stronghold. In 1369 the English again invested the rock, this time under the command of Robert Knolles. (Tarde, who spelt all English names as he had heard them pronounced in the country, writes Robert Canole.) The place was then so well defended, and success appeared so far off to the partisans of Edward III., that the siege was raised ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... of the fourteenth century. The modern game differs little from that which the old pictures describe, except in the shape of the trap which holds the ball. But the most ancient of all games of this nature is golf, or goff (as it used to be spelt), which was played with a crooked club or staff, sometimes called a bandy. Scotsmen are very fond of this game, which has lately migrated into England and found many admirers. It was probably introduced into ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... seeing a picture he took it up. It evidently had fallen from some ill-used history, for the picture showed some queer ships at anchor, some oddly dressed men just landing, and a crowd of Indians dancing about on the shore. Ben spelt out all he could about these interesting personages, but could not discover what it meant, because ink evidently had deluged the page, to the new reader's ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... built a little romance about poor Falcon's assassin, giving him credit for much suffering for his country's sake, particularly for long imprisonment at Richmond, since which time he had devoted himself as an Avenger. I was gratified to observe that his name was seldom, if ever, correctly spelt. I did think of sending a contradictory note to one of the local journals, but decided against wasting ink and paper. Besides, it is a pity to abase oneself unnecessarily. "I ain't proud, 'cos its sinful," ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... parts of the name be significant, I take it that the correct spelling at any period is that of the contemporary spelling of the parts. Therefore, when spear was spelt "spere," the cognomen should be spelt "Shakespere"; when spear was spelt "speare," as it was in the sixteenth century, the name should be spelt "Shakespeare." Other methods of spelling depended upon the taste or education of the writers, during ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... of all strategies—was not for him. In matters of the subtlest handling, where to act anything except indifference was to lose, with sheep restless, fearful forebodings hymned to them by the wind, panic hovering unseen above them, when an ill-considered movement spelt catastrophe—then was ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Godfrey, most probably," said Betty. "It is well spelt as well as indited, and has not the air of being drawn up ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inconvenient instinct was apt to assure the lady immediately concerned that it was love of self and not of her. They were all more or less mistaken, but, as usual, the women went nearest to the mark. Montalvo's real aim was self, but he spelt it, Money. Money in large sums was what he wanted, and what in this way or that he ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... companions were the Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs. His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might have been called a living concordance; and on the margin of his copy of the Book of Martyrs are still legible the ill spelt lines of doggrel in which he expressed his reverence for the brave sufferers, and his implacable enmity ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... forgive me if they ever call him Percy for short!) and that his aunt is the Countess of D—— and that he knows a number of people you and Lady Agatha have often spoken of. He's got a Japanese servant called Kino, or perhaps it's spelt Keeno, I don't know which, who's housekeeper, laundress, valet, gardener, groom and chef, all in one,—so, at least Percival Benson confessed to me. He also confessed that he'd bought the Titchborne ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... deal table, propped against the wall on account of a broken leg, the ragged curtain stretched across the window, the new shelf that he had made out of a box. He studied, with fresh interest, the coloured almanacs on the wall, and spelt out, with amiable derision, the Scripture text over the door. He felt vaguely that he ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... with a modern disfigured etymology which strips vocables of their genealogy and history, is American and ergo admirably progressive. The spurious facetiousness which deals mainly in mere jargon words ill-spelt and worse pronounced; in bizarre contrast of ideas, and in ultra-Rabelaisian exaggeration, is American wit and humour—therefore unsurpassable. The Newspaper Press, that great reflector of nationalities, that prime expression of popular taste, too often of an ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... brain also made possible the communication and tradition of his experiences and ideas through articulate speech by which means his successors in each generation were able to keep and develop the slowly spelt lessons of human life. ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... language demands regular grammar and correct spelling: these are imprinted deeply on the tablets of a nation's memory by a common use of classical and popular writers. In our own day we have attained to a point at which nearly every printed book is spelt correctly and ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... learning, only what I got by natur."—It was in vain that we reminded him that he could quote Josephus to our confusion.—"I've thought, if I ever met a learned man, I should like to ask him this question. Can you tell me how Axy is spelt, and what it means? Axy," says he; "there's a girl over here is named Axy. Now what is it? What does it mean? Is it Scriptur? I've read my Bible twenty-five years over and over, and I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... explanation of the name Tzeyr or Tzier, by which the Algerians commonly called their city, and which is, I suspect, a corruption of the Roman city Caesarea (Augusta), which occupied almost the same site. It should be remarked that the Algerians pronounce the g[i]m hard: not Al-Jeza[i]r. Europeans spelt the name in all sorts of ways: Arger, Argel, Argeir, Algel, &c., down to the ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... never saw her, I could have told her, "that good sense and good-humour smiled in her eyes; that constancy and good-nature dwelt in her heart; that beauty and good-breeding appeared in all her actions." When I was five-and-twenty, upon sight of one syllable, even wrong spelt, by a lady I never saw, I could tell her, "that her height was that which was fit for inviting our approach, and commanding our respect; that a smile sat on her lips, which prefaced her expressions before she uttered them, and her aspect prevented her speech. All she could say, though she had ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... go back to Northampton? How queer it must be to be able to float round! It is a pity you could not float to New York, and get a good hugging from this old woman. We expect 250 ministers here in May at general assembly (I ought to have spelt it with a big G and a big A). My dear child, what makes you get blue? I don't much believe in any blue devils save those that live in the body and send sallies into the mind. Perhaps I should, though, if I had not a husband and children to ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss |
