"Dictionary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and I packed our portmanteaus, and sat down to the intellectual repast. It was a feast, and we enjoyed it. I always have enjoyed the Richmond editorials. If I were a poet, I should study them for epithets. Exhausting the dictionary, their authors ransack heaven, earth, and the other place, and into one expression throw such a concentration of scorn, hate, fury, or exultation as is absolutely stunning to a man of ordinary nerves. Talk ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... those misfortunes has befallen me once only, and I might have been very often the victim of them, if experience had not taught me how much they were to be dreaded. A thoughtless fellow is a man who has not yet found the word dread in the dictionary of his life. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to use words you can understand; that is all I have to say. I cannot undertake to be Mr. Richmond's dictionary. Uncompromising means different things at different times. It isn't a word for you, Tilly," the mother added, with a ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... the course of the present volume it will often be necessary for me to refer to some of my near relations. A few years ago a distinguished Italian philosopher and author, Angelo de Gubernatis, was good enough to include me in a dictionary of writers belonging to the Latin races, and stated, in doing so, that the Vizetellys were of French origin. That was a rather curious mistake on the part of an Italian writer, the truth being that the family originated at Ravenna, where some members of it held various ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... volume on the discoveries of Volta in electricity, but not having the price, he saved his pennies and secured the volume. It was written in French, and so he was obliged to save again, till he could buy a dictionary. Then he began to read the volume, and, with the help of his elder brother, William, to repeat the experiments described in it, with a home-made battery, in the scullery behind his father's house. In constructing ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... placed in no very enviable situation. He had been mainly instrumental in detecting the Popish Conspiracy in that year, which drew down upon him the bitter animosity of the Jesuits. They charged him in their publications (from which extracts may be seen in Mr A. Chalmers' "Biographical Dictionary," and elsewhere) with having been "first a stage-player and afterwards an apprentice," and after being "hissed from the stage" and residing at Rome, with having returned to his original occupation. Munday himself ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... described as a species of guitar in Murray's "New English Dictionary," and this passage from the Diary is given as a quotation. The word appears as angelot in Phillips's "English Dictionary" (1678), and is used in Browning's "Sordello," as a ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Saccaze; is a shepherd who has always lived in these mountains, and has made himself so thoroughly acquainted with the botany of the district as to have become a valuable correspondent of the members of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris: he taught himself Latin, by means of an old dictionary which he bought for a few sous, and, by dint of extraordinary perseverance, has made himself master of the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... change of plan. I have ordered the following books to be sent you from London, to the care of Mr. Madison. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's Hellenics, Anabasis, and Memorabilia, Cicero's works, Baretti's Spanish and English Dictionary, Martin's Philosophical Grammar, and Martin's Philosophia Britannica. I will send you the following from hence. Bezout's Mathematics, De la Lande's Astronomy, Muschenbroeck's Physics, Quintus Curtius, Justin, a Spanish Grammar, and some Spanish books, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Religion of the Assyrians and Babylonians (in the supplementary volume of Hastings's Dictionary of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... you wo'nt tell me," said she, "what has come over you, and why you look as grave and sensible as a Dictionary, when, by general consent, even ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... put the cradle over his knees, and he added, "One gets accustomed to everything," and settled back happily with his reading-lamp, his French novel, and his dictionary. ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... like the Swiss, like your Americans; so that there be no Metropolis or indivisible French Nation any more? Your Departmental Guard seemed to point that way! Federal Republic? Federalist? Men and Knitting-women repeat Federaliste, with or without much Dictionary-meaning; but go on repeating it, as is usual in such cases, till the meaning of it becomes almost magical, fit to designate all mystery of Iniquity; and Federaliste has grown a word of Exorcism and Apage-Satanas. But furthermore, consider ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... this number has been extended; in one remarkable instance, that of Berlioz in his Requiem, to eight pairs. According to Mr. Victor de Pontigny, whose article I am much indebted to (in Sir George Grove's dictionary) upon the drum, the relative diameters, theoretically, for a pair of kettle drums are in the proportion of 30 to 26, bass and tenor; practically the diameter of the drums at the French opera is 29 and 251/4 inches, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... terrible affliction with which a divine providence had seen fit to try him; and finally the Signal uttered its absolute conviction that his native town would raise a cenotaph to his honour. Mr. Critchlow, being unfamiliar with the word "cenotaph," consulted Worcester's Dictionary, and when he found that it meant "a sepulchral monument to one who is buried elsewhere," he was as pleased with the Signal's language as with the idea, and decided that a cenotaph should ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... poverty. His dispositions were eminently social, and his love of poetry amounted to a passion. He is commemorated in the poetical works of his early friend, Wilson, who has addressed to him a lengthened poetical epistle. In 1818, a dictionary of Scottish words, which he had occupied some years in preparing, was published at Edinburgh by "James Sawers, Calton Street," and this publication was found of essential service by Dr Jamieson in the preparation of his "Supplement" to his "Dictionary of the Scottish Language." ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... crescendo, emulated Niagara, surpassed that very American effort of nature, wavered, faltered to Lodore, died away to a feeble tittup like water dropping from a tap to flagstones, rose again in a final spurt that would have made Southey open his dictionary for adjectives, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... like him so well. Uncle talks a little too much out of the dictionary, and walks so straight that he bends backward. But I say, Paul, old Mudge deserves to be choked, and Mrs. Mudge should be obliged to swallow a gallon of her own soup. I don't know but that would be worse than choking. I wouldn't ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... number of general works is large, and the numerals allow of this division, without extra labor for the numbers from 501 to 509 would otherwise be unused. They apply only to the general treatises, which, without them, would have a class number ending with two zeros. A Dictionary of Mathematics is 510, not 503, for every book is assigned to the most specific head that will contain it, so that 503 is limited to Dictionaries or Cyclopedias of Science in general. In the same way a General Cyclopedia ...
— A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library [Dewey Decimal Classification] • Melvil Dewey
... highest, was made up of artifice and conventionalism; when all poets, except the very greatest, spoke a hereditary dialect of their own, which nobody else interfered with—counted on their fingers every line they penned, and knew no inspiration except that which they imbibed from Byssh's rhyming dictionary. True that there was then no life or spirit in the poetical vocabulary—true that there was no nature in the delineations of our minor poets; but better far was such language than the slip-slop vulgarities of the present rhymester—better far that there should be no nature in poetry, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... amount seems so incredible that I cannot but suspect an error in the MS. The sum named is two hundred Attic talents. The Attic talent, according to Smith's dictionary, was worth L243 13s. It may be that this large amount had been collected over ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... flattered by it. He is chiefly attentive to Miss Ford, whom I like and do not like, and like and do not like—but do like. She is utterly cold, and has not an affection on earth. Sir T.—I have not a dictionary—calls her a fair clictic, I think. (Let even Cornelia read hard, or woe to her in their hours of privacy!—his vocabulary grows distressingly rich the more you know him. I am not uneducated, but he introduces me to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... brought out Thornton again, who mentioned several law papers in which the word had been correctly written by his clerks. Despard challenged him on this, and, because Thornton had to confess that he had not examined the word, dictionary in hand, he ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the languages of which he already knew a little, and without a friend to guide him,—having saved up money enough to buy a grammar and dictionary,—he commenced the study of another; after mastering the chief difficulties of which he began still another; and so he had gone on through life, with the most determined perseverance, gaining even more than a smattering ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... I am," responded the old man, promptly. "Do I not beg of you? What is a beggar? 'One who begs or entreats earnestly or with humility; a petitioner.' That is how your dictionary has it. It does n't say for what he begs or entreats. Where I come from things are so different,—there it is a mark of distinction, I can assure you, to be a beggar. One must have lived such a long life of poverty and self-sacrifice before one is permitted to beg—to ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... man; and the very aged man was going to die, and every one but the aged man thought the other, the very aged man, wouldn't die. I do this to explain it to you. He, the man who was really going to die, was—I will look in the dictionary" (He looks in the book, and gives out with much confidence), "was two thousand and eighty-eight years old. Well, the other man was—well, then, the other man 'at knew he was going to die, was about four thousand and two; not nearly so old, you see." ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... my father, who had bought a Greek grammar and dictionary, and a delectus, some time before; and I could see him often, dear old father, with his glass in his eye, puzzling away over them when I was playing, or reading Cook's Voyages, for it had grown to be the wish of his heart that I should be a scholar, and should go into orders. So he was ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... his leisure was spent at Master Swift's cottage, and in reading his books. The schoolmaster had marked an old biographical dictionary at pages containing lives of "self-made" men, who had risen as inventors or improvers in mechanics or as discoverers of important facts of natural science. Jan had not hitherto studied their careers with the avidity Master Swift would have liked to see, but one day ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... same time. He was ambitious to shine, and to astonish his hearers by a show of learning. He knew nothing of Latin and Greek, but he was fond of great high-sounding words of Greek and Latin origin. He carried about with him a pocket dictionary, which he used for the purpose of turning little words into big ones, and common ones into strange ones. My taste was just the contrary. My desire was to be as simple as possible. Like my companion, I often carried about with me a pocket dictionary, but the end for which I used it was, to ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... According to the dictionary definition—and this will serve us for the present—it is the (pretended) art of producing marvellous results by the aid of spiritual beings or arcane spiritual forces. Magic, therefore, is the practical complement ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... the nobility of England before his French and English Dictionary, takes notice, "that both in France, and in other nations, the word thou was used in speaking of one, but by succession of time, when the Roman commonwealth grew into an empire, the courtiers began to magnify the emperor, as being furnished with power to ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... etymologies even in those proposed by our best comparative scholars, and that not everything that is mentioned by Bopp, or Pott, or Benfey as possible, as plausible, as probable, and even as more than probable, ought, therefore, to be set down, for instance, in a grammar or dictionary, as simply a matter of fact. With certain qualifications, an etymology may have a scientific value; without those qualifications, it may become not only unscientific but mischievous. Again, nothing seems a more difficult lesson for an etymologist to learn than to say, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... the more prominent names; and these I have placed in the order of their occurrence in the foregoing pages. In compiling them, I have consulted the Index to Le Monnier's edition of Vasari (1870), Crowe and Cavalcaselle's "History of Painting," and Milizia's "Dictionary of Architects." ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... close to a deer and touch it.... Or Heinrich indexing. He had a passion for listing and indexing books, music, any loose classifiable thing. His favourite amusement was devising schemes for the indentation of dictionary leaves, so that one could turn instantly to the needed word. He had bought and cut the edges of three dictionaries; each in succession improved upon the other; he had had great hopes of patents and wealth arising therefrom.... And his room had been a source of strange sounds; ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... to have known, for he was a perfect polyglot dictionary in himself. He did not pretend, like a certain learned pundit, to speak the two thousand languages and four thousand idioms made use of in different parts of the globe, but he did know all ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... will suffice to remedy the mischief of my affected concentration of language, into the habit of which I fell by thinking too long over particular passages, in many and many a solitary walk towards the mountains of Bonneville or Annecy. But I never intended the book for anything else than a dictionary of reference, and that for earnest readers; who will, I have good hope, if they find what they want in it, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 16mo; over 500 illustrations. An excellent dictionary for school and office use. Bound in cloth and title stamped on the front in ink ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... caught, Paddy," said Tom Pim. "I envy you your success, and only wish that I could talk French as you do, to be employed on the same sort of service. La Touche is teaching me, and I'm trying to teach him English, but we make rum work of it without a grammar or dictionary, or any other book. I suspect he gets more out of me than I do out of him, though I try very hard to pronounce the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... signal for a fresh outburst of cheers and groans. Young "Rats" commenced to hiss like a small steam-engine, while Grundy made frantic but futile attempts to reach over from the desk behind and smite him on the head with a French dictionary. ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... * * The sentence of the law, pronounced by the court, upon the matter contained in the record." 8 Blackstone, 895. Jacob's Law Dictionary. ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... and statesman, noted for piety and austerity. A somewhat fuller version of this story, from which I have borrowed certain details, is given in the Biographical Dictionary of Ibn Khallikan (i. 303-4). The latter, however, calls the first Abd al-Malik "Ibn Bahran" (in the index Ibn Bahram), which somewhat spoils the story. "Ibn Khallikan," by-the-by, is derived popularly from "Khalli" (let ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Dictionary of Quotations from the Greek, Latin, and Modern Languages, translated into English. ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... begin with that." "No," said I, "as we have come to the verbs, we will begin regularly; hramahyel is a verb of the second conjugation. We will begin with the first." "First of all tell me," said Belle, "what a verb is?" "A part of speech," said I, "which, according to the dictionary, signifies some action or passion; for example, I command you, or I hate you." "I have given you no cause to hate me," said Belle, looking me sorrowfully in ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... yet even in this work he did not evince the atheism which he subsequently avowed. It was soon after the imprisonment in which he was involved by this book, that he projected the plan of the magnificent work, the Encyclopedie, or universal dictionary of human knowledge. Its object however was not only literary, but also theological; for it was designed to circulate among all classes new modes of thinking, which should be opposed to all that was traditionary. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... in the papers every day; and when Me und Gott was a famous poem, and "to hobsonize" was the most popular verb; and when I was twenty-one. Sic transit gloria mundi, as it says in the back of the dictionary. ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... books for a little, that I might seek the Lord's blessing, and also, that I might be kept from that spiritual deadness, which is so frequently the result of much study. I looked up to the Lord even whilst turning over the leaves of my Hebrew dictionary, asking His help, that I might quickly find the words. I made comparatively little progress in English; for living with some of my countrymen, I was continually led ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... a gazetteer (a dictionary or index of places, usually with descriptive or statistical information) and cannot provide more than the names of the administrative divisions (in the Government category) and major cities/towns (on the country maps). Our ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... talk,' said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, 'of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I to rush out into the street, collar the first man of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to say that if I wanted a Sanscrit dictionary, I had only to put her head straight at it, and let her feel the spur, and it would ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... have it with you," said Ida, "for I put my Greek dictionary in my pocket this morning, when I first came down, hoping to have a chance to do some translating, and what better chance could I have ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... Ure's Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, containing a Clear Exposition of their Principles and Practice. From the Last Edition. Edited by Robert Hunt, F.R.S., F.S.S., Keeper of Mining Records, etc., assisted by Numerous Contributors Eminent in Science and Familiar with Manufactures. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... to grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's reputation that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the arduous work of preparing a dictionary of the English language, in two folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of letters who assisted him in the humbler parts ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... or—er—yes, Deuteronomy, but the preachers were hammering away at the inspiration idea before we could get into type. So, driven to the wall, we go for our subject-matter to the reliable, old, moral, unassailable vade mecum—the unabridged dictionary. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... dear fellow, the most foolish thing I ever did was to give my wife a French teacher. As long as she slaughtered the dictionary and tortured the grammar I adored her. Our conversations were simple. They revealed to me her surprising gracefulness and matchless elegance; they showed her to me as a wonderful speaking jewel, a living doll made to be kissed, knowing, after a fashion, how to express what ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... languages; and in all fields, in the classical as well, his lively faculty of recognition and assimilation had given him large booty in proportion to his labor. One cannot under any circumstances conceive of Sterling as a steady dictionary philologue, historian, or archaeologist; nor did he here, nor could he well, attempt that course. At the same time, Greek and the Greeks being here before him, he could not fail to gather somewhat from it, to take some hue and shape from it. Accordingly ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... They must never complain of being tired, or their complaints will, at least, never be regarded, because, as the etymology of the word implies, it is their business to be tired. The substantive fag is not to be found in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary; but the verb to fag is there a verb neuter, from fatigo, Latin, and is there explained to mean, "to grow weary, to faint with weariness." This is all the satisfaction we can, after the most diligent research, afford the curious and learned ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... is simple enough. Of the mirage the dictionary says it is "an optical illusion arising from an unequal refraction in the lower strata of the atmosphere, causing images of remote objects to be seen double, distorted or inverted as if reflected in a mirror, or to appear as if ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... I shouted more loudly. Then I stepped to the writing-table, took a dictionary from among the books of reference, found the place I wanted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... may be found in Barbier's "Dictionary of Anonymous Works," and in St. Surins's article in the "Biographie Universelle," so in the little tract before mentioned as published by J. Watson. D'Holbach contributed largely to the first French Encyclopaedia, and other works of a like character. Of the "System of Nature" we ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... flush overspread his forehead. "Will it do if I write it? I don't always spell quite right when I haven't a dictionary, and nobody tells me." ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Standard (?) Pronouncing Dictionary, it is given,— Lenticulareae, a nat. ord. of marsh plants, which thrive in ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... that happiness depends, not upon external causes themselves, but only upon our relation to them, and that, provided a man can accustom himself to bearing suffering, he need never be unhappy. To prove the latter hypothesis, I would (despite the horrible pain) hold out a Tatistchev's dictionary at arm's length for five minutes at a time, or else go into the store-room and scourge my back with cords until the tears involuntarily ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... came out she brought her daughter, a gentle young girl who sat down and smiled upon us through the rest of the interview. She brought also an armful of books, the Spanish-English Ollendorff which her son had used in studying our language, his dictionary, and the copy-book where he had written his exercises, with two photographs of him, not yet too Americanized; and she showed us not only how correctly but how beautifully his exercises were done. If I did not admire these enough, again I cannot ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... uncleanness. The dictionary says that uncleanness means "morally impure, foul, filthy, unchaste and obscene." The Bible says, "God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness." I Thess. 4:7. This means that we are to keep ourselves pure in thought, ...
— The Key To Peace • A. Marie Miles
... awful afraid you'll get muddled in your head, miss, for as to mine, it has swam away long ago. I begin not to know in the least who I am, miss. Poppy, why it ain't nowhere! only I'm Sarah, with all the other words in the dictionary tacked on to it. I don't mind it now; they say folks can get accustomed to anything, so I don't mind being Sarah, and everything else too, only it has a very swimming effect on the head, Miss Primrose. Oh, my darling ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... ladies had, as usual, made ample preparation for our supper, and Kate had found time to give Bella her usual lessons. Her instruction was imparted certainly under difficulties. Her only books were a Bible, a small History of England, a Johnson's Dictionary, and a work on natural history. The latter was especially useful to all of us, as it gave a very fair account of many of the animals we were likely to meet with. Senhor Silva had laid in a good stock of paper, pens, and ink. Kate herself was so well acquainted ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... name to the booksellers for attachment to other men's wares,[6] and, finally, only escaping the indignity of a removal from his professor's chair by sudden death, in 1732. Yet this gentleman's botanical dictionary ("Historia Plantarum," etc.) was quoted respectfully by Linnaeus, and his account of British cattle, their races, proper treatment, etc., was, by all odds, the best which had appeared up to his time. The same gentleman, in his "New Improvements of Planting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the Bible, which he pursued with maps, commentary, and Bible dictionary, soon became very interesting to him. It awakened in his mind a new spirit, and kindled emotions which before had been foreign to him. He was an earnest teacher, while he was an inquiring student. The course of study which he had undertaken for my sake had been even a ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... admirable was that answer of Dr. Johnson's, when a lady asked him how on earth he allowed himself to describe the word pastern in his dictionary as the knee of a horse. "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," was his laconic reply. So great a man could well afford to confess utter ignorance of matters outside his own sphere. But how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any subject under ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... information bureau, but we will do our best. (1) Conjunctivitis is properly a disease of the eyes; "psychical conjunctivitis" would be a sort of mental squint. "Katzenjammer" is the German for "hot coppers." "Cephaloedematous" is not in the New Oxford Dictionary, but apparently applies to a sufferer from swelled head. HOKUSAI was a Japanese artist, and "asininity" is the special quality of the writer of the article from which you have taken these words. (2) "Scooping" is the vulgarisation of the portamento, (3) Operatic singers grow stout because ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... not been able to find the words "carmingier," "primmentum," and "biroletus" in any dictionary. "Biroletus" is probably the same as "luiroletus" which we have met with above, and the word is misprinted in one ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... see why, having boulevard (boule-vert), which is the same word as bowling-green, the French should have adopted boulingrin. It is surprising that a person so grave as the Dictionary should ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... not misspellings: "dumfoundered" "parricide" "nobble" "finicking". "shewing" was very moldy at the time this was written but still not deceased. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, was used as the authority for spellings. I don't know about "per mensem" Chapter XXXVI page 180, line 18. I don't know about "titify" Chapter XL ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... been also proverbial sayings of buying and selling the devil; but that such a traffic was actually ever negociated will appear incredible. Blount's "Law Dictionary," under Conventio, gives an instance of a sale; it is extracted from the court rolls of the manor of Hatfield, near the isle of Axholme, county of York, where a curious gentleman searched for it and found it regularly entered. There then followeth an English ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... little washroom. Oh, I'm so happy! I can't realize it's all true." As she spoke she raised herself on her toes so that she could see her face in the mirror over the mantel. "Why, do you know, sister," she rattled on, her eyes studying her own face, "that Miss Sarah used to make us learn a page of dictionary if we talked after the ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... look into this monumental tome. (Do not think that adjective hyperbolical, for surely monumental is not too strong a word to describe a book which would just about balance in weight an unabridged dictionary.) Some idea of the immensity of the undertaking can be obtained when, as the preface says, "it is known that nearly one year's time was consumed and an average force of twenty-five men employed in the labor of obtaining information ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... you ask! But really this white gown will last a little longer—Cairo is so clean. No, thank you, there is nothing I need bother you about—Oh, yes, there really is one book that I would like—a Turkish or an Arabic dictionary. I have always meant to learn a little of the language and this would ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of tea is universal. The tables show that for each inhabitant New South Wales requires annually 7.8 lbs.; Victoria, 7.7 lbs.; South Australia, 6.5 lbs.; and Queensland 8.4 lbs.; and moreover, that West Australia attains a maximum with 10.6 lbs. Now, according to Mulhall, in his DICTIONARY OF STATISTICS, the amount of tea consumed annually for each inhabitant in the United Kingdom is only 5 lbs.; and for the United States of America the ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... a whole week, which was the longest time allowed them; but, after all, it was quite long enough, for they both had preparatory knowledge, and everyone knows how useful that is. One knew the whole Latin dictionary and also three years' issue of the daily paper of the town off by heart, so that he could repeat it all backwards or forwards as you pleased. The other had worked at the laws of corporation, and knew by heart what ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... his joy was great. A box of books had come. Among them was a General Dictionary which he regarded as a real treasure. Reading was now his principal occupation. He found the making of many experiments irksome and seemed, all at once, "quite averse to having his hands so much in water." Presumably ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... important to note that each term given is defined in its relation to the photoplay, and not according to its usual or dictionary meaning. All terms are explained in detail as the book progresses. (See ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... monuments older than those collected in the handy volumes which we call Dictionaries, and those who know how to interpret those English antiquities—as you may see them interpreted, for instance, in Grimm's Dictionary of the German, in Littre's Dictionary of the French, or in Professor Skeats' Etymological Dictionary of the English Language—will learn more of the real growth of the human mind than by studying many volumes on logic ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... in the Standard Dictionary as follows: "The science that treats of citizenship and of the relations between citizens and the government: a new word directly derived from the adjective civic, introduced by ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... Peterkin, "canibobbles? eh! well done. Mak, I must get you to write a new dictionary; ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... the coal companies between the mines and Philadelphia by the Schuylkill; the Union Canal connected the Schuylkill and Susquehanna, and New York City was supplied by the Delaware Canal. [Footnote: McCulloch, Commercial Dictionary (ed. of 1852), I., 366; U.S. Census of 1880, IV.; Worthington, Finances ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... for his little friend, Louise Gerard, who out of sheer kindness constituted herself his school-mistress, guiding and inspiriting him, and working hard at the rudiments of L'homond's Grammar and Alexandre's Dictionary, to help the child struggle with his 'De Viris'. Unfortunate indeed is he who has not had, during his infancy, a petticoat near him—the sweet influence of a woman. He will always have something coarse in his mind and hard in his heart. Without this excellent ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... man of wonderful parts; and no bibliographer can be satisfied without it. Goujet was perhaps among the most learned, if not the "facile princeps," of those who cultivated ancient French literature. He liberally assisted Niceron in his Memoires, and furnished Moreri with 2000 corrections for his Dictionary.] ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... my lessin," went on the funny little thing. So he put her up at the table, opened the great dictionary she had brought, and gave her a paper and pencil, and she scribbled away, turning a leaf now and then, and passing her little fat finger down the page, as if finding a word, so soberly that I nearly betrayed myself by a laugh, while Mr. Bhaer stood stroking her pretty hair with ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... BRAHE, &c.] Tycho Brahe was an eminent Danish mathematician. Quer. in Collier's Dictionary, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Latin or Greek lack this intermediate experience, though the study of their original meanings is full of surprises. This, however, is merely a question of opening a Latin or Greek dictionary, if we have not time for the moment's reflexion which would serve the same purpose. Thus, to take a dozen examples at random, to abominate[6] is to turn shuddering from the evil omen, a generous man is a man of "race" (genus), an innuendo can be conveyed "by nodding," ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... student. "This word," says Mr. Pickering, in his Vocabulary, "has been much used at our colleges. The English have the verb to apply, but the noun applicant, in this sense, does not appear to be in use among them. The only Dictionary in which I have found it with this meaning is Entick's, in which it is given under the word applier. Mr. Todd has the term applicant, but it is only in the sense of 'he who applies for anything.' An American ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Geography, Bible, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Dictionary? I know them very little. I am very delighted that I am improving much. Perhaps I will be an assistant of the Deaf and Dumb School. Where were you born? Would you like to correspond with me? I would be very fond of you. You ought to write a long letter to me soon. ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... regular system of exaggeration—is to speak simple words, using all necessary force and emphasis in the voice instead of in the number of syllables, saying what you mean by just the words that will convey the meaning. Of course the dictionary must be frequently used. There is no help so sure as that which it affords to one who would use ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... it,—canst not thou save it, then, without prize? Put forth thy hand, in God's name; know that 'impossible,' where Truth and Mercy and the everlasting Voice of Nature order, has no place in the brave man's dictionary. That when all men have said "Impossible," and tumbled noisily elsewhither, and thou alone art left, then first thy time and possibility have come. It is for thee now; do thou that, and ask no man's counsel, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... is my transliteration of Greek text into English using an Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table. The diacritical marks ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... had become the famous Doctor Samuel Johnson! He was universally acknowledged as the wisest man and greatest writer in all England. He had given shape and permanence to his native language, by his Dictionary. Thousands upon thousands of people had read his Idler, his Rambler, and his Rasselas. Noble and wealthy men, and beautiful ladies, deemed it their highest privilege to be his companions. Even the king of Great Britain ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a studied position; and it was evident that he was preparing himself for his speech, although, afterwards, a good many words escaped him which are found in no dictionary, but belong to the jargon of the lowest classes, and serve to express the ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... exercise those mental powers with which he felt himself so generously endowed, almost swept him off his feet. He had been a reporter once; for two golden weeks he had handed in police-court reports that fairly scintillated with verbal gems plucked at random from the dictionary. But the city editor had indicated as kindly as possible that his services were no longer required, vaguely suggesting that it was necessary to reduce the force; and Mr. Opp had assured him that he understood perfectly, and that he was ready to return at any future time. That apprenticeship, brief ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... for regular perusal: we may consider them as deserts served up for a taste only, not a dinner; yet even this rule may be broken by a resolute reader, for the late Joseph Scott, Esq; founder of the trust before-mentioned, assured me, in 1751, that he had perused Bailey's Dictionary as methodically as he had done Tom Jones; and, though a dissenter, he continued to read the Common Prayer Book from end to end, about twice a year; which is more than, perhaps, the greatest lover of that ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... tools for that work cost more yet. Yours cost you from ten cents to five dollars, his from five dollars to a hundred. A single volume of Lange, or Alford, or the Speaker's Commentary cost five dollars; a good Bible Dictionary, from twenty to thirty; a good Encyclopedia, from fifty to a hundred. And theological treaties have a small market and therefore a high price-very high for their value. And his tools grow old too, and have to be replaced oftener ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... strange way of not understanding! We who live in the world must speak as the world speaks—we cannot recur continually to a philosophical dictionary, and if we had recourse to it, we should only be sent from a to z, and from z back again to a; see affluence, see competence, see luxury, see philosophy, and see at last that you see nothing, and that you knew as much before you opened the book as when you shut it—which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... standing at its time-worn threshold, the visitor needed no effort of fancy to picture that uncouth figure shambling through the crooked lanes that afford access to this queer, somber, melancholy retreat. In that house he wrote the first dictionary of the English language and the characteristic, memorable letter to Lord Chesterfield. The historical antiquarian society that has marked many of the literary shrines of London has rendered a signal service. The custom of marking the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... house full of devout foreigners, each ready and waiting, with his little book in his hand—a morocco-bound Testament, apparently. But only apparently; it is Mr. Bellows's admirable and exhaustive little French-English dictionary, which in look and binding and size is just like a Testament and those people are there to study French. The building has been nicknamed "The Church of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stand by their convictions, they put themselves and their families at the mercy of a problematical future; and when, in advanced years, they undertook the gigantic work of compiling so large and profound a German dictionary. Jakob looked as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... elaboration too lofty to be noticed. A few days afterwards Mr. Labouchere met the Colonel, and asked him what he meant by calling him a political gargoyle. "Well," said the Colonel, "rather late to ask me; you will find the definition in the dictionary. It is a grotesque gutter-spout." Said Mr. Labouchere, "You're a very clever fellow, Colonel; that would have been a capital point—if you ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... by no means difficult,[Footnote: Latin, subdifficilis which I should render somewhat difficult had not Cicero treat that question as one that presents no difficulty. In the ancient tongues, as in our own or even more than in our own, a word is often better defined by its use than in the dictionary.] whether at any time new friends worthy of our love are to be preferred to the old, as we are wont to prefer young horses to those that have passed their prime. Shame that there should be hesitation as to the answer! There ought to be no satiety of friendships, as there is rightly ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... books: histories, philosophies, and scientific works; also a Bible and a dictionary. He had studied these and knew them by heart; he was a direct and diligent talker. He never talked of himself, and beyond the statement that he had acquired his knowledge from reading, and not at school, his personality was a mystery. He left the house at six in the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the stuff." Which means—as you will discover by referring to the unabridged dictionary of Bohemia—that he had "cut out the booze;" that he was "on the water wagon." The reason for Bob's sudden attitude of hostility toward the "demon rum"—as the white ribboners miscall whiskey (see the "Bartender's Guide"), should be of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... weakness, all depressing patronymics, and when godfathers and godmothers will soberly and earnestly debate the interest of the nameless one, and not rush blindfold to the christening. In these days there shall be written a "Godfather's Assistant," in shape of a dictionary of names, with their concomitant virtues and vices; and this book shall be scattered broadcast through the land, and shall be on the table of every one eligible for god-fathership, until such a thing as a vicious or untoward appellation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Persons wishing to revive their knowledge of neglected Hebrew, or desirous to learn it anew without a teacher, can find no book better adapted to facilitate the acquisition than this, in addition to a grammar and dictionary. ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... fair Goddess of Flowers, skies brighten, the gardens are glowing, And lo! 'tis the season of Flower Shows, when everything seems "All-a-blowing!" And what the dickens you've been up to with the dictionary, I'm dashed if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... said the spring was out of order. The wagon was what is known as a thorough-brace, which means that there are two large loopy steel bands on which the wagon box rests; the loops are filled in with countless strips of leather, forming a pad for the springs to play on. (The Century Dictionary will please not copy this definition.) The Deadwood stage coach was a thorough-brace, I believe. Another interesting out-of-date detail in the construction of this wagon was that the brake had no mechanical device for holding it in position when it was put on hard, ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... Arminius has observed) that Tacitus misunderstood an attempt of Arminius to extend his influence as elective war-chieftain of the Cherusci, and other tribes, for an attempt to obtain the royal dignity. [Dr. Plate, in Biographical Dictionary commenced by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.] When we remember that his father-in-law and his brother were renegades, we can well understand that a party among his kinsmen may have been bitterly hostile to him, and have opposed his authority ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... would not, defied his father, and despatched Berry to the Shades. Berry was all that Benson was not. Whereas Benson hated woman, Berry admired her warmly. Second to his own stately person, woman occupied his reflections, and commanded his homage. Berry was of majestic port, and used dictionary words. Among the maids of Raynham his conscious calves produced all the discord and the frenzy those adornments seem destined to create in tender bosoms. He had, moreover, the reputation of having suffered for the sex; which assisted his object in inducing the sex to suffer ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... historian and states-councillor Molbeck, who played, in our time, so great a part in the history of Danish criticism, that I must speak of him rather more fully. He is an industrious collector, writes extremely correct Danish, and his Danish dictionary, let him be reproached with whatever want he may, is a most highly useful work; but, as a judge of aesthetic works, he is one- sided, and even fanatically devoted to party spirit. He belongs, unfortunately, to the men of science, who are ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... therefore readily expressed in pantomime. Not only was pantomime sufficient for all the actual needs of his existence, but it is not easy to imagine how he could have used language such as is now known to us. If the best English dictionary and grammar had been miraculously furnished to him, together with the art of reading with proper pronunciation, the gift would have been valueless, because the ideas expressed by the words had not yet ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... is wanted upon every library table, and in every club and reading-room "where men do congregate;" which is, at the same time, from its nature, open to the criticism of hundreds of critics,—when a work of this nature and of such extent as Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire bears on its title-page the brief but expressive words "Thirteenth Edition," it has obviously long outlived the time when any question can exist as to its merits. These have long been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... told you it would end in a blow-up; go to your dictionary, you dirty blackguard, and do more credit to your education and superior instruction from a certain person who shall ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... writing, to think out just what we want to say. A rambling, incoherent letter is not in good taste any more than careless, dishevelled clothing. Spelling should be correct. If there is any difficulty in spelling, a small dictionary kept in the desk drawer is easily consulted. Begin each sentence with a capital. Start a new paragraph when you change to a new subject. Put periods (or interrogation points as required) at the ends of the sentences. It is neater to preserve ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... bamboo joints holding about a tumblerful each. To refuse the allotted portion would degrade one in the eyes of everyone, for here it is a sin to be sober and a virtue to get drunk. Gluttony finds no place in a Manbo dictionary—one is merely full,[7] but always ready to go on; friend divides his rice with friend, when he sees that the latter's supply is getting low, and his own is immediately replenished by one of the womenfolk, or slaves that ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... surface and dried it in the sun. Mr. Goodyear was surprised to observe that this process seemed to produce the same effect as the application of aquafortis. It does not appear to have occurred to him that Hayward's process and his own were essentially the same. A chemical dictionary would have informed him that sulphuric acid enters largely into the composition of aquafortis, from which he might have inferred that the only difference between the two methods was, that Hayward employed ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... his coming. I saw the brownie's work in exercises left overnight full of faults, and found next morning carefully corrected: I profited by his capricious good-will in loans full welcome and refreshing. Between a sallow dictionary and worn-out grammar would magically grow a fresh interesting new work, or a classic, mellow and sweet in its ripe age. Out of my work-basket would laughingly peep a romance, under it would lurk the pamphlet, the magazine, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... was made Praefectus Annonae for five years. There was a great scarcity at Rome, which was nothing unusual, and dangerous riots (see the article CORN TRADE, ROMAN, 'Political Dictionary,' by the author of this note). The appointment of Pompeius is mentioned by Dion Cassius (39. c. 9, and the notes of Reimarus). Cicero (Ad Atticum, iv. 1) speaks of ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... became the celebrated author, the compiler of the English Dictionary, and one of the most distinguished scholars in England; but he never forgot his act of unkindness to his poor, hard-toiling father. So when he visited Ottoxeter, he determined to show his sorrow and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... grew complicated if he tried to explain himself. One day his mother, having run short of methylated spirit, for her teakettle, sent him with a bottle to buy some more. He looked the words up in a dictionary, entered a chemist's, and demanded "alcohol for burning" in his best Italian. The assistant seemed mystified, but suddenly a light flooded his intelligent face, he flew to a series of neat little drawers behind the counter, rummaged about, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... pleasure to get a dictionary from Mr. Weekley. One knows from experience that Mr. Weekley would contrive to avoid unnecessary dullness, even if he were compiling a railway guide, but that he would also ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... "Arthur" in the "Dictionary of National British Biography"; and Professor Rowley in Low and Pulling's "Dictionary of English History," p. 434. See also Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Britons" and Tennyson's ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... precisely what East Anglia is, it is perhaps equally difficult to speak for a few minutes on so colossal a theme as the literature of East Anglia. It would be easy to recapitulate what every biographical dictionary will provide, a long list of famous names associated with our counties; to remind you that we have produced two poet-laureates—John Skelton, of Diss, the author of Colyn Cloute, and Thomas Shadwell, of Broomhill, the playwright—the ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... always be a comfort to me. You wouldn't ha' knowed me for your feyther's old sarvant if you'd heard me. I felt as if Satan had got hold o' my tongue, and was wagging it for me. The words came so pat. It seemed as if I'd got all the dictionary at the tip ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... of names seriously; the Murchisons always did. Indeed, from the arrival of a new baby until the important Sunday of the christening, nothing was discussed with such eager zest and such sustained interest as the name he should get—there was a fascinating list at the back of the dictionary—and to the last minute it was problematical. In Stella's case, Mrs Murchison actually changed her mind on the way to church; and Abby, who had sat through the sermon expecting Dorothy Maud, which she thought lovely, publicly cried with disappointment. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... as taking the suffixed pronoun in the third singular only. neg., negative. neut., neuter. obj., object. part., particle. partic., participle. pers., person, personal. pl., plural. poss., possessive. pr., pronoun. pref., prefix. prep., preposition. S, Sa'a language. See Sa'a and Ulawa dictionary. sing., singular. sub., subject. suff., suffix, suffixed. term., termination. tr., transitive. U, Ulawa language. See Sa'a and Ulawa dictionary. v., verb. v.i., verb intransitive, i.e., a verb which can not take ...
— Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language • Walter G. Ivens
... of the South, (1869). The Correspondent. Poetry of the Future. Dictionary of Southern Authors, [unfinished]. School History of South Carolina. Bell of Doom, [a poem]. Florida of To-day. Helen of Troy, [a romance of ancient ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... nineteenth-century novel, with events, scenes, and decor of the fifth century. If it has not the spectacular and popular appeal of The Last Days of Pompeii, it escapes, as that does not, the main drawback of almost all the others—the "classical-dictionary" element: and if, on the other, its author knew less about Christianity than Cardinals Wiseman and Newman, he knew more about lay "humans" than the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... bear to them the relation of discoverer, as it were. A High-Dutch Columbus, from Vienna, had been before me, and I could only come in for Amerigo Vespucci's tempered glory. This German savant had dwelt a week in these lonely places, patiently compiling a dictionary of their tongue, which, when it was printed, he had sent to the Capo. I am magnanimous enough to give the name of his book, that the curious may buy it if they like. It is called "Johann Andreas Schweller's Cimbrisches Woerterbuch. Joseph ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... leading booksellers, Johnson had entered on the largest, and, as it proved, the decisive, work of his life, the preparation of his 'Dictionary of the English Language.' The earliest mentionable English dictionary had appeared as far back as 1604, 'containing 3000 hard words ... gathered for the benefit and help of ladies, gentle women, or any other unskilful persons.' Others had followed; but none of them was comprehensive ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... doudo, a simpleton; but as he is generally somewhat wild and vague in his etymologies, and as we have no intelligence whatever of the dodo through the Portuguese, we may safely conclude that the name is of Dutch derivation. In the old black-letter Dutch and English dictionary now before us, we find the word dodoor translated a humdrum, which, Dr Johnson tells us, means 'a stupid person.' Now, if the name be derived from the bird's simplicity, the Dutch dodoor is as near the mark as the Portuguese doudo. But it may be that the name was given on account of the peculiar ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... upon an undertaking of a very different kind. In 1747 he had put forth a plan for an English Dictionary, addressed at the suggestion of Dodsley, to Lord Chesterfield, then Secretary of State, and the great contemporary Maecenas. Johnson had apparently been maturing the scheme for some time. "I know," he says in the "plan," that "the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... big cafe on the Grands Boulevards. I wish the reader to know that it was not alone the gaiety which drew me there; aside from that I had a laudable purpose. I had purchased an English-French conversational dictionary, and I went there every night to take a language lesson. I used to get three or four of the young women who frequented the place at a table and buy beer and cigarettes for them. In return I received my lesson. I got more than my money's worth, for they ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... coined in 1886 to meet a want which the general's importance had created. That word was boulangisme, though it would be hard to give it a definition in the dictionary. We can only say that it meant whatever General Boulanger might be ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... for the purpose, wheeled round within a yard of his nose, displaying his brilliant charms in vain; and all the eyes of Argus seemed to pale their ineffectual fire, as when Mercury, with his delightful music, in accordance with the command of Jupiter, and with Lempriere's dictionary, made them wink in a delicious drowse. And, thirdly, in the case of a game bantam, once my property, who flew up every morning to the top of a tall pump, and challenged Nottinghamshire to fight, I could not but admire the gawstering spirit, because ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... truth, but still very fearful of being known as inquirers. It became necessary therefore to seek the patronage of the government, and Mr. Judson determined, so soon as he should have finished his dictionary of the language, to proceed to Ava, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... block o' yours, Mac, you an Scraggsy can divide my share o' these two boxes o' ginseng root between you. Do you get it, you chuckleheaded son of an Irish potato? Gin Seng, 714 Dupont Street. Ginseng—a root or a herb that medicine is made out of. The dictionary says it's a Chinese panacea for exhaustion, an' I happen to know that it's worth five dollars a pound an' that them two crates weighs a hundred and fifty pounds each if ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... lost. (6) in the original book, words which were obsolete (in 1911) were marked with a dagger. In this version, those words are marked with a vertical bar ("|"). Some of the words which were still current in 1911, but are no longer found in a current college-size dictionary (presently obsolete words), or which are no longer used in the specific indicated sense, have been marked with a bar followed by an exclamation point "|!". However, this marking process has just commenced, and only a small portion of the words which are ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... recalls the fact that the barber chirurgeon or surgeon in mediaeval England was also known as the leech. It would be natural to suppose that he was named after the insect which he applied, but Murray's Dictionary holds that the two words were derived from separate early English roots, and were subsequently identified by ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell |
