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Vernacular  adj.  Belonging to the country of one's birth; one's own by birth or nature; native; indigenous; now used chiefly of language; as, English is our vernacular language. "A vernacular disease." "His skill in the vernacular dialect of the Celtic tongue." "Which in our vernacular idiom may be thus interpreted."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vernacular" Quotes from Famous Books



... Judeo-German, the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe. The basis is an archaic form of German, on which are grafted many words of Hebrew origin, and words from the vernacular of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... and salvation through the merits of another is taught. "Ta-riki," "another's power," not "Ji-riki," "self-power," is with them the orthodox doctrine. Priests may marry and eat meat, practices utterly abhorrent to the older and more primitive Buddhism. The sacred books are printed in the vernacular, in marked contrast to the customs of the other sects. Women, too, are given a very different place in the social and religious scale and are allowed hopes of attaining salvation that are denied by all the older sects. "Penance, fasting, prescribed diet, pilgrimages, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... to my picture of society when I got him into it. I lacked the touch of the literary diner-out; and I had, as the reader will probably find to his cost, the classical tradition which makes all the persons in a novel, except the comically vernacular ones, or the speakers of phonetically spelt dialect, utter themselves in the formal phrases and studied syntax of eighteenth century rhetoric. In short, I wrote in the style of Scott and Dickens; and as fashionable society then spoke and behaved, as it still does, in no style at all, my transcriptions ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... be infused into his character. To the Christian public, all other questions subordinate themselves to this, and this needs, not speculation, but hard work; legislation cannot do it, the church must; time will not do it, Christian teaching and example alone can. The vernacular question, so much agitated recently, is important only as it may hinder ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various

... already quite definitely marked with her sex, came in so funnily atop that she got clear away from all my power of similes and resembled nothing in the world but Nellie in masquerade. Then there was Robinet in a white night gown, old woman's cap (mutch, in my vernacular), snuff-box and crutch doubled up and yet leaping and gyrating about the floor with incredible agility; and lastly, Mademoiselle in a sort of elderly walking-dress and with blue spectacles. And all this incongruous impossible world went tumbling and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... into vernacular verse of the prose versions of specimens of the literature of the great apes of Africa, collected by Professor GARNER. It is not too much to say that those touching cris de coeur redolent of the jungle, ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various

... men—generously ready for any event. What self-sacrificing opportunists men are! After all, Kelly," she added, slipping easily into the vernacular, "it's always ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... the five Orders in Manila, the most famous preachers of the Cathedral, and even the Paulists, [39] to preach on the holy days upon profound theological subjects to the sinners who understood only the vernacular of the mariners. The partizans of Capitan Tiago would observe that she slept during the sermon; but her adherents would answer that the sermon was paid for in advance, and by her, and that in any affair payment was the prime requisite. At length, she had driven ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... the literary speech of the time, abundantly illustrates this fact. This conservative tendency is especially noticeable in districts remote from literary centres, and those of us who are familiar with the vernacular in Vermont or Maine will recall in it many quaint words and expressions which literature abandoned long ago. In Virginia locutions may be heard which have scarcely been current in literature since Shakespeare's time. Now, literary and colloquial Latin were probably ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... a single sentence in the vernacular for Harold's ears. With one gesture he indicated Harold, himself, and Pete in turn, then pointed to the girl. His face was ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... break with French classicism and with that part of the native literature which had followed academic traditions. Here the insurrection was far more violent in Germany than in England,[13] partly because Gallic influence had tyrannized there more completely and almost to the supplanting of the vernacular by the foreign idiom, for literary uses; and partly because Germany had nothing to compare with the shining and solid achievements of the Queen Anne classics in England. It was easy for the new school of German poets and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... of the Christian Vernacular Education Society for India was formed here in 1874. There are several branches in this town and neighbourhood of the Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society for making known the Gospel to the women of India, and about L600 per year is ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... that it was Cato who taught Agriculture to speak Latin. Cato's book, written in the middle of the second century B. C, was the first on the subject in Latin; indeed, it was one of the very first books written in that vernacular at all. Of the other Latin writers whose bucolic works have survived, Varro and Virgil wrote at the beginning of the Augustan Age and were followed by the Spanish Columella under Tiberius, and by Pliny (with his Natural History) under Titus. After them (and "a long ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... national schoolmaster and my mother was a butcher's daughter. I can't help my vernacular. You took a fancy to this fellow in the Cafe Royal, and you begged me to paint him so that you might get to know him. I ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... were of late date. Christian scholars have examined them one by one as carefully, and certainly at least as conscientiously, as their opponents; and show us, in result, that the words, although not familiar in the Hebrew vernacular, were in widely-current use either in the neighboring Persian or in that family of languages—Syriac and Chaldaic—of which Hebrew was but ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings

... and partly in one of the Indian dialects, which luckily all the parties appeared to understand. As a matter of course, with a sole view to oblige the reader, we shall render what was said, freely, into the vernacular. ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... for which detectives are employed is not in the detection of crime and criminals, but in simply watching people, following them, and reporting as accurately as possible their movements. These functions are known in the vernacular as spotting, locating, and trailing. It requires patience, some powers of observation, and occasionally a little ingenuity. The real detective under such circumstances is the man to whom they hand ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... her. "If you insist," he said. The girl started in surprise at the words, and the man plunged immediately into the vernacular of the cow-country as he followed her into the timber. "Yes. A cup of Java wouldn't go bad, but I won't stop long. I want to kind of circulate along the back-trail a ways to see if we're bein' followed." He took the cup of coffee ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... that from the first the writers of America have lagged honourably behind their age. The wisest of them have written with a studious care and quiet reverence. As if to mark the difference between the written language and the vernacular, they have assumed a style which belonged to their grandfathers. This half-conscious love of reaction has been ever present with them. Tou may find examples at each stage of their history. Cotton Mather, who armed his hand and tongue against the intolerable sin of ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... the vernacular, but the tone in which the young man spoke rang so confidently that it brought to Ford a pleasant thrill of satisfaction. From the first he had found in the personality of the young man something ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... spirits than when I began reading. "According to this letter, then," she said, addressing me somewhat excitedly, "we may—" but she let fall her eyes and did not complete her sentence. My sister bestowed upon her one of those glances described in the vernacular of woman as "knowing" and then said to me: "We may expect Mr. Maitland at any time, it seems." "Yes," I replied; "he will lose no time in getting here. He undoubtedly feels much chagrined at his failure and will now be more than ever determined to see the affair through ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... ends at Forty-fifth Street; where it is high noon at eight o'clock at night, and bedtime when the gray dawn comes shivering cold and ghastly into hotel corridors where the washerwomen are scrubbing the marble floors. "Little old Broadway," as it is affectionately toasted in the vernacular of its habitues, wherever rye whisky is drunk, and faithful homesick hearts recall its lights, its ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... he shall get home to bed, and only his gilt coach be left. Scarcely less delicate is Syndic Roederer's task; who must wait whether he will lament or not, till he see the issue. Janus Bifrons, or Mr. Facing-both-ways, as vernacular Bunyan has it! They walk there, in the meanwhile, these two Januses, with others of the like double conformation; and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... repress a smile at this torrent of eloquence gushing from such a bit of a fellow, which sounded specially out of place here, where the ryots are given to stating their profoundly vital wants in plain and direct vernacular, of which even the more unusual words get sadly twisted out of shape. The clerks and ryots, however, seemed duly impressed, and likewise envious, as though deploring their parents' omission to endow them with so splendid a means of appealing to ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... Lansmere, with the additional franchise of Freemen. Universal suffrage could scarcely more efficiently swamp the franchises of men who care a straw what becomes of Great Britain! With all Randal Leslie's profound diplomacy, all his art in talking over, deceiving, and (to borrow Dick Avenel's vernacular phrase) "humbugging" educated men, his eloquence fell flat upon minds invulnerable to appeals, whether to State or to Church, to Reform or to Freedom. To catch a Scot-and-lot voter by such frivolous arguments—Randal Leslie might as well ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... refusal of the hairs, and said that, if the same woman had asked him, he would have given every hair in the tail rather than offend her, showing thereby his undoubted belief in the woman's power. Fortunately for her, she lived in a storeyed building—in local vernacular, a land—or in all probability her house would have been set on fire in order to burn her. At the same time, while she was hated and dreaded, everybody for their own safety paid her the most marked respect. Had she lived a century earlier, such evidence would have brought her to the stake. In ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... radical reforms in the Pope and his court, and some concessions to the Protestants—the permission of marriage for the priesthood, the distribution of the wine to the laity in the eucharistic sacrament, and the use of the vernacular tongue in a portion, at least, of the public services. The arrival of the Cardinal of Lorraine and other bishops, in the month of November, 1562, to reinforce the handful of French prelates in attendance, enhanced the apprehensions ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... as they returned from their travels in France and Italy, full of admiration for everything that was not German. They were delighted to hear that in France, in Holland, and in Italy, it was respectable to write poetry in the modern vernacular, and set to work in good earnest. After the model of the literary academies in Italy, academies were founded at the small courts of Germany. Men like Opitz would hardly have thought it dignified to write verses in their native tongue had it not been for the moral support which they received ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... that then laid the foundation for the better half of a mighty city to come. The "act" concludes: "And then and there proceed to elect Five discreet freeholders, resident within said village, to be trustees thereof." So witness is borne to this vernacular quality of discretion in the twilight of ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... only in the language or languages in which he wrote, this necessary closer contact with his personality can be enjoyed only by a very limited circle of advanced scholars. But many of these will be grateful for a translation into their vernacular for more rapid reading, from which they may turn to the standard text when a question of more minute criticism is at stake. Even advanced students appreciate accurately rendered and scholarly annotated translations, by which the range of the leaders of human thought, with ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... disappearance of the slave and the mere labourer from the modern conception of what is necessary in the state, there has now come about an extension of this initiation to the whole of our English-speaking population. And in addition to reading and writing the vernacular, there is also almost universally in schools instruction in counting, and wherever there is a coinage, in the values and simpler computation ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... one of the largest islands in Europe. It contains thirty thousand square miles of surface, and has about seventy thousand inhabitants. Geographers have divided it into four parts, and we had to cross the southwest quarter which in the vernacular ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... Sheemus Ruah, or red James, from the color of his hair. These epithets, to be sure, still occur in Ireland, but far less frequently now than in the times of which we write, when Irish was almost the vernacular language of the country. It was for a reason similar to those just alleged, that John O'Rorke was known as Lamh Laudher O'Rorke; he, as well as his forefathers for two or three generations, having been remarkable for prodigious ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... indiscreet writing in the Anglo-Indian press, [Articles in Anglo-Indian papers on such subjects as "The Recrudescence if Mahommedanism" produce more effect on the educated native mind than the most seditious frothings of the vernacular press.] united to ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... he affirmed, had gone to church and preached a sermon an hour and a half long. The sheriff, too, was there in a red coat, and had no doubt got his place by interest. 'Pomp and 'umbug I calls it, and we poor chaps pays for it all.' Fitzjames heartily enjoyed good vernacular embodiments of popular imagination. He admitted that he was not quite insensible to the pleasures of pomp and humbug as represented by javelin men and trumpeters. His work, as my quotation indicates, included some duties that were trivial and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... 1913 informed the International Historical Congress that the word son had ceased to be vernacular in the dialects of many parts of England. 'I would not venture to assert (he adds) that the identity of sound with sun is the only cause that has led to the widespread disuse of son in dialect speech, but I think it has certainly contributed to ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... like this exhibits the writer's entire want of acquaintance with the grammatical system employed by the great poet and the writers of his age. We must not judge Shakspeare's grammar by Cobbett or Murray, but by the vernacular language of his own times. It is perfectly well known that Shakspeare constantly uses the passive for the active participle, in the same manner that he uses the present tense for the passive participle, and commits numerous ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various

... Would it not be agreeable to the analogy of Gaelic derivation to write Corintich, Galataich, Ephesich, subjoining the Gaelic termination alone to the Primitive, rather than by introducing the syllable an, to form a Derivative of a mixed and redundant structure, partly vernacular, partly foreign? The word Samaritanaich, John iv. 40, is remarkably redundant, having no fewer than three Gentile Terminations. From [Greek: Samareia] is formed, agreeably to the Greek mode of derivation, [Greek: Samareitai]. ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... of mutilation. My wife gave much assistance in my hospital duties, often reaching and influencing those beyond me. I recall one poor fellow who was actually six months in dying from a very painful wound. Profanity appeared to be his vernacular, and in bitter protest at his fate, he would curse nearly every one and everything. Mrs. Roe's sympathy and attentions changed him very much, and he would listen quietly as long as she would read to him. Some of the hospital attendants, men and women, had good voices, and ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... difference in the vestments, ceremonies, or language of the priest. A little altar boy from the United States could serve Mass in any part of the world. See, therefore, the great advantage the Church has in using the Latin language instead of the vernacular or ordinary language of the people. If the Church used the usual language of the people, the Mass would seem different in every country; while natives would understand the words of the priest, strangers ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... our own tongue should be written clean and pure, unmixed and unmangled with the borrowing of other tongues, wherein if we take not heed by time, ever borrowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt." Writings in the Saxon vernacular like the sermons of Latimer, who was careful to use nothing not familiar to the common people, did much to help the scholars to save our prose from the extravagances which they dreaded. Their attack was directed no less against the revival of really obsolete words. It is a paradox ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... swearing. It is a fact, that while these poor creatures cannot articulate a word of any thing else in English, the most awfully profane expressions will drop from their lips in English, as fluently as if it had been their vernacular tongue. When the whites first settled in that neighborhood, the Indians raised corn and other provisions enough, not only for their own use, but also for the ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... tell you what is Latin for Constitution, will not make you a particle the wiser; I will, therefore, explain it in the vernacular tongue.—Constitution then, in its primary, abstract, and true signification, is a concatenation or coacervation of simple, distinct parts, of various qualities or properties, united, compounded, or constituted in ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low

... confidently believed, than I felt disposed to concede. Something was being read over to me by the Clerk upon which my thoughts were concentrated. Suddenly the Chairman roared out a terrifying word in the vernacular. I never moved a hair. I behaved just as if the Chairman had merely sneezed. My imperturbability appeared to convince him that I really did not understand German, because no further reference was made to the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... in search of more hot water, and on the way heard voices which made him call Mr. Graham, who knew more of the vernacular German patois than himself, to understand it. He thought he had caught something about English, and a doctor at Kandersteg. It was true. A guide belonging to the other side of the pass, who had been weather-bound at Kandersteg, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... stark naked save gee-string and a little open coat, passing the plate. Father Clapp has been here seven years, has compiled a Bontok-English Dictionary, and translated the Gospel of Saint Mark into the vernacular. As already said, he has a school, a sort of hospital; is building a stone church; is full of his work, and deserves the warmest support. It must be very hard to get at what is going on behind the eyes of his ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... loving care and a knife, in his infancy, by his papa) said only "Ptwack" as he chewed a mouthful of coffee-beans and hide. It may have been a pious ejaculation or a whole speech in his own peculiar vernacular. It was a tremendous smacking of tremendous lips, and the expression which overspread his speaking countenance was of gusto, appreciative, and such ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... that during the fifteenth century the popularity of these plays increased enormously, records of their performance being found in all parts of England, including Cornwall and Wales, where they were acted in the vernacular. ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... that is picturesque about the man-killer of the mountain country. He is lacking sadly in the romantic aspect and the delightfully studied vernacular with which an inspired school of fiction has invested our Western gun-fighter. No alluring jingle of belted accouterment goes with him, no gift of deadly humor adorns his equally deadly gun-play. He does ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... Why do you crow? Why do you eat other people's grain? Your death is my feast; I touch you in the name of God." And saying this he puts a knife to the fowl's throat. The vernacular verse is a good imitation of the cackling of a fowl. And again, they slice off the top of an egg as if they were killing an animal and repeat the formula, "White dome, full of moisture, I know not if there is a male or female within; in the name of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... visits to Ceylon Inhabitants of the island at that time supposed to be of Malayan type Legend of their Chinese origin Probably identical with the aborigines of the Dekkan Common basis of their language Characteristics of vernacular Singhalese State of the aborigines before Wijayo's invasion Story of Wijayo The natives of Ceylon described as Yakkos and Nagas Traces of serpent-worship in Ceylon Coincidence of the Mahawanso with ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... that, within a year after Judge Hyde's death, Abner Dimock, the tavern-keeper's son, returned to Greenfield, after years of absence, a bold-faced, handsome man, well-dressed and "free-handed," as the Greenfield vernacular hath it. Nobody knew where Abner Dimock had spent the last fifteen years; neither did anybody know anything against him; yet he had no good reputation in Greenfield. Everybody looked wise and grave when his name was spoken, and no Greenfield girl ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... vernacular of the show profession of today, Rosston, Springer & Henderson took up the stand and did not appear in Brownsville. They were advertised to ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... but an empty sound, if even that. And yet, though helping much the cause of the Reformation by the freedom of his social and clerical criticism, by his unsparing exposure of every form of corruption and injustice, and, not least, by his use of the vernacular for political and religious purposes, he can scarcely be classed in the great army of the Protestant Reformers. He was a reformer from within, a biting, unsparing exposer of every priestly abuse, but a loyal son of the Church, who rebuked the faults of his brethren, but ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... example, can only hamper every new industry by increasing the cost of machinery, and must especially hinder navigation and shipbuilding, in which we have made such progress." Not a few of the country's foremost vernacular dailies are as outspoken as Count Okuma on this point, and the Kobe Chronicle declares that, with diminished exports to Japan, "British manufacturers will find compensation in the lessened ability of the Japanese to compete ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... Christine and Dennis at last received an army biscuit (hardtack in the soldier's vernacular) and a tin-cup of what resembled coffee. To him it was very touching to see how eagerly she received this coarse fare, proving that she was indeed almost famished. Too weak to stand, they sat down near the door on the sidewalk. A kind lady presently came and said, "If you have ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... mate, in the peculiar drawling vernacular of the poor whites of the south, extending a hand as cold and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... admit a French word which has no English equivalent), that is to say, the stock phrases which Heaven knows who first minted and which will pass till they are worn out of all knowledge. It has two great poets—one in the vernacular, one in the literary language—who are rich enough to keep a bank for their inferiors almost to the end of time. The depreciation of it by "glaikit Englishers" (I am a glaikit Englisher who does not depreciate), simply because it is unfamiliar and rustic-looking, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... evening after supper had been served and things had somewhat quieted down in the rooms, almost dumfounded by surprise Jim watched Snippy's jocker paint a strong solution of lye into the dreadful sore—known in the hobo vernacular as a "jigger"—upon the road kid's arm. The poor little lad shrieked with pain as the acid ate into his quivering flesh, which deepened the wound still more and gave it a "fresh" look, which greatly added to its horrid repulsiveness ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... in Scotland are obliged to study English from books, like a dead language, which we understand, but cannot speak.' He adds:—'I have spent some years in labouring to acquire the art of giving a vernacular cast to the English we write.' Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto, p. 222) says:—'Since we began to affect speaking a foreign language, which the English dialect is to us, humour, it must be confessed, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... connexion with the arts of wood-cutting and printing. A Vulgate from Dr. Faustus's own press, a mass book and breviary, Thomas a Kempis's Imitation and the Nuremburg Chronicle all in Latin, and the poetry of the gentle Minnesinger and bird lover, Walther von Vogelweide, in the vernacular: these were her stock, which Hausfrau Johanna had viewed as a foolish encumbrance, and Hugh Sorel would never have transported to the castle unless they had been so well concealed in Christina's kirtles that he had taken them for parts ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Sam, immediately translating into his vernacular grammar: "wal, now, that are's jest the question, ye see." "Well, grandma thinks there are, and Aunt Lois thinks it's all nonsense. Why, Aunt Lois don't even believe the stories ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... as though she were setting forth on her honeymoon, were going back to take up the white man's burden. We swung them over the side as we had the other two, and that night in the smoking-room the Coasters drank "Luck to him," which, in the vernacular of this unhealthy shore, means "Life to him," and to the plucky, jolly woman who was going back to fight death with the man who had never lost ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... original oral Gospel were formed in Jerusalem, in the bosom of the first Christian Church; and the language of it must have been Aramaean, since the members consisted of Galileans, to whom that tongue was vernacular. It is natural to suppose that they were accustomed to converse with one another on the life, actions, and doctrines of their departed Lord, dwelling on the particulars that interested them most, and rectifying the accounts given by one ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... elements in the Northern dialects of Lowland Scotch, those of Caithness and Insular Scotland, are not represented in this work. My list of loanwords is probably far from complete. A few early Scottish texts I have not been able to examine. These as well as the large number of vernacular writings of the last 150 years will have to be examined before anything like ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom

... Mr Seth Allport, the first mate of the Susan Jane, that when he spoke on medical topics and subjects, which formed the only real education he had received, his mode of speech was refined and almost polished; whereas, his usual language when engaged in seafaring matters—his present vocation—was vernacular in the extreme, smacking more of Vermont than it did of ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... (official) universal Bantu vernacular, French (official), English (official), Kiswahili (Swahili) used in ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... conquer the system that for two thousand years had dominated the arithmetic of business. Not a little of the success of the new plan was due to Luther's demand that all learning should go into the vernacular.[606] ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:—'Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten' ('No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... was deeply fraught, as we have seen, with classic stores; and at a time when England possessed as yet no complete translation of Virgil, he might justly regard it as a considerable service to the cause of national taste to transplant into our vernacular poetry some scattered flowers from his rich garden of poetic sweets. Thus he has embellished his legend with an imitation or rather paraphrase of the celebrated description of night in the fourth book of the AEneid. The lines ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... as he drove off—what that excellent woman did say I have not the slightest recollection. I only remember that it did not frighten and grieve me as such attacks used to do; that, in her own vernacular, it all "went in at one ear, and out at t'other;" that I persisted in looking out until the last glimmer of the bright curls had disappeared down the sunshiny road—then shut the front ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... Foreign Affairs have long been the leaders of fashion, and continue still to give the tone to the manners and sentiments of the politer circles, where also their language is, perhaps, more frequently spoken than the vernacular tongue; and as there is something about them—no matter what—which renders them great favourites with a portion of the softer sex, we shall endeavour to point out, for the edification of those who may be disposed to copy them, those peculiarities of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... marvellously intricate, almost defies acquisition. Suppose this difficult vernacular mastered; the would-be student discovers that literary works, even newspapers and ordinary correspondence, are not composed in it, but in another dialect, partly antiquated, partly artificial, differing as widely from the colloquial speech as Latin does from Italian. Make a second hazardous ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... the natives here discriminate between the light and dark-coloured shrews, and hold, with the people of Malabar, that the bite of the latter is venomous. Horsfield states that it has been found in Upper India, Nepal, and Assam, and he gives the vernacular name in the last-named country ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... while he adhered to a crude vernacular, there was, in the cadence of his voice, a forceful sort of eloquence. In the latent intensity of his personality dwelt a sheer wizardry which few women could ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... of his State, remarked: "Now we must have all the native Presidents of Virginia buried within this inclosure." Immediately a vigorous hand was placed on his shoulder by a New York alderman who had accompanied the funeral cortege, who exclaimed in characteristic Bowery vernacular: "Go ahead, Governor, you'll ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... can roast you," Nan was saying, archly. She had switched back to her favorite baseball vernacular. "You pitched a swell game last Saturday in Rochester, didn't you? Not! You had no steam, no control, and you ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... pamphlet on the State of Florence 'to the Great ones of the Earth,' and the public utterances of his later years, dating from the time of his banishment, are all directed to emperors, princes, a nd cardinals. In these letters and in his book De Vulgari Eloquentia (About the Vernacular) the feeling, bought with such bitter pains, is constantly recurring that the exile may find elsewhere than in his native place an intellectual home in language and culture, which cannot be taken from him. On this point we shall have more to say in ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... account of his labors in Biblical Literature. He did more in laying open the holy mysteries of the gospel to the perusal of the laity, by translating them into the Saxon tongue, than any other before him. He gave them, in a vernacular version, the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Esther, Job, Judith, two Books of Maccabees, and a portion of the Book of Kings, and it is for these labors, above all others, that the bible student will venerate ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... of Martin Luther were those by which he gave to the common people a vernacular Bible and vernacular worship, that through the one, God might speak directly to the people; and in the other, the people might speak directly to God. Luther's Bible and Luther's Hymns gave life not only to the churches of the Reformation, ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... etc., detained us till near ten o'clock, so we had time to walk on the Boulevards, and to see the fortifications, which must be very strong, all the country round being flat and marshy. Lost, as all know, by the bloody papist bitch (one must be vernacular when on French ground) Queen Mary, of red-hot memory. I would rather she had burned a score more of bishops. If she had kept it, her sister Bess would sooner have parted with her virginity. Charles I. had no temptation to part with it—it might, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... in English. The style of that text is sometimes laboured and pompous; it is often ungrammatical. But the narrative is generally lively, full of neat phrases, and abounding in quaint expressions—many of them still recognizable in the modern Florentine vernacular—while, in such Lives as those of Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelagnolo, Vasari shows how well he can rise to a fine subject. His criticism is generally sound, solid, and direct; and he employs ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... to the decipherment of the inscriptions, giving them their accepted value, we soon found that the language in which they are written is, in the main, the vernacular of the aborigines of Yucatan and other parts of Central America to-day. Of course, the original mother tongue having suffered some alterations, in consequence of changes in customs induced by time, invasions, intercourse with ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... rush basket for flowers at a stall for the sale of wicker-work made by low-caste Hindus at Panipara, she overheard a conversation in the vernacular between one of the workers and an outsider of evil appearance. Their words were often unintelligible being drowned in the noises prevailing around her, but the drift of their talk held Honor rigid and attentive, with every faculty alert, and fear at her heart. Feeling ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... now on his way back to his birthplace to spend his life in the sacred fields as a missionary. He was thoroughly equipped for roughing it, with a splendid physique and perfect health, imperturbable spirits, and a rare command of classic and vernacular Arabic. He wanted to go to Beirut with as few impedimenta as possible, and, after some talk, we merged our two parties into one. Our preparations for the journey were of the simplest sort. We agreed to dispense with dragomans and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... Mundukya Upanishad, &c. Gayatri, the holiest verse of the Vedas. Gehs, Parsi prayers. Gelugpas, "Yellow Caps," the true Magi and their school, so called in Tibet. Gnansaki, the power of true knowledge, one of the six forces. Gujarathi, the vernacular dialect of Gujrat, a province of Western India. Gunas, qualities, properties. Gunava, endowed with ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... husbands' side, and left them unhelped in their public life. But even now they wield great influence over husband and son. Culture has never forsaken them, but the English education of their husbands and sons, with the neglect of Sanskrit and the Vernacular, have made a barrier between the culture of the husband and that of the wife, and has shut the woman out from her old sympathy with the larger life of men. While the interests of the husband have widened, those of the wife have narrowed. The materialising of the husband tended ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant

... results of this in the life of Prince Henry; at present there is only space to notice the general fact. The other lines of John's home government—his reform of criminal procedure, his sanction of the vernacular in legal and official business in place of Latin, his attempt to publish the first collection of Portuguese laws, his settlement of the Court in the true national capital of Lisbon—are only to be linked with the life of his son, as helping one and all of them towards that conscious political ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... Plato or even of Aristotle is but slightly removed from that of common life, and was introduced naturally by a series of thinkers: the language of the scholastic logic has become technical to us, but in the Middle Ages was the vernacular Latin of priests and students. The higher spirit of philosophy, the spirit of Plato and Socrates, rebels against the Hegelian use of language as ...
— Sophist • Plato

... of the door was again gingerly opened. The same face appeared, that of a round blue-eyed Dutch girl. She turned her impassive gaze upon the visitor, who, by way of opening the conversation, taxed his limited knowledge of the vernacular so far as to ask for a ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... Two years later, Philip appeared in person at a meeting of the collace, or municipal assembly, and delivered a harangue to the Ghentish magistrates and burghers, flattering them, moreover, by using their vernacular. The tenor of this speech was ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... for such boldness, such rawness. In "this odd-kind chiel" such points hardly mar the rest. Not only are they in consonance with the underlying spirit of the pieces, but complete the full abandon and veracity of the farm-fields and the home-brew'd flavor of the Scotch vernacular. (Is there not often something in the very neglect, unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not "put on," that secretly pleases the soul more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most perfect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... made answer, under his nose, having been scurrying forwards while he was speaking, the Irish mate adding in his native vernacular, "Begorrah, we'll rig up the whole, sir, in the twinkling of a ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... together. To the ancient reasons for union—symbolised by the living Latin speech of all clerks, of all scholars, of all engaged in serious affairs-were added the newer bonds of connexion involved in the common knightly and social ideals, in the general spread of a common art and a common vernacular language and literature. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... youthful belle! Such a person, especially if she possess that happy opinion of herself, which prevents her from having the slightest suspicion that she can be the object of anything but admiration with all, is regarded by them as a legitimate subject for a mystification, which, in our vernacular, means hoax,—elle se prete au ridicule, as they say, she lends herself, as it were, to ridicule; and to be convinced that they know how to take consummate advantage of the loan, it is only necessary to glance over "France ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... imagine the Colloquia written in the racy Dutch of the sixteenth century! What could he not have produced if, instead of gleaning and commenting upon classic Adagia, he had, for his themes, availed himself of the proverbs of the vernacular? To us such a proverb is perhaps even more sapid than the sometimes slightly finical ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... them of high excellence. Frederick II. of Germany and Richard I. of England were both good poets, and were as proud of their verses as they were of their military exploits. Frederick II. may be said to have founded the vernacular in which Dante wrote; and Longfellow rendered into English a poem of Richard's which he composed during his cruel imprisonment in Austria. A knight who could not compose a song and sing it to the guitar was as rare as a modern gentleman of fashion who cannot play golf. When James Russell Lowell resigned ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... may be said to be the superstructure of Sir Walter Scott's fame. It consists, as we have already hinted, of the ballad poetry of the Border district; but to obtain this vernacular literature was not the work of mere compilation. The editor's task was not performed in the closet, but in a sort of literary pilgrimage through a land of song, story, and romance. The farmers and peasantry from whose recitation the ballads were to be set down, were a primitive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various

... has been already observed that Naples was a Greek colony, and consequently Greek appears to have continued the vernacular tongue.] ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... forest, they met Athelstane the Thane powdering along the road in the direction of Rotherwood on his great dray-horse of a charger. "Good-by, good luck to you, old brick," cried the Prince, using the vernacular Saxon. "Pitch into those Frenchmen; give it 'em over the face and eyes; and I'll stop at home and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... entire agreement with the Syriac translation. (5) This Syriac translation (if it be a translation, which is very doubtful, for we know neither the time of its appearance, nor the translators and Syriac was the vernacular of the Apostles) renders the text before us in a way well explained by Tremellius ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza

... learning by stipends paid to students in Sanscrit, Persian, and Arabic; and by liberal grants for the publication of works in those languages. The other half were in favour of teaching the elements of knowledge in the vernacular tongues, and the higher branches in English. On his arrival, Macaulay was appointed President of the Committee; but he declined to take any active part in its proceedings until the Government had finally pronounced on the question at issue. Later in January 1835 ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... part, and expressed himself with freedom and decision. His conversation, in fact, astonished the literati even more than his poems had done. Perhaps they had expected some uncouth individual who would stammer crop-and-weather commonplaces in a rugged vernacular, or, worse still, in ungrammatical English; but here was one who held his own with them in speculative discussion, speaking not only with the eloquence of a poet, but with the readiness, clearness, and fluency of a man of letters. His pure English diction astonished them, but his acuteness of reasoning, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... company, of course, was mixed, but the white contingent had caught the local colour (coffee) and showed great aptitude in imitating the methods of the aborigines. Naturally there were conventions; the chiefs talked fluent English, while the Zulu supers employed their own vernacular, except in certain formal phrases, as when the "praisers" (my programme's name for a sort of universal claque) punctuated the speeches of their king with cries of "Yes, O Lion!" or "Yes, Great Beast!" No doubt our honoured visitors could perceive ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various

... the Soul, has, if I am not mistaken, been translated into French, German, and Modern Greek, and has issued from the Mission-press at Ceylon, in one or more of the dialects of India. It has also been partially rendered into the vernacular at the missionary stations, in opposite parts of the world. His Child's Book on Repentance, and his Histories of the Patriarchs, published by the American Tract Society, are the result of diligent study. The Life of Moses may be specified, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... Granius," said Brutus, "of whom Lucilius has related such a number of stories?"—"The very same," said I: "but though Tineas said as many smart things as the other, Granius at last overpowered him by a certain vernacular gout, which gave an additional relish to his humour: so that I am no longer surprised at what is said to have happened to Theophrastus, when he enquired of an old woman who kept a stall, what was the price of something which he wanted to purchase. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... not under existing conditions view with too uncharitable sentiments the marvellous good fortune of the book-hunters of the last century, at the very outset of a revival of the taste for our own vernacular literature? Does it not seem tantalising to hear that Warton the historian could pick up for sixpence a volume containing Venus and Adonis, 1596, and seven other precious morceaux, off a broker's counter in Salisbury, when the British ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... this! A total lack of tall trunks, frills, and curling-kids. Driven by the oestrum of a Yo-Semite pilgrimage, the San-Francisco belle forsakes (the Western vernacular is "goes back on") her back-hair, abandons her capillary "waterfalls" for those of the Sierra, and, like John Phoenix's old lady who had her whole osseous system removed by the patent tooth-puller, departs, leaving her "skeleton" behind her. The bachelor who cares to see ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... mutual equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Thus Ted flippantly mixed his familiar American and newly acquired British vernacular. "You are dead right, Larry. I am afraid I'm doomed to land some nine miles or so below the mark but I'm going to make a stab ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... two first of these Latin lines, changing, as I have said, the name of the river to Awyne, almost, apparently, for the purpose of getting a vernacular rhyme, and then ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the commentator, called his boy, etc. Cortina," (vernacular for Cortona, probably,) "a renowned painter, was nicknamed, etc., etc. When the mother of Sheridan once, etc., etc. One teacher sent Chatterton home, etc. Napoleon and Wellington, etc., etc. And Sir Walter Scott was named," etc., ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... from any illusion that his plays were constructed with cogent and consummate technique? Did he for a single instant imagine himself the inspired reformer of public morality? Did he believe that his style was elegant and polished? Indeed, he must have effected an appreciable refinement of the vernacular of his age to produce his lively verse, but without losing the robust vitality of "Volkswitz." Or is it true that nothing further than amusement lay ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... the noble Christian Jew, an Israelite of harmony indeed. The most sympathetic of vocations, whose appeal more than any other is direct to the feelings, could not induce him to tell a sympathetic lie. Would that the writers and speakers of plain English, and of their mother-tongue in every vernacular, might take example from the conscientious creator, who would not put a particle of cant into the crooked marks and ruled bars which are such a mystery to the uninitiated, blot with one demi-semi-quaver of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... have learnt from Mr. Caird that indigo grows in cakes (the ale is imported); to his description of the process of manufacture I can only add that the juice is generally expressed in the vernacular. You give a cake of the raw material to a coloured servant, you stand over him to see that he doesn't eat it, and your assistant canes him slowly as he squeezes the juice into a blue bottle. Blue pills are made of the refuse; your female servants use aniline dyes; and there you are. If any one ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... itself directly or indirectly responsible for the education of the province. At the headquarters of each district there is a high school for boys controlled by the Education Department. In each district there are Government middle schools, Anglo-vernacular or Vernacular, and primary schools, managed by the Municipal Committees and District Boards. Each middle school has a primary, and each high school a primary and a middle, department. For the convenience ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie



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