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Substantive   /sˈəbstəntɪv/   Listen
Substantive

noun
1.
Any word or group of words functioning as a noun.



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"Substantive" Quotes from Famous Books



... This word is now used in a most ignorant way; and from its misuse it has come to be a word wholly useless: for it is now never coupled, I think, with any other substantive than these two—faith and confidence: a poor domain indeed to have sunk to from its original wide range of territory. Moreover, when we say, implicit faith, or implicit confidence, we do not thereby indicate any specific kind of faith and confidence differing from other faith ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... hangs over these events, but of this I am sure, he will be unable to deny anything I advance. There is evidence almost amounting to demonstration that Pichegru was strangled in prison, and consequently all idea of suicide must be rejected as inadmissible. Have I positive and substantive proof of what I assert? I have not; but the concurrence of facts and the weight of probabilities do not leave me in possession of the doubts I should wish to entertain on that tragic event. Besides, there exists ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... park between it, and the palace which is called Huytal; but why it is called Huytal, I am sure I don't know." His researches in the English language had not enabled him to recognize the adjective and substantive out of which the abstruse compound ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... other aspects of juvenile delinquency, must apply with much the same force in this Dominion as elsewhere, and to the sexual deviant as to all other juvenile delinquents. In searching for the real or substantive cause it must be borne in mind that juvenile delinquency, of the type now being considered, is a new feature of modern life and a facet of juvenile delinquency which does not appear to have engaged the ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.

... archaically expressed by a second and abstract substantive. This peculiarity is common in the South African family, as in Ashanti; but, as Bowdich observes, we also find it in Greek, e.g. , "heresies of destruction" for destructive. Another notable characteristic is the Mpongwe's fondness for the passive voice, never ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... the doctrine or concept of Federalism; (2) the doctrine of the Separation of Powers; (3) the concept of a Government of Laws and not of Men, as opposed especially to indefinite conceptions of presidential power; (4) and the substantive doctrine of Due Process of Law and attendant conceptions of Liberty. What I proposed to do is to take up each of these doctrines or concepts in turn, tell something of their earlier history, and then project against this background ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... is lesser or greater, I say the space is more or less pure. So that when I speak of pure or empty space, it is not to be supposed that the word "space" stands for an idea distinct from or conceivable without body and motion—though indeed we are apt to think every noun substantive stands for a distinct idea that may be separated from all others; which has occasioned infinite mistakes. When, therefore, supposing all the world to be annihilated besides my own body, I say there still remains pure Space, thereby nothing else ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... should admit Jack upon quarterdeck, yet, what with talking against lords and aristocracy, jobs and abuses, and searching through no very refined vocabulary for the strongest epithets to apply to those irritating nouns-substantive, his bile had got the better of his understanding, and he became fuddled, as it were, by his own eloquence. Thus, though as innocent of Jacobinical designs as he was incapable of setting the Thames on fire, you would have ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... person, you mean?" asked the lady. Her tone and accent made the substantive sound criminal. It almost hissed, the way she ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... applied to the pores of the skin, and can only drink a very small quantity of the circumambient moisture, by reason of the smallness of their diameters;—whereas, from the verb poteein is derived the substantive potamos, which signifies a river, or vast quantity of liquor. I could not help smiling at this learned and important investigation; and, to recommend myself the more to my new acquaintance, whose disposition I was by this time well informed ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... of chimes. The college clock was beginning to strike ten. He had scarcely got into the passage, and closed the door after him, when a roar as of a bereaved spirit rang through the room opposite, followed by a string of words, the only intelligible one being the noun-substantive "globe", and the next moment the door opened and Moriarty came out. The last stroke of ten was just booming from ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... contributions to periodical literature, and a leading newspaper gives expression to a general wish when it says that "this series of striking essays ought to be collected and reprinted, both because of substantive worth and because of the light they throw on the author's literary canons and predilections." In fact, the articles which were published anonymously in The Westminster Review have been so pointedly designated ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... consistent with being understood. They inflect both their nouns and verbs regularly; and denote the cases of the former and the tenses of the latter, not like the English by auxiliary words, but like the Latins by change of termination. Their nouns, whether substantive or adjective, seem to admit of no plural. I have heard Mr. Dawes hint his belief of their using a dual number, similar to the Greeks, but I confess that I never could remark aught to confirm it. The method by which they answer a question that they cannot resolve is similar ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... distinctly written, looks at first like acomie, but is no doubt the word acornie (French, acorne, horned), which Jamieson defines as a substantive, meaning 'apparently a drinking vessel with ears or handles.' He quotes from Depredations on the Clan Campbell, p. 80: 'Item, a silver cup with silver acornie, and horn spoons and trenchers.' It seems more probable that the word in both passages is an adjective, applicable to spoons, and descriptive ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... author ought in fairness to have noticed. I had pointed out that we have only the Latin version here, and that the present tense is obviously due to the translator. The original would naturally be [Greek: ton sun auto], which the translator, being obliged to supply a substantive verb, has carelessly rendered 'his qui cum eo sunt.' If any one will consider what has been just said about the general character of the Epistle, he will see that this is the only reasonable explanation of the fact, whether we regard the work as genuine or not. If it is not genuine, the forger ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... and lawyers simply didn't think of competing; and since this sort of thing carries its own penalty, the designation which they shared with so many distinguished persons in history became a byword on the lips of envious persons and small boys, by which they wished to express effeminacy and the substantive of the "stuck-up." "D'ye take me fur a bank clurk?" was a form of repudiation among corner loafers as forcible as it ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... boast of one's money; shishka [Bump or swelling.] (on pronouncing which one had to join one's fingers together, and to put a particular emphasis upon the two sh's in the word) meant anything fresh, healthy, and comely, but not elegant; a substantive used in the plural meant an undue partiality for the object which it denoted; and so forth, and so forth. At the same time, the meaning depended considerably upon the expression of the face and the context of the conversation; so that, no ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... placed on this curious fact; but hardly any construction can be placed on it which does not in some way connect Grimald with the publication. It may be added that, while his, Surrey's, and Wyatt's contributions are substantive and known—the numbers of separate poems contributed being respectively forty for Surrey, the same for Grimald, and ninety-six for Wyatt—no less than one hundred and thirty-four poems, reckoning the contents of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... publicly or privately, such a case as I have mentioned, considering the subject in the two points of view: first, with respect to the particular forms; and secondly, to the question, how far any difference in point of form can preclude the Parliament of Ireland from the exercise of the same substantive right as that which we have declared to vest in us ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... saving element in its verb is the minuteness with which it defines the time of an action. The causative form is made by the use of a suffix. It does not use the verb "to go" or "come" in order to express a future tense. Numerous particles are used in the substantive verb sense. The Mandingo language is rather smooth. The letters v and z are not in it. About one-fifth of the verbs and nouns commence with vowels, and the noun always ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... old style." But in general, between troubadour poetry and the popular poetry of folk-lore, a great gulf is fixed, the gulf of artificiality. The very name "troubadour" points to this characteristic. Trobador is the oblique case of the nominative trobaire, a substantive from the verb trobar, in modern French trouver. The Northern French trouvere is a nominative form, and trouveor should more properly correspond with trobador. The accusative form, which should have persisted, was superseded by the [10] nominative trouvere, which grammarians brought ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... he is. B-o-t, bot, t-i-n, tin, bottin, n-e-y, ney, bottinney. Noun substantive. A knowledge of plants. When a boy learns that bottinney is a knowledge of plants, he goes and knows 'em. That's our system, Nickleby. Third boy, what's ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of "the survival of the fittest." This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words Natural Selection. I formerly thought, probably in an exaggerated degree, that it was a great advantage to bring into connection natural and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... known to fame, though in a widely different line of usefulness, makes a very distinct picture in my mind; this was Ephraim Wales Bull, the inventor of the Concord grape. He was as eccentric as his name; but he was a genuine and substantive man, and my father took a great liking to him, which was reciprocated. He was short and powerful, with long arms, and a big head covered with bushy hair and a jungle beard, from which looked out a pair of eyes singularly brilliant and penetrating. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... overstrained. But when other people criticize our own more exalted soul-flights by calling them 'nothing but' expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be made to hold ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... Subscribe (sign) subskribi. Subscribe (money) monoferi. Subscription monoferado. Subscription abono. Subsequent sekva. Subside mallevi. Subsidy helpa mono. Substance substanco. Substantial fortika. Substantiate pruvi. Substantive substantivo. Substitute anstatauxi. Subterfuge artifiko. Subterranean subtera. Subterraneous subtera. Subtile maldika. Subtle ruza. Subtract elpreni. Subtraction elpreno. Suburbs cxirkauxurbo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... says—"Now in ancient languages every one of these words had necessarily a termination expressive of gender, and this naturally produced in the mind the corresponding idea of sex, so that these names received not only an individual, but a sexual character. There was no substantive which was not either masculine or feminine; neuters being of later growth, and distinguishable chiefly in the nominative." (Chips, vol. ii., p. 55.) And this alleged necessity for a masculine or feminine implication is assigned as a ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... appears this substantive and this definition. "PARASITE (par'-a-sit), n. one who frequents the table of a rich man and gains his favor by flattery; a hanger-on; an animal or plant nourished by another to which it ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... a capital; as ought every line in a poem. I and O, when they stand single, must always be capitals; any words, particularly names or substantives, may begin with a capital; but the common way of beginning every substantive with a capital is not commendable, and is ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... adieu to all that in our declensions distinguishes the gender, and the number of things we would speak: adieu, in the verbs, to all which might explain the active person, how and in what time it acts, if it acts alone or with others: in a word, with the Chinese, the same word is substantive, adjective, verb, singular, plural, masculine, feminine, &c. It is the person who hears who must arrange the circumstances, and guess them. Add to all this, that all the words of this language are reduced ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... resorted to, to help out defective averments in pleading; especially, in pleading in abatement, where the utmost certainty and precision are required. (Chitty on Pl., 457.) That the plaintiff himself was a slave at the time of action brought, is a substantive fact, having no necessary connection with the fact that his parents were sold as slaves. For they might have been sold after he was born; or the plaintiff himself, if once a slave, might have became a freeman before action brought. To aver that his ancestors were sold as slaves, ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... Grammar teaches us the laws of the verb and nominative case, as well as of the adjective and substantive. ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... virtues residing in it, or by many other different names. These metaphysical conceptions were regarded as intensely real, and at first as mere instruments in the hands of the appropriate deities. But the habit being acquired of ascribing not only substantive existence, but real and efficacious agency, to the abstract entities, the consequence was that when belief in the deities declined and faded away, the entities were left standing, and a semblance of explanation of phaenomena, equal to what existed ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... intervals mentioned all six subjects recall movement couplets better than verb couplets. In view of the small difference here and of his whole record, however, M is probably to be classed as indifferent in both substantive and action series. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... life can here be used, unless for alacrity, liveliness, vigour, and in this sense the expression is harsh. Perhaps we may read,—with good lift, with good will, with sincere zeal for my service. I should have proposed,—with good lief, in the same sense, but that I cannot find lief to be a substantive. With good life may however mean, with exact presentation of their several characters, with observation strange of their particular and distinct parts. So we say, he acted to ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... [Greek: gnosis], knowledge as a possession, but the state of acquiring knowledge ([Greek: hina gignoskosin]). It is significant, I think, that St. John, who is so fond of the verb "to know," never uses the substantive ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... of despotism;" [74] meditari Leucada, "to intend to bring about the catastrophe of Actium," [75] and so on. We observe also several innovations in syntax, especially the freer use of the infinitive (vivere durent) after verbs, or as a substantive, a defect he shares with Persius (scire tuum); and the employment of the future participle to state a possibility or a condition that might have been fulfilled, e.g., unumque caput tam magna iuventus Privatum factura timet velut ensibus ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... We then told you that it was a bill for the wholesale disfranchisement of the electors of Ireland. We then proved incontrovertibly that, under pretence of reforming the law of procedure, you were really altering the substantive law; that, by making it impossible for any man to vindicate his right to vote without trouble, expense, and loss of time, you were really taking away the votes of tens of thousands. You denied all this then. You very coolly ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... certain verbs of wishing, commanding, forbidding, and the like are used with an object clause consisting of a substantive in the objective case and an infinitive, as, he commanded the men to flee. Such object clauses are called infinitive clauses, and the substantive is said to be the ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... causation. This should be thoroughly understood as it is the philosophic basis of all those "denials" which play so important a, part in Mental Science, and which may be summed up in the statement that evil being negative, or privation of good, has no substantive existence in itself. Conditions, however, whether positive or negative, are no sooner called into existence than they become causes in their turn and produce further conditions, and so on ad infinitum, thus giving rise ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... of Indian coyote folk tales have been many. The majority of retellers from western Indians include Coyote. One of the very best is Frank B. Linderman, in Indian Why Stories and Indian Old-Man Stories. These titles are substantive: Old Man Coyote by Clara Kern Bayliss (New York, 1908, OP), Coyote Stories by Mourning Dove (Caldwell, Idaho, 1934, OP); Don Coyote by Leigh Peck (Boston, 1941) gets farther away from the Indian, is more juvenile. The Journal of American Folklore ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... much interested in study. He got along as he best could by his native wits and such little application as he found absolutely necessary. One day we were reciting in Lowth's Grammar. The Bishop says that in English the substantive singular is made plural for the most part by adding s. Professor Channing called up this classmate of mine, who stated this as follows: "The author says that the distinction between nouns in the singular and plural ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... douleur retrace le recit de ta douleur. This is a Latin construction of frequent occurrence in this play. Cf. post urbem conditam "after the founding of the city." The past participle qualifying the noun takes the place of our abstract substantive. ...
— Esther • Jean Racine

... recognizes that U.S. relationships with Iran and Syria involve difficult issues that must be resolved. Diplomatic talks should be extensive and substantive, and they will require a balancing of interests. The United States has diplomatic, economic, and military disincentives available in approaches to both Iran and Syria. However, the United States should also consider incentives to try to engage them constructively, ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... have had some haunting thoughts of; and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... to the carriage instantly,' said Lady Palliser, almost shouting the substantive, in order that Jack might be reminded what kind of people he had insulted by his ruffianly bearing. 'I feel that I am bemeaning myself every moment I stay ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... from a grant of arms to a pair of wooden legs; so it is not surprising if, in Oxford, such an every-day commodity as a dog can be obtained through the medium of "filthy lucre;" for there was a well-known dog-fancier and proprietor, whose surname was that of the rich substantive just mentioned, to which had been prefixed the "filthy" adjective, probably for the sake of euphony. As usual, Filthy Lucre was clumping with his lame leg up and down the pavement just in front of the Brazenface gate, accompanied by his last "new and extensive assortment" of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... a Russian-mediated cease-fire in place since May 1994, and support the OSCE-mediated peace process, now entering its fifth year. Nevertheless, Baku and Xankandi (Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh region) remain far apart on most substantive issues from the placement and composition of a peacekeeping force to the enclave's ultimate political status, and prospects for a ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... doubt that upon more mature consideration MR. THORPE will see that it could not be a substantive that was intended; and, as he admits my conjecture to be specious, that he will, in the course of his very useful labours, ultimately find it not only specious but correct. Meanwhile, I submit to his consideration, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... in no humor for jesting. Damas. I see you understand something of the grammar; you decline the non-substantive "small-swords" with great ease; but that won't do—you must take a ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... stands for "gold" as a substantive may also stand, as in English, for an adjective, and for a verb, "to gold," i.e. to regard as gold, to ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... "walking," "speaking" words such as "rain," "sunrise," "lightning," which do not denote what would commonly be called actions. These words illustrate, incidentally, how little we can trust to the grammatical distinction of parts of speech, since the substantive "rain" and the verb "to rain" denote precisely the same class of meteorological occurrences. The distinction between the class of objects denoted by such a word and the class of objects denoted by a general name such as "man," "vegetable," or ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... an errata page, the alteration of the couplet I have just sent (half an hour ago) must take place, in spite of delay or cancel; let me see the proof early to-morrow. I found out murmur to be a neuter verb, and have been obliged to alter the line so as to make it a substantive, thus— ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... or dislikes are excited, and so absolutely unable to check himself whenever he feels tempted thus to go off, lacks the very first qualifications of the critic:—lacks them, indeed, almost as much as the mere word-grinder who looks to see whether a plural substantive has a singular verb, and is satisfied if it has not, and horrified if it has. His most famous sentence "The Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities live for ever" is certainly noble. But it would have been better if the Humanities had oftener ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... exist only in substances and their forms, which are the subjects; existing in the brain which is full of substances and forms, they are called purely organic forms. No one who thinks rationally can help laughing at the fancies of some that affections and thoughts do not have substantive bases, but are exhalations given shape by heat and light, like images apparently in the air or ether. For thought can no more exist apart from a substantial form than sight can apart from its form, the eye, or hearing apart from its form, the ear, or taste apart from its form, the tongue. ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... any stray shoats?" asked a passer: "I-uns's uses about here." "Critter" means an animal—"cretur," a fellow-creature. "Longsweet-'nin'" and "short sweet'nin'" are respectively syrup and sugar. The use of the indefinite substantive pronoun un (the French on), modified by the personals, used demonstratively, and of "done" and "gwine" as auxiliaries, is peculiar to the mountains, as well on the Wabash and Alleghany, I am told, as in Tennessee. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... government for New Mexico, that man would, of course, be of opinion that it is necessary to protect the ever-lasting snows of Canada from the foot of slavery by the same overspreading wing of an act of Congress. Sir, wherever there is a substantive good to be done, wherever there is a foot of land to be prevented from becoming slave territory, I am ready to assert the principle of the exclusion of slavery. I am pledged to it from the year 1837; I have been pledged to it again ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... wanting in the parallel passage in St. Luke (cf. Luke x. 3). This may be so or not; we have no means of judging. But it should at any rate be remembered that this original document, supposing it to have had a substantive existence, most probably contained repeated references to miracles. The critics who refer Matt. x. 16 to the document in question, also agree in referring to it Matt. vii. 22, x. 8, xi. 5, xii. 24 foll., &c., which speak ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... quod est) and predicate (modus entis), and derives them from two fundamental activities of the mind, a combining function (simulsumtio, totatio) and an abstracting function (one which removes the nota subjecti). Substance and accident, substantive and adjective, are expressions for subjective processes of thought and hence do not hold of things in themselves. With reference to the importance, nay, to the indispensability, of linguistic signs in the use of the understanding, the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... make faces, Mr. Sheffield; a little, I say; a little of everything is best—ne quid nimis. Avoid all extremes. So it is with sugar. Mr. Reding, you are putting too much into your tea. I lay down this rule: sugar should not be a substantive ingredient in tea, but an adjective; that is, tea has a natural roughness; sugar is only intended to remove that roughness; it has a negative office; when it is more than this, it is too much. Well, Carlton, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was so fond of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the substantive, such as "proud submission and dignified obedience," are, I think, first to be found in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... the compound tenses of Bi are rarely if ever used. They are here given complete, because they correspond to the analogy of other verbs; and show how accurately the various modifications of time may be expressed by the substantive verb itself. ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... with this term others of similar termination, such as sanctimonia from sanctus, we shall find in them a confirmation of the etymology given above: monia serves to form the substantive, but does not otherwise ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs

... proposes itself to a modern versifier, from which there is no escape, which occurs perpetually, and which, choose as he may, presents him always with an evil. I mean in the instance of the particle (the). When this particle precedes a vowel, shall he melt it into the substantive, or leave the hiatus open? Both practices are offensive to a delicate ear. The particle absorbed occasions harshness, and the open vowel a vacuity equally inconvenient. Sometimes, therefore, to leave it open, and sometimes ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... different; for instance, a girl of thirteen who has begun to menstruate may be competent for the act of procreation, and yet her sexual development may still be far from complete. The confusion as regards the use of the substantive puberty is no less perplexing. One writer uses it to denote the time at which procreative capacity begins, and believes he is right in assuming that in the male this time is indicated by the occurrence of the first involuntary sexual ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... tendency undoubtedly leads to great defects of style. His sentences are monotonous and mechanical. He has a perfect hatred of pronouns, and for fear of a possible entanglement between 'hims' and 'hers' and 'its,' he will repeat not merely a substantive, but a whole group of substantives. Sometimes, to make his sense unmistakable, he will repeat a whole formula, with only a change in the copula. For the same reason, he hates all qualifications and parentheses. Each thought must be resolved into its constituent ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... that some of the comments received in response to the NPRM had already been addressed, and some called for minor clarifications that have been made to the final regulations. Other comments, whether raised for the first or second time, raise substantive issues ...
— Supplementary Copyright Statutes • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... mode of classification, which, if not so far-reaching as the other, is at least an exceedingly useful one. The two methods may be combined to a considerable extent. By the latter plan the colours may be conveniently divided into three groups: I., substantive colours; II., adjective colours; III., mineral and ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... the Naturo-Philosophical volumes of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, and is therefore to be viewed as a portion of that series rather than as a substantive work. Its preparation has been entrusted to Mr. M. Donovan, Professor of Chemistry to the Company of Apothecaries in Ireland; so that it comes to us with some share of recommendatory experience on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various

... and her Royal Consort, with a sum of L50.—Some singular decisions have recently been made by the Vice Chancellor. It seems that a Mr. Hartley deceased in 1843, left directions in his will that L300 should be set apart as a prize for the best Essay on "Natural Theology," treating it as a substantive science, and as adequate to constitute a true, perfect, and philosophical system of universal religion. It was ruled by the Vice Chancellor that this bequest was void, on account of the evident tendency which the essay so described would have to demoralize society and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... Punctuation at the end of entries was silently regularized, and missing or invisible periods (full stops) after standard abbreviations such as "m." or "pl." were silently supplied. Other errors in punctuation or typography are listed separately, after the more substantive errors. ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall

... Church; surely she must be adequate to send her representatives to the lower House. I know the time may not have come for mooting a question of this sort; but I know the time will come, and that woman will be something more than a mere adjective to man in political matters. She will become a substantive also. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... Personal intelligence, affection, identity, are inseparable components of the idea of a soul. And what method is there of crushing or evaporating these out of being? What force is there to compel them into nothing? Death is not a substantive cause working effects. It is itself merely an effect. It is simply a change in the mode of existence. That this change puts an end to existence is an assertion ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... O Ahu. In this instance the article still finds itself disunited from its substantive. To-day we ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... Siste Gloede (literally "The Last Joy"). The title as it stands is expressive. The substantive is "joy"—but it is so qualified by the preceding "last," a word of overwhelming influence in any combination, that the total effect is one of sadness. And the book itself is a masterly presentment of gloom. Masterly—or most ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... be often well to admit the license of using a substantive for epithet, (as one says rock-bird or sea-bird, and not 'rocky,' or 'marine,') in Latin as well as in English. We thus greatly increase our power, and assist the brevity of nomenclature; and we gain the convenience of using the second term by itself, when we wish to do so, more ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... originality in the right sense of the term, because it will have originated from the author's mind, just as the offspring originates from the parent. And the result will be, not a showy, emphatic, superficial virtue, which is indeed a vice, but a solid, genuine, substantive virtue; that is, the thing will be just what it seems, and will mean just what it says. Moreover the greatness of the work, if it have any, will be more or less hidden in the order and temperance and harmony of the parts; so that the work will keep growing larger and richer to you ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... second-hand character, of Anglo-Saxon literature have combined to frustrate what might have been expected from another characteristic of it—the unusual equality of its verse and prose departments. We have only one—not quite entire but substantive—prose tale in Anglo-Saxon, the version of the famous story of Apollonius of Tyre, which was to be afterwards declined by Chaucer, but attempted by his friend and contemporary Gower, and to be enshrined in the most certain of the Shakespearean ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... of names shows us also the difference of our ideas: for if we observe them, we shall find that OUR SIMPLE IDEAS HAVE ALL ABSTRACT AS WELL AS CONCRETE NAMES: the one whereof is (to speak the language of grammarians) a substantive, the other an adjective; as whiteness, white; sweetness, sweet. The like also holds in our ideas of modes and relations; as justice, just; equality, equal: only with this difference, that some of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... them revealed, homogeneous, consecutive, in their gestures and tones, the whole, the very being, of which words and acts are but the partial manifestation. Methinks that in this way the play might add enormously to the suggestiveness, the delight and dignity of life; play-acting might become a substantive art, not a mere spoiling of the work of poetry. Methinks that if this happened, or happened often, my friend and I, who also hates the play.... But it seems probable, on careful consideration, that my friend and I are conspicuously devoid of the dramatic faculty; ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... usual, before examining the various classes into which names are commonly divided, to begin by distinguishing from names of every description, those words which are not names, but only parts of names. Among such are reckoned particles, as of, to, truly, often; the inflected cases of nouns substantive, as me, him, John's; and even adjectives, as large, heavy. These words do not express things of which any thing can be affirmed or denied. We can not say, Heavy fell, or A heavy fell; Truly, or A truly, was asserted; Of, or An of, was in the room. Unless, indeed, we are speaking of the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... that the projects of Louis Napoleon in Mexico, and the consequent sympathies of the United States with Russia against Poland and France, make an imbroglio fatal to Poland. Now that, if the Russian Empire were organized into States possessed of substantive interior nationality (as the French plan is), this would seem to be a very lamentable result. The two Western Cabinets have so acted as to ensure that Russia and the United States shall each desire the aggrandizement of the other; and if Russia take a lesson ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... I," echoed Avis, mournfully. "I don't think Latin was ever meant for girls. My brother did Caesar two years ago, and he's in Virgil now, though he's a year younger than I am. It seems quite easy to him, but I never know which verb goes with which substantive, or whether a thing is a nominative or a genitive. I look out all the words in the dictionary, and learn their meanings, but I can't make the least sense of them until Miss Harper shows me how they fit into the sentences. Why isn't ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... Dorsenne again, jocosely, "that in the father's dictionary the word has another meaning: Conversion, feminine substantive, means to him income.... But let us reason a little, Countess. Why do you think it sad that the daughter should see her father's character in her own light?... You should, on the contrary, rejoice at it.... And why do you find ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... present tense there is no substantive verb. The predicate and subject are combined as in the examples already given (cf. p. 312, 2). But when the present indicates a state in opposition to one preceding it, ga is used before the adjective, or if in opposition to a future ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... rejected (with all the consequences of its rejection apparent) or that it should be passed without these clauses. There was no necessity for their abandonment of any opinion or principle, nor any obstacle to the appropriation clauses being brought forward again and again in a substantive independent shape. Besides this, it is not pretended that these clauses were to produce any immediate perhaps not even any remote, effect, and they not only acknowledge that the state of Ireland calls for ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... was in the habit of using the adjective for the substantive, especially fair for fairness; one ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... paid his expenses. Dorothea could have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should give him wifely help. Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought rather to have done—not even Sir James Chettam, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... Banter to chaff or make fun of, at this time a new slang word. It is almost certain that the verb, which came into use about 1670, was a full decade earlier than the noun. In 1688 the substantive 'Banter' was up-to-date slang. For the verb vide D'Urfey's Madam Fickle (1676), Act v, I, where Zechiel cries to his brother: 'Banter him, banter him, Toby. 'Tis a conceited old Scarab, and will yield us excellent sport—go play upon him a little—exercise thy Wit.' cf. Swift, Apology (1710), ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... is observed on the surface only, the grain otherwise possessing that pure white colour characteristic of Neradol D tanned leather. Further, it may be noted that leathers tanned—with Neradol D fix basic coal-tar dyes excellently, whereas acid and substantive dyestuffs are fixed with other than ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... language is beyond the limits of Germany. The rival religion of the Brahmins expelled it. Which of the two was the older is uncertain. Still more difficult is it to determine how far each is a separate substantive mythological growth, or merely a modification of ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... the most important part of a good working dictionary, the intention of which is not to inform readers and writers what a word may have meant before the Dispersion, but what it means now. The pedigree of an adjective or substantive is of little consequence to ninety-nine men in a hundred, and the writers who have wielded our mother-tongue with the greatest mastery have been men who knew what words had most meaning to their neighbors and acquaintances, and did not stay their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... accused of impertinence, of exceeding due measure. The sculptor did his best; but he was careful to do nothing which was out of harmony with its surroundings. He sank himself in his work. And even when he was engaged on a more serious substantive work, what he most avoided was the incongruous and unbecoming. He so worked that the attention of the spectator was concentrated not on the character of the workmanship, but on the person or the subject portrayed. The idea which he tried to incorporate in marble ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... been written especially for her benefit. What rapture to be questioned about those very rules in French grammar which one had rubbed up the week before; to have pet passages selected from Shakespeare, and find the Latin prose for translation become gradually intelligible, as one telling substantive gave the clue to the whole! Once assured of the meaning, it was easy to pick out the words, skimming lightly over difficult phrases, but making a great show of accuracy when opportunity arose. As to the elegance of the translation ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... evening is of four hundred years. (The total duration, therefore, of the Krita yuga is four thousand and eight hundred years of the deities). As regards the other yugas, the duration of each gradually decreases by a quarter in respect of both the substantive period with the conjoining portion and the conjoining portion itself. (Thus the duration of the Treta is three thousand years and its morning extends for three hundred years and its evening for three ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... also signifies "the upper part of the ridge of some elevated and exposed land." As a prefix, its meaning depends upon the fact whether the word attached to it be an adjective or a substantive. If an adjective be attached, it has the second signification; i.e. it is the upper part of some exposed land, having the particular quality involved in the adjective, such as, "Cefndu," "Cefngwyn," "Cefncoch," the black, white, or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... man; his name was Solamona: and we esteem him as the lawgiver of our nation. This king had a large heart, inscrutable for good; and was wholly bent to make his kingdom and people happy. He therefore, taking into consideration how sufficient and substantive this land was to maintain itself without any aid (at all) of the foreigner; being five thousand six hundred miles in circuit, and of rare fertility of soil in the greatest part thereof; and finding also the shipping of ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon

... words as these of my text if He had simply thought of His death as a Plato or a John Howard might have thought of his, as being the close of his activity for the welfare of his fellows. Unless Christ's death has in it some substantive value, unless it is something more than the mere termination of His work for the world, I see not how the words before us can be interpreted. If His death is His glorifying, it must be because in that death something is done which was not completed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... of ablative, conjunctive, substantive, or grammar, no more than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet these will give you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear them, and peradventure shall trip as little in their language as the best masters of art in France. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... A certain number of salutary habits and sentiments, such as that which the Amphictyonic oath embodies, in regard to abstinence from injury as well as to mutual protection, gradually found their way into men's minds: the obligations thus brought into play acquired a substantive efficacy of their own, and the religious feeling which always remained connected with them, came afterward to be only one out of many complex agencies by which the later historical Greek was moved. Athens ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... legend. "Device" and its doublet "devise" come from the two Old French forms devis and devise of the Latin divisa, things divided, from dividere, to separate, used in the sense of to arrange, set out, apportion. "Devise," as a substantive, is now only used as a legal term for a disposition of property by will, by a modern convention restricted to a disposition of real property, the term "bequest" being used of personalty (see WILL). This use is directly due to the Medieval ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... hardly necessary to occupy further room with more instances of so familiar a phrase, though perhaps it may not be out of the way to remark, that miss is used by Andrewes as a substantive in the same sense as the verb, namely, in vol. v. p. 176.: the more usual form being misture, or, earlier, mister. Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary, most unaccountably treats these two forms as distinct words; and yet, more ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... before now by readers who were quite at home in the original languages: "earing nor harvest" (Genesis). Without some acquaintance with the earlier forms of our mother tongue, one is liable to take earing to mean the same as "harvest," from the association of ears of corn. But it is the substantive from the Anglo-Saxon verb erian, to plough, to till: so that "earing nor harvest" "sowing nor reaping." From erian we may pass on to arare, and from that to arista: in the long pedigree of language ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... be called the juridical rules, embracing as well substantive law as the procedure and practice of ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... voting with the government in favour of the removal of Jewish disabilities. No ordinary degree of moral courage was needed for such a step by the member for such a constituency. 'It is a painful decision to come to,' he writes in his diary (Dec. 16), 'but the only substantive doubt it raises is about remaining in parliament, and it is truly and only the church which holds me there, though she may seem to some to draw me from it.' Pusey wrote to him in rather violent indignation, for Mr. Gladstone was the only man of that school who learned, or was able to learn, what ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... concluding that the underlining had been done by Paul Harley, I read them with particular care. They were as follows: "According to Hesketh J. Bell, the term Obeah is most probably derived from the substantive Obi, a word used on the East coast of Africa to denote witchcraft, sorcery, and fetishism in general. The etymology of Obi has been traced to a very antique source, stretching far back into Egyptian mythology. A serpent in the Egyptian language was called Ob or Aub. Obion ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... not say that priggishness is absolutely unknown among the North Italians; sometimes one comes upon a young Italian who wants to learn German, but not often. Priggism, or whatever the substantive is, is as essentially a Teutonic vice as holiness is a Semitic characteristic; and if an Italian happens to be a prig, he will, like Tacitus, invariably show a hankering after German institutions. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... the First and Second Parts issued separately in the autumn of 1869 and the summer of 1870. Although prior English versions have often been heavily abridged, this new translation is complete to the smallest substantive detail. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... abeyance for a time, or even permanently, but the dominant features must be retained. It is not enough to have genuine Consistories, we must have genuine Classes. And, under whatever modifications, the substantive elements of our polity must be reproduced in the mission churches established by the blessing of God upon the men and means furnished by ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... unmarketable elements; which is just the reason why you have it here so briefly told. But his wonder has still kept growing; and I think the reader's will also, if he consider it ripely. For now he sees why I speak of the little people as of substantive inventors and performers. To the end they had kept their secret. I will go bail for the dreamer (having excellent grounds for valuing his candour) that he had no guess whatever at the motive of the woman—the hinge of the whole well-invented plot—until the instant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sentence are: some name for the object of thought (to which the general term substantive may be given); some word or group of words to make assertion concerning the substantive (general term, assertive); and, in case of an incomplete assertive, one of the above given completions of its meaning (object ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... the couplet I have just sent (half an hour ago) must take place, in spite of delay or cancel; let me see the proof early to-morrow. I found out murmur to be a neuter verb, and have been obliged to alter the line so as to make it a substantive, thus: ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... the spirit in all things. Moreover, emotion is in itself simple; it does not need generalization, it is the same in all. It is rather a means of universalizing the refinements of the intellect, the substantive idealities of imagination, by enveloping them in an elementary, primitive feeling which they call forth. Poetry, therefore, especially deals, as Wordsworth pointed out, in the primary affections, the elementary passions of mankind; and, whatever ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry



Words linked to "Substantive" :   substantive dye, jurisprudence, noun, meaningful, substantial, substantival, word, law, adjective



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