"Misnomer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... defect which the plea points out. This plea, though it was recently, made use of by the defendants in the case now pending in Ireland, is of very rare occurrence in ordinary practice—a recent statute having entirely superseded every advantage formerly to be derived from this plea, in cases of a misnomer, or a wrong name, and of a false addition or a wrong description of the defendant's rank and condition, which were the principal occasions on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... A.M., passed Piper's Islands, and steered for Young Island; could not make it out for some time, when we did see it, found it only a small reef above water, not worthy the name of an island; such a misnomer is likely to mislead; hauled up for the reef M. At noon, abreast of Haggerstone Island, steered to give Sir Everard Home's Isles a berth; saw natives on Cape Grenville; hauled in for Sunday Island; the wind ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... arrant misnomer—has fallen short of its well-meant original purpose is beyond dispute. We see its baneful effect in municipal, State and national government. The unparalleled political corruption in most of our large cities, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... what plane of nature does it really belong? The answer to both these questions is contained in the reply that it is read from the akashic records; but that statement in return will require a certain amount of explanation for many readers. The word is in truth somewhat of a misnomer, for though the records are undoubtedly read from the akasha, or matter of the mental plane, yet it is not to it that they really belong. Still worse is the alternative title, "records of the astral light," ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... we have called the attempt to do what we are told to do. The word is a misnomer; with our Captain as our Leader no hope is ever "forlorn"! But our Leader calls for men, men like the brave of old who jeopardised their lives unto the death in the high places of the field, in the day that they came to the help of the Lord, to the help of ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... selection" is a misnomer, as Darwin himself perceived. It means merely survival. "Selection" proper involves intention, and belongs to human reason. Selection by man we call artificial. Natural selection is the outcome of certain physical facts: 1. Environment: the complex ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... be not a misnomer, we are prompted to say that "ENQUIRE WITHIN" is peopled with hundreds of ladies and gentlemen, who have approved of the plan of the work, and contributed something to its store of useful information. There they are, waiting to be questioned, and ready to reply. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... been offered anything he wanted. At present he was State Senator. He with others called himself a Republican—one of the great party of Lincoln to which the negroes after their enfranchisement united themselves. It was a fearful misnomer. The Republican party in the South, composed of ninety-nine ignorant negroes to one renegade white, about as truly represented the progressive party of Lincoln as a black vampire the ornithology of ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the Reverend Doctor Opimian, dining with his friend Squire Gryll; 'a curiously complicated misnomer. We have an excellent old vegetable, the artichoke, of which we eat the head; we have another of subsequent introduction, of which we eat the root, and which we also call artichoke, because it resembles ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... previously expressed her high disdain. This consisted of a hopeless endeavor to make a lame dog dance. The animal in question was no other than 'Becca Rudd's Dash, a piece of nomenclature which can only be described as the wildest and most satirical misnomer. Liza had not been too severe on Dash's physical infirmities when she described him as lame on one of his hind legs, for both those members were so effectually out of joint as to render locomotion of the simplest kind a difficulty attended by violent oscillation. This was ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... be. A new factor has been introduced, it may be a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset calculation—a something in his character in virtue of which his second choice is different from his first. It is an utter misnomer to call it 'chance.' Even though he had tossed a coin and acted on the throw, his action would still be determined by the kind ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... some respects, a correct designation but in others a misnomer. It had rooms to let, or rather suites, and it had a clerk. So far, a hostelry. It had no dining room, no bar, no billiard room, no news-stand, no barber shop, no boot-black, no laundry—and in these respects, at ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... second birthday was passed, Star's education commenced. The process called "gentling," was a complete misnomer for the series of buck jumps, of bites and kicks, with which the young lady received the slightest attempt to touch her. She had a horrible habit also of shrieking, really almost like a human being in a frantic rage; she would rush at ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... pretty gown I have? I'll win you with my smile. Most audiences are good-natured, and enjoy to the full such small vanities; moreover, we all like to see winning smiles, beautiful gowns, and graceful gestures; but it is a pitiable misnomer to call such exhibitions reading. But the more subtle forms of insincerity in this art are even more prevalent. To exaggerate some form of emphasis, to exaggerate a gesture or facial expression, to wrest a passage from its meaning, these, and many other devices for forcing immediate approval ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... It required no very vivid imagination to fancy ourselves in the happy valley of "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," and it seemed to me impossible that any one could ever desire, like that discontented youth, to leave so charming a spot. The term prairie is a misnomer in this case; instead we found a beautiful fruitful valley lying between two low ranges of hills, interspersed with groves of trees and picturesque lakes, and watered by a river winding gracefully through its whole length. It had been the seat of the Winnebago ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... night rapidly to advance, but the grand preliminaries being settled, we approached the "road" and strove to penetrate with our keenest vision into its dark recesses. A road! this it could not be. It was a gross misnomer! It appeared to our excited imaginations, a lane, in the tenth scale of consanguinity to a road; a mere chasm between lofty trees, where the young moon strove in vain to dart a ray! To go or not to go, that was the question! A new consultation ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... been justly observed that Shakespeare shows much judgment in the naming of his plays. From this observation several critics have excepted Julius Caesar, pronouncing the title a misnomer, on the ground that Brutus, and not Caesar, is the hero of it. It is indeed true that Brutus is the hero, but the play is rightly named, for Caesar is not only the subject but also the governing power of it throughout. He is the center and springhead of the entire action, giving law and shape to ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... expression, and set forth the actual thing the lessons undertake, by using such caption as for for example, To give the idea, of a triangle, or to insure, or to furnish the idea of a curve? We think the misnomer yet greater and worse, when we come to such captions as 'To develop the idea of God, as a kind Father;' especially when the amount of the development is this: 'Now, children, listen very attentively to what I say, and I will tell you about a Friend that you all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... corn-fields and pasture-lands, interspersed with all kinds of fruit-trees except the olive. They put into Badis or Jask, and after leaving it and passing Maceta or Mussendon, they came in sight of the Persian Gulf, to which Nearchus, following the geography of the Arabs, gave the misnomer of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... "anti-Semitism" here in the sense in which it has come to be used—that is to say, anti-Jewry, but place it in inverted commas because it is in reality a misnomer coined by the Jews in order to create a false impression. The word anti-Semite literally signifies a person who adopts a hostile attitude towards all the descendants of Shem—the Arabs, and the entire twelve tribes of Israel. To apply the term to a person ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... significantly remarked on the effect produced by the "deliberate exclusion" of any instruction in Irish history from National schools. It does seem curious that national history should be a forbidden subject in National schools, and this fact makes the appellation of "National" seem rather a misnomer. The result of this deliberate exclusion was graphically described by the honorable member. The youth comes forth educated, and at a most impressible age he reads for the first time the history of his country, and burns ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... dragged along until the pursuing and long visible disaster finally overtook the company in Centropolis, Illinois (this is not the real name of the city, but it is no more flagrant a misnomer than the one it boasts). They played a matinee here and an evening performance, to two almost empty houses; that gave them ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Melbourne, passing to the east of the Benevolent Asylum, we went over a little rise called Mount Pleasant, which, on a damp sort of a day, with the rain beating around one, seemed certainly a misnomer. After about two miles, we came to a branch-road leading to Pentridge, where the Government convict establishment is situated. This we left on our right, and through a line of country thickly wooded (consisting of red and white gum, stringy bark, cherry and other trees), we ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... Lutheranism advocated during the middle of the nineteenth century as "American Lutheranism" was a misnomer, for in reality it was neither American nor Lutheran, but a sectarian corruption ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... terms, because, if we speak of the mouth, we are at once reminded of the mouth in the higher animals, and in this sense the word, as applied to the aperture through which the Sea-Urchins receive their food, is a misnomer. Very naturally the habit has become prevalent of naming the different parts of animals from their function, and not from their structure; and in all animals the aperture through which food enters the body is called the mouth, though there is not the least structural ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... held to adjust the details. The privileges of a college were to be obtained, with the power of conferring the same degrees upon female students, as upon males—forgetting, in their ardor, that the constitution of female Bachelors and Masters of Arts would be a misnomer in any other country than Ireland. In one word, there was to be no other classical institution, in this country or any other, comparable with it—and to it the nuns of Canada, the Moravians of Bethlehem, and the azure-hosed professors of modern Ilium, would ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... Home! Frightful misnomer for that place, warm and well-ventilated as it was, and supplied with the latest products of civilization. The gas was burning brightly; fresh cool water flowed at his will; at his touch a bell rang, and instantly, outside his door, an iron plate ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... him enthroned fast, The blind old man of Scio, hoary Homer, So that of all the harpers first and last, To call him king, is not a base misnomer. ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... there is not a single German reference given in the whole book. In the second place, the genetic point of view is almost completely overlooked, one of cardinal importance in such a field. Thirdly, the whole subject of the unconscious is treated as non-existent. It is a complete misnomer to entitle a book on descriptive psychology "The Foundations of Character" when no notice whatever is taken of that region of the mind where the very springs of character take their source, and where the most fundamental features ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... price but it cost nothing to look. He called it widow-shopping, which was not a misnomer in Crystal City. There were plenty of widows, some lonely, some lively. Some free and uninhibited. And he did have ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... shorten sail, and the ship drew into that arm of the sea which, by a misnomer peculiarly American, it is the fashion to call the East River. Here our heroine candidly expressed her disappointment, the town seeming mean and insignificant. The Battery, of which she remembered a little, and had heard so much, although beautifully placed, disappointed her, for ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... than once all but occasioned its suppression. Both journals are published weekly, and both have a considerable circulation, though it must be owned that their title of "comic" is for the most part a sad misnomer. That the Russians are naturally devoid of humor no reader of Gogol or Griboiedoff, Pushkin, Kriloff or Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial University, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... show", said Colombo, "that sorcery is somewhat akin to business, and now that I think of it", said Colombo, "I believe that the term wizard of industry is perhaps not entirely a misnomer." ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... prefixed to this paper would be a misnomer, if I did not add a list of books which it may be ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... utility. We, the reviewer of this book, at eight years of age, though even then passionately fond of study and disdainful of childish sports, passed some of the most wretched and ungenial days of our life in 'learning by heart,' as it is called (oh! most ironical misnomer!), Propria quae maribus, 'Quae genus,' and 'As in praesenti,' a three-headed monster worse than Cerberus: we did learn them ad unguem; and to this hour their accursed barbarisms cling to our memory as ineradicably ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... placed before the judges, and was called upon to plead, he admitted that he was the person indicted, but pleaded a misnomer in abatement—or, in other words, that he was the Earl of Banbury. The pleas occupied, subsequently, more than a year, during which time the prisoner was admitted to bail. At last the House of Lords interfered, and called upon the ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... have been established, and continue to flourish, that they obviously perform certain useful and welcome functions; but my own criticism would be that to call them clubs for "authors" or "writers" is a misnomer which fails to particularize the real basis of membership. In the modern world, no doubt, all writers, merely as writers, have certain interests in common. They have, in the first place, to get their ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... maidens enter the kingdom while yet their parents are stumbling where no light from the Golden City and "the Land very far off" reaches them. Last winter I became very much interested in such a case. I was going to write "Poor Mary Neil!" but that would have been the strangest misnomer. Happy Mary Neil! rises impetuously from my heart to ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... 1793 Grenville arranged similar conventions with Sardinia, Hesse-Cassel, Spain, and Naples. In this haphazard manner did these States agree to war against France. Their aims being as diverse as their methods were disjointed, the term "First Coalition" applied to this league is almost a misnomer. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... insects of this order the most noted are the white ants or termites (which are ants only by a misnomer). They are, unfortunately, at once ubiquitous and innumerable in every spot where the climate is not too chilly, or the soil too sandy, for them to construct their ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... "also" the first syllable must be short and the second long, and then be compelled, by the evidence of one's senses to mark "echo" as a trochee, and "detract" as an iambus? What less pardonable misnomer, than for a great critic to call the sign of long ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... course this very word "dead" is an absurd misnomer, as most of the entities classified under this heading are as fully alive as we are ourselves; the term must be understood as meaning those who are for the time unattached to a physical body. They may be subdivided into nine principal ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... been called the "king of the forest." This appears to be a misnomer. He is not properly a forest animal. He cannot climb trees, and therefore in the forest would less easily procure his food than in the open plain. The panther, the leopard, and the jaguar, are all tree-climbers. They can follow the bird to its roost, and the monkey to its perch. The forest ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... may yet be simply organic, and whether a series of such actions are possible—and close on the heels of this question would follow the old, "Is logic the essence of thinking?"—in other words, "Is thinking possible without arbitrary signs? or how far is the word arbitrary a misnomer? are not words, etc., parts and germinations of the plant, and what is the law of their growth?" In something of this order I would endeavour to destroy the old antithesis of Words and Things, elevating, as it were, Words into Things, and living things too. All the nonsense of ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... am I to substitute? What other sense is conceivable that does not destroy the doctrine which it professes to interpret—that does not convert it into its own negative? As if a geometrician should name a sugar- loaf an ellipse, adding—"By which term I here mean a cone;"—and then justify the misnomer on the pretext that the ellipse is among the conic sections! And yet—notwithstanding the repugnancy of the doctrine, in its unqualified sense, to Scripture, Reason, and Common Sense theoretically, while to all practical uses it is intractable, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... behavior, that most of the remarks which have been made about that wild being apply to her also. In many cases, indeed, we find that one version of a story will allot to a Baba Yaga the part which in another version is played by a Witch. The name which she bears—that of Vyed'ma—is a misnomer; it properly belongs either to the "wise woman," or prophetess, of old times, or to her modern representative, the woman to whom Russian superstition attributes the faculties and functions ascribed in olden days by most of our jurisprudents, in more ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... New Jersey village, or rather city (for it had won municipal government some years before, in spite of the protest of far-seeing citizens who descried in the distance bonded debts out of proportion to the tiny shoulders of the place), was a misnomer. Often a person, being in Fairbridge for the first time, and being driven by way of entertainment about the rural streets, ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Fortnightly, and still it is The Fortnightly. Of all the serial publications of the day, it probably is the most serious, the most earnest, the least devoted to amusement, the least flippant, the least jocose,—and yet it has the face to show itself month after month to the world, with so absurd a misnomer! It is, as all who know the laws of modern literature are aware, a very serious thing to change the name of a periodical. By doing so you begin an altogether new enterprise. Therefore should the name be well chosen;—whereas this was very ill ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... axes, knives, beads, tobacco, pipes, and muskets, for coconut oil and turtle shell. Others were wild, good-for-nothing runaways from whaleships, who then were generally known as "beach-combers"—that is, combing the beach for a living—though that, indeed, was a misnomer, for in those days, except one of these men was either a murderer or a tyrant, he did not "comb" for his living, but simply lived a life of luxurious, sensuous ease among the copper-coloured people with whom he dwelt. He had, indeed, to be of a hard and ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... "the rules of our holy alliance require new birth. We have excepted in favour of Little John, because he is great John, and his name is a misnomer. I sprinkle, not thy forehead with water, but thy lips with wine, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... "St. Sophia," the common name of this church, is a misnomer. It was not dedicated to a saint at all, but to the Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), which name the Turks have retained in the softened ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... chair—it is not every old chair that is comfortable,—with pipe in mouth, and in full unbuttoned ease, his bushy cauliflower wig laid aside, by reason of the heat, reposed Dr. Small. Small, indeed, was somewhat of a misnomer, as applied to the worthy doctor, who, besides being no diminutive specimen of his kind, entertained no insignificant opinion of himself. His height was certainly not remarkable; but his width of shoulder—his sesquipedality ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tree-hopper and all of its queer harlequin tribe are near relatives to the buzzing cicada, or harvest-fly, whose whizzing din in the dog-days has won it the popular misnomer of "locust." ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... a twitch about the corners of his mouth that seemed to be along the sarcastic order, as if deep down in his heart the lad thought the name might be a misnomer, according to his ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... to obtain complete families of instruments to play in concert. The invention of the basset horn in 1770 is attributed to a clarinet maker of Passau, named Horn, whose name was given to the instrument;[2] by a misnomer, the basset horn became known in Italy as corno di bassetto, and in France as cor de basset. In 1782, Theodore Lotz of Pressburg made some modifications in the instrument, which was further improved by two instrumentalists of Vienna, Anton and Johann Stadler, and finally in 1812 by Iwan ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... that the misnomer is corrected," was all Mrs. Treadwell rejoined. So Lansing had passed through preparatory school and was ready for college before Markham could be brought to definite terms. The letter from The Forge ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... medicinal virtues of these foods, or however appropriate the term "condimental" which has been applied to them, it is quite certain that their whilom designation "concentrated" was a misnomer. Their composition shows that they possess a degree of nutritive power considerably below that of linseed-cake, and but little, if at all, superior to that ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... Park Land to Wapping, by day and by night, I've many a year been a roamer, And find that no Lawyer can London indite, Each street, every Lane's a misnomer. I find Broad Street, St. Giles, a poor narrow nook, Battle Bridge is unconscious of slaughter, Duke's Place can not muster the ghost of a Duke, And Brook Street is ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... could pay down the money that Simone could pay down; and as to argument, Griffo of the Dragon-flag was too busy a man to bother about other people's arguments. Yet Griffo left the Company of Death a misnomer, as far as he was concerned. Griffo had let the Reds ride onward to Arezzo and back to Florence, very much to Simone's annoyance and discomfiture. What, then, was the cause of Griffo's defalcation, and who had inspired him to this signal ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... it!" insisted my guardian. Dunny has the biggest heart in the world, with a cayenne layer over it, and this layer is always thickest when I am bound for distant parts. "I mean every word of it, I tell you, Dev." Dev, like Dunny, is a misnomer; my name is Devereux—Devereux Bayne. "Don't you risk your bones enough with the confounded games you play? What's the use of hunting shells and shrapnel like a hero in a movie reel? We're not in this war yet, though we soon will be, praise the Lord! And till we are, I believe ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Davison says:—"The Malabar Whistling-Thrush (rather a misnomer, by the way) breeds on the slopes of the Nilghiris, never ascending higher than 6000 feet. The nest is always placed on some rock in a mountain torrent; it is a coarse and, for the size of the bird, a very large structure, and though I have never measured ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... but left the right of action subsisting. In criminal proceedings a plea in abatement was at one time a common practice in answer to an indictment, and was set up for the purpose of defeating the indictment as framed, by alleging misnomer or other misdescription of the defendant. Its effect for this purpose was nullified by the Criminal Law Act 1826, which required the court to amend according to the truth, and the Criminal Procedure Act 1851, which rendered description of the defendant unnecessary. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fact, by the way, that all the places which make Broadway notorious are in the side streets. Just as it is a curious misnomer to call the toughest section of it the Tenderloin. Broadway has no slums. Laboring people, even, never make any distinguishable element in its populace. This is, of course, owing to its geographical position. But there is one fact which is immensely to its credit, and is perhaps ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... under which we are suffering gheblee, is a perfect misnomer; for the hot wind of to-day and yesterday came directly from the north, "Bahree!" As Yusuf said, however, when I told him where the wind was from: "Where now is the sea? It is a long way from ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... was a misnomer in our case. Our sojourn here was prolonged for more than a month by a slight attack of typhoid fever, which this time seized Sachtleben, and again the kind nursing of the missionary ladies hastened recovery. Our mail, in the mean time, having ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... off one of the best families in Europe—he has thrown away all his posterity, and reduced 20,000 acres of wood-land, arable, meadow, and pasture within the narrow circumference of an oaken table of eight foot." The Masquerade as the title of the play is a misnomer, for it does not conduce at all to the plot. We give the greater part of the Prologue to The Masquerade, ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... fashion. There is an excellent eighteen-hole golf course in Barrackpore park, but when you hear people talking of the second "brown" there can be no doubt but that you are in Asia. A "green" would be a palpable misnomer for the parched grass of an Indian dry season, still a "brown" comes as a shock at first. The gardens merit their reputation. There are innumerable ponds, or "tanks," of lotus and water-lilies of every hue: scarlet, crimson, white, and pure ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot; St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang. pseudology[obs3]. pseudonym &c. (misnomer) 565; Mr. So-and-so; wha d'ye call 'em[obs3], whatchacallim, what's his name; thingummy[obs3], thingumbob; je ne sais quoi[Fr]. neologist[obs3], coiner of words. V. coin words, coin a term; backform; ; Americanize, Anglicize. Adj. neologic[obs3], neological[obs3]; archaic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... England, a mile in length, from the end of which it is said that on a clear day with a powerful telescope you may perchance see the sea, that a distinguished traveller accustomed to the deserts of Sahara once found it, and that the name Southport is altogether a misnomer, as it is in the north and there is no port ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... given by Epicurus and Lucretius of what the Epicurean theory really was, and compare them with the numerous attacks made upon it by opponents, we cannot but remark that the title or formula of the theory was ill chosen, and was really a misnomer. What Epicurus meant by Pleasure was, not what most people meant by it, but something very different—a tranquil and comfortable state of mind and body; much the same as what Democritus had expressed before him by the phrase [Greek: euthymia]. This last phrase would have ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... however, may subsist between unequals, as between parents and children, princes and subjects, men and women, where there is a difference in the character of the affection of the two parties. A certain degree of inequality—though we cannot lay down the limitation—makes "friendship" a misnomer. One would not desire the actual apotheosis of a friend, because that would take him out of reach; it would end friendship. Friendship lies rather in the active loving than in being loved, though most people are more anxious to be ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the mill girls liked the bright-colored and expensive wares, and why; she learned that the woman with the "fascinator" (tragic misnomer!) over her head wanted the finest sled for her boy. She learned to keep her temper. She learned to suggest without seeming to suggest. She learned to do surprisingly well all those things that her mother did so surprisingly well—surprisingly because both the women secretly hated the business of ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... stir the heart of any lover of liberty to witness that portion of Gomez's ragged army, under command of General Castillo, lined up to welcome us to their beautiful island, and to guide and guard our way to the Spanish strongholds. To call it a ragged army is by no means a misnomer. The greater portion of those poor fellows were both coatless and shoeless, many of them being almost nude. They were by no means careful about their uniform. The thing every one seemed careful about was his munitions ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... would be but to carry out the absurdity, of which the public are guilty, in holding abolitionists responsible for the mobs, which are got up against them. These mobs, by the way, are called "abolition mobs." A similar misnomer would pronounce the mob, that should tear down your house and shoot your wife, "Henry Clay's mob." Harriet Martineau, in stating the fact, that the mobs of 1834, in the city of New York, were set down to the wrong account, says, that the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... with the Synthesis, the Begriff of Providence, our Agnostic takes refuge in the sentiment of an unknown and an unknowable. He objects to the countless variety of forms assumed by the perception of a Causa Causans (a misnomer), and to that intellectual adoption of general propositions, capable of distinct statement but incapable of proofs, which we ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... Kingdom. It is necessary to insist upon this point. For half the fallacies of the arguments for Home Rule rest upon the idea that Home Rule is a matter affecting Ireland alone. 'Irish Federalism,' the title of a pamphlet by Mr. Butt, is a term involving something like self-contradiction. The misnomer is curious ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... Europe by the misnomer, American blight—is very destructive across the water, but does not exist extensively on this side. It is supposed to exist, in this country, only where it has been introduced with imported trees. It appears as a white downy ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... short shrift in a book on public speaking, for, delude yourself as you may, public reading is not public speaking. Yet there are so many who grasp this broken reed for support that we must here discuss the "read speech"—apologetic misnomer ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... occupies or not the exact site of the ancient Karn[a]vati, Gujerat was a stronghold of Indian culture long before the Mahomedan invasions. Architecture especially had reached a very high standard of development in the hands of what is usually known as the Jaina school. This is a misnomer, for the school was in reality the product of a period rather than a sect, though Jainism probably never enjoyed anywhere, or at any time, such political ascendancy as in Gujerat under its Rashtrakuta and Solanki rulers ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... text-books have not kept pace with the knowledge of its leading minds. Such is confessedly the case in the department of Medical Jurisprudence. This very term, Medical Jurisprudence, as now used in colleges, is generally acknowledged to be a misnomer. There is no reason why it should be so used. The leading medical writers and practitioners are sound at present on the moral principles that ought to direct the conduct of physicians. It is high time that their principles be more generally ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... a misnomer for the extraordinary establishment, studio and domicile combined, at which we dismounted. It is not a hut, and neither in architectural motive nor the artistic proclivities of its inmates has it aught to do with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... without the walls of a factory, but also beyond the contamination of a large town.'[36] It may have surprised such people, but it does not surprise us who are surveying the industrial scene and beginning to apprehend the rottenness of that worm-eaten structure which under the misnomer of domestic industry marks the half-way house to ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... that the electric fluid he fancied he had discovered had its origin in the animal tissues. Misapprehending all, he was yet unconsciously the first experimenter in what we, for convenience, designate dynamic electricity. He knew only of animal electricity, and called it by that name; a misnomer and a mistake of fact, and the cause of an early scientific quarrel the promoting of which was the actual reason of the advance that was made in the science following his accidental and enormously ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... all we visited the library, though the name is a misnomer, for there are no books in it and our courteous guides said there never had been. We ascended the narrow stairs leading from the vast, empty, dusty room on the lower floor through an equally empty second story to the third and topmost story, which is the home of hundreds ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... of the four who habitually sat with us was Giojoso, the seneschal, a lantern-jawed fellow with black, beetling brows, about whom the only joyous thing was his misnomer of a name. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... of days of hard work in getting the big white-lipped peccaries—white-lipped being rather a misnomer, as the entire under jaw and lower cheek are white. They were said to be found on the other side of, and some distance back from, the river. Colonel Rondon had sent out one of our attendants, an old follower of his, a full-blood Parecis Indian, to look for tracks. This was an excellent man, who ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... for any man to look upon such beauty. I was a hardened vessel in such matters, having, with the exception of one painful experience of my green and tender youth, put the softer sex (I sometimes think that this is a misnomer) almost entirely out of my thoughts. But now, to my intense horror, I knew that I could never put away the vision of those glorious eyes; and alas! the very diablerie of the woman, whilst it horrified ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... I must premise that the name of Ditton-in-the-Dale is in a great measure a misnomer, as the house and estate which bear that name, are situated on what a visiter would be at first inclined to call a dead level, but on what is in truth a small secondary undulation, or hollow, in the broad, flat valley through which the father of the English rivers, the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... employed in reproach and not in praise. Hence Rationalist is a term of contempt, and means not one who is really reasonable, but would like to pass for such." Of course the Doctor concludes that the word is a most flagrant and unrighteous misnomer; but we accept his philology and return him our thanks for his ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... has transformed some of the most degraded portions of London by her improved tenement houses for the poor. One place, called Nova Scotia gardens,—the term "gardens" was a misnomer,—she purchased, tore down the old rookeries where people slept and ate in filth and rags, and built tasteful homes for two hundred families, charging for them low and weekly rentals. Close by she built Columbia ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... and stormed less than in the old days before the halt at Penrith; but rode, a silent, thoughtful figure, so self-contained and of so godly a mien as would have rejoiced the heart of the sourest Puritan. The wild tantivy boy had vanished, and the sobriquet of "Tavern Knight" was fast becoming a misnomer. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... of electrotyping is as follows: The form is locked up very tightly, and is then coated with a surface of graphite, commonly known as blacklead, but it is a misnomer. This is put on with a brush, and may be done very evenly and speedily by a machine in which the brush is reciprocated over the type by hand-wheel, crank, and pitman. A soft brush and very finely powdered graphite are used; the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... constitute the Missouri Synod. It is historically unjust to apply the term private confession to that public confession of sins, made by the congregation collectively, as part of our preparatory exercises on sacramental occasions, and usually a misnomer to apply the name private confession, to the habit of some of our German ministers, (termed Anmeldung,) of having all communicants call on them for conversation on their spiritual state, prior to sacramental communion. Although these ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... sphincteric muscular arrangement at the cardiac orifice of the esophagus, so that spasmodic stenosis at this level is not possible and the term cardiospasm is, therefore, a misnomer. It was first demonstrated by the author that in so-called cardiospasm the functional closure of the esophagus occurred at the diaphragmatic level, and that it was due to the "diaphragmatic pinchcock." Anatomical studies have corroborated this finding by demonstrating a definite ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... heat; and the Dutch clotted cream—a coagulated mass in which a spoon will stand upright—is manufactured from fresh-drawn milk, which is put into a pan, and stirred with a spoon two or three times a day, to prevent the cream from separating from the milk. The Scotch "sour cream" is a misnomer; for it is a material produced without cream. A small tub filled with skimmed milk is put into a larger one, containing hot water, and after remaining there all night, the thin milk (called wigg) is drawn off, and the remainder of the contents of the smaller ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... connected with the Lupercal worship (see Rom. Forschungen, i. 17), is found exclusively among the Quinctii and Fabii: the form commonly occurring in authors, -Lupercus Quinctilius- and -Quinctilianus-, is therefore a misnomer, and the college belonged not to the comparatively recent Quinctilii, but to the far older Quinctii. When, again, the Quinctii (Liv. i. 30), or Quinctilii (Dion. iii. 29), are named among the Alban clans, the latter reading is here to be preferred, and the Quinctii are ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... were so magnified and others so minimized as to make them harmonize with what the author thought the facts should be rather than what they actually were. In the first place, the very name of his work is a misnomer: "History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Final Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877." I have emphasized the words "to the final restoration of home rule at the South in 1877" because those are the words that constitute the misnomer. If home rule ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... upon his productions, has honestly bought the rareties which he has served up. In this he has the advantage. He is a better writer too than some who make grammars; though no adept at composition, and a total stranger to method. To call his work a "system" is a palpable misnomer; to tell what it is, an impossibility. It is a grammatical chaos, bearing such a resemblance to Smith's or Kirkham's as one mass of confusion naturally bears to an other, yet differing from both in almost every thing that looks like order ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... muscular contractility. I own that if it be here demanded of me how a compound can be present unless every one of its components be present also, I may under pressure be constrained to suggest that possibly, after all, the very term compound or complex idea may be somewhat of a misnomer, or at any rate that the constituents of such an idea are much fewer than is commonly supposed. Be it admitted that the idea, so styled, could not have been formed without the instrumentality of other and previously-formed ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... loll back and dream a tale. 35 Move, or be moved—there's no protection, Our Mother Earth has ta'en the infection— (That rogue Copernicus, 'tis said First put the whirring in her head,) A planet She, and can't endure 40 T'exist without her annual Tour: The name were else a mere misnomer, Since Planet is but Greek for Roamer. The atmosphere, too, can do no less Than ventilate her emptiness, 45 Bilks turn-pike gates, for no one cares, And gives herself a thousand airs— While streams and shopkeepers, we see, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... name in going about, for people to pick up," he explained to Mugby High Street, through the Inn window, "and that name at least was real once. Whereas, Young Jackson!—Not to mention its being a sadly satirical misnomer for ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... champagne-basket cradle. "The sublime martyrdom of maternity". Left alone immediately after infant's birth. Husband dangerously ill, and cannot help. A kindly miner. Three other women at the Bar. The "Indiana girl". "Girl" a misnomer. "A gigantic piece of humanity". "Dainty" habits and herculean feats. A log-cabin family. Pretty and interesting children. "The Miners' Home". Its petite landlady tends bar. "Splendid material for social ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... when after the coveted cream; that larger pussy, the tiger, steals lightly towards the ambushed hunter who is to furnish him the next delicious meal; and "Tarquin's ravishing strides" are undoubtedly a misnomer, for the Roman must have been something more or less than man if he did not tip-toe his sandals or cast them off altogether, when he stole towards the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... insubordinate Democrat from New Hampshire, for the same offense, and at the time screaming that the "blood of our glorious battle-fields in Mexico rested on the hands of the President"; Mr. Clingman challenging the House with the broad statement that "it is a misnomer to speak of our institution at the South as peculiar; ours is the general system of the world, and the free system is the peculiar one," and Mr. Palfrey dryly responding that slavery was natural just as barbarism was, just as fig-leaves and bare skins were a natural dress. When ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... exception to the rule. The only method yet discovered of overcoming this tendency to the selfish use of power, whether consciously or unconsciously, by those possessing it, is the distribution of the power among all who are its subjects. Short of this the name free government is a misnomer. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... what he naturally mistakes for masonry; but which, on a more minute inspection, he discovers to be, for the most part, the rock itself. There stands what is now described as the Einsiedlerstein,—that is, the stony dwelling of the hermit; a grievous misnomer surely,—for though the last occupant of that dwelling was doubtless a recluse, its original purpose, which for many ages it served, was that of a strong-hold, or castle. And perhaps nowhere, even in Germany, can a more ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... this island are so well preserved that it is almost a misnomer to call them ruins. The little island is only five hundred yards long and sixty yards wide, and contains the Temple of Isis, Temple of Hathor, a kiosk or pavilion, two colonnades, and a small Nilometer. In the gateway ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... without democracy is as impossible as a shadow without light. The word "Socialism" applied to schemes of paternalism, and to government ownership when the vital principle of democracy is lacking, is a misnomer. As ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... First, the name "rural libraries" I found a misnomer. It in no sense represents facts. The words imply community interests, interests alike of adult and child, whilst the reality is that these libraries are simply school deposits, composed wholly of "juvenile books," graded up to but not beyond the seventh grade. When one realizes ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... next station, where the conductor summoned reenforcements and invoked the majesty of the law in the form of an officer. The affray, from first to last, was most depressing and gave to the unwilling witness a feeling that civilization is something of a misnomer and that ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... is certainly a strong misnomer; he always plods in the beaten road of his predecessors, following the Spectator (with the same pace a pack-horse would do a hunter) in the style that is proper to lengthen a paper. These writers may, perhaps, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... philosopher, gave to one of his books the title "Joyful Wisdom"—an absurd misnomer. That which he mistook for joy was the delirium of an unbalanced mind. The philosophy of Christ might with propriety be called Joyful Wisdom; it leads one into the path of happiness that ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... quotations from a little pamphlet, entitled Historical Facts connected with Nantwich and its Neighbourhood. Now, after giving this work a most careful perusal, I cannot but think that the title of the book is, in this instance at least, a misnomer. The authoress, for it was written by a lady long resident in the vicinity, has evidently wrought upon the foundations of others; and taking the veteran Ormerod as a sufficient authority, has given ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... positive beautifier, the best cosmetic. The term "beauty sleep" is no misnomer. Sleep freshens the complexion, smoothes out wrinkles, clears out the brain, strengthens the muscles, puts light into the eyes ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... first ford on their return trip; a sad misnomer now, for it was an unfordable ford. The water of old Elkwater was rearing and plunging, and furiously wild. Every mountain (and there are myriads) was sending out its wet aid to swell the raging torrent; the regiment, at this time, only three miles from the Secessionists. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... departure of the squire for Burlington immediately the meal was ended, and the desire of Tabitha's father and aunt to have news of Mrs. Meredith and of the doings "up Brunswick way," filled in the whole afternoon till tea time—if the misnomer can be used, for, unlike the table at Greenwood, tea was a tabooed article in the Drinker home. One fact worth noting about the meal was that Janice asked if any of them knew who ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... disaffection of Mr. Weston, there were complaints of his delay in providing the necessary shipping; but at last the Speedwell, of sixty tons—miserable misnomer—was purchased in Holland for the use of the emigrants; and the Mayflower, of a hundred eighty tons—whose name is immortal—was chartered in England, and was fitting for their reception. The cost of the outfit, including ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the archbishop observes, is, in strict reality, a misnomer. 'Literally, it implies an exact coincidence of meaning in two or more words, in which case there would be no room for discussion; but it is generally applied to words which would be more correctly termed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various |
