Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Paraphrase   Listen
noun
Paraphrase  n.  A restatement of a text, passage, or work, expressing the meaning of the original in another form, generally for the sake of its clearer and fuller exposition; a setting forth the signification of a text in other and ampler terms; a free translation or rendering; opposed to metaphrase. "In paraphrase, or translation with latitude, the author's words are not so strictly followed as his sense." "Excellent paraphrases of the Psalms of David." "His sermons a living paraphrase upon his practice." "The Targums are also called the Chaldaic or Aramaic Paraphrases."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Paraphrase" Quotes from Famous Books



... Dryden turned again to the stage, his old-time purse-filler; and he produced two of his best plays, Don Sebastian and Amphitryon. The rest of his life, however, was to be spent, not with the drama, but in translation and paraphrase. Since 1684 he had several times published Miscellanies, collections of verse in which had appeared fragments of translations. With that indefatigable energy which characterized him, he now devoted himself ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... affluent and ready discourse, and excellent comportment.' He had also a poetical fancy, and a zealous inclination to all literature, which made his company acceptable to the most virtuous men, and scholars of his time. He also wrote a Paraphrase on the Psalms of David, and upon the Hymns dispersed throughout the Old and New Testament, London, 1636, reprinted there in folio 1638, with ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... offer to show you the trick of it,—believe him not. Wait for his prophetic hour; then give yourself to his passion, his joy or pain. "We are in Love's hand to-day!" sings Gautier, in Swinburne's buoyant paraphrase,—and from morn to sunset we are wafted on the violent sea: there is but one love, one May, one flowery strand. Love is eternal, all else unreal and put aside. The vision has an end, the scene changes; but we have gained something, the ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe

... the works of previous historians. The Chronicle bears evidence, however, of enormous and painstaking research which makes it valuable even now. Holinshed's style was clear, but not possessed of any distinctly literary quality. Much of what Shakespeare used was indeed but a paraphrase of an earlier chronicler, Edward Hall. Holinshed was uncritical, too, since he made no attempt to separate the legendary from the truly historical material. So far as drama is concerned, however, this was rather a help than a hindrance, since legend often crystallizes ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... heretique par les inquisiteurs, et pour ne pas retarder son chatiment, il sera livre au bras seculier." (Soldan, from Lamothe-Langon, iii. 458, reads exclusivement, which must be wrong, if, indeed, the whole be not a mere paraphrase, which ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... watches the waves go over the widow before her, she will relent!' The ruse, however, had the opposite effect. When Margaret saw the fortitude with which the elder woman yielded her soul to the incoming tide, she began to sing a paraphrase of the twenty-fifth Psalm, and those on the beach took up the strain. The soldiers angrily silenced them, and Margaret's mother, rushing into the waters, begged her to save her life by making the declaration that the authorities desired. But tantalized ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... a paraphrase in Claude's language of Uncle Sim's pietistic ditty that Thor winced. "Take its own pace—and stop still," he ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... with him to see is to do, and soon he turned to me with the courageous expression which in him signifies that the fight is fought, the victory won. 'It is necessary to be just, it is not necessary to be happy. I shall never marry Sylvia, even if I may,'—and with that paraphrase of words, whose meaning seemed to fit his need, he went away. I think he will not come again either ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... verse, but as the scenes we had left rose before our minds voices quavered, until all became silent, tears flowed, and Mrs Auld was sobbing. 'This wont do,' cried the master, 'we have come here as to a land of promise and there must be no looking backward. We go forward. Alice, start the second paraphrase and then ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... the highest credits are awarded. Such a child may be sometimes recognized by the neglected appearance of his teeth and finger-nails, the "high-water marks" about his neck and wrists, the dust on his clothing and shoes, his untidy hair, etc. In fact, he seems to have adopted as his life motto the paraphrase, "There is ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... power, ordered through the wires that make the world's continents, oceans and islands one huge whispering gallery, such striking exemplification. There was glory and fame in it, and immeasurable material for the making of history. We may paraphrase Dr. Johnson's celebrated advertisement of the widow's brewery by saying: Admiral Dewey's victory was not merely the capture of a harbor commanding a great city, one of the superb places of the earth, and the security of a base of operations to ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... rugged road of life. There never was a human heart so crushed and broken by the sorrows of earth but what Christ can heal, for that heart that was broken on Golgotha pants and heaves toward earth's sufferers. How beautifully expressive is the paraphrase: ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... sight of your handwriting moves me (though I have nothing to say) to show you mine, and if I could recollect the passage in Virginius I would paraphrase it, and say, "Does it seem to tremble, boy? Is it a loving autograph? Does it beam with friendship and affection?" all of which I say, as I write, with—oh Heaven!—such a splendid imitation of you, and finally give you one of those grasps and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... that would not be a tedious paraphrase of the lessons suggested by this conversation? All is included in it, either as seed or fruit. Nevertheless, you see, O husband! that your ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... of wisdom in Ibsen's remark, "The strongest man is he who stands alone," and Kipling's paraphrase, "He travels ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... verbal study of the Letter which Epaphroditus carried to Philippi. We attempt first a translation of its first main section, interspersed with an explanatory paraphrase. This will be followed by a brief meditation upon one of the main "Lessons in Faith and ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... Michael Angelo, and omits no fragment of his indubitable compositions.[2] Signor Guasti prefaces the text he has so carefully prepared, with a discourse upon the poetry of Michael Angelo and a description of the manuscripts. To the poems themselves he adds a prose paraphrase, and prints upon the same page with each composition the version published by ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... but with an increasing abandon, half laughter and half tears, the clear young soprano voice took up its playful paraphrase, ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... the three outstanding moral dispositions in respect of God, of man, and of the conduct of life, which mark the true man or woman of the Spirit; and it is in the childhood that the tendency to these qualities must be acquired. First, he says,—I paraphrase, since the old terms of moral theology are no longer vivid to us—there comes an attitude of reverent love, of adoration, towards all that is holy, beautiful, or true. And next, from this, there grows up an attitude towards other men, governed by those ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... of mine, long since dead, who refused to condemn almost anything, whether there were any vices that he could not find it in his heart to tolerate. He replied at once that there were two—cruelty, and bilking; which, if the word is not academic, I may paraphrase as cheating the helpless, swindling a child out of its pennies, or leaving a house by the back door in order to avoid paying your cabman his lawful fare. These exclusions from mercy Shakespeare would accept; and I think he would ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... I of money? To paraphrase AEschylus: 'For more of money than I would is mine.' I can't eat it, or beat swords out of gold, or repair my ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... English divine, born at Chertsey; suffered as an adherent of the royal cause, being chaplain to Charles I.; author of "Paraphrase and Annotations ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Joshua smiled. "To paraphrase a certain American inventor—we're finding any number of ways you can't go to the Moon. What ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman

... there was a silence as the Reverend Ebenezer Skinner, without a tremor in his voice, gave out that they would sing to the praise of God the second Paraphrase to the tune "St. Paul's." The congregation stood up—a new invention of the last minister's, over which also Cracky had nearly resigned, because it took away from his dignity as precentor and having therefore the sole right to stand during the service of song. The ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... his army. Rather let us quote from some of the sermons and poems of German pastors and the religious press. In a collection of poems published by a German pastor, Konsistorialrat Dietrich Vorwerk, there occurred the following paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer: "Though the warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work daily death and tenfold woe unto the enemy. Forgive in merciful long-suffering each bullet and each blow which misses its mark! Lead us not into the temptation of letting our wrath be too tame in carrying out Thy divine ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... over against the unshapely earth he sets up the "happy townland" of which he sings in one of his later and most lovely poems. It would not be easy to write a prose paraphrase of The Happy Townland, but who is there who can permanently resist the spell of this poem, especially of the ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... Psalms are not at all new; they are used, in fact, in Scotch Presbyterian churches in place of regular hymns. The poetic paraphrase of the first Psalm by Wilson Tylor is well done, and only in a few such phrases as "winds that blow" and "perish and shall not be blest," does he get dangerously near redundancy for the sake of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... conspicuous hair as mine, who will make just as effective a hostess, and who won't be bothered by any of these damned modern ideas about public service and woman's mission and all the rest of the tomfoolery the modern generation of women is addicted to. (I paraphrase, and soften our young ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... suddenly, must have come from God, received him into the monastery, made him a monk, and had him taught sacred history. "All this Caedmon, by remembering, and, like a clean animal, ruminating, turned into sweetest verse." His poetical works consist of a metrical paraphrase of the Old and the New Testament. It was written about the year 670; and he died in 680. It was read and re-read in manuscript for many centuries, but it was not printed in a book until ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... served to infuse a tone of kindliness into his ridicule. How charming in this way is the Ode to Lydia (I. 8), of which the late Henry Luttrel's once popular and still delightful 'Letters to Julia' is an elaborate paraphrase!— ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... times of Edward VI. he became king's printer at the Grey Friars (now Christ's Hospital). His former fellow-worker in Paris, Edward Whitchurch, set up his press at De Worde's old house, the "Sun," near the Fleet Street conduit. He published the "Paraphrase of Erasmus," a copy of which, Mr. Noble says, existed, with its desk-chains, in the vestry of St. Benet's, Gracechurch Street. Whitchurch married the widow ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... S. Mary from the Cross He used the same word: "Woman, behold thy son." In such circumstances we understand that the word on our Lord's lips is a word of infinite tenderness. I do not believe that we could do better than to translate it mother. We might paraphrase our Lord's saying thus: "Mother, we are both concerned with the trouble of these friends; but do not be anxious; I will act when the time comes." His words are perfectly simple and courteous, though they do, no doubt, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... various subjects, which he often repeated, and some of which he recited daily. He said the Lord's Prayer, with particular devotion, weighing all the words, and meditating on the sense they contain, as is seen by the paraphrase of it he composed, and which we think it useful ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... Petrarch has left us a study on book-collecting in the form of a dialogue between his natural genius and his critical reason. He argues, as it were, in his own person against the imaginary opponent. A paraphrase will show the nature and ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... is the shop of the knight of the shears," replied the clerk, with elegant paraphrase; "come, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... translation from English into French; and I should advise you to translate very freely, and use the dictionary as little as possible; if you cannot remember the exact rendering, twist the sentence and paraphrase it, till you can manage it, simply to learn to express your thoughts easily. I should say an hour a week of this would keep up ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... I owe great indebtedness for many a felicitous expression. I have also used Dr. Nott freely in my annotations. The only English prose translation of which I have any knowledge is the one in Bohn's edition of Catullus, and this, in addition to being bowdlerized, is in a host of passages more a paraphrase than a ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... defy all efforts; and especially an abnormal number of undoubted lacuna disfigure the text. Unfortunately no papyrus fragment of the Hymns has yet emerged, though one such fragment ("Berl. Klassikertexte" v.1. pp. 7 ff.) contains a paraphrase of a poem very closely parallel to the "Hymn ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... like marriage. In labor disputes, for instance, the bargaining relationship breaks down when either one or both parties abandon the attempt to communicate with the other. Therefore, we may conclude, in paraphrase of the Scriptures: If any man says that he loves God and will not try to communicate with his brother, he ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe

... be much more grievous to be disobeyed by the Parliament than to force it into obedience; and immediately after asked the Duc de Noailles his opinion, who replied that it would be very sad to act thus, but that he was for it. Villars wished to paraphrase, but contained himself, and said he hoped the Parliament would obey. Pressed by the Regent, he proposed to wait for fresh news before deciding; but, pressed more closely, he declared for the interdiction, with an air of warmth and vexation, extremely ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... paraphrase of Demetrius' "Well roar'd, Lion!" in act v, scene 1 of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The lion, of course, is the familiar ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... language. I am pleased with the result, although it is clear to me that without a development of the Latin vocabulary far beyond Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Seneca no one could ever be fluent and free to speak on modern subjects. One has to paraphrase and go round instead of speaking outright. I am thinking I ought to know something more about Arnobius and Lactantius, and see what sort of development they effected; and the resolution rises in my mind that ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... of any such experiment anywhere conducted can best be made plain by a crude paraphrase of a classic proposition from Relativity. Suppose it is required to determine the same moment of time at two different places on the earth's surface, as must be attempted in finding their difference ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... Where nimble winds lodge, ore investigate An eagles passage through the agill ayre Then to invent a paraphrase to expresse How much true virtue is ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... Home" is right in keeping to still life. In the artistic home—to paraphrase Dr. Watts—every prospect pleases and only man is inartistic. In the picture, the artistic bedroom, "in apple green, the bedstead of cherry-wood, with a touch of turkey-red throughout the draperies," is charming. It need hardly ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... Ulphilas as sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical words of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance of the same philosophical linguist, I read through [39] Ottfried's metrical paraphrase of the gospel, and the most important remains of the Theotiscan, or the transitional state of the Teutonic language from the Gothic to the old German of the Swabian period. Of this period— (the polished dialect of which is analogous to that of our Chaucer, and which leaves ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... novelists. But the amusement changed to dismay when the ladies began to retort. For No. 1 started with an airy restatement of what I had never said, and No. 2 (who had missed to read the interview) misinterpreted No. 1.'s paraphrase; and by these and other processes within a week my digestive silence had passed through a dozen removes, and was incurring the just execration of a whole sex. I began to see that my old college motto—Quod taciturn ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... to Montana, and quite as long as the old Chisholm Trail stretching between these states. Some of the songs the cowboy certainly composed; all of them he sang. Obviously, a number of the most characteristic cannot be printed for general circulation. To paraphrase slightly what Sidney Lanier said of Walt Whitman's poetry, they are raw collops slashed from the rump of Nature, and never mind the gristle. Likewise some of the strong adjectives and nouns have been softened,—Jonahed, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... not so bad as that," protested Dr. Millar, and then he was guilty of a most audacious paraphrase of a piece of schoolboy slang, for which he had some excuse in the habits of his wife—"Keep your cap on, Maria. In the first place, I see no analogy between the cases. Dora had not a private love affair—at least I was never told ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... splendid imaginative language and extraordinary figures of speech. For a literary study of it, the student is recommended to Professor Moulton's edition. Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet of mediaeval times, who became known to English readers through the beautiful paraphrase of some of his stanzas by Edward Fitzgerald, in 1859. If any one will take the trouble to compare a literal prose rendering of Omar (as in N.H. Dole's variorum edition) with the version by Fitzgerald, he will speedily see ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... another and supreme immolation, for which He who speaks "has come" to present HIMSELF. "Ears hast Thou opened for me," runs the Hebrew (Ps. xl. 6). "A body hast Thou adjusted for me," was the Greek paraphrase of the Seventy, followed by the holy Writer here. It was as if the paraphrasts, looking onward to the Hope of Israel, would interpret and expand the thought of an uttermost obedience, signified by the ear, into the completer ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... find side by side in his work two distinct and apparently antagonistic though equally conscious tendencies; the one towards authority, leading him to borrow motives freely and even to resort to direct paraphrase; the other towards individuality, nationality, freedom, informing his general scheme and regulating the language of his imaginary swains. It is this double nature of his pastoral work that justifies us as regarding ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... That audacious paraphrase of the Book of Job, The Undying Fire (CASSELL), seems to me to be marred by a fundamentally false note. I am sure that Mr. WELLS is as serious about his new God in the Heart of Man as he was about the Invisible King—I've ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... the translation of N. Bailey, the compiler of a well-known Dictionary. In his Preface Bailey says, "I have labour'd to give such a Translation as might in the general, be capable of being compar'd with the Original, endeavouring to avoid running into a paraphrase: but keeping as close to the original as I could, without Latinizing and deviating from the English Idiom, and so depriving the English reader of that pleasure that Erasmus so plentifully entertains his reader ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... Greek vases. But the most curious fact connected with their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom, appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In Caedmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... sure that Mr. Dobson agrees with me, but I am very fond of Locker's paraphrase of one of Clement Marot's Epigrammes; and as the lines are redolent of his delicate connoisseurship, I will quote both the original ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... paraphrase of the Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj of India, as I find them in Mozoomdar's account of the devotional exercises of that remarkable religious development which has attracted far less attention and sympathy from the Christian world than it deserves, as a fresh revelation of the direct action of the Divine ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... predominantly a townsman's movement, notwithstanding that it had a considerable support from among the peasantry. The Anabaptists' leaders were not, as in the case of the Peasants' War, in the main drawn from the class of the "man that wields the hoe" (to paraphrase the phraseology of the time); they were tailors, smiths, bakers, shoemakers, or carpenters. They belonged, in short, to the class of the organized handicraftsmen and journeymen who worked within city walls. A prominent figure ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... illumined by the sun, Inland or by the lifted wave, had rest. The passionate or calm pageants of the skies No artist drew; but in the auburn west Innumerable faces of fair cloud Vanished in silent darkness with the day. The prairie realm—vast ocean's paraphrase— Rich in wild grasses numberless, and flowers Unnamed save in mute Nature's inventory No civilized barbarian trenched for gain. And all that flowed was sweet and uncorrupt. The rivers and their tributary ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair

... beyond my dreams. Above all, as I have seen the crowd of students coming and going, I have felt assured that the work is good. It was with this feeling that, just before I left the university for the embassy at Berlin, I erected at the entrance of the university grounds a gateway, on which I placed a paraphrase of a Latin inscription noted by me, many years before, over the main portal of the University ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... deeper than undrained land, and this is a fact to be impressed upon all who lay tiles in a cold climate. It is a strong argument for deep drainage. "Drain deep, or drain not," is a convenient paraphrase of a familiar quotation. How often do we hear it said, "My meadow never freezes more than a foot deep; there will never be any trouble from frost in that place, if the tiles are no more than two feet deep." Be assured, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... to be pleased, since I have not always been able to satisfy myself. To interpret a language by itself is very difficult; many words cannot be explained by synonymes, because the idea signified by them has not more than one appellation; nor by paraphrase, because simple ideas cannot be described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... this poem is only a paraphrase of the Bible. A paraphrase means the same thing said in other words. But in other places the poet seems to forget his model and sings out of his own heart. Then his song is best. Perhaps some of the most beautiful lines are those which tell of the dove that Noah sent forth ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... Mr. Samuel Whyte, who took a deep interest in the precocious genius of his pupil, and had no small share of honour in bringing him into notice. As early as fourteen years of age he entered the Dublin University. He was scarcely more than a year a pupil in the university when he published a paraphrase on the fifth ode of Anacreon. This was so well received that he proceeded to translate the remaining odes, which performance ultimately met with a most encouraging reception. In his nineteenth year, he proceeded to London in the hope of obtaining by subscription a sufficient ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... knowledge of the details of legal procedure, when it cannot be ascribed to the natural Norman turn for lawsuits, is accounted for by his position as Avocat du Roi and one of the Admiralty Court (called the "Marble Table") of Rouen. Though in the "Cid" his law is Spanish, and in "Horace" it is a paraphrase of Livy, yet Corneille was the first to realise that the speeches of lawyers, which were then little known to the general public, would form a very interesting scene upon the stage. His immediate success proved the worth of the idea. But that such success was ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modern edition or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the Persian of the day, was, I believe, composed about three hundred years ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... the true spirit of Christian faith. The amplifications of the Scripture narrative are often conceived with high poetic insight, and this "Dream of the World's Tragedy" is, despite some trifling incongruities, a lofty and not inadequate paraphrase of the supreme climax ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow

... readers will have inferred by this time that the establishment of a peaceable international system in the two Americas is only a sanctimonious paraphrase for a policy on the part of this country of political aggrandizement in the Western hemisphere. Such an inference would be wholly unjust. Before such a system can be established, the use of compulsion may on some occasions be necessary; ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... even the expression, believing in Christ; merit of the death of Christ, acquittal, acceptance, justification;—he knows, or soon will find, that he is talking the language of an occult science. And he is forced down to such expedients of grovelling paraphrase, and humiliating analogy, that he becomes conscious that his method of endeavoring to make a divine subject comprehensible, is to divest it of its dignity, and reduce it, in order that it may not confound, to the rank of things which have not majesty enough to impress ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... thought must be regarded rather as a paraphrase of Aristotle than as a literal transcript. He is hesitating and obscure, and at times apparently self-contradictory. He has not, any more than Plato, quite cleared himself of the confusion between the mutually contrary ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... gave the interview, intimated that such language was actionable beyond a doubt. "Our Mr. Levy will attend to this. We have the endorsement of the general public, and that makes us still less willing to have anybody challenge our business acumen"—all this was but an elegant paraphrase of Sidney Meyer's actual remarks, for he had left school at sixteen and had never looked into a book ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... 30, Washington, 1907, two volumes. In summing up the character and achievements of the Indians I have drawn also on other sources, but have everywhere taken pains to make no statements which are not abundantly supported by this authoritative publication. In some cases I have not hesitated to paraphrase ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... "mere verbiage" and "extravagant rant." I recommend a careful consideration of the scene over the grave of Ophelia; and then let any one say whether or not the "wag" of tongue between Laertes and Hamlet be not fairly described by the expressions I have used,—a paraphrase ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various

... but that the highest practical self-cultivation would not be compassed by a much humbler paraphrase of Schiller's advice: let us learn to like what does no harm to the present or the future, in order not to throw away heroic efforts or sentimental intentions, in doing what we don't like for someone ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a disposition to be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive deeply into the minute and delicate features of language. Hence his whole work is to be looked upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a translation. There are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes, which prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical attainments were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it is probable that these examinations were the result ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... at his return. He was very animated in the account of his travels, but assured me he had never had the least idea of writing them. He said he believed satire to be his forte, and to that he had adhered, having written, during his stay at different places abroad, a Paraphrase of Horace's Art of Poetry, which would be a good finish to English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. He seemed to promise himself additional fame from it, and I undertook to superintend its publication, as I had done that of the Satire. I had chosen the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... successful for a time, of the Pueblos in 1680, against the Spanish domination. The material on this eventful epoch is still largely in manuscript, the nearest approach to a documentary presentation in full being the incomplete paraphrase furnished by W. W. H. Davis in his Spanish Conquest of New Mexico, published in 1869. No blame should be attached to the author for the insufficiency of his data. He made the best possible use of his materials with the help of my late friends David Miller ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

... hitherto untried royal veto on such premature haste and cruel forcing of a girl's inclination. Victoria received my advances with visible surprise. Did I suppose, she asked, that she was so happy at home as to shrink from marriage? Would not such a step be rather an emancipation than a banishment? (I paraphrase and condense her observation.) Did I not perceive that she must hail the prospect with relief? I was to know that her mother and herself were at one on this matter; she was obliged for my kindness, but thought that I need not concern myself in the matter. Considerably ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... Book of Jeremiah is but seven-eighths of the Hebrew,(7) but conversely it contains some hundred words that the Hebrew lacks. Part of this small Greek surplus is due to the translators' expansion or paraphrase of briefer Hebrew originals, or consists of glosses that they found in the Hebrew MSS. from which they translated, or added of themselves; the rest is made up of what are probably original phrases but omitted from the Hebrew by the carelessness of copyists; yet none of these differences is of ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... nearly five volumes of equal size for his account of seventeen years. But it is safe to say that Thucydides tells us as much that is worth knowing as Macaulay. One is concise, the other is not. It is impossible to paraphrase the fine parts of Thucydides, but Macaulay lends himself readily to such an exercise. The thought of the Athenian is so close that he has got rid of all redundancies of expression: hence the effort to reproduce his ideas in other words fails. The account of the plague in Athens has been studied ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... Orientalism. The transfusion of the Greek and Latin choral metres is a light effort to the difficulty of imitating the rhythm, or representing the peculiar vein of these song-enamoured mountaineers. Those who know how a favourite ode of Horace, or a lay of Catullus, is made to look, except in mere paraphrase, must not talk of the poorness or triteness of the Highlander's verses, till they are enabled to do them justice by a knowledge of the language. We disdain any attempt to make those bards sing in the mere English taste, even if we could so translate them as ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... of simplicity, purity, and dignity in English prose which has been of permanent value. Bentham's style, on the contrary, was so wanting in beauty and perspicuity that one at least of his chief works is best known to English readers in the admirable French paraphrase of his friend Dumont. This is his famous Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, in which the doctrines of the utilitarian philosophy are rigorously applied to jurisprudence and the regulation ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... free and graceful style, and brought things slowly down to our own door with pleasant word and wit (Ripley was a punster with the rest; one of our wags one day called him a Pumpkin— Pun-King—a paraphrase on New England pronunciation of the word), and in conclusion gave us a sentiment: "The Hive! May it be a hive, full of working bees, who make a little noise, a great deal of honey, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... the capacity of children, of which book the present volume is a continuation. While we credit the author for the best intentions, we must, however, suggest that it would have been better in every instance had the original text been given as well as the paraphrase, unless, indeed, it be assumed that the Bible is unfit for children to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... feeling for art, and original poetic imagination are lacking in Shire Tiferet. Practically it is nothing more than an oratorical paraphrase of the Biblical recital. The shortcomings of his main work are characteristic of all the poetry by Wessely. On the other hand, his oratorical manner is unusually attractive, and his Hebrew is elegant and chaste. The somewhat labored precision of his style, ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... what she said into English, the translation turns out to be but a sonorous paraphrase. Her French was of that mixed creole sort, a blending of linguistic elegance and patois, impossible to imitate. Like herself it was beautiful, crude, fascinating, and something in it impressed itself as unimpeachable, despite the broken ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... father and mother if she had received an order from heaven to do so; and in her opinion nothing could displease God if the motive were laudable. The Countess taking advantage of the sacred authority of her unexpected accomplice, led her on to make a kind of edifying paraphrase of this axiom of morality: ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... God." In its due course, we will consider especially the difference between the Word and God; likewise the seeming contradiction, but true concord, of being simultaneously God, and with God. At present, and previously to the true commencement of our a priori thoughts, let us, by a word or two, paraphrase that brief but comprehensive sentence, "In the beginning was the Word." Eternity has no beginning, as it has no end: the clock of Time is futile there: it might as well attempt to go in vacuo. Nevertheless, in respect to finite intelligences ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... church, in Flintshire. [b] This paraphrase is inserted in Mrs. Williams's Miscellanies. The Latin is there said to be written by Dr. Freind. Of the person whose memory it celebrates, a copious account may be seen in the appendix to the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... been my aim throughout to produce a translation and not a paraphrase; not indeed such a translation as would satisfy, with regard to each word, the rigid requirements of accurate scholarship; but such as would fairly and honestly give the sense and spirit of every passage, and of every line; omitting nothing, and expanding nothing; ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... withering sarcasm as flashes through an 'entretien' like that between 'Frere Rigolet' and 'L'Empereur de la Chine.' Every French man of letters knows it by heart; but it would wound our English susceptibilities were I to cite it here. Then, too, the impious paraphrase of the Athanasian Creed, with its terrible climax, from the converting Jesuit: 'Or vous voyez bien . . . qu'un homme qui ne croit pas cette histoire doit etre brule dans ce monde ci, et dans l'autre.' To which 'L'Empereur' replies: 'Ca c'est clair ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... and tumults to bring it to light instead of the muses." Sandys went back to England for good probably as early as 1625, and can, therefore, no more be reckoned as the first American poet, on the strength of his paraphrase of the Metamorphoses, than he can be reckoned the earliest Yankee inventor because he "introduced the first water-mill ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... perfektajxo. Paragraph paragrafo. Parallel paralela. Paralyze paralizi. Paralysis paralizo—ado. Paralytic paralizito—ulo. Paramount superega. Paramour kromviro—ino. Parapet randmuro. Paraphrase parafrazo. Parasite parazito. Parasitic parazita. Parasol sunombrelo. Parboil duonboli. Parcel pako, pakajxo. Parcel out dispecigi, dividi. Parcels-office pakajxejo. Parcel-post posxta paketo. Parch sekigi. Parchment pergameno. Pardon pardoni, senkulpigi. Pardon ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... mean's her design, and her subject as mean, The first but a rebus, the last but a dean. A dean's but a parson: and what is a rebus? A thing never known to the Muses or Phoebus. The corruption of verse; for, when all is done, It is but a paraphrase made on a pun. But a genius like hers no subject can stifle, It shows and discovers itself through a trifle. By reading this trifle, I quickly began To find her a great wit, but the dean a small man. Rich ladies will furnish their garrets ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... agreed to consider certain words, for no very good reason, bad words. It is a pure convention; it has little or nothing to do with the actual meaning, because for every one of these bad words there is a paraphrase or synonym considered to be quite suitable for polite ears. Hence the feeblest creature can always produce a sensation by breaking the taboo. But women are learning how to undo this error of theirs now. The word 'damn,' for instance, is, I hear, being admitted freely ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... speechmaker." He replied, "Say anything." "Anything," I said, "anything won't do." "Then," said he, "repeat the first speech of Sir Peter Teazle, 'When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect?'" [Laughter.] Well, I think I can paraphrase that and say, "When a young man enters the theatrical profession, what is he to expect?" Well, he may expect a good many things that are never realized. However, suffice it to say that fifty years ago I made my debut as an actor in my native city of Boston. I commenced in the first-class ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... celebrated rabbin contemporary with St. Paul, and to whom the Targum, that is, a translation or paraphrase of the Holy Scriptures, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... his disrespectful paraphrase of "The Father of Waters," the title of the giant Mississippi. He told of his adventures until he mentioned the Silver Sides. Then he swore in a manner that ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... pulled the manuscript out and threw it on the writing table. As he did so a stanza from the book caught his eye; it was almost a paraphrase from the Bible, which had been such a solace to him in his solitary life. He began to read the story and was more and more enthralled by it, yet his resolution to write no more was not altered. However, as the days passed there would be here a line written down, there a melody—until ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... This is worth coming to; the instrument seems but the organ of the man's own feelings; its mournful tones are only a paraphrase of his sighs; its brilliant arabesques are but the playful expression of his own delight with every thing and every body! His cheek is warm, his eyes sparkle, his hands detonate thunder and lightnings from the keys, and he concludes as suddenly as he began; the very silence is felt, and the breathless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... remark, showing, as it does, that ethical laws are common both to dogs and men; and that with both a single deliberate violation of the conscience loosens all. "But while the lamp holds on to burn," says the paraphrase, "the greatest sinner may return." I have been cheered to see symptoms of effectual penitence in my sweet ruffian; and by the handling that he accepted uncomplainingly the other day from an indignant fair one, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... true that a minute reading indicates that Mr. Wilson was merely quoting, or attempting to paraphrase, the statements of the leaders of both sides, but there is such a thing as quoting with approval, and no explanation could convince the British public that the ruler of the greatest neutral nation had not declared that the Allies and the Central Powers stood morally upon ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... paraphrase of the Monroe doctrine. And the popular voice has favoured—aye, and the greatest statesmen among them have looked upon it as inevitable—an extension of the principles of democracy over this continent. Now, I suppose a universal ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... he was sixteen years of age. His memory and his imagination must both have served him well; for he not only acquired a style fit for narrative, exposition, or argument, but also learned to use the fable, parable, paraphrase, proverb, and dialogue. The third element in his education was writing for publication; he began very early, while he was still a young boy, to put all he had learned to use in writing for the press. When he was but nineteen years old he wrote and published in ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot

... because she is mine, and you know it, Fanny. It is so with everything,—everybody that is at all dear to me. That is enough to set you against them. My dear old father rescued Celestine from bondage when she was a mere baby (a favorite paraphrase of Mrs. Forrest's for describing the fact that one of that damsel's parents had officiated as cook at a Southern hospital where the chaplain happened to be on duty in the war-days). Her mother lives with his people to this hour, and she ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... hard; how could he know, to paraphrase the old form of Christian comfort, that his end as a miner would mean, in another sphere, "a brighter resurrection" than even his ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the chief commissioner, whom, as was stated with whimsical simplicity, "the good God had called to Himself after all his luggage had been put on board ship," proceeded in the French language to give a somewhat abbreviated paraphrase of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and fruitful, await the successful explorers of Nature no one can doubt. What would one not give for a Science primer of the next century? for, to paraphrase a well-known saying, even the boy at the plough will then know more of science than the wisest of our philosophers do now. Boyle entitled one of his essays "Of Man's great Ignorance of the Uses of Natural Things; or that there is no one thing in Nature whereof the uses ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... was more or less a paraphrase of the note he had that day sent to Berlin, and was in fulfillment of a promise he made to notify Congress of any action he took to bring Germany to realize the serious condition of her relations ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... there is, in all this contempt on the part of physicists for sensation, only differences in language, and that a paraphrase would suffice to correct them without leaving any trace. Be it so. But something graver remains. When one is convinced that our knowledge of the outer world is limited to sensations, we can no longer understand how it is ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet



Words linked to "Paraphrase" :   reword, ingeminate, reiterate, repeat, restate, rephrase, recasting, retell



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com