"Plural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an 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 former vocation. He desired to express in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... and he told us many 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 pocket and put it gently on the billowing middle of the poor tramp's sleeping ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... then, that the domestic situation in Byron's house at the time of his wife's expulsion was one so grave as to call for family counsel; for Lady Byron, generally accurate, speaks in the plural number. 'His nearest relatives' certainly includes Mrs. Leigh. 'His family' includes more. That some of Lord Byron's own relatives were cognisant of facts at this time, and that they took Lady Byron's side, is shown by one of his own chance admissions. In vol. vi. p.394, in a letter on Bowles, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... scholars have not been satisfied with the common explanation of the name, and have stated that it was originally composed with the word tan['e] (seed, or grain), and the word hata (loom). Those who accept this etymology make the appellation, Tanabata-Sama, plural instead of singular, and render it as "the deities of grain and of the loom,"—that is to say, those presiding over agriculture and weaving. In old Japanese pictures the star-gods are represented according to this conception of their respective attributes;—Hikoboshi ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... should 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 ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... call themselves 'Cales,' by which appellation indeed they are tolerably well known by the Spaniards, and which is merely the plural termination of the compound word Zincalo, and signifies, The black men. Chai is a modification of the word Chal, which, by the Gitanos of Estremadura, is applied to Egypt, and in many parts of Spain is equivalent to 'Heaven,' and which is perhaps a modification of 'Cheros,' the word for heaven ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... newspaper where we had tea and cake at about four. From there to the house of the daughter of a leading statesman of the Manchus, she being a lady of small feet and ten children, who has offered a prize for the best essay on the ways to stop concubinage, which they call the whole system of plural marriage. They say it is quite unchanged among the rich. There we were given a tea of a rare sort, unknown in our experience. Two kinds of meat pies which are made in the form of little cakes and quite peculiar in taste, ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... being 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, ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... 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 ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... group now known as that of PULO CONDORE, in old times an important landmark, and occasional point of call, on the route to China. The group is termed Sundar Fulat (Fulat representing the Malay Pulo or Island, in the plural) in the Arab Relations of the 9th century, the last point of departure on the voyage to China, from which it was a month distant. This old record gives us the name Sondor; in modern times we have it as Kondor; Polo combines both names. ["These may also be the 'Satyrs' Islands' ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 8: Zurita ("Rapport," etc., etc., p. 50): "The chiefs of the second class are yet called calpullec in the singular and chinancallec in the plural." (This is evidently incorrect, since the words 'calpulli' and 'chinancalli' can easily be distinguished from each other.) "'Chinancalli', however after Molina means 'cercado de seto' (Parte IIa, p. 21), ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... The word Vanity (remarks Hurwitz, the translator) occurs twice in the plural, which the Rabbi considered as equivalent to four, and three times in the singular, making ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of a different case, were joined to the genitive plural of Sestertius, it signified so many thousand Sesterces; ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... in the singular into words in the plural, and banishing from the British vocabulary the copulative conjunction "and"—Herr Grosse announced his readiness to sit down to lunch. He was politely recalled from the Mayonnaise to the patient by his discreet ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... to the latter of which the middle board of red oak from the head of a flour-barrel is indispensable as a bakeboard, while the fire to bake with must be of walnut logs. Hasty pudding, corn dumplings, and corn-meal porridge, so eminently good that it was ever mentioned with respect in the plural, as "them porridge," all are described with the exuberant joyousness of a happy, healthful old age in remembrance of a happy, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Euryclea says it was herself that had thrown the cloak over Ulysses—for the plural should not be taken as implying more than one person. The writer is evidently still fluctuating between Euryclea and Eurynome as the name for the old nurse. She probably originally meant to call her Euryclea, but finding it not immediately easy to make Euryclea scan in xvii. 495, she hastily called ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... formula would be 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
... 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 deeper. I felt myself ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... content you with life, as with death! Philosophy will chill your best impulses and most generous enthusiasms,—it will make you over-cautious and doubtful of your friends,—it will cause you to be indifferent to women in the plural, but it will hand you over, a weak and helpless victim to the one woman,—when she comes,—as she is bound to come. There is no one so hopelessly insane as a philosopher in love! Love women, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... or spirits is as improper as the term gods. Soul or Spirit signifies Deity and nothing else. 466:21 There is no finite soul nor spirit. Soul or Spirit means only one Mind, and cannot be rendered in the plural. Heathen mythology and Jewish 466:24 theology have perpetuated the fallacy that intelligence, soul, and life can be in matter; and idolatry and ritualism are the outcome of all man-made beliefs. The ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... and in close proximity to it bone. We may, in fact, and do get in it exactly similar changes to those termed 'synovitis' and 'arthritis' elsewhere. Therefore, we include the changes occurring in it in this chapter, and hence the plural use of the word to ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Coningry, Coneygar or Conygre (Vol. vii., pp. 182. 241. 368.).—There are many fields in the midland counties which bear the name of conigree. In some instances they are in the vicinity of manor-houses. The British name of a rabbit is cwningen, plural cwning. That of a rabbit warren is cwning-gaer, that is, literally, rabbits' camp. The term coneygar is so like this, that it may be supposed to have ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... Toulon, in anticipation of a possible meeting with the French squadron there, when the disparity of force was less—say, eight to ten. This impression is confirmed by the "Plan of Attack" speaking of the junior "Admirals"—in the plural. There was but one such in the pursuit to the West Indies. It is quite possible, however, that the same order was re-issued upon the later occasion, re-copied without change of words. In any event, it confirms other statements and actions ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... recollection. After the preparation which we have recommended, the singular number of a declension will be learnt in a few minutes by a child of ordinary capacity, and after two or three days repetition, the plural number may be added. The whole of the first declension should be well fixed in the memory before a second is attempted. During this process, a few words at every lesson may be translated from Latin to English, and such nouns as are of the first declension, may be compared ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... from laughter, when I answered all thy civilities without uncovering my head, and at the same time said 'thee' and 'thou' to thee. However, thou appearest to me too well read not to know that in Christ's time no nation was so ridiculous as to put the plural number for the singular. Augustus Caesar himself was spoken to in such phrases as these: 'I love thee,' 'I beseech thee,' 'I thank thee;' but he did not allow any person to call him 'Domine,' sir. It was not till many ages after that ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... type, and those due to excess, such as the double monsters. Hippocrates, in his work on the "Nature of the Infant," tells us that twins are the result of a single coitus, and we are also informed that each infant has a chorion; so that both kinds of plural gestation (monochorionic and dichorionic) were known to the ancients. In this treatise it is further stated that the twins may be male or female, or both males or both females; the male is formed when the semen ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... reduce themselves almost wholly to a circumstance of provincial usage, which even well educated persons in Suffolk and Norfolk do not wholly avoid; and which may be said, as to general custom, to have become in these Counties almost an established Dialect:... that of adopting the plural for the singular termination of verbs, so as to exclude the s. But not a line is added or substantially alter'd through the whole poem. I have requested the MS. to be preserv'd for the satisfaction of those who may wish to ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... to the proper use of the auxiliaries shall and will, will be found to arise from the fact, that while these particles respectively convey a different idea in the first person singular and plural, from that which they imply in the second and third persons singular and plural, the distinction has been lost sight of in the amalgamation of both; as if they were interchangeable, in one tense, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... the Almighty has endowed us all with a certain amount of brains; but we don't all use them." (Cheers).—Mr. TICKLER in the debate on the Plural Voting Bill. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... 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 in ancient mythologies ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... l[i]). (Plural of alveolus). Air cells. The cells, or cavities, that line the air passages and air sacs at the ends ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... hole in a wall in which a lamp is placed, and Masabih the plural of "a lamp", because traditions are compared to lamps, and this book is like that which containeth a lamp. Another reason is, that Masabih is the name of a book, and this book comprehends its contents' (Matthews's translation, vol. i, p. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... 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
... The plural was pure chivalry. It was not Amzi who nagged Phil. The aunts, perfectly aware of this, and ready usually to challenge any intimation that their attitude toward Phil was not dictated by equity and wisdom, were silent. Their failure to respond with their customary defense aroused his ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... problems of sex and age, leadership and training, aims and objectives. He should also know thoroughly the policies of denominational and interdenominational Sunday school bodies, and, where there are denominations in plural quantity, this may mean a task worth while. Sometimes it is a slow process. Surely, so! The Kingdom, with all the wisdom of Heaven, has been twenty centuries in the building, and it has been wrought out in the Church. The contribution that each man or woman makes must be small, but likewise ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... gentlemen' (politely saluting them with his hand) 'thought one such as thou shouldest have written classical Arabic (Arabi fossieh), and have called it "al Daboor;" nevertheless, it is proper to write it "Samoom," not, as some do "Simoom," which is the plural of sim (poison).' I shook my head, and said, I did not recollect al Daboor. Then my Reis, sitting at the door, offered his suggestion. 'Probably the English, who it is well known are a nation of sailors, use the name given to the land wind by ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... being mechanics. Shakespeare often uses adjectives with the sense of plural substantives. Cf. 'subject' in Hamlet, I, i, 72. Twice in North's Plutarch occurs "base mechanical people."—/ought not walk/. ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... 3. The plural speakes of moe then one; as, handes, trees, sheep, horses, men, tuo, three, foure, or moe, or how ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... appear to use a plural verb after a singular noun, it really expresses his meaning, which is evidently, that portions of the WORD of God are rendered into poetry as nearly as possible, word for word with the original; and he immediately apologizes for this rudeness, in neglecting the rules of grammar, by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... When one has a great deal more to say than one has any right to say, and when at the same time one is expected to say particularly little, it is very hard to write a good note. All sorts of ideas creep in and express themselves automatically. A misplaced plural for a singular, a superlative adjective where the vaguer comparative belongs; the vast and immeasurable waste of weary years that may lie between "dear" and "dearest," the gulf placed between "sincerely yours, John Smith," and "yours, J.S.," and "your J.," until the blessed ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... chose to think that it must be "one of those below." I kept on a little farther, by the crooked river lanes, where public houses were as plentiful as if the entire population suffered from a raging and inextinguishable thirst for beer. The sign-boards displayed a preference for the plural which seems not to have escaped the observation of the novelist. If I did not see The Six Porters, I came across The Three Mariners, The Three Cups, The Three Suns, The Three Tuns, The Three Foxes, and the Two Brewers; and in the last ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... (King of 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 ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... moral. When a king decided a dispute by a sentence, the judgment was assumed to be the result of direct inspiration. The divine agent, suggesting judicial awards to kings or to gods, the greatest of kings, was Themis. The peculiarity of the conception is brought out by the use of the plural. Themistes, Themises, the plural of Themis, are the awards themselves, divinely dictated to the judge. Kings are spoken of as if they had a store of "Themistes" ready to hand for use; but it must be distinctly understood that they are not laws, but judgments. ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... forgetting at this moment of genuine feeling the pompous plural in which he had hitherto spoken of himself. The Prince fondly kissed his child. The boy was about ten years of age, exquisitely handsome. Courage, not audacity, was imprinted on his ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... my companion took his coffee, but it seemed to me that tardy politeness now demanded that I tacitly—or at least demi-tacitly—accede to the alleged plural intent of the question. Therefore, I replied: "Mr. Morgan takes two lumps. I don't take ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... in 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
... organ originally denoted but a single pipe, and hence the older English writers, when referring to the complete instrument, generally used the word in the plural number. "Father Schmidt and other famous organ-builders flourished in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The organ in Temple Church, London, was built by Schmidt in Charles ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... 18 districts (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 districts ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... it will be perceived, differs in his translation of the Hebrew word 'nebelati,' which is, certainly, in the singular number, and not plural. The correct rendering is, doubtless, "with my dead body they," &c.; but this weakens not at all his argument, which is essentially a Jewish one. See the Commentators, Chizoook Emunah, ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... the beauty of his plural pronoun as she had judged he might be with that of her own; but she knew now so well what she was about that she could almost play with him and with her new-born joy. "You say 'about the time you speak of.' But I don't think you speak of an exact ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... most pleasant there, hot afternoons. Did you use to dote on horse-chestnuts? Queer boys should. But I rather like them myself, in a way,—out of the way! We have picked up a hundred and seventeen." Miss Salome dropped into the plural number innocently, and Elizabeth laughed over John's shoulder. Elizabeth did the reading between the lines. John was ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... relieved," said David. "It's much easier to understand the plural of girl. Girl in the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... timid that he never had had the audacity to tell the girl at the glove counter that he preferred bronze-green gloves, nor the boldness to show Maria Gerard his poems composed in her honor, in which he now always put the plural "amours," so as to make it rhyme with "toujours," which was an improvement. He never had dared to reply to the glance of the little maid on the second floor; and he was very wrong to be embarrassed, for one morning, as he passed the butcher's shop, he saw the butcher's ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... lovers exactly the same kind of apology is desirable as it is in the case of Nodier. "Where," I hear reproaching voices crying, "is Jean Sbogar? Where is Laure Ruthwen ou les Vampires in novel-plural or Le Vampire in melodrama-singular? Where are a score or a hundred other books, pieces, pages, paragraphs, passages from five to fifty words long?" They are not here, and I could not find room for them here. "But you found more ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... 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, in continuing, "But ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... actions, ought not to be expected to vary in the same degree; and we shall accordingly find that it is chiefly in words of these and similar classes that the greatest degree of resemblance is found to exist. With regard to the pronouns this is very remarkable. In the singular, plural, and dual numbers they almost coincide in Western Australia, South Australia, and Sydney. The following table of the pronouns as used in those places ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... consanguineous marriages where relatives are deaf have a greater probability of producing deaf offspring, and also a greater probability of producing plural deaf offspring, than ordinary marriages, and two thirds of the congenitally deaf offspring of consanguineous marriages do have deaf relatives, it does not seem necessary to look beyond the law of heredity for an explanation of the high percentage of the congenitally ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... the whole battery, wasn't it?" asked Gordon, "and two huts is plural. I said houses of the people. I couldn't say two houses of the people. Just you send this as you get it. You are not an American consul at the present moment. You are an under-paid agent of a cable company, and you send my stuff as I write it. The American residents have ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... of information, 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. Hares are not so mad as in March, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... narrative distributed, when my much-heaving numskull would be incapable of finish or fine style. At Savage we met the missionary barque JOHN WILLIAMS. I tell you it was a great day for Savage Island: the path up the cliffs was crowded with gay islandresses (I like that feminine plural) who wrapped me in their embraces, and picked my pockets of all my tobacco, with a manner which a touch would have made revolting, but as it was, was simply charming, like the Golden Age. One pretty, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sweet breathings of the Eolian harp, or the celestial cadences of that heart-subduing cherub, Stephens; when we set out on our romantic excursion. Reader, you may well start at the introduction of the plural number; but say, what man could abandon his friend to such a dangerous enterprise? or what moralists refuse his services where there was such a probability of there being so much need for them? But we are poor frail mortals; so a truce ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... says: "I am in a slight difficulty.... What is the pronunciation of the plural termination OJ?" Unfortunately this point was not sufficiently clear in the first edition of the Text-Book. The sound is monosyllabic as in TOY. The tonic accent therefore falls on the preceding syllable. The termination of adjectives ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... for the post of Company Interpreter lie in the fact that I once, in company of various other youths of my age, spent a fortnight in and around the Casino at Trouville. Peters of our company knows a long list of nouns taking "x" instead of "s" in the plural, but my knowledge is ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... (Sec. 5) do not admit him into their college (the motive of denial recurs later); but enter him for the battle with the lion. This is surely a personification of the same obstructions as the elders themselves. In them we have, so to speak, before us the dragon (to be subdued) in a plural form. Analogous multiplying of the dragon is found, for example, in Stucken [in the astral myth]. Typical dragon fighters are Jason, Joshua, Samson, Indra; and their dragon enemies are multitudes like the armed men from the sowing of the dragon's teeth by Jason, the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... accept the Holy Bible as received by all Christian people, but believe the Book of Mormon to be an additional revelation, and also that their chief or prophet receives direct inspiration from God. They practice plural marriage, or polygamy, claiming that the Scriptures justify, while one of their revelations directly commands it. After the death of Smith and their expulsion from Nauvoo, a company under the leadership of Brigham Young crossed the Rocky Mountains, and settled near Great Salt ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... sometimes in the plural Ladir, was the old capital of Drontheim, before Nidaros — the present Drontheim — was founded. Drontheim was originally the name of the country round the firth of the same name, and is not used in the old sagas for a town. (2) The country ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... 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, that ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the Prologue to the Book of Foundations, Father Garcia de Toledo, her confessor at St. Joseph's Convent, is said to be responsible for the order to rewrite the "Life"; but in the Preface to the "Life" St. Teresa speaks of her "confessors" in the plural. Fathers Ibanez and Banez may be included in the number. See also ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... 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 the latter end in s." "Is that a good distinction?" ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... was more like some shrewd, old, humble friend who 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 have hope - more ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the plural, and you'll be nearer right," laughed Mrs. Grenfell, and added to Honora, "You'd best take care, my ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 and ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Modifications. [Footnote: Those grammarians that attempt to restrict number, case, mode, etc.—what we here call Modifications—to form, find themselves within bounds which they continually overleap. They define number, for instance, as a form, or inflection, and yet speak of nouns "plural in form but singular in sense," or "singular in form but plural in sense;" that is, if you construe them rigorously, plural or singular in form but singular or plural form in sense. They tell you ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Kloots-a-mah plural Klootsmuk the Indian word for "married woman" but used in the legends for girls as well as women. According to Gilbert Malcolm Sproat who lived in Alberni in the early "sixties" the term used for a young girl or daughter was "Ha-quitl-is" and ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... by the Upper House to introduce plural voting, the bill became law in January 1907, the peers insisting only upon the establishment of a fixed maximum number or numerus clausus, of non-hereditary peers, so as to prevent the resistance of the Upper Chamber from being overwhelmed at any critical moment by an influx of crown nominees ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... numbers and an enduring faith. Many a similar 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 stage. And our desire has ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... succeed in giving a fair account of its method and argument, offering by the way a few suggestions, such as might occur to any naturalist of an inquiring mind. An editorial character for this article must in justice be disclaimed. The plural pronoun is employed not to give editorial weight, but to avoid even the appearance of egotism, and also the circumlocution which attends a rigorous adherence to the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... meaning 'correction.' Zeller has noted a fondness for substantives ending in -ma and -sis, such as georgema, diapauma, epithumema, zemioma, komodema, omilema; blapsis, loidoresis, paraggelsis, and others; also a use of substantives in the plural, which are commonly found only in the singular, maniai, atheotetes, phthonoi, phoboi, phuseis; also, a peculiar use of prepositions in composition, as in eneirgo, apoblapto, dianomotheteo, dieiretai, dieulabeisthai, and other words; also, ...
— Laws • Plato
... cultivation, Parliamentary debate itself become a mockery—these calamities were all due to long Parliaments; and would be cured if once a year—on June 1st—a fresh Parliament was elected by the votes of every man over eighteen—by ballot and without any plural voting—and a payment of two guineas a day was made to members on their attendance. Of course, Cartwright could not help writing "all are by nature free, all are by nature equal"—no political reformer in the eighteenth century could do otherwise—but, ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... he thought, for a day wasted upon a girl's society. There still seemed to linger upon his palate the flavor of Aunt Eunice's pullets, from which he had been despoiled by his first enforced call upon her ward, and though he had regretfully heard Susanna say "chicken" without the plural "s," he knew that, being himself "company," he would get his full share of the fowl, which he trusted might be ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... there is an English and a Latin ending, the former is usually given with the word and the other is added: e.g. aequilate -us, instead of aequilatus, there being no difference in the application. Usually the singular form of the word is first given, and the plural ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... that mamma is a noun of the feminine gender and singular number; men is a noun masculine and plural; ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... TREE.—A Yew Tree. First it may be a 'Igh Tree, but it is a Yew Tree. It is either a He Tree or a She Tree. If small, it represents the first person plural by being a "Wee Tree:" the second person plural is the Manager and Manageress of the Haymarket, "Ye Trees;" and the third person plural would be expressed by a Devonshire Gardener indicating this talented couple as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... Sentences in the S'klallam or Sclallam. 52 ll. 4^o. In Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages, 1st ed., complete. Collected at the Skokomish Reservation in 1878. Includes plural forms and possessive cases of nouns and pronouns and the partial conjugation of the ...
— Catalogue Of Linguistic Manuscripts In The Library Of The Bureau Of Ethnology. (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (Pages 553-578)) • James Constantine Pilling
... is but a somewhat distorted reflex of her perfect honesty. After a little trifling talk, which is sure to come first when people are more than ordinarily glad to meet, I asked after her children. I forget how many there were of them, but they were then pretty far into the plural number. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... monogamy; but, aside from the Christians, none appear to see how this is to be done. Even Mr. Fukuzawa says that the first step in the reform of the family and the establishment of monogamy is to develop public sentiment against prostitution and plural or illegal marriage; and the way to do this is first to make evil practices secret. This, he says, is more important than to give women a higher education. He does not see that Christianity with its conceptions of immediate ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... knows as little as any of us; but we would humbly suggest to her that one does not hear anything bend, unless it be of a creaking nature, like an old tree, and that is rather opposed to one's idea of "silences," vague as our notions of that plural noun are. Why one "silence" could not serve her turn is one of those Dundrearyan conundrums that no fellow can find out. And, while we are about it, we should like to know whether it is the silences or the loneliness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... historically or critically. His prose and poetry swarm with locutions that would have made Lindley Murray's hair stand on end. How little he knew is plain from his criticising in Ben Jonson the use of ones in the plural, of "Though Heaven should speak with all his wrath," and be "as false English for are, though the rhyme hides it." Yet all are good English, and I have found them all in Dryden's own writing! Of his sins against idiom I have a longer list than I have room ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... of an equivalent, and the fact that it may still be heard in remote places. Where possible, I have retained the archaic order of the original Text. Such irregular constructions, as e.g., the use of a singular pronoun in the first half of a sentence, and of a plural in the second half, I have left unaltered; for the meaning was perfectly clear. In short, I have endeavoured to make Richard Rolle as he was as significant as possible to English men and women of to-day as they are, when they are not professed ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... agree with the nouns which they qualify. This and that qualify nouns in the singular; these and those belong to nouns in the plural. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... have found characteristic of the religion, whereby powerful gods absorb the functions of weaker ones whose attributes resemble their own. But while the god disappears, the name survives. Nun-gal with the plural sign attached becomes a collective designation for a group of powerful demons.[193] In this survival and use of the name we have an interesting example of the manner in which, by a species of differentiation, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... care much whether we did or didn't," retorted Vixen, shrouding her personality in a vague plural. "If you had cared you would have been with us. Sultan," meaning the chestnut "must have felt cruelly humiliated by ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... since it left Dr. Bonar's hands. Besides the change of metaphors, the first personal pronoun singular is changed to the plural. There was strength, and ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... person plural with the best intention, but her object was defeated. The rector recognised the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... told me that the old Editions on the whole favoured 'leggiavamo.' Now I shall tell him that the Germans have decided on 'leggevamo.' But Brooke quotes one Copy (1502) which reads 'leggevam,' which I had also wished for, to get rid of a fifth (and superfluous) o in the line. I suppose such a plural is as allowable as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... could be offended by them. For a special instance: The prayer for "our bishops and curates, and all congregations committed to their charge," is, in the Lincoln Service-book, "for our bishop, and all congregations committed to his charge." The change from singular to plural seems a slight one. But it suffices to take the eyes of the people off their own bishop into infinite space; to change a prayer which was intended to be uttered in personal anxiety and affection, into one for the general good of the Church, of which nobody could judge, and for which nobody ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... prepositions, as expressive of relations, being completely unknown to them. Other peculiarities characteristic of the Altaic languages are the vocal harmony occurring in many of them, the inability to have more than one consonant in the beginning of a word, and the expression of the plural by a peculiar affix, the case terminations being the same in the plural as in the singular. The affinity between the different branches of the Altaic stem is thus founded mainly on analogy or resemblance in the construction of the languages, while the different tongues ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... lunching with him in order to celebrate the triumph of "their" plan. Selwyn was amused at the plural. They went to a near-by club and remained for several hours talking of things of general interest, for Selwyn refused to discuss his victory after they had left the protecting ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... second person plural is used because the writer would involve the subjects of his correspondent ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... but is there any difference between all (in the plural) and the all (in the singular)? Take the case of number:—When we say one, two, three, four, five, six; or when we say twice three, or three times two, or four and two, or three and two and one, are we speaking of the same or ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... Danube, over the dependent islands of the Mediterranean, and over that part of the continent of Africa which lies between the confines of Cyrene and those of Tingitania. 4. The praefect of the Gauls comprehended under that plural denomination the kindred provinces of Britain and Spain, and his authority was obeyed from the wall of Antoninus to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... a saint, Meshe," said Malka, so impressed that she admitted him to the equality of the second person plural. "If everybody knew as much Terah as you, the Messiah would soon be here. Here are five shillings. For five shillings you can get a basket of lemons in the Orange Market in Duke's Place, and if you ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... like a catacomb. It is tolerable so long as you do not actually belong to it. But when you do belong to it, when you have outlived the fleeting gratification at having been elected, when you...but I ought not to have fallen into the second person plural. You, readers, are free-born Englishmen. These clubs 'come natural' to you. You love them. To them you slip eagerly from your homes. As for me, poor alien, had I been a member of the club whose demolition has been my theme, I should have grieved ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... irregularities of nouns as to gender (i. e. which nouns having a masculine termination are yet feminine, &c.), the second to teach the irregularities of nouns as to number (i. e. which want the singular, which the plural), the third to teach the irregularities of verbs (i. e. their deviations from the generic forms of the preterite and the supine): this is what they profess to teach. Suppose then their professions realised, what is the result? Why that ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... one word and two of its compound or forms and will mean accordingly: (1) The Strong one used 225 times in the Old Testament; (2) The Strong one as an object of worship; (3) The Strong one who is faithful and, therefore, to be trusted and obeyed. This last is a plural term and is used 2300 times in the Old Testament. It is the name used when God said. "Let us make man" and "God created man in his own image," etc., Gen. 1:26-27. It was by this name that God the Trinity covenanted for the good of man before ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... my 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 deaths ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... countrywomen of Aucassin find it difficult. You will not expect me to write an essay on the grammar, nor would you read it if I did. The chief thing is that "s" appears as the sign of the singular, instead of being the sign of the plural, and the ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... churchmen; and men of talent and women of superior sentiments cannot hide their contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men,—if indeed I can speak in the plural number,—more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 appear in a new suit. He had the ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the Sanskrit kapi; kap in the same language means tremble; but the connection is not clear. Lemur, the name given to that low family of monkeys, is from the plural Latin word lemures, meaning ghost or spectre. This has reference to the nocturnal habits, stealthy gait, and weird expression of these large-eyed creatures. Antelope is probably of Grecian origin, and was originally applied to a half-mythical animal, located on the banks of the Euphrates, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... away amid his trunks from the home of his father (genealogical poverty denies us the romantic grandiloquence of the plural), it was his mother's farewell arms and farewell tears, and his farewell promises to her, of which he was mainly conscious. He had promised "to take care of himself," and particularly to beware of damp sheets, and then he too had burst into tears. Indeed, it was generally a tearful business, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... church, and every church with its towers, this brazen-tongued clamor is relentlessly poured forth. In most Christian lands one good bell is all-sufficient for a church steeple, but here they have them in the plural, and all striving to excel each other at the same moment. Of course no one is able to sleep amid such an outburst of noise, or within the radius of a league. Bells and mosquitoes are two of the prevailing nuisances of this thrice-sunny city. Nor must we forget to add ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... rally to the philosophic standard. They are sick of the woodeny puppetry they dispense, as on a race-course to the roaring frivolous. Well, if not dozens, half-dozens; gallant pens are alive; one can speak of them in the plural. I venture to say that they would be satisfied with a dozen for audience, for a commencement. They would perish of inanition, unfed, unapplauded, amenable to the laws perchance for an assault on their last remaining pair of ears or heels, to hold them fast. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as the geometrical cube, the die used in play, and the temple at Mecca, which is of the same figure. The Persic name for 'die' is 'dad,' and from this word is derived the name of the thing in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, namely, dado. In the old French it is det, in the plural dets; in modern French de and dez, whence our English name 'die,' and its plural 'dies,' ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... same time the powers granted to Congress have proved sufficient to bind the states together into a union that is more than a mere confederation. From 1776 to 1789 the United States were a confederation; after 1789 it was a federal nation. The passage from plural to singular was accomplished, although it took some people a good while to realize the fact. The German language has a neat way of distinguishing between a loose confederation and a federal union. It calls the former a Staatenbund and the latter a Bundesstaat. So in English, if we liked, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... nothing to hinder its being published at once. In all probability, then, the book was 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 tone prevails ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... 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
... in any way disappointed the gentleman from San Juan, my closest observation of his smile and glance failed to detect it. He merely quivered his shoulders—a sort of plural shrug—rolled his cigarette tighter between his thumb and forefinger, remarked that the memoranda were entirely satisfactory, and folding the paper slid it carefully into his pocket; then with a series of salaams that reminded me of a Mohammedan spreading a ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... spirit, but the former always contrasts with spirit; so to confound the two is to ignore a distinction upon which everything depends in any, except the materialistic, philosophy. When the term substance is used in the currency of the term matter it admits of the plural form as well as the singular. Indeed, all the primordial elements known in chemistry are known as so many different substances. It is unscientific and absurd to confound all these elements by claiming the one-substance theory. It has been called "the hog philosophy," ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... families are the best citizens of the Republic. Wife and children are the sources of patriotism, and conjugal and parental affection beget devotion to the country. The man who, undefiled with plural marriage, is surrounded in his single home with his wife and children has a stake in the country which inspires him with respect for its laws and courage for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Who is the pilot of the cloud? Where does he sit? What lures the pilot? Who are the "genii"? (A genius—plural, genii—is a good or evil spirit which was supposed by the ancients to guard a man and control his destinies. In a sense the spirit of the waters may be said to control the lightning.) Who move "in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Romans seem not to have liked a too frequent repetition of this letter, for it is omitted often when a following syllable contains it; as pejero for perjero; and grammarians have noticed that the genitive plural of the future participle is of rare occurrence. In the colloquial and provincial Latin, r is often dulled into l. Thus on one of the walls at Pompeii a part of the first line of the Aeneid was found written, "ALMA ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck |
