"Noun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the simple word can become in the hands of a master. Dante's verb and noun are now proverbial. As for Mr. Davidson, Gray's clear-cut lines in the Elegy can supply no more instances of perfect aptness than those which I quoted some time ago of the lark. Notice the exactness ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... and persevers, discerns, occur respectively at pp. 43. and 92. of Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure (Percy Society's edition). The noun substantive perseverancediscernment is as common a word as any of the like length in the English language. To omit the examples that might be cited out of Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure, I will adduce a dozen other instances; and if ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... carefully. Notice that there is no pause at the end of the first stanza. In the ninth line, mentally put in how after know. Explain what is said about Freedom's training her son. Loftier office: Loftier than what? Note that might is a noun. Mentally insert hand after courtier's. Can you tell from the hand of a person whether he has suffered or not? What does the author mean here by "the weight of Atlas"? What is a "formless grace"? Is the expression appropriate here? What characteristic ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... himself to the work with great patience and sagacity, carefully acting the differences between the Indian and the English modes of constructing words; and, having once got a clew to this, he pursued every noun and verb he could think of through all possible variations. In this way he arrived at analyses and rules, which he could apply for himself ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even a noun. He is a kind of an adverb. Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually there are from a dozen to forty women really involved in every murder, but in this case it seems to be only five ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... means," I replied, "your proposal does not suit me." "You may be principal in time," said the man. "That makes no difference," said I; and, sitting with my legs over the pit, I forthwith began to decline an Armenian noun. "That a'n't cant," said the man; "no, nor gypsy either. Well, if you won't close, another will, I can't lose any more time," ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the word "phenomenal" in the sense of "extraordinary." But, with Mr. Crummles's Infant Phenomenon in everybody's mind, can we expect the adjective to shake off the old associations of its parent noun? ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... ever is passing along a path. Again you cannot logically say that the passer is passing, for the sentence is redundant: the verb adds nothing to the noun and vice versa: but on the other hand you clearly cannot say that the non-passer is passing. Again if you say that the passer and the passing are identical, you overlook the distinction between the agent and the act and both become unreal. ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... light," from which is derived the Aramaic "Raca" of Matt. v. 22?] The verb is often applied to the beating out of metals, but not always. It is a new doctrine in etymology, that the meaning of a verbal noun is to be deduced from the nouns which often supply objects to its root, instead of from the meaning of the root itself. But even if it can be shown that the word did originally involve such a meaning, that would be nothing to the purpose. It would only be in the same case with a vast ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... turns upon shewing that the Conjunction That is the pronoun That, which is itself the participle of a verb, and in like manner that all the other mystical and hitherto unintelligible parts of speech are derived from the only two intelligible ones, the Verb and Noun. "I affirm that gold is yellow," that is, "I affirm that fact, or that proposition, viz. gold is yellow." The secret of the Conjunction on which so many fine heads had split, on which so many learned ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... But we want more than photographs: we want pictures to give that important element in Natural Beauty—the colour. And we want pictures painted in words as well as on canvas. Not shallow rhapsodising of the journalese and guide-book type, but true expression in which each noun exactly fits the object, each epithet is truly applicable, and each phrase is rightly turned, and in which the emphasis is placed on the precisely right point, and the whole composed so as distinctly to bring out ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... was a veritable and inimitable clown, and his name has figured in French literature both as a proper and a common noun almost from the day that he and his partner, Mondor, set up their booth on the Pont Neuf. They began their sale of ointments and liniments in Paris about the year 1618, attracting custom by their absurd dialogues in the vein of the circus-clown and ring-master ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... will be better able to comprehend the beauty and scientific propriety with which he selected the active participle of the verb to flow, as the name for the undulations of this fluid; for the primary meaning of the Hebrew verb ar is, to flow, or, when used as a noun, a flood. "It shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt."[257] And of the like import are the nouns, iar and aur, formed from it. "Who is this that covereth up like a flood, whose waters are moved like the rivers?"[258] The philosopher, even though he be a skeptic, will ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... formed from the neuter Greek noun, thrausma, meaning fragment, and the masculine Greek noun, sauros, meaning reptile. The specific name, serratidens, is formed from the Latin serratus, meaning serrate, and the masculine Latin noun, dens, meaning tooth. The specific ...
— Two New Pelycosaurs from the Lower Permian of Oklahoma • Richard C. Fox
... Kamephis], or [Greek: Kmephis]. [Greek: Kamephin ton helion einai phesin auton ton depou ton noun ton noetoun]. Apud Damascium in ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... object (noun) people person pleasant, pleasantness, pleasing, pleasure pretty small thinking, thought, thoughts unnecessary unpleasant use, used, useful, usefulness, useless, uselessness, uses, using ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... Master Philologist has conquered me. It is not at all equitable: but the man showed me a huge book wherein were the names of everything in the world, and justice was not among them. It develops that, instead, justice is merely a common noun, vaguely denoting an ethical idea of conduct proper to the circumstances, whether of individuals or communities. It is, you observe, just a ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... genders, masculine and feminine; o represents the masculine and i the feminine: for example, boro rye, a great gentleman; bori rani, a great lady. There is properly no indefinite article: gajo or gorgio, a man or gentile; o gajo, the man. The noun has two numbers, the singular and the plural. It has various cases formed by postpositions, but has, strictly speaking, no genitive. It has prepositions as well as postpositions; sometimes the preposition is used with the noun and sometimes the postposition: for example, cad o gav, from the ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... have never been matched in their kind, and never approached, except by a few of the more fortunate poems of Herbert, Vaughan, and Quarles. We know not why it is that what is called religious poetry is commonly so bad. The thing gives the lie to both the adjective and the noun of its title. Anything more flat and flavorless, whether in sentiment or language, is beyond the conception even of an editor with the nightmare. Men have been hanged for more venial murders than some have been praised for who have choked out the immortal soul of the Psalms of David. We have, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... (Epist. lviii.) complains that even the of the Platonists (the ens of the bolder schoolmen) could not be expressed by a Latin noun.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and the broad world stretching away in all directions behind. Here lived Policeman T—— and B——. "First-class policemen" perhaps I should take care to specify, for in Zone parlance the unqualified noun implies African ancestry. But it seems easier to use an adjective of color when necessary. Among their regular duties was that of weighing down the rocking-chairs on the airy front veranda, whence each nook and cranny of Corozal was in sight, and of strolling ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... loud laugh. 'You may call him that, you may even qualify the noun you have used with an adjective if the author of the Proverbial Philosophy can think of one that is properly descriptive and yet not too unparliamentary. So you are Cyril Aylwin's kinsman. I have heard him,' he said, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... grammatical construction. Still, it has some authority for being considered idiomatic, for does not "Pilgrim's Progress" tell us of the "Palace Beautiful?" And doubtless many other instances might be cited of the substitution of an adjective for a noun. At all events, the worthy owner, who built his house in the most approved style of former New England architecture, spacious, square, and with projecting windows in the roof, made some pretensions to classical allusion; ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... indifference. He must be independent of the world, not only in material things, but in those intangible qualities of the spirit. It was this that lost him Isopel Berners, whose love he awakened by a strong right arm and quenched with an Armenian noun. Again, his independence stood in the way of his happiness. A man is a king, he seemed to think, and the attribute of kings is their splendid isolation, their godlike solitude. If his Ego were lonely and crying out for ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the Apostate than Julian the Saint; though the latter crowned his canonisation with the sacred glory of being the patron saint of inn-keepers. But the best example of this unjust historical habit is the most famous of all and the most infamous of all. If there is one proper noun which has become a common noun, if there is one name which has been generalised till it means a thing, it is certainly the name of Judas. We should hesitate perhaps to call it a Christian name, except in the more evasive ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... to-day, to-morrow, or yesterday, because the time at which an incident has occurred is rarely the most important fact. For the same reason, careful writers avoid starting with the, an, or a, though it often is necessary to begin with these articles because the noun they modify is itself important. The name of the place, too, rarely ever is of enough importance to be put first. An examination of a large number of leads in the best newspapers shows that the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... occupying a high and honourable place, if not indeed the highest place of all. What the etymological meaning was, of the primitive Aryan word from which our mother is descended, is uncertain. It seems, however, to be a noun derived, with the agent-suffix -t-r, from the root ma, "to measure." Skeat thinks the word meant originally "manager, regulator [of the household]," rejecting, as unsupported by sufficient evidence, a suggested interpretation as the "producer." Kluge, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... properly signifies "an expanse," or "extension," something stretched or beaten out. The verb from which this noun is derived is often used in Scripture, both as referring to the heavens and in other connections. Thus in Job xxxvii. 18, the question is asked, "Canst thou with Him spread out the sky, which is strong as a molten mirror?" ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... any statement unaccompanied by proof. The agreement of an adjective with its noun displeased him, because an arbitrary rule merely ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... that many words name things—are the names of things of which we can think and speak. These we place in one class and call them Nouns (Latin nomen, a name, a noun). ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... The verb ([Hebrew: nador]) translated to vow, in its literal acceptation means to beat out grain from the sheaf on the thrashing-floor: hence, as the corn is thus scattered, it came to signify to scatter, or to be liberal; and thence, finally, to offer willingly and freely. The noun ([Hebrew: neder]) accordingly is put to denote the act of offering, or of making a promise, to God, and also what in this is spontaneously offered or promised. Moreover, in a passage formerly quoted, it is described as a free-will-offering. ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... it is a quality of which Doctor Cummings has very much. When working together, we will ... scan? No. Perceive? No. Sense? No, not exactly. You will have to learn our word 'peyondire'—that is the verb, the noun being 'peyondix'—and come to know its meaning by doing it. The Larry also instructed me to explain, if you ask, how I got this way. ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... view to take of the matter. In the original Greek we find two words similar in sound, but distinct in meaning for the two objects to which Christ refers: Peter's name is Petros, which is a personal noun; the word for "rock" is petra, which is a common noun. In the Greek, then, Christ's answer reads thus: "Thou art Petros, and on this petra will I build my Church." Catholics claim that Christ, in answering ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... "Gullinhjalti" is written as one word and capitalized may be a late development and signify no more than the modern treatment by some writers of "gylden hilt" (i.e., writing it "Gyldenhilt") in Beowulf. Even if we assume that the original author of the word intended "Gullinhjalti" as a proper noun and the name of the king's sword, it does not necessarily conflict with the idea that the name of the king's sword is Skofnung. "Gullinhjalti" would then be a by-name, a pet-name, for Skofnung, derived from its golden hilt. It can hardly be presumed that when the saga-man in this connection ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... (v. 21147) that Arthur's helmet was called Goswhit, a name that is evidently a translation of some Welsh term meaning "goosewhite," which at once classes the helmet with Arthur's dazzlingly bright fairy belongings. Moreover, Layamon says (vs. 21158, 23779 ff.) that his spear Ron (a Welsh common noun, meaning "spear") was made by a smith called Griffin, whose name may be the result of an English substitution of the familiar word griffin for the unfamiliar Gofan, the name of the Celtic smith-god. These facts are mainly important as testimony to the Celtic ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... for a brief explanation. The original word is the adjective aionos (aionios) (Eng. aeonian), coming from the noun aion (aion) (Eng. aeon), an age, an epoch, a long period of time. This noun cannot mean eternity for it is repeatedly used by St. Paul in the plural "aeons" and "aeons of aeons." As we speak of great periods of time, "the Ice Age," "the Stone Age," etc., so the Bible speaks of ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... all. A cat may look at a king; and upon this or that out-of-the-way point a writer may presume to be more knowing than his reader—the serf may undertake to convert his lord. The reader is a great being—a great noun-substantive; but still, like a mere adjective, he is liable to the three degrees of comparison. He may rise above himself—he may transcend the ordinary level of readers, however exalted that level be. Being great, he may become ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Sergeant; it is a replica. Take it into your hand and you will see it is not an apple. It is a model of the apple you saw. Alphonse Poller was the brilliant scientist who devised this method of taking impressions and making models. He called it 'moulage.' The word is used either as a verb or a noun. ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... material, which is then transferred, by transitions more or less direct and immediate, to things which are intellectual." Derivative words are formed from the roots by a few simple and regular laws. The noun is scarcely inflected at all; but the verb has a marvellous wealth of conjugations, calculated to express excellently well the external relations of ideas, but altogether incapable of expressing their ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... to Q; and so, in process of time, I came to e per se e, and com per se, and tittle; then I got to a, e, i, o, u; after, to Our Father; and, in the sixteenth year of my age, and the fifteenth of my going to school, I am in good time gotten to a noun, By the same token there my hose went down; Then I got to a verb, There I began first to have a beard; Then I came to iste, ista, istud, There my master whipped me till he fetched the blood, And so forth: so that now I am become the greatest scholar in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... is a kind of music for me. It was almost a pleasure to write that letter, because of the repetition of that delightful noun. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... 'Where'er these casual eyes are cast,' which he objected to as not simple and natural, and as scarcely correct, he suggested 'Where'er a casual look I cast;' and for 'converse,' the accent of which he condemned as belonging to the noun and not to the verb, he suggested 'commune.' In the second stanza he pointed out the improper sequence of tenses in the third and fifth lines, which he corrected by reading in the latter 'My cheeks are oftentimes bedew'd.' Of the narrative poems of his friend, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... one unassisted noun, scorning the aid of verb, adjective, or adverb, the gooseherd, by a masterpiece of profound and subtle emphasis, contrived to express the fact that he existed in a world of dead illusions, that he had become a convert to Schopenhauer, and that Mr. Curtenty's inapposite geniality ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... is an adjective, formed with the proper termination from the noun, batture, which means a bank upon which the sea beats, reef or sand-bank. Cap Batturier may therefore be rendered sand-bank cape, or the cape of the sand-banks. Batturier does not appear in the dictionaries, and was doubtless coined by ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... found in Scripture, but the truth which it expresses is set forth there, dimly in the Old Testament, distinctly in the New. In the first chapter of Genesis the word "God" is in the Hebrew a plural noun, and yet it is used with a singular verb, thus early seeming to intimate what afterwards is clearly made known, that there is a plurality of Persons, who yet constitute the one living and true God. The same indication ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... and right 'Quarterly'), the 'Westminster Review,' promises an early paper with passing words of high praise. What vexed me a little in one or two of the journals was an attempt made to fix me in a school, and the calling me a follower of Tennyson for my habit of using compound words, noun-substantives, which I used to do before I knew a page of Tennyson, and adopted from a study of our old English writers, and Greeks and even Germans. The custom is so far from being peculiar to Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and Leigh Hunt are all redolent of it, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... at the Sportsmen's Retreat, and Jacques was there, of course. There was nothing of the disconsolate lover about him. The noun he might have confessed to, in a confidential moment of intercourse with his violin; but the adjective was not in ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... word used as the name of anything that can be thought of, John, boy, paper, cold, fear, crowd. There are three things about a noun which indicate its relation to other words, its number, its gender, and its case. There are two numbers, singular meaning one, and ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... my opinion that "news is a noun singular, and as such must have been adopted bodily into the language;" and if it were a "noun of plural form and plural meaning," I still think that the singular form must have preceded it. The two instances CH. gives, "goods" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... modern writers regard kind as singular. Shakespeare treated it as a plural noun, as "These kind of ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... The word, in this sense, has something of the meaning of conspiracy, but there is no justification for it as a noun, in any sense. ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it. For though life is great, and fascinates, and absorbs; and though all men are intelligent of the symbols through which it is named; yet they cannot originally use them. We are symbols and inhabit symbols; workmen, work, and ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of lost and loved ones. But all these blessednesses, heaped together, as it seems to me, would become sickeningly the same if prolonged through eternity, unless we had God for our very own. Eternal is an awful word, even when the noun that goes with it is blessedness. And I know not how even the redeemed could be saved, as the long ages rolled on, from the oppression of monotony, and the feeling, 'I would not live always,' unless God was 'the strength of their hearts, and their portion for ever.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Indeed, it has but one conjugation, but with seven or eight variations, having the effect of as many different conjugations, and giving great variety of expression. The predominance of these modifications over the noun, the idea of time contained in the roots of almost all its verbs, so expressive and so picturesque, and even the scarcity of its prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs, make this language in its organic structure breathe life, vigor, and emotion. If it lacks the flowery ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... of many erroneous primitive conceptions and ideas. Some traces of the earliest form of language can still be discerned. Thus of Santali Sir G. Grierson states: "Every word can perform the function of a verb, and every verbal form can, according to circumstances, be considered as a noun, an adjective or a verb. It is often simply a matter of convenience which word is considered as a noun and which as an adjective ... Strictly speaking, in Santali there is no real verb as distinct from the other classes of words. Every independent word can perform ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... cackle, kaka the crow; Pawnee kaka; Man keka the crow; Eu sara stream flow, sara butter; Min tsara; Tit Dak sla grease; I E ar join whence our arm; Win and Min ara, the arm; Slav Teut lap, lamp shine; Dak ampa light; Slav Teut krup fear; Dak kopa noun fear, a fearful place; adj insecure; a Scandinavian base naf, nap, our nab, Icel nefi; Swed nefwa (perhaps i was the original suffix) the hand; Dak nape the hand; I E kak spring; Lith szaka (pronounced shaka) twig shoot, etc; Dak shake nails claws; ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... que d'un cot de pe Memboyo friza mas marotos, Perdi moun ten, es bray, mais noun pas moun pape, Boti mous beis ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... tenses, and carried this fad somewhat remorselessly through a series of republished articles; but the result has not pleased me. Boswell tells us that Johnson would have none of "former" and "latter;" that he would rather repeat the noun than resort to this subterfuge. I see no good reason for rejecting these convenient alternatives; but nevertheless I have obsequiously bowed to the autocrat and taken a skunner to the words—the only literary snobbishness of which I am conscious. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... predicate. But just as that into which the change is made is something determinate, for the change is into nothing else but the body of Christ, so also that which is converted is determinate, since only bread is converted into the body of Christ. Therefore, as a noun is inserted on the part of the predicate, so also should a noun be inserted in the subject, so that it be said: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... stairs, as we went down together. At the pawnbroker's shop, too, I began to be very well known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar relish in these meals ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... number, and are denoted by prefixes. The declension of the noun lum (hill) is given ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... well-known words of Papias, a writer who in early life might have seen St. John. The works of Papias are lost—a misfortune the more to be regretted because Eusebius speaks of him as a man of very limited understanding, [Greek: panu smikros ton noun]. Understanding and folly are words of undetermined meaning; and when language like that of Irenaeus could seem profound it is quite possible that Papias might have possessed commonplace faculties which ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Maria never calling her anything except "you," and referring to her as "she" and "her." The woman, in fact, became a pronoun for the child, who in her honesty and loyalty could never put another word in the place which had belonged to the noun, and feel satisfied. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to bring out what appears to be his sense. There is, I think, a peculiar force in the word fabulosae, standing as it does at the very opening of the stanza, in close connection with me, and thus bearing the weight of all the intervening words till the very end, where its noun, palumbes, is introduced at last. Horace says in effect, "I, too, like other poets, have a legend of my infancy." Accordingly I have thrown the gossip of the country-side into the form of an actual speech. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... word for water, and the Chinese shuy, and the Turkish su, signifying the same thing; but where is the resemblance between dzow and tide? Again, the word for bread in ancient Armenian is hats; yet the Armenian on London Bridge is made to say zhats, which is not the nominative of the Armenian noun for bread, but the accusative: now, critics, ravening against a man because he is a gentleman and a scholar, and has not only the power but also the courage to write original works, why did not you ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... gorgeous and sonorous description of Westminster Hall, beginning—"The place was worthy of such a trial." In the next sentence the word "hall" recurs five times, and the relative "which" occurs three times, and is not related to the same noun. Ten sentences in succession open with the pronoun "there." It is a perfect galaxy of varied colour, pomp, and illustration; but the effect is somewhat artificial, and the whole scene smells of the court upholsterer. The "just sentence of Bacon" pairs off with "the just absolution of Somers"; the ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... native writers have done is to draw a distinction between [Ch][Ch] and [Ch][Ch] "full" and "empty words," respectively, the former being subdivided into [Ch][Ch] "living words" or verbs, and [Ch][Ch] "dead words" or noun-substantives. By "empty words" particles are meant, though sometimes the expression is loosely applied to abstract terms, including verbs. The above meagre classification is their nearest approach to a conception of grammar in our sense. This ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... and space so narrowly circumscribed. The same strain is taken up in the second paper. We have short dissertations on the deadly 'hiatus in the harness which should connect the pre-revolutionary with the post-revolutionary commonwealths of England;' on the adjective old, and the aged noun civilation; then comes a general belaboring of athletes and gymnasts, at which point Sir William fairly emerges into view; suddenly our author seems to recollect that his space is fast diminishing, and concludes ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... friends and contemporaries at school were in the habit of employing the ameliorating adjective, but there were still a few fellows in Pocket's house who made an insulting point of the other. All, however, seemed agreed as to the noun; and it was pleasant to cast off friend and foe for a change, to sit comfortably unknown and unsuspected of one's foibles in the train. It made Pocket feel a bit of a man; but then he really was almost seventeen, and in the Middle Fifth, and allowed to ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... my diary seemed even more wanting in connection. Conjunctions would not join, nor any therefores and wherefores tie the sentences. It was merely chance that I landed a verb in the right place, and did not altogether lose the noun. I seemed to know what I wanted to say but it would not form itself on the pen, and what I wrote one day I had an infinite disrelish for the next. I have heard something in my time about rising upon our dead selves. I know of nothing so dead and so precipitating as the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... a new adjective. But it needs a new definition, and the complement of a corresponding noun. I would fain set down on paper some observations and reflections which may serve to make its meaning clear, and render due praise to that most excellent quality in man or woman,—especially in anglers,—the small but useful ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... all their Aryan brethren, they had also the name janua, to which there is no corresponding term in any Indo-European speech. The word has the appearance of being an adjectival form derived from the noun Janus. I conjecture that it may have been customary to set up an image or symbol of Janus at the principal door of the house in order to place the entrance under the protection of the great god. A door thus guarded might be known as a janua ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... has come to be used as the proper name of a place. It is an instance of a form of personification often employed by the Hawaiians, in which words having a specific meaning—such, for instance, as our "jack-in-the-box"—have come to be used as a noun for the sake of the meaning wrapped up in the etymology. This figure of speech is, no doubt, common to all languages, markedly so in the Hawaiian. It may be further illustrated by the Hebrew name ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... powerful word." "The body of our humiliation" is "our humiliating body." "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" is "from this deadly body," as the context of the passage clearly shows. In each case the second noun is the adjective modifying ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... length in another place; they bear a marked relation to the theory of observation I have just laid down. Whatever the thing we wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it. We must seek till we find this noun, this verb, and this adjective, and never be content with getting very near it, never allow ourselves to play tricks, even happy ones, or have recourse to sleights of language to avoid a difficulty. The subtlest things may ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... which, though brief—it consisted simply of the interjection "Oh!" followed by a geographical, or more correctly, perhaps a theological noun in four letters—had better not be transferred to these pages. He turned his back without more ceremony upon the pink dress and went out of the box. In the corridor he found Valentin and his companion walking towards him. The latter was thrusting ...
— The American • Henry James
... be amiss to observe that the original term is gwyddfa but gwyddfa; being a feminine noun or compound commencing with g, which is a mutable consonant, loses the initial letter before y the definite article—you say Gwyddfa a tumulus, but ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... near and distant foliage, all have their effect on the design, and should have their influence on the designer, inducing, as they do, a perfect change of circumstance in every locality. Only one general rule can be given, and that we repeat. The house must not be a noun substantive, it must not stand by itself, it must be part and parcel of a proportioned whole: it must not even be seen all at once; and he who sees one end should feel that, from the given data, he can ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... primary room the other day," Bernice began in explanation. "The teacher asked him what 'cat' was. I guess he was not paying attention. He looked all around, and finally said he did not know. She told him it was a noun. 'Then,' he said, after some deliberation, 'kitten must be ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... appeared that she had used the word, not in its legal or business acceptation, when it merely expresses an individual, but as a noun of multitude, or signifying many: for Miss Tox escorted a plump rosy-cheeked wholesome apple-faced young woman, with an infant in her arms; a younger woman not so plump, but apple-faced also, who led a plump and apple-faced child in each hand; another plump and also apple-faced boy ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... replied the Master. He had already noted, with a thrill of admiration, the wondrous purity of the old man's Arabic. His use of final vowels after the noun, and his rejection of the pronoun, which apocope in the Arabic verb renders necessary in the everyday speech of the people, told the Master he was listening to some archaic, uncorrupted form of the language. Here indeed was nobility of blood, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... of the colloquial, or spoken language, is extremely simple. It admits of no inflexion of termination, either in the verb, or in the noun, each word being the same invariable monosyllable in number, in gender, in case, mood, and tense; and, as most of these monosyllables begin with a consonant and end with a vowel, except a few that terminate in l, n, or ng, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... A noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. Nouns are divided into proper and common; proper nouns are the names of particular persons, places, or things, common nouns are the names that belong to all persons, places or things of the same ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... orders, who, being a great eater and a very poor conversationalist, feasted his eyes alternately on his plate and on the pretty faces, whispering to his neighbour remarks about the viands and the feminine guests, whose artless simplicity—they consisted chiefly of a noun and a laudatory adjective—showed a profoundly satisfied and comfortable mood. At her left sat a highly esteemed friend of the family, Dr. Bergmann, a young physician, a tutor in the Wurzburg university, who, during the ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... would be a very good one, as it signifies a self-controlled and reasonable nature. The verb ANDRISO, signifying to render hardy, manly, strong, to display vigor, and make a manly effort of self-control, would be equally appropriate in the adjective form, ANDRIKOS, and still more in the noun ANDRIA, which signifies manhood or manly sentiments and conduct. It would not, however, be preferable to the English word, MANLINESS, which is as appropriate a term as Sanity ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost always do mean something, and this helps to deceive ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... possible perfect. You think of Horace as you read; and you think of those among our own eighteenth century poets to whom Horace was an inspiration and an example. The epithet is usually so just that it seems to have come into being with the noun it qualifies; the metaphor is mostly so appropriate that it leaves you in doubt as to whether it suggested the poem or the poem suggested it; the verb is never in excess of the idea it would convey; the effect of it all is that 'something has here got itself uttered,' ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... natural and dignified sense. For example: "At Giles's ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up." And then in the East it has become the victim of extravagant metaphor. As a verb, it means to hold firm, to put a screw on; as a noun, it means a grip or screw, an advantage fair or unfair. In the hand of the sporting reporter it can achieve wonders. "The bettor of whom the pool-room bookmaker stands in dread"—this flower of speech is culled from the 'New York World'—"is the race-horse owner, who has a cinch bottled up ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... a recent verse adventure I compiled "a little list" Of the verbs deserving censure, Verbs that "never would be missed"; Now, to flatter the fastidious, Suffer me the work to crown With three epithets—all hideous— And one noisome noun. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... summoned myself as a witness I take the stand once more to confess that Alan Seeger's lofty lyric, 'I have a rendezvous with Death' has a diminished appeal because of the foreign connotations of 'rendezvous'. The French noun was adopted into English more than three centuries ago; and it was used as a verb nearly three centuries ago; it does not interfere with the current of sympathy when I find it in the prose of Scott and of Mark Twain. Nevertheless, it appears ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... 11. fantasmas: this noun is usually masculine, but is often feminine in popular speech. The distinction between the masculine and feminine meanings given in most dictionaries does not apply in Espronceda. He uses ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... question the intellectual ability of the blacks because they have not elaborate systems of numeration and notation, which in their life were quite unneeded. Such as were needed were supplied. They are often incorporate in one word-noun and qualifying ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... 18. The words father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, etc., when followed by a proper noun, should always begin ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... and read and reread the labels, one was struck by the meagre English of merchandisers and the poor verbal resources of commerce generally. A while ago business dealt hardly with the word "proposition." It was the universal noun. Everything that business touched, however remotely, was a "proposition." When last he was "outside" the writer heard the Nicene creed described as a "tough proposition"; the Vice-President of the United States as a "cold-blooded ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... Lit. a pressure or oppression (priemere, hod. premere, to press or oppress, indicative used as a noun). The monk of course refers to the posture in which he had seen the abbot have to do with the girl, pretending to believe that he placed her on his own breast (instead of mounting on hers) out of a sentiment ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... is Rome. Many a day have I been kept in school without my dinner because I was not able to parse thee idly by, Roma—Rome—noun of the first declension, feminine gender, that a quarter of a century ago caused me punishment, I have thee now literally under foot, and (knocking his cigar) ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... or Anglo-Saxon, 450-1100.— This form of English differed from modern English in having a much larger number of inflexions. The noun had five cases, and there were several declensions, just as in Latin; adjectives were declined, and had three genders; some pronouns had a dual as well as a plural number; and the verb had a much larger number of inflexions than it has now. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Crispinus threatens Horace with the 'purge' (a word that may be used as a noun or a verb), which, in The Return from Parnassus, is mentioned as having been administered by Shakspere to Jonson. It is highly probable that the reconciliation between Crispinus and Horace, which is described ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... and Negro have been used interchangeably in the book, with Negro generally as a noun and black as an adjective. Aware of differing preferences in the black community for usage of these words, the author was interested in comments from early readers of the manuscript. Some of the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... as often as kullu-ma. This is the eleventh question of the twelve in Al-Hariri, Ass. xxiv., and the sixth of Ass. xxxvi. The former runs, "What is the noun (kullu- ma) which gives no sense except by the addition thereto of two words, or the shortening thereof to two letters (i.e. ma); and in the first case there is adhesion and in the second compulsion?" (Chenery, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... specimen of a race fast decaying,—specimen of the true fine gentleman, ere the word "dandy" was known, and before "exquisite" became a noun substantive,—let me here pause to describe thee! Sir Sedley Beaudesert was the contemporary of Trevanion and my father; but without affecting to be young, he still seemed so. Dress, tone, look, manner,—all were young; yet all had a certain ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... represent such figure, device, or composition accurately in form, position, arrangement, and colouring. But, as a matter of practical usage, pictorial representation is usually allied to the word "emblazon." The word "blazon" also, as a noun, may be employed with a general and comprehensive ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... Odyssean word" (677), an Attic form of an epic word, and a "forbidden trochaic caesura in the fourth foot"; an Odyssean word for carving meat, applied in a non-Odyssean sense (688), a verb for "insulting," not elsewhere found in the Iliad (though the noun is in the Iliad) (695), an Odyssean epithet of the sun, "four times in the Odyssey" (735). It is also possible that there is an allusion ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... name implies (pro, "instead of," and noun), often take the place of nouns, usually to save repeating the same noun, as, Galba is a farmer; /he is ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... word to be, as above, a noun of multitude, and so to be used ambo-dexter, as occasion presents, singular or plural; then the Devil signifies Satan by himself, or Satan with all his Legions at his heels, as you please, more or less; and this way of understanding the word, as it may be very ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... know the young man?" asked the Judge, on whom the compound noun for some cause produced an ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the ground that the symbols covenanted upon and assented to by both were uttered and received by eyes and not by mouth and ears? When the lady drank to the gentleman only with her eyes, and he pledged with his, was there no conversation because there was neither noun nor verb? Eyes are verbs, and glasses of wine are good nouns enough as between those who understand one another. Whether the ideas underlying them are expressed and conveyed by eyeage or by tonguage is a detail that ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... tongue, And said there was analogy between 'em; She proved it somehow out of sacred song, But I must leave the proofs to those who've seen 'em; But this I heard her say, and can't be wrong, And all may think which way their judgments lean 'em, "'T is strange—the Hebrew noun which means 'I am,' The English always use ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... use the adverb because an adverb enhances the verb and is active, whereas the adjective simply loads down the noun. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... "Fooshee;" and Deveraux or Devereux, now converted into "Debro" or "Devroo." The only very noticeable change that has taken place in the orthography of our French names is that the article has been joined to the noun in many cases where they were originally separate. In this way La Ramie, La Rabie, La Reintree, etc. are now usually spelled Laramie, Larabie (or, in some instances, Larrabee), Lareintree, etc.; the pronunciation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... particles subservient to other words. Thus, in the instance of rumah, a house; deri pada rumah signifies from a house; but it would be talking without use or meaning to say that deri pada is the sign of the ablative case of that noun, for then every preposition should equally require an appropriate case, and as well as of, to, and from, we should have a case for deatas rumah, on top of the house. So of verbs: kallo saya buli jalan, If I could walk: this may be ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... known that French verse is not seventy years old. If it was Hugo who invented French rhyme it was Banville who broke up the couplet. Hugo had perhaps ventured to place the pause between the adjective and its noun, but it was not until Banville wrote the line, "Elle filait pensivement la blanche laine" that the caesura received its final coup de grace. This verse has been probably more imitated than any other verse in the French language. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... be subdivided. That is, indeed, what the etymology of the word means. Nevertheless, the slightest reflection will cause any one to see that this assumption is a most mistaken one. The individual is no more the unit of humanity than is the tribe or family; but, like them, is a collective noun, and stands for a number of distinct persons, related one to another in a particular way, and having certain features of resemblance. The persons composing a family are related both collaterally and by succession or descent, ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... M. Turquet, 'by suppressing the budget of worship. We shall do this to satisfy the blockheads who are a noun of multitude. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Ukthya is a slight modification of the Agnishtoma sacrifice. The noun to be supplied to it is kratu. It is a Soma sacrifice also, and one of the seven Sansthas or component parts of the Jyotishtoma. Its name indicates its nature. For Ukthya means 'what refers to the Uktha,' which is an older name for Shastra, i.e. recitation ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... A Noun Substantive is the Name of a Thing considered simply in itself, and without any Regard to it's Qualities; as a ...
— A Short System of English Grammar - For the Use of the Boarding School in Worcester (1759) • Henry Bate
... doctrine of virtues. In general, however, both by the Greek and Roman moralists, and particularly the Stoics, the word virtus retained something of the sense of force or capacity—a quality prized in the citizen. The English word is a direct transcript of the Latin. The German noun, Tugend (from taugen, to fit) means capability, and is related to worth, honour, manliness. The word arete does not frequently occur in the New Testament.[1] In the few passages in which it appears it ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander |
