"Plural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anything under the sun. There is really no more ground for supposing that all our demands can be accounted for by one universal underlying kind of motive than there is ground for supposing that all physical phenomena are cases of a single law. The elementary forces in ethics are probably as plural as those of physics are. The various ideals have no common character apart from the fact that they are ideals. No single abstract principle can be so used as to yield to the philosopher anything like a scientifically accurate ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... "Eye—please,—the singular or plural in this case makes all the difference, but I shall have my new one in fairly soon now and then illusion will ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... it from Micah, Saul's daughter putting one in David's bed to deceive her father's messenger, while he escaped. This, it is possible, alludes to some divination by the Teraphin which she used in his behalf, for Teraphin is the plural number; therefore, could not signify only one image; neither could the gods which Rachel stole from her father, Labon, be one god as big as a man, for she sat on them and hid them. The word is here in the original "Teraphin," although translated gods. Then, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Babylonian the name for "sun" or the Sun-god would be Shamash or Shamshu, not Samsu; in the second half of the name, while ilu ("god") is good Babylonian, the ending na, which is the pronominal suffix of the first person plural, is not Babylonian, but Arabic. We need not here enter into a long philological discussion, and the instance already cited may suffice to show in what way many of the names met in the Babylonian inscriptions of this period betray a foreign, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... imagination to the village. I could see the glint in the boy's eyes, realised how the blood pulsed quicker through his veins at the sight of, not the personal pronoun "I" in the singular, but the plural "We are doing well for France." For one glorious moment he was part of the hosts of France and in spirit serving his Motherland. It is that spirit of the French nation that their enemies ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... kept. This is indicated in the twentieth chapter of Revelation, where it is said, "And the books were opened." Notice that it is plural and not singular. There is a record in heaven kept by the Recording Angel. If it were in the memory of God it would be an awful thing, for while God does not remember forgiven sin, he cannot, from the very nature of the case, forget unpardoned sin, and if that is the record ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... hang pendulum, appendix Pendo, pensum weigh compendium, expense Pes, pedis foot expedite, biped Peto seek impetus, compete *Plaudo, plausum clap, applaud explode, plausible *Plecto, plexum braid perplex, complexion *Pleo, pletum fill complement, expletive *Plus, pluris more surplus, plural Plico, plicatum fold reply, implicate Pono, positum place opponent, deposit Porto carry report, porter Potens, potentis powerful impotent, potential Prendo, prehensum seize comprehend, apprise *Primus, primatis first primary, primate Probo, probatum ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... among the greatest literary characters here. There is one peculiarity, however, which he has in conversation, that of using the verb in the third person singular with the pronoun in the first person singular and plural, as instead of 'I show' or 'we show,' he says 'I shows,' 'we shows,' etc., upon which peculiarity the famous Mr. Sheridan made the following lines in ridicule ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... 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 plural meaning more than one. ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... or, Aids for correct Speaking, Writing, and Spelling, for Adults. By CHARLES HARTLEY. Contents: Introduction, Neglect of English Grammar, Divisions of Grammar, Parts of Speech, The Article, The Silent H, Nouns, Formation of the Plural, Genders of Nouns, Cases of Nouns, Comparison of Adjectives, Personal Pronouns, Relative Pronouns, Demonstrative Pronouns, Regular and Irregular Verbs, Shall and Will, The Adverb, Misapplication of Words, Division of Words, ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... intelligible and even gastronomically correct were it not for this word "fish." However, we cannot accept Lister's reading lacertis. We prefer the reading, laridis, bacon. The French have another term for this—petits sales. Both this and the Torinus term are in the plural. They are simply small strips of bacon to which Torinus again refers in the above formula, salsum, coctum in media pones—put the bacon, when done, in the center (of the dish). Regarding salsum also see ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... blunder or slip of the pen. The words which follow, viz., 'comfort' and 'stablish,' are in the singular, whilst these two mighty and august names are their nominatives, and would therefore, by all regularity, require a plural to follow them. That this peculiarity is no mere accident, but intentional and deliberate, is made probable by the two instances in our text, and is made certain, as it seems to me, by the fact that the same anomalous and eloquent construction occurs in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... he has got at second hand from the lexicographer. Dr. Trench could also make large reclamations, and several others. There is beside an unpleasant assumption of superiority in the book. An author who says that paganus means village, who makes ocula the plural of oculus, and who supposes that in petto means in little, is not qualified to settle Dr. Webster's claims as a philologer, much less to treat him with contempt. The first two blunders we have cited may be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... open book in history. We have his genuine epistles, in which he gives considerable account of himself and his exploits. We have one portion of the Acts in which, contrary to the rest of that book, the author narrates in the first person plural, "we," which appears to be taken from the notes of one of Paul's companions—Luke, Timothy, Silas, or any other. Then we have the Talmud, with its numerous anecdotes about Acher, as the rabbis called Paul, which are of inestimable value to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Jocelin The Fifth "Life," by Probus, proves that St. Patrick was born in Bononia St. Patrick's Flight to Marmoutier described by Probus Britain in Gaul St. Patrick's Native Country Britanniae in the Plural not appropriated to Great Britain St. Patrick calls Coroticus, a British Prince, "Fellow Citizen" Summary The Site of the Villula ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... the work, in manuscript, from which the grammatical notices have been elaborated is Arte y Vocabulario de la lingua Dohema, Heve Eudeva; the adjective termination of the last and first name being evidently Spanish, as is also the plural terminations used elsewhere in some of the modifications of those words. We have only the definition of Heve with certainty given as "people;" to the word "nation" in the vocabulary, there being attached ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... other capitalists against landowners, while the Conservatives have proposed the Referendum, but only to protect the Lords. From 1884 to 1911 neither Party had introduced any measure to democratize the House of Commons and so to increase the representation of labor. Kautsky reminds us of the plural voting, unequal electoral districts, and absence of primary and secondary elections. This he believes is evidence that the capitalists fear to extend political democracy farther. They even fear the purely economic reforms that ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... the food itself, though in later times it became also the receptacle in which that food was stored. This store was inhabited or guarded by spirits, the di penates, who together with Vesta represent the material vitality of the family; these spirits, always conceived and expressed in the plural, form a group in a way which is characteristic of the Latins, and their plurality is perhaps due to the variety and frequent change of the material of the store. The religious character of the store is also well shown by the fact, if such it be, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Antero Wipunen. Dus'ter-land. The Northland; Pimentola. Et'e-le'tar. A daugter of the South-wind. Fire-Child. A synonym of Panu. Frost. The English for Pakkanen. Hal'lap-yo'ra. A lake in Finland. Hal'ti-a (plural Haltiat). The Genius of Finnish mythology. Het'e-wa'ne. The Finnish name of the Pleiades. Hi'si (original Hiisi). The Evil Principle; also called Jutas, Lempo, and Piru. Mon'ja-tar. The daughter of the Pine-tree. ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... we learn that prime English beef is underdone, which causes rather a run on mutton. Revenons, &c., is the watchword in many households. Poultry flies rather high for the time of year, and grouse is also up. Grice—why not? plural of mouse, mice—grice, we say, are growing more absent, and therefore dearer. Black game is not so darkly hued as it is painted, and a few transactions in wild duck are reported. Lard is hardening, as usual in frosty weather. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... will please to observe that I have left myself entire freedom as to the sources of what may be said over the teacups. I have not told how many cups are commonly on the board, but by using the plural I have implied that there is at least one other talker or listener beside myself, and for all that appears there may be a dozen. There will be no regulation length to my reports,—no attempt to make out a certain ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... curious to observe the forms of the imperative mood plural which occur so frequently throughout the poem in the Oriel copy. The forms ending in -eth are about 31 in number, of which 17 are of French, and 14 of A.S. origin. The words in which the ending -eth is dropped are ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... simple Raveloe theology fell rather unmeaningly on Silas's ears, for there was no word in it that could rouse a memory of what he had known as religion, and his comprehension was quite baffled by the plural pronoun, which was no heresy of Dolly's, but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous familiarity. He remained silent, not feeling inclined to assent to the part of Dolly's speech which he fully understood—her ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... "The plural of the word is pandanaceae; and they are the same thing as the screw-pines, and sometimes are found thirty feet high. There is one; and you can see roots starting out of the stem, and heading downward. The leaves are very useful to the natives. We shall get tied in a hard knot ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... to make thee less happy than thou hast been with those others," said he softly in Italian, and using the form of address, which, in almost every language but the English, marks a different and more tender relation from that indicated by the more formal plural pronoun. ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... grace and a dozen words from her lips. You do not know whether she is free, nor how she would welcome the notions you entertain if you gave them utterance, yet here you are saying, "We should go here," "We should do this and that." Keep to the singular, my poor fellow. The plural is far away, very far away, if not entirely ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Mixteca, plural of Mixtecatl, an inhabitant of Mixtecapan, near the Pacific. The Huasteca, a nation of Maya lineage, lived on ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... recalls Hopi methods of forming their plural, but is not characteristic of them, and the word Totonteac has a Hopi sound. The supposed derivation of Tonto from Spanish tonto, "fool," is mentioned, elsewhere. The so-called Tonto Apache was probably an intruder, the cause of ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... of London are the one sheriff of Middlesex; thus constituting in the latter case, what may be denominated, in the words of George Colman the Younger, (see his address to the Reviewers, in his vagaries,) 'a plural unit.' Henry the First, in the same charter by which he declared and confirmed the privileges of the City of London, (and among others, that of choosing their own sheriffs,) conferred on them, in consideration of an annual ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... and merely added the plural, making it "breeches," I know not; but the present war for the Union has elicited much enthusiasm among the gentler sex, causing them, in many instances, to lay aside their accustomed garb, and assume the exterior of the sterner portion of creation; in proof of which the ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... the familiar form of the second person plural of the personal pronoun; its use in this case was a mark of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... the various aspects under which Life appeared to the wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First comes Hafiz, whose well-known lines are quoted beginning with Shab-i-trk o bm-i-mauj, etc. Hr is the plural of Ahwar, in full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where they should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly Houries. Follows Umar-i-Khayym, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or Sooffeism, even as the Soofis (Gnostics) spiritualized Moslem Puritanism. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... them, however, accompanied the writer in his further exploration of the ensuing day, for he uses the plural number, and speaks of his 'friend.' We thus condense his statements: One day (7th March) is described as having been spent in Wady es-Sabaiyeh, or the plain before Mount Sinai. After having penetrated into this wady, he says: 'We took our course along the base of Jebel Deir, until we ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... I use in the plural, intending it for McPherson also. I should write to him, and will some day, but, starting in the morning, I do not know that I will find ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... laughed Phillips. "He is offering me an excuse to surrender gracefully. We must have a public meeting or two after Christmas, and clear the ground." They had got into the habit of speaking in the plural. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... secret of its influence over its members, and of its attractiveness to its proselytes, viz., the peculiarity of the "Mormon" institution of marriage. The Latter-day Saints were long regarded as a polygamous people. That plural marriage has been practised by a limited proportion of the people, under sanction of Church ordinance, has never since the introduction of the system been denied. But that plural marriage is a vital tenet of the Church is not true. What the Latter-day ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... best; but I am afraid that I shall not be able to give you very many as good: and now, in your turn, you are to fulfil your promise, and tell me what virtue is in the universal; and do not make a singular into a plural, as the facetious say of those who break a thing, but deliver virtue to me whole and sound, and not broken into a number of pieces: I have given ...
— Meno • Plato
... Hebrews, the word AUR, in the singular, signified light, but in the plural, AURIM, it denoted the revelation of the divine will; and the aurim and thummim, literally the lights and truths, constituted a part of the breastplate whence the high priest obtained oracular responses to the questions which ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... pomposities, fee. But the copy published says, 'as they have already submitted us to the form of the British,' &c.; making me express hostility to the form of our government, that is to say, to the constitution itself. For this is really the difference of the word form, used in the singular or plural, in that phrase, in the English language. Now it would be impossible for me to explain this publicly, without bringing on a personal difference between General Washington and myself, which nothing before the publication of this letter has ever done. It would embroil me also with all ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... going to happen," the girl said, with an acceptance of the plural which deepened the intimacy of the situation, and which was not displeasing to Verrian when she added, "If our friend's vehicle holds out." Then she turned her face full upon him, with what affected him as austere resolution, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... familiarly used of the birth of a man, as "Mizraim begat Pathrusim, and Casluhim out of whom came Philistim,"" Gen. x. 13, 14. This is a very awkward quotation on the part of Mr. Everett, as it says nothing in favour of his views, but directly favours mine: for Philistim is a word in the plural number, and is used in the Hebrew Bible, to express "the Philistines;" and the word translated "come"[fn33] is also in the plural number, see Simon's Hebrew Bible. The passage therefore in Genesis x. 13. 14. imports that the Philistines ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... of his secret sorrows—especially about there being no work nowadays for an honest man. At last he dropped asleep in the middle of a story about a vestry he worked for that hadn't acted fair and square by him like he had by them, or it (I don't know if vestry is singular or plural), and we went home. But before we went we held a hurried council and collected what money we could from the little we had with us (it was ninepence-halfpenny), and wrapped it in an old envelope Dicky had in his ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... into her broad embrace, and steamers steer a bee-line course to their landings, the officers might have been able to say at what hour we should reach our destination. As it was, they merely reiterated the characteristic "Ne znaem" (We don't know), which possesses plural powers of irritation when uttered in the conventional half-drawl. Perhaps they really did not know. Owing to a recent decree in the imperial navy, officers who have served a certain number of years without having accomplished a stipulated ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... one of the best safeguards to the Union. At the period of the formation of the Constitution the principle does not appear to have enjoyed much favor in the State governments. It existed but in two, and in one of these there was a plural executive. If we would search for the motives which operated upon the purely patriotic and enlightened assembly which framed the Constitution for the adoption of a provision so apparently repugnant to the leading democratic principle that the majority should govern, we must reject the idea that ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... title of the collection as originally published is obviously ambiguous—is Shepheardes' to be considered as singular or plural? There is a tendency among modern critics to evade the difficulty in such cases by quoting titles in the original spelling. I confess that this practice seems to me both clumsy and pedantic. In the present case there can be little doubt that the title of Spenser's work was suggested by ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... certainty is that they are independent of each other, since Progress means 'going on' and therefore 'change'; whereas Civilization may remain at the same high level for a very long period, without any change at all. Compare our own country with China, for instance. In the arts—the plural 'arts'—in applied science, we are centuries ahead of Asia; but our manners are rough and even brutal compared with the elaborate politeness of the Chinese, and we should labour in vain to imitate the marvellous productions of their art. We may prefer ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... mamma is a noun of the feminine gender and singular number; men is a noun masculine and plural; table is neuter ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... niente: vide Ps. cxxx. 6., and Job vii. 3, 4. Ennui is closely allied to our annoy or annoyance, through noceo, noxa, and their probable root nox, [Greek: nux.] It is precisely equivalent to the Latin taedium, which may be derived from taeda, which in the plural means a torch, and through that word may have a side reference to night, the taedarum horae: cf. Ps. xci. 5. The subject is worthy of strict inquiry on the part of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... his pocket, setting out to turn it into 300 pounds by a book of travels. I have avoided mention of Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, and all common watering-places; I have talked of physicians in the plural; in short, no one who reads that paragraph, but will suppose that you are a young man of rank and fortune, to whom money is no object, and who spends hundreds to cure that which might be effected by a little regularity, and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... woman of property if she chose to take the trouble to get it, and at the same time enfranchise only about one-tenth or one-fifteenth of the working women of the country. That was simply a roundabout way of doubling the plural voters and no democrat could possibly support it, so long as there remained a single alternative. The solution that most appeals to me is the one embodied in the Dickinson Bill, that is to say, a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... a point to note of special interest in their language. All the nouns have a masculine and a feminine gender, and the feminine nouns immensely predominate. The sun is feminine, the moon masculine. In the pronouns there is one form only in the plural, and that is feminine. It may seem that these matters—noted so briefly—are unimportant; but it is such little things that deserve attentive study. At least they serve to show that the Khasis have reached a high level of primitive culture; and they ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... which he has left us is manifestly intended primarily, not for secret worship, but for social worship. The pronouns of the "Lord's Prayer" are all in the plural number: "Our father who art in heaven;" "Give us this day our daily bread." For solitary prayer ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... is no process known by which a noun plural can be formed from an adjective, without the previous formation of the singular in the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... exhorting and instructing them how they should lead their lives. Now among other things that He commanded this was one: "This I command unto you, that ye love one another." The English expresses as tho it were but one, "This is my commandment." I examined the Greek, where it is in the plural number, and very well; for there are many things that pertain to a Christian man, and yet all those things are contained in this one thing, that is, love. He lappeth up ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... children had in addressing one another changed the homely singular pronoun to the more polite, if less grammatical, second person plural. The boy laughed, nodded his head, and said, 'You are ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... may be proper to observe, that by the unavoidable idiom of our language the ideas of perception, of recollection, or of imagination, in the plural number signify the ideas belonging to perception, to recollection, or to imagination; whilst the idea of perception, of recollection, or of imagination, in the singular number is used for what is termed "a reflex idea of any of those ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... had been describing our Opera, not your own; we have just set out with one in what they call, the French manner, but about as like it, as my Lady Pomfret's hash of plural persons and singular verbs or infinitive moods was to Italian. They sing to jigs, and dance to church music -. Phaeton is run away with by horses that go a foot's-pace, like the Electress's(1338) coach, with such long traces, that the postilion was in one street and the coachman in another;—then ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... these: (1) That many of the pictures of the hieroglyphics stand for the names of the objects actually delineated; (2) that other pictures are sometimes only symbolic; (3) that plural numbers are represented by repetition; (4) that numerals are represented by dashes; (5) that hieroglyphics may read either from the right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the animal and human figures face; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... a Greek word, the plural of 'antipous, lit. "having feet opposed." The ancients, however, had no knowledge of the southern hemisphere. Under the word perioikos, Liddell and Scott explain that 'antipodes meant "those who were in opposite ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Chapter XI: "flag-ships" plural in original. Chapter XII et seq.: "St. Martinsville" corrected to "St. Martinville" Chapter XXI: "Brownville", Texas, corrected to "Brownsville". Chapter XXXIV: the Grant in temporary command of Getty's division is Brigadier-General ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... be spelt, properly and precisely, "dog." When it is used in the sense to mean not "a dog" or "one dog" but two or more dogs—in other words what we grammarians are accustomed to call the plural—it is proper to add to it the diphthong, s, pronounced with a hiss ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... of battle was "Spirito Santo Cavaliere", i.e. Cavalier in the singular number. The plural number has been employed in the text, as somewhat more animated, and therefore better adapted to the kind of poetry into the service of which the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a mystery in the mind of some why we read in the Bible of churches, when God has but one church. A little attention to the word will convince any honest mind that the church of God is plural only in regard to its geographical location. The people in the different communities could not go up to Jerusalem in order to assemble themselves together in worship, for the distance in some instances would have been too great. Thus, it became necessary for many to form home congregations. But ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... and fell. The excitements of the past six hours had demoralised me altogether. I could not remember who or what gradus was—whether it was an active noun or a feminine verb or a plural conjunction, or what. In vain the faithful Dicky prompted me from behind and Graham minor from the side. As they both prompted at the same time, and each suggested different things, I only floundered ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... Chiuta, 'God in space and the rainbow sign across;' Mpambe, 'God Almighty' (or rather 'pre-excellent'); Mlezi, 'God the Sustainer,' and Mulungu, 'God who is spirit.' Mulungu God, 'not spirits or fetish.' 'You can't put the plural, as God is One,' say the natives. 'There are no idols called gods, and spirits are spirits of people who have died, not gods.' Idols are Zitunzi-zitunzi. 'Spirits are supposed to be with Mulungu.' God made the world and man. Our author says 'when the chief or people sacrifice it is to God,' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... "antecedents," as a plural, and in the sense attached to it by the French, is not to be found in any English dictionary that I have the means of consulting. And yet it seems now to be commonly used as an English expression, even by some of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... head, how singular I act: Cut off my tail, and plural I appear. Cut off my head and tail—most curious fact, Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off?—a sounding sea! What is my tail cut off?—a flowing river! Amid their mingling ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... inconveniences: one of the chief of these remedies being Proportional Representation, on which scarcely any of the Conservatives gave me any support. Some Tory expectations appear to have been founded on the approbation I had expressed of plural voting, under certain conditions: and it has been surmised that the suggestion of this sort made in one of the resolutions which Mr. Disraeli introduced into the House preparatory to his Reform Bill (a suggestion which meeting ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... mean your plan for the improvement of our language, which I allow has some defects, and which wants correction in several particulars. The specific amendment which you propose, and to which I object, is the addition of a's and o's to our terminations. To change s for a in the plural number of our substantives and adjectives, would be so violent an alteration, that I believe neither the power of Power nor the power of Genius would be able to effect it. In most cases I am convinced that very strong innovations ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... crude English adaptation of the Latin term "Punctus contra punctum" which refers to the notes as punct[u]s (plural) or dots which were pricked with a stylus into the medieval manuscripts. In this phrase the emphasis is on the contra, signifying a combination of different melodies and rhythms, and calling attention to that higher importance which, everywhere in art, is caused ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... stupidity and swank, are the privilege of the diarist. He may indulge himself in the delightful luxury of making post-mortem enemies. He may wonder what the average reviewer thinks he means by always referring to single publishers in the plural. A note which we often see in the papers runs like this: "Soon to be issued by the Dorans (or Knopfs or Huebsches)," etc., etc. This is an echo of the old custom when there really were two or more Harpers. But as long ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... goods nor at community of wives. And when we put aside Plato and the Platonic communities, the first fact to challenge attention is that the communities which established laws relating to sex relations which were opposed to the monogamic family, whether promiscuity, so-called free love; plural marriage, as in Mormonism, or celibacy, as in Harmonism and Shakerism, were all religious communities. In a word, all these experiments which antagonized the monogamic family relation were the result of various interpretations of the ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... is the plural form of the word. When we speak of only one we say "larva"; when we speak of more than one, instead of saying ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... learned—but learned without misgivings— Their love for good living and eke good livings; Not knowing (as ne'er having taken degrees) That good living means claret and fricassees, While its plural means simply—pluralities. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... in the main written and lost during the reign of Manasseh (circa 660 B.C.). It has been observed that in some sections the 2nd pers. sing, is used. in others the pl., and that the tone of the plural passages is more aggressive than that of the singular; the contrast, e.g., between xii. 29-31 (thou) and xii. 1-12 (you) is unmistakable. We might, then, limit the conclusion reached above by saying that the passages in which a milder ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... excused for leaving some traces of that character to remain, in both the cast of expression and the theological sentiment; for reverting repeatedly to the sentence from Scripture; and for continuing the use of the plural pronoun, so commodious for the modest egotism ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... folly? For us also makes that mystical Psalmist, though I remembered it not in its right place, "Remember not the sins of my youth nor my ignorances." You see what two things he pretends, to wit, youth, whose companion I ever am, and ignorances, and that in the plural number, a number of multitude, whereby we are to understand that there was no small ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... a bare fact in the experience of the theorist, and the other facts of his experience are so many other momentary views, so many scant theories, to be immediately superseded by other "truths in the plural." Sensations and ideas are really distinguishable only by reference to what is assumed to lie without; of which external reality experience is always an effect (and in that capacity is called sensation) and often at the same time an apprehension (and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... (dzongkhag, singular and plural); Bumthang, Chhukha, Chirang, Dagana, Geylegphug, Ha, Lhuntshi, Mongar, Paro, Pemagatsel, Punakha, Samchi, Samdrup Jongkhar, Shemgang, Tashigang, Thimphu, Tongsa, Wangdi Phodrang note: there may be two new ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... is Love, Which grows a habit she can ne'er get over, And fits her loosely—like an easy glove,[ch] As you may find, whene'er you like to prove her: One man alone at first her heart can move; She then prefers him in the plural number, Not finding that the additions ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and body text: this list does not include trivial differences such as singular for plural, ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... appears in books and newspapers. When the opera was brought out in the vernacular, Mr. Frederick E. Weatherly, who made the English adaptation, called the play and the character assumed by Canio in the comedy "Punchinello." This evoked an interesting comment from Mr. Hale: "'Pagliacci' is the plural of Pagliaccio, which does not mean and never did mean Punchinello. What is a Pagliaccio? A type long known to the Italians, and familiar to the French as Paillasse. The Pagliaccio visited Paris first in 1570. He was clothed in white and wore big buttons. Later, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Frankland, 768-814), for example, found it necessary to order that priests and monks must show themselves capable of changing the wording of the masses for the living and the dead, as circumstances required, from singular to plural, or from masculine ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... always been mentioned in Theodora's prayer, from infancy. It was the plural number, but the strength and fervency of petition were reserved for one; and with him she now joined the name of his child. But how pray for the son without the mother? It was positively a struggle; for Theodora had a horror of ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... study. He got along as he best could by his native wits and such little application as he found absolutely necessary. One day we were reciting in Lowth's Grammar. The Bishop says that in English the substantive singular is made plural for the most part by adding s. Professor Channing called up this classmate of mine, who stated this as follows: "The author says that the distinction between nouns in the singular and plural is that ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... This, obviously, was what counted in a man as delicacy. If her friend had blurted or bungled he would have said, in his simplicity, "Did we do 'everything to avoid' it when we faced your remarkable marriage?"—quite handsomely of course using the plural, taking his share of the case, by way of a tribute of memory to the telegram she had received from him in Paris after Mr. Verver had despatched to Rome the news of their engagement. That telegram, that acceptance of the prospect proposed to ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... s-ma-i must be taken as a compound term for "starry heaven." The parallel passage in the Assyrian version (Tablet I, 5, 27) has the ideograph for star, with the plural sign as a variant. Literally, therefore, "The starry heaven (or "the stars in heaven") was there," etc. Langdon's note 2 on page 211 rests on ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... importing the singular number only, may be extended to several persons or things; and words importing the plural number only may be applied to one person, or thing; and words importing the masculine gender only ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... word forms the plural, which is never formed in any other way. The first three vowels (a, e, i) added to any noun, form respectively its genitive, dative, and accusative; s added to these forms makes the plurals of the same cases. Man is ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... angels. Both are pure forms and incorporeal. Their rationality is indicated in the nineteenth Psalm, "The heavens declare the glory of God." That God rules the world through them is evident from a number of passages in Bible and Talmud. The plural number in "Let us make man in our image" (Gen. 1, 26), "Come, let us go down and confuse their speech" (ib. 11, 7) is explained by the Rabbis in the statement that "God never does anything without first looking ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... ask at once: "Were then these Heaven and Earth gods?" But gods in what sense? In our sense of God? Why, in our sense, God is altogether incapable of a plural. Then in the Greek sense of the word? No, certainly not; for what the Greeks called gods was the result of an intellectual growth totally independent of the Veda or of India. We must never forget that what we call gods ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... that it exports for the Ujiji and other distant markets. The Africans have no religion, unless Fetishism may be considered such. They use charms to keep off the evil eye, and believe in fortune-tellers. Their church is called Uganga, and the parson Mganga, the plural of which, priests, changes to Waganga. The prefixes, U, M, and Wa, are used uniformly throughout this land from Zanzibar, to denote respectively, U, country or place, M, an individual, and Wa for plurality, as in tribe or people: thus, Uganga, Mganga, Waganga; ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... bottle at the end of the chace—he was prodigal of his fortune, where his pleasures were concerned, and as those pleasures were chiefly social, his sporting companions and his mistresses (for these were also of the plural number) partook ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... of the editorial we, which at the fag-end of passages sometimes dropped into I. [Upon my remarking upon this to Rossetti he remembered incidentally that a similar confounding of the singular and plural number of the pronoun produces marvellously suggestive effects in a very different work, Macbeth, where the kingly we is tripped up by the guilty I in ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... is, that you should learn grammar, my boy, and then you will know that go is plural, and goes is singular, so that if you are speaking of more than one horse, it is proper to say go, because we say, 'they go;' but if you are speaking of only one, it is proper to say goes, because we should ...
— More Seeds of Knowledge; Or, Another Peep at Charles. • Julia Corner
... prayer has been heard which He made for Peter, and for those who should, in turn, exercise Peter's office and functions, and should speak in his name. Harken to the narrative, as given by St. Luke: "The Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you [observe, the plural number] that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed [not for all, but] for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren" (Luke xxii. 32) [observe the singular number, "thee," ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... not the Dutch of Holland; nor yet a mere provincial dialect of it. Instead of the infinitive moods and plural numbers ending in -n as in Holland, the former end in -a, the latter in -ar. And so they did when the language was first reduced to writing,—which it has been for nearly a thousand years. So they did when the laws of the Old Frisian ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... the pages were stuck together by a blot: and Father Arnall held it up by a corner and said it was an insult to any master to send him up such a theme. Then he asked Jack Lawton to decline the noun MARE and Jack Lawton stopped at the ablative singular and could not go on with the plural. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... very clear. I know the people I live among don't know everything. I grant you all that. But Woman Free! Woman Free! Madame Mafflu wants to know what liberty—or what liberties—singular or plural; do you take me?—ha! ha! ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... distinction of one from more than one. There are two numbers, singular and plural; the singular denotes one, the plural two or more. The plural is generally formed from the singular by the addition of s ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... to advise thee (The courteous use of the plural was proscribed at Paris. The Societies Populaires had decided that whoever used it should be prosecuted as suspect et adulateur! At the door of the public administrations and popular societies was written up, "Ici on s'honore du Citoyen, et on se tutoye"!!! ("Here they ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and fury, signifying angry passion stirred by Home Rule Bill. In studiously moderate speech PREMIER moved resolution identical with that adopted last year, whereby Committee stage of Home Rule Bill, Welsh Church Disestablishment and Plural Voting will be forgone. Pointed out that Committee stage is designed for purpose of providing opportunity of amending Bills. Since under Parliament Act none of these measures can be amended in the Commons, what use to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... odd name for a town, whether we regard it as a genitive singular, or as a nominative plural. The story goes, that the first settlers appointed a committee of one to name the place. The gentleman selected for this duty had been a schoolmaster, and he brought to bear upon the task all the learning appertaining to his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... fashion; her most common method of amusement being to reproduce for its entertainment scraps of conversation current in the house, with all the sense left out of them, and all the nouns changed to the plural number, as—"Did its mothers make it up a beds then! And did its hair grow brown and curly when its cap was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... will be found conjoined with an extraordinary lack of education and training. An excellent piece of English—pithy, forcible, and even elegant—will often shatter on some simple grammatical reef, such as the use of "as" for "that" ("he did not know as he could"), or of the plural for the singular ("a long ways off"). Mr. James Lane Allen, the author of a series of refined and delicately worded romances, can write such phrases as "In a voice neither could scarce hear" and "Shake hands with me and tell me ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... proclamations, signed "Norton I.," which the lively San Francisco dailies were always ready to print conspicuously in their columns. The style of these proclamations was stately, the royal first person plural being used by him with all gravity and dignity. Ever and anon, as his uniform became dilapidated or ragged, a reminder of the condition of the imperial wardrobe would be given in one or more of the newspapers, and then in a few days he would ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... disrespect annexed to the use of the second person in discourse, though difficult to be accounted for, seems pretty general in the world. The Europeans, to avoid the supposed indecorum, exchange the singular number for the plural; but I think with less propriety of effect than the Asiatic mode; if to take off from the bluntness of address ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Mother," he explained, wearily, "I do wish you wouldn't speak of your vital organs in the plural. Anyone would imagine you were a sort of freak, like the two-headed boy at the circus. It's ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the singular and all nouns in the plural except those ending in s take an apostrophe and s ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... or, in the large cities, of Europeans and of Eurasians, besides still more specialised constituencies for the representation of land-holders, universities, commerce, and industries. There was no female suffrage, and no plural vote. No elector could vote both in a "general constituency" and in a "special" one. The qualifications laid down for the franchise were of a very modest character. Illiteracy was no bar, as to have made it so in ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... counselled him about his new suit, and listened, uneasy and ashamed, to a brief, penitential reference to "crazy" things he had done, as a "kid." He promised her never to drink again and incidentally told her that his real name was Edward Tenney. Suddenly they found the plural pronoun: we must do that; that doesn't interest us; Pa ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... 29: Toward your children)—Ver. 151. The plural "liberos" is here used to signify the one son which Menedemus has. So in the Hecyra, l. 217, the same word is used to signify but one daughter. This was a common mode of expression in the times of the earlier ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... the Aztecan, a number of derivatives from the same root, na, among them this very word, Nahuatl, all of them containing the idea "to know," or "knowledge." The early missionaries to New Spain often speak of the naualli (plural, nanahualtin), masters of mystic knowledge, dealers in the black art, wizards or sorcerers. They were not always evil-minded persons, though they seem to have been generally feared. The earliest source of information about them is Father Sahagun, who, in his invaluable History, ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... Universe at large. The Number Two corresponds with the Dual Number in Grammar, and with the Couple or Pair in the World of Persons (and Things); and finally the Number Three corresponds with the Plural Number in Grammar and with Society or the many among Persons (and Things); or in tabular ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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. The vocabulary of the language contained very few foreign elements. The poetry of the language employed head-rhyme or alliteration, and not end-rhyme, as we do now. The works of the poet Caedmon ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... (singular and plural) note: example: he or she is from Taiwan; they are from Taiwan ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... she returned, "then you need not be more afraid than I, because 'people' is plural. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... should have kept a lodge; yet he led the procession of becoming deaths, and began in the mind of Fleeming that train of tender and grateful thought which was like a preparation for his own. Already I find him writing in the plural of "these impending deaths"; already I find him in quest of consolation. "There is little pain in store for these wayfarers," he wrote, "and we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... buildings, especially on castles. This at Coulyng is remarkable from being in English, at a time when Latin was employed in all charters; it contains that early form of the plural 'beth' instead of 'are.' The inscription measures thirty-two inches by fourteen, and the diameter of the seal is no less than seven and ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... atmosphere. bawled, cried out. ere, before. bad, ill; vicious. e'er, ever. bade, past tense of bid. heir, one who inherits. baize, a kind of cloth. aisle, walk in a church. bays, plural of bay. isle, an island. bear, an animal. I'll, I will. bare, naked. cere, to cover with wax. bay, part of the ocean. sear, to burn; dry. bey, a Turkish officer. seer, a prophet. be, to exist. ball, a round body. bee, an insect. bawl, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... comes from the old English cheri, chiri, and that probably from the French cerise, that from the Latin cerasus, and that from the Greek kerasos. "Cheri or chiri was a corruption of cheris or chiris, the final s being mistaken for the plural inflection; the same mistake occurs in several other words, notably in pea as shortened ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... the apostles the plural form of the word church is frequently used, but this argues nothing against the unity of God's church, nor in favor of the multiplicity of sects. If all the saved people in the world could be congregated in one place there would be no occasion for using the plural form of ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... doctrine of the Trinity. This word is not 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 of plurality in unity ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... must acknowledge, very dull of understanding; they is in the plural number, and speaks is in the singular. Will you thus all your life offend grammar? [Footnote: Grammaire in Moliere's time was pronounced as grand'mere is now. Gammer seems the nearest approach to this ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... "Guardian" exhibited more than the usual dearth of domestic intelligence, although it was singularly oracular on "The State of Europe," and "Jeffersonian Democracy." A certain cheap assurance, a copy-book dogmatism, a colloquial familiarity, even in the impersonal plural, and a series of inaccuracies and blunders here and there, struck some old chord in my memory. I was mutely wondering where and when I had become personally familiar with rhetoric like that, when the door of the office opened and a man entered. I was surprised ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... write about them and exploiter them professionally, and use her expertness to give instruction to those less privileged. Her voluble egotism; her sense, not of radical bad being, as the really contrite have it, but of her "faults" and "imperfections" in the plural; her stereotyped humility and return upon herself, as covered with "confusion" at each new manifestation of God's singular partiality for a person so unworthy, are typical of shrewdom: a paramountly feeling nature would be ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... attempt has failed because its experimentation and expression have been restricted by a single point of view. Many have not continued because the desire has waned in the face of the hardships and sacrifices entailed. But the Players rightly had a plural name. We were, and are, a collection of many individuals—actors, authors, artists, and art-lovers—all fired with the sincere desire to give to playgoers something they had not been able previously to find on the American ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... space 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 "this age" (aeon), "the coming age" (aeon), and "the end of the age," etc. These aeons or ages are thought of in Scripture as vast periods past, present ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... The Hawaiian alphabet had no letter s. The Hawaiians indicated the plural by prefixing the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... was given the southward movement when it became evident that the national prosecution against plural marriage was to be pushed to the extreme. January 4, 1883, with the idea of finding an asylum for the Saints in Mexico, Apostle Thatcher traveled from St. David on the San Pedro, to the southeast as ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... the French says: "there are none who do," instead of "there is none who does," a plural due to the plural ...
— Esther • Jean Racine |
