"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crouched beside her, drawing himself into the smallest space possible. "No, Redhead! The devil dragged the man who did that down to the lower regions long ago, on account of my tongue. It's his son. The younger, the sharper. This stripling made Casper Rubling,—[Dice, in gambler's slang]—poor wretch, pay for his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "Bud" more readily than to his own, and he made practical use of the slang and colloquialisms of the plains without any ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... yet cause a great deal of unchasteness in other people. Here is this Mrs. Harrison, smoking cigarettes—and cigars, too, sometimes, in the open air; drinking grog at night, and sometimes in the morning; letting Tom Edwards and the foolish boys who imitate him talk slang to her without putting them down; always ready for a walk or drive with the last handsome young man who has arrived; and utterly ignoring her husband, except when she makes some slighting mention of him for not sending ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... you'll excuse me for being highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class lecture, and read some of my best poetry—not the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But say, when I get out in the tall grass, there's nothing will take but a lot of cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge in it here, he'd get the gate so fast it would make his ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... therefore, while not the same word as our child, has the same primitive meaning, "the produced one," and finds further cognates in kid and colt, names applied to the young of certain animals, and the first of which, in the slang of to-day, is applied to children also. In some parts of Germany and Switzerland Kind has the sense of boy; in Thuringia, for example, people speak of zwei Kinder und ein Madchen, "two boys and a girl." From the same ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... sides of literary study. I mean its effect as helping to preserve the dignity and the purity of the English language. That noble instrument has never been exposed to such dangers as those which beset it to-day. Domestic slang, scientific slang, pseudo-aesthetic affectations, hideous importations from American newspapers, all bear down with horrible force upon the glorious fabric which the genius of our race has reared. I will say nothing of my own on this pressing theme, but will read to you a passage of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... dreadful of all existences infesting that haunted wood—a body without a soul! In its blank stare was neither love, nor pity, nor intelligence—nothing to which to address an appeal for mercy. "An appeal will not lie," he thought, with an absurd reversion to professional slang, making the situation more horrible, as the fire of a cigar might ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... formula. Just at present, we may assure the Blade neophyte, it is all the rage to ask for "Two of swipes, ducky." Go in boldly, bang down your money as loudly as possible, and shout that out at the top of your voice. If it is a barman, though, you had better not say "ducky." The slang will, we can ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... he exclaimed, a weak smile on his lips. "I'm no boob!" Obviously, he meant this lapse into the slang of the Tenderloin to convey his intimate knowledge of police methods. "You can't soft-soap me! You don't want explanations! You want me to get myself in bad. But you won't get anything out of me. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... Caput—a German slang expression with the general significance of the English "gone to smash," but also a hundred other and wider meanings, impossible ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... J. P. was a very dignified gentleman and did not revert to his boyhood's slang except under extreme provocation. "He shouldn't have allowed you to urge him. And what about the brilliant prospect you gave up once just because his father ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... right. That's one time Prudence was away off." She smiled as she recognized a bit of Carol's slang upon her lips. "Don't worry about her. You needn't keep an eye on her any ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... church covenant of the Boston divines "a stinking carrion and a human invention," was fined L10, while Thomas Makepeace, another Weymouth malcontent, was informed by those in power that "they were weary of him," or, in modern slang, that "he made them tired." Parson Lenthal himself, being sent for by the convention, weakened at once in a way his church followers must have bitterly despised; he was "quickly convinced of his error and evil." ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Even Sammy Brown was shone upon by the far-flung rays of the renaissance. Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horseshoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending admiration of Ravenel—the broker's clerk made an excellent foil to the new, bright unseen visitor ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... information he could out of the driver. It appeared, in spite of his theory, that they were not all good Catholics at Ha-Ha Bay. "This chap, for example," said the Frenchman, touching himself on the breast and using the slang he must have picked up from American travellers, "is no Catholic,—not much! He has made too many studies to care for religion. There's a large French party, sir, in Canada, that's opposed to the priests and ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... The more money they can spend, the more beer they can drink, the more chorus girls' photographs they can get to paste up in their rooms, the more tobacco pipes they can display over and under their mantels, the more slang and indecency they can learn, the more college atmosphere they think they are creating. I wonder sometimes why the professors don't seem to care about the morals of us students. We never hear anything in the class room ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... and drew his pencil away with a precise movement. He looked at the Masked Lady with a smug smile. "That word snitch," he said. "It's entirely out of place, you know—after you've once introduced Aladdin and Hansel and Grettel in your story. And a giant. It's slang, and it came into use long after the ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... sensations as a relief from immense labors, gave Lucien a welcome among them. And Lucien had gained confidence; he gave himself out in talk as though he had not to live by his wit, and was pronounced to be a "clever fellow" in the slang of the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... stay, wallow in every species of debauchery. In such a state of society the public standard of morality must necessarily fall to a very low degree. The leaven spreads from the corrupted part into the whole mass. Just as the slang of London thieves is become the classical language of Sydney, so do necessarily a familiarity with crime, hatred to law, and contempt for virtue, make their way into the minds and hearts of those who are untainted with actual crime. So far from a reformation being even begun ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... feebleminded, and was yet permitted to continue in his responsible office. A trait, after the manner of the find in the Lido, forces itself upon me here. It was to this man that some youthful colleagues in the hospital adapted the then popular slang of that day: "No Goethe has written that," "No Schiller composed ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... maidens shall have fathers. I raise no doubt that Mr. Harding is a wonderful financier and railroad genius, and it is likely he is entitled to a vacation and to that relaxation which comes from taking exercise, but this does not justify him in—well, in "butting in" on our game. I don't use slang as a rule, but no other term so accurately describes the conduct of that ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... pray you, brethren, to remember that, whether our consciences try to shuffle off responsibility for united action upon the other members of the firm, or whether we try to excuse our individual actions by laying blame on our tempers, or whether we adopt the modern slang, and talk about circumstances and heredity and the like, as being reasons for the diminution or the extinction of the notion of guilt, it is sophistical trifling; and down at the bottom most of us know that we alone are responsible for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Murray laughed. "I know that you wanted to use that particular expressive bit of our particularly expressive slang. What I mean is this: People study religion nowadays—that is, English-speaking people—with the Catholic Church left out. Yet she claims the allegiance of over three hundred million people. Without her, Christianity would be merely pitiful. She alone ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... says," said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a bureau drawer and taking out a file of papers; "she sums it up somewhere confidentially. Yes, here it is! '17 very attractive—conclude 47, longer in the tooth' (slang for age, you know)—'distinctly gone—waiting his time—17 perhaps holding off for terms, impossible to say without knowing more. But inclined to think on the whole—doesn't know her mind—likely to act on impulse ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... she was pretty and merry and kind; and, above all, she had mastered to perfection the rare art of letting children alone. If we kept ourselves tolerably clean, and refrained from quarrelling or talking slang, Aunt Olivia did not worry us. Aunt Janet, on the contrary, gave us so much good advice and was so constantly telling us to do this or not to do the other thing, that we could not remember half her ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... more quietly than the procession on Monday. There were about 25,000 men, mostly well dressed, no noise or tumult, a vast crowd. It was a failure altogether; Melbourne's answer was good. They say 250,000 men are enrolled in the Unions, and the slang name for those who won't belong to them is 'dungs;' the intimidation used is great. There was quite as great a crowd assembled yesterday to see old Lady Hertford's funeral go by. The King sent all the royal carriages, and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... adjective. We say "Dutch Gold" for pinchbeck, "Dutch Myrtle" for a weed. "I shall talk to you like a Dutch uncle" is another saying, not in this case contemptuous but rather complimentary—signifying "I'll dress you down to some purpose". One piece of slang we share with Holland: the reference to the pawnbroker as an uncle. In Holland the kindly friend at the three brass balls (which it may not be generally known are the ancient arms of Lombardy, the Lombards being ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... kind of thing which is meant by people who talk of Muscular Christianity. It is certainly a noble and excellent thing to make people discern that a good Christian need not be a muff (pardon the slang term: there is no other that would bring out my meaning). It is a fine thing to make it plain that manliness and dash may co-exist with pure morality and sincere piety. It is a fine thing to make young fellows comprehend that there is nothing fine and manly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... been marri'd, say, I've chucked some things, An' learned a whole lot more to fill the space. I've slung all slang; crook words 'ave taken wings, An' I 'ave learned to entertain with grace. But when ole Missus Flood comes round our place I don't object to 'er, for all 'er sighs; Becos I likes 'er ways, I likes 'er face, An', most uv all, she 'as ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... queered ourselves," said she, struck by the phrase that fell from his lips. It was not Anne's habit to use slang, but somehow George's way of putting the situation into words was so aggravatingly complete that she almost resented his prior use of an expression that she had never used before in her life. It did sum up the business, neatly and compactly. Strange that she had never thought of that admirable ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... realisation. Already I detect myself, in a retrospective mood, hankering for the savoury ragouts we used to get in peasant homes in obscure French villages, and for the meals they gave us at the regimental messes of our own forces, where the cooking was the home sort and good honest American slang abounded. ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... the slang term for gas observation balloons which go up at certain points and observe the enemy's positions or maneuvers before and during battle on the earth below. Sausages do not fight back much but are protected by support battle planes ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... school (chap, xxvi.); and of old remedies for the lost art of swooning, in the 'lavender drops' of chapter xxix. The mention of a dance as a 'little hop' in chapter ix. reads like a premature instance of middle Victorian slang. But nothing is new—even in a novel—and 'hop,' in this sense, is at least as old ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... proclaim themselves gentlemen, belong to that class of men who cock their hats on one side of their heads, and often wear them when and where gentlemen would remove them; who pride themselves on their familiarity with the latest slang; who proclaim their independence by showing the least possible consideration for others; who laugh long and loud at their own wit; who wear a profusion of cheap finery, such as outlandish watch-chains hooked in the lowest button-hole of their vests, Brazilian diamonds ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... literary salon; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in the other. Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, "The princess, I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;" and then in terrible slang we shouted a benediction on some "crib" that was going to be broken into that evening. And we thought there was something very thrilling in leaving the Rue de la Gaieté, returning home to dress, and presenting our spotless selves to the élite. And we succeeded very well, as indeed ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of bar-room loafers was a swarthy boatman, wearing a leathern waistcoat, who, on being jostled by a stalwart roysterer carrying a long rifle, poured out curses and slang epithets, swearing he could whip any man in the tavern or in the town. The challenge was no sooner uttered than the offender for whom it was meant ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... temperament and his pursuits were also analogous; he was a great pugilist, knew the merits of every man in the ring, and the precise date and circumstances attending every battle which had been fought for the previous thirty years. His conversation was at all times interlarded with the slang terms appropriated to the science to which he was so devoted. In other points he was a brave and trustworthy officer, although he valued the practical above the theoretical branches of his profession, and was better pleased when superintending the mousing of a stay or ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... his pony, pulled up the lariat pin which held him out upon the prairie and scampered for home, and Billy and Davie Dunn, his chum, were forced to "hoof it," as the western slang goes, home. ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... Opium is extracted from poppy straw in commercial operations that produce the drug for medical use. Qat (kat, khat) is a stimulant from the buds or leaves of Catha edulis that is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), ephedrine, ecstasy (clarity, essence, doctor, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... to do some spiral and somersault stunts for the benefit of some huns." ("Hun," used in this connection, not referring to the Germans. "Hun" is the slang term for student aviators, tacked on them ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... most important personages of the realm, and their entertaining this high opinion of themselves can scarcely be wondered at; they were low fellows, but masters at driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of the coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed as his unquestionable ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Very frightful, indeed, though your slang still much worse is, With your "topping," "top-holing," ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the chambers—at Lind's table, in fact. He was a man of about twenty-eight or thirty, slim and dark, with a perfectly pallid face, a small black mustache carefully waxed, and an affectedly courteous smile. He wore a pince-nez; was fond of slang, to show his familiarity with English; and aimed at an English manner, too. He seemed bored. He regarded this man whom Brand introduced to him without ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... joined their friends in the debris heaps. The protection of the debris heaps was not quite so good as that afforded by the mines, and the music of the cannon the troglodytes had always with them. But there was more liberty and comfort in the caves, which were dry as dust and—no slang intended—not too dusty. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... dinners and theatres, race meetings and cricket matches, at both of which more attention is paid to fashion than to the field, follow one another in a dizzy succession. She has naturally no time for thought, but in order to avoid the least suspicion of it, she learns to chatter the slang of the youthful Guardsmen and others who are her companions. A certain flashing style of beauty ensures to her the devotion of numerous admirers, to whom she babbles of "chappies" and "Johnnies," and "real jam" and "stony broke," and "two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... cried Joe with a laugh. "Excuse my slang, but I know just how it is," he proceeded. "You've made up your mind to go, and you're getting all the advance information you can, to spring it on me. I know your tricks. Well, you won't go without me; ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... soap-bubbles out on the lawn and let them float away over the garden and the orchard like fairy balloons. They had glorious afternoon teas under the beech tree. They made ice cream themselves. Jims even slid down the bannisters when he wanted to. And he could try out a slang word or two occasionally without anybody dying of horror. Miss Avery did not seem to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the room, a man in a broad-skirted green coat, with corduroy knee-smalls and gray cotton stockings, was performing the most popular steps of a hornpipe, with a slang and burlesque caricature of grace and lightness, which, combined with the very appropriate character of his costume, was inexpressibly absurd. Another man, evidently very drunk, who had probably been tumbled into bed by ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Cossie accompanied him to the same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against the slap-dash untidy menage, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative gesture, beckoned him ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... show. The profligacy of their public men is proverbial throughout the states; and the coarse avidity with which they bid against each other for the petty spoils of office, is quite incomprehensible to an European spectator. To "make political capital," as their slang phrase goes, for themselves or party, the most obvious policy of the country is disregarded, the plainest requirements of morality and common sense set aside, and the worst impulses of the people watched, waited on, and stimulated into madness. To listen to the debates in Congress, one would ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... cured their own and their people's bad temper with fire and slaughter; but now that the fire is so long of range and the slaughter so large, they do other things, and few among their people guess how much they owe in mere life and money to what the slang of the ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... drink, he said, but he thought it was chiefly obvious to the sober spectator. As the sober spectator, he sang of violent delights which have violent ends. He may best be left to illustrate student life for himself. The 'waster' of whom he chants is the slang name borne by ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... than shrinking! Free from the athletics and the slang, she is antetype, indeed, of, say, the St. Andrews girl, that admirable creation of our age; but she soars beyond her sister on the wings of her more exquisite sensibility, and her deeper restfulness. Not for her the perpetual ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... strictly spiritualistic one, which expresses itself in spirit returns and messages from the other world. Geographically the most favoured stations for wireless heavenly connections seem to be Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles, California. The adherents of this underworld philosophy have a slang of their own, and the result is that their letters, while they spring from the deepest emotions, sound as if they were copied from the same sample book. The better style begins about like this: "Knowing that you are intensely interested ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... a conversation with Lord Lisle was about as unpleasant a matter as one could well experience. His language was coarse; his ideas coarser still. There was very little to redeem it. He mistook slang for wit, told stories that made his wife shudder, and misbehaved himself as only such ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... him. "Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modest boy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex—not even Briggs—when she began to talk to him; whereas, put him at Iffley Lock, and he could out-slang the boldest bargeman. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sophie that she had selected from among all the dashing wooers; at her heels, Walter Trumwell, simple and sedate, who was horrified by her pranks and shocked by her use of slang, but who adored her with the devotion of a frightened puppy. Their engagement had been long announced. It was only in its high-handed abruptness that the wedding was ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... type of the travelling canvasser for a manufacturing house—a class which at that time was first being dubbed by the slang of the day "drummers." He came within the meaning of a still newer term, which had sprung into general use among Americans in 1880, and which concisely expressed the thought of one whose dress or manners are calculated to elicit the admiration of susceptible young women—a "masher." His suit ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... that, you need not have been so precipitate. It was what I think you gentlemen call a 'stand-off,'" said she, with a pretty grimace at the slang, "but—do you always take the roundabout way to reach the door?" Miss Wallen's lips were twitching with suppressed delight, and Captain Forrest was watching them with ill-suppressed ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... class probably use more words to express their ideas than the similar class of any other people; but this prodigality is partially balanced by the parsimony of words in some higher regions, in which a few phrases of current slang are made to do the whole duty of exchange of ideas; if that can be called exchange of ideas when one intellect flashes forth to another the remark, concerning some report, that "you know how it is yourself," and is met by the response ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Caryatides against the sunny wall of some low grog-shop during a whole winter afternoon,—their eyes listless, their hands in their pockets, their legs outstretched, their backs bent, their conversation a languid mixture of Cracker dialect and overseer slang, their negroes' earnings running down their throats at intervals, as they change their outside for a temporary inside position,—and all the well-dressed citizens addressing them cheerfully as "Colonel" and "Major," without a blush of shame, as they go by! Goldwin Smith was right in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Kathleen, in her easy slang, "is that he never pulls any knighthood-in-flower stuff, yet you somehow feel it's there. Know what I mean? There's a scrapper behind ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... purred the smaller man in the Western slang that phrased incredulity. Then, suddenly, he foamed at the mouth. "Keep out of this if you're squeamish. Let me play out the hand. I'll bump ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... are objectionable everywhere, but the slang and twang of the conventicle—as bad in its way as that of the House of Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it—should be studiously avoided under such circumstances as I describe. The avoidance was not complete on this occasion. Nor was it quite agreeable to see ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... secretary—we could not separately challenge any special social or literary distinction. Yet I am satisfied that the very name of our Club—a common Spanish colloquialism, literally meaning "a little more or less," and adopted in Californian slang to express an unknown quantity—was supposed to be replete with deep ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... skipper, who was addicted somewhat to figurative language and hyperbole in the form of slang, "another week in the doctor's hands, an' the grub of the London Home, will set 'em up taught ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... my more or less "learned" instructor in practical law, goes out to a good many evening parties, I find. Casually remarks that he "danced three square dances, the other night, with old DAVIS's ugly daughter, the Solor (legal slang for Solicitor), in Caraway Street." It's DAVIS himself, not the daughter, that is the Solicitor, and, it seems she introduced the gay FIBBINS to her Papa. Hence another brief, a rather complicated one, on some ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... of it yourselves," said Allie doubtfully. "I don't half like it; and if Howard won't help meet him, he ought to keep clear out of the way. But there's one thing about it, boys, you must, you really must, stop talking so much slang. It's bad enough with us girls, and I'm getting to use it as much as you do; but you'll scare Charlie to pieces if you talk so ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... very opposite in temperament, were very warm friends. Winifred saw beneath a light exterior a quantity of good, sound sense and a warm heart. She was a frequent guest at their house. Mrs. Gray liked her, though deploring her occasional indulgence in slang. Mr. Gray enjoyed her racy conversation, and Hubert professed a dislike of her volatile qualities. This last fact grieved Winifred, who liked ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... in your family know of it—if you could get them to tell you. My two sons studied at a State university, and they would bring me home what they heard—the gossip, the slang, the horrible obscenity. Fourteen fellows in one dormitory using the same bathroom—and on the wall you saw a row of fourteen syringes! And they told that on themselves, it was the joke of the campus. They call the disease a 'dose'; and a man's not supposed to be worthy the respect of his fellows ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... a very charming person," protested Everett. "I used the term in its most complimentary sense. It means a girl between fourteen and eighteen. It's English slang, and in England at the present the flapper is very popular. She is driving her sophisticated elder sister, who has been out two or three seasons, and the predatory married woman to the wall. To men of my years the flapper is really ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... which they feel themselves to be chiefly deficient. Their reverence and affection are bestowed upon her whose voice is ever soft, gentle and low, and whose mild influence is shed like a balm upon the labours and troubles of life. Of slang, and of slaps upon the back, of strength, whether of language or of body, they get enough and to spare amongst themselves, and they are scarcely to be blamed if at certain moments they should prefer refinement to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... evident improprieties; while the having all one's senses assailed and offended together by the scent of highly-ammoniated bandy-legged fellows in fustian or corduroy, (their necessary satellites,) who inundate street and piazza with the slang of the London mews, is something ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... shrewdness and sagacity of some of his critical prefaces to his novels, where he discusses principles of literature without seeming to call them such."[491] Scott was quick to notice "cant and slang"[492] in the professional language of men in all arts; and he valued most highly the remarks of those whose intelligence had not been overlaid by ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... comedy. Unlike Plautus, he draws his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude; Terence for the few. Plautus delighted in a noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence confines himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian, and other great critics. He aspired to the approval of the good, rather than ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... been nobly raised; people don't talk now as formerly of a man's being somewhat elevated or tipsy, or merely overtaken, when he is drunk, for they have learned to call things by their right names, and not practise imposture by slang phrases. Public resolutions have been passed against giving spirituous liquor at wakes or funerals, churns, ploughing-matches, or evening parties; men and women can go to market and fair, buy and sell, and yet never think of treating or being treated ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... six miles off, but ere they had gone two April knew the painter as well as if they had been twin sisters. Clive Connal hadn't a secret or a shilling she would not share with the whole world. She used the vocabulary of a horse-dealer and the slang of a schoolboy, but her mind was as fragrant as a field that the Lord hath blessed, and her heart was the heart of a child. It was shameful to deceive such a creature, and April's nature revolted from the act. Before they reached the farm she had confessed her identity—explaining ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... her of the smugglers and owlers who had used the Woolpack as their headquarters long ago, riding by moonlight to the cross-roads, with their mouths full of slang—cant talk of "mackerel" and "fencing" and "hornies" ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... In logic, and the safer course they took; By any other they would have been stumped, Unable to argue, or to quote a book, And quite dumbfounded, which they cannot brook; They break no bones, and suffer no contusion, Hiding their woful fall, by hook and crook, In slang and gibberish, sputtering and confusion; But that was not the way Sam ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... this was the favourite slang term of the smashing fraternity for the metal used in their nefarious business, the spoons manufactured by Messrs. Yates and Son being the best material for ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... yourselves," yelled Noddy, reverting in this moment of excitement, as was his habit at such times, to his almost forgotten slang. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... communicating our ideas to each other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy to observe these precise and beautiful forms of expression; it clips its words; throws its sentences together without regard to grammar; falls into slang; draws its figures from the coarse and low and sensual side of life, instead of from ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... note was the set of sham Macedonian epics and popular songs (all about Alexander the Great, and other heroes) which a schoolmaster in the Rhodope imposed on M. Verkovitch. The trick was not badly done, and the imitation of "ballad slang" was excellent. The 'Oera Linda' book, too, was successful enough to be translated into English. With this latest effort of the tenth muse, the crafty muse of Literary Forgery, we may leave a topic which could not be exhausted ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... genius strays 'Mid Drury's stews to incubate her lays, And in St. Giles's slang conveys her tropes, Wreathing the poet's lines with hangmen's ropes; You who conceive 'tis poetry to teach The sad bravado of a dying speech; Or, when possessed with a sublimer mood, Show "Jack o'Dandies" dancing upon blood! Crush bones—bruise flesh, recount each festering ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... incredible difficulty, a fact which I cannot reconcile with the extreme interest which I take in philology and linguistics, and the discoveries which I have made; as, for instance, that of Shelta in England, or my labours in jargons, such as Pidgin-English, Slang, and Romany. But, as the reader has probably perceived, I was a boy with an inherited good constitution only from the paternal side, and a not very robust one from my mother, while my mind, weakened by long illness, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... hole"—a slang term for the mouth, has been well "threshed out"—as it is called. Of "My Prooshian Blue," as his son affectedly styled his parent, Mr. Lang correctly suggests the solution, that the term came of George IV's intention of changing the ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... her? What kind of language do you call that, Margaret Pratt Stillman?" reproved Marjorie, with her best grandmother air. "If you are not careful, the habit of using slang will grow ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... an abbreviation and transliteration of [Footnote Greek words], "the mob"; university slang for the whole body of students taking merely the degree of Bachelor ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... This heartless, trafficking slang tortured the unfortunate bankrupt to such a degree that he arose from his seat in a passion and began ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... fulfilment of the highest social duties, are poorly performed, and, indeed, little understood. Not many of those who think at all think beyond the line of established custom and routine. They may take pains in their letters to obey the ordinary rules of grammar, to avoid the use of slang phrases and vulgar expressions, to write a clear sentence; but how few seek for the not less imperative rules which are prescribed by politeness and good sense! Of those who should know them, no small proportion habitually, from thoughtlessness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... in which the weal of the unborn generations of men was the end; those plots for the relief of man's estate which had to be plotted, like murders and highway robberies, then, by bandits that had watch-words, and 'badges' and signals and private names, and a secret slang ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Rosie, I am not talking slang, but the pure American language; and I think you are more considerate about other people's brothers than you are of your own. Twice this night I have heard your brother called ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... youthfulness of race. He writes, and recites, poems about ranches and canyons; they are designed to betray the recklessness of his nature and to reveal the good that lurks in the lawless ways of a young society. He is there to explain himself, voluble, with a glossary for his own artless slang. But his colonialism is only provincialism very articulate. The new air does but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse feeling of a race decivilising. American fancy played long ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... triumphs were completely eclipsed, I soon learned, by the capture, alive, on this last expedition, of an abominably poisonous snake, known to those who knew it as the Blue Dryad, or more familiarly in backwoods slang, as the Half-hour Striker, in vague reference to its malignant and fatal qualities. The time in which a snake-bite takes effect is, by the way, no very exact test of its virulence, the health and condition not only of the victim, but of the snake, having of ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... "Slang," he said, "is too sacred and precious to be used promiscuously. Its use should be led up to reverently for it expresses what the King's English ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... near as you can, Bertie. I dare say you cannot turn slang into Spanish; but you can find other words to express your meaning, and when you cannot hit on a word you must use an English one. Your best plan is to move along on the other side of Dias, and chat to his wife." "What have I got to say ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... slang expression, used to express incredulity. It has somewhat the same meaning as the slang phrase heard in the United States—"Over ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a dirty job; but Johnny and I were vulgar enough to like it. I like young people because theyre not too afraid of dirt to live. Ive grown out of the mud pies; but I like slang; and I like bustling you up by saying things that shock you; and I'd rather put up with swearing and smoking than with dull respectability; and there are lots of things that would just shrivel you up that I ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... not, there could be no doubt that Margaret Shields was extremely pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates ("chamber-dekyns" they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett's shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle. This young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... put slang phrases into my mouth, Cora. If I think that a man intrudes upon me, I am of course bound to let him know ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... distant period be as distinguished for the vulgarity of their jargon as the inhabitants of Newgate; and he therefore conceived it superfluous to incorporate with his work the few examples of fashionable slang that might occur ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... tobacco leaf himself, and might have stood for a sign. But the genius of the place, its omnipresent and all-pervading goddess, was Jovita! Smiling, joyous, indefatigable in suavity and attention; all-embracing in her courtesies; frank of speech and eye; quick at repartee and deftly handling the slang of the day and the locality with a childlike appreciation and an infantine accent that seemed to redeem it from vulgarity or unfeminine boldness! Few could resist the volatile infection of her presence. A smile was the only tribute she exacted, and good-humor the rule laid ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the sort!" Gisela's voice cut through the ripples of laughter which always greeted Mimi's redundant slang. "You'll go back to Germany with me and do your part in putting an end to this war!" All but Heloise half arose, but she sat staring at that hard drawn face as if ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... large number of lads and young men who came in to lounge and drink; and there was scarcely one of them whose face did not show marks of sensuality, or whose language was not marred by obscenity, profanity, or vulgar slang. The subjects of conversation were varied enough, though politics was the most prominent. In regard to politics I heard nothing in the least instructive; but only abuse of individuals and dogmatism on public measures. They were all exceedingly ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... love to tease her now and then. I go to the races, play cards, waltz, talk slang, and read novels. But when I do bow down to her I bow away down. Why, at Montrose, I ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... still examining the papers. Suddenly this cautious, strong-minded man looked up into Yuba Bill's waiting face, and said quietly, in the despicable slang of the ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... touch is contaminating. Filth, pollution, and mental degradation, follow in the train of this class of writers. In what consists the merit of Uncle Tom's Cabin? It is hard to tell. Look at its dark design—its injustice—its falsehoods! Its vulgarisms, negroisms, localisms, and common place slang! Its tendency to pervert public taste, and corrupt public morals. How remarkable that a work of its character, should have been so much read and admired! We may boast of our intelligence and virtue to ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... woman's rights, the great mining boom, and the Eastern Question, it is 'in the air.' It pervades society everywhere with its subtle essence; it infects small-talk with its familiar catchwords and its slang phrases; it even permeates that last stronghold of rampant Philistinism, the third leader in the penny papers. Everybody believes he knows all about it, and discusses it as glibly in his everyday conversation as he discusses the points of racehorses he has never seen, the charms ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... accumulated he would read them all through, with the greatest care. There upon the table, the whole soul of Gordon lay before him—in its incoherence, its eccentricity, its impulsiveness, its romance; the jokes, the slang, the appeals to the prophet Isaiah, the whirl of contradictory policies—Sir Evelyn Baring did not know which exasperated him most. He would not consider whether, or to what degree, the man was a maniac; no, he would not. A subacid smile was the only comment he allowed himself. His position, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... part of us that is usually conscious is dissociated and the submerged part takes the stage. When we forget our surroundings in concentration or absent-mindedness, a part of us is dissociated and our friends say that we are "not all there," or as popular slang has it, "Nobody home." When a mood or system of complexes drives out all other moods, one becomes "a different person." But if this normal dissociation is carried a step farther, we may lose the power to put ourselves together ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... the readers of Don Juan have, it must be confessed, been found among those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable—who have been attracted by the very excesses of buffoonery, violations of good taste, and occasionally almost vulgar slang, which disfigure its pages. Their patronage is, at the best, of no more value than that of a mob gathered by a showy Shakespearian revival, and it has laid the volume open to the charge of being adapted "laudari ab illaudatis." But the welcome ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... how they joked and pirouetted and gossiped, and hugged and scorned each other, and what slang they spoke and how pretty they often looked next moment, and how they denounced the one that had just gone out as a cat with whom you could not get in a word edgeways, and oh, how prompt they were to give a slice of their earnings to any ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... present exhibition or the unquestionable evidences. There was the lost and hardened female, uttering the wild screams of intoxication, or pouring forth from her dark, filthy place of confinement torrents of polluted mirth; the juvenile pickpocket, ripe in all the ribald wit and traditional slang of his profession; the ruffian burglar, with strong animal frame, dark eyebrows, low forehead, and face full of coarseness and brutality; the open robber, reckless and jocular, indifferent to consequences, and holding his life only in trust for the hangman, or for ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... fondness for misplaced pleasantry, gives rise to the vicious style described above. It gives some practical rules for writing a long sentence clearly and impressively; and it also examines the difference between slang, conversation, and written prose. Both for translating from foreign languages into English, and for writing original English composition, these rules have been used in teaching, and, we venture to ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... consid'ble like rain, lately, hereabouts," continued the captain, coolly, in a kind of amphibious slang, characteristic of the man, "but in these yer latitudes no man kin set up ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... enough to interest me. I can express it only in slang. There, framed in the little thing, was a vision of as swell a "chicken" as I ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... in authority, do you mean?" asked Margaret, who could not abide slang of any kind. "No, indeed, Basil. Your Uncle John is the head of the house, in every possible way. I hope you are all going to be very good and obedient. He is the kindest, best ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... His charity, business honor, and public spirit were highly spoken of by those who knew him best. That a journal does not always reflect the editor is as much the fault of society as of the man. So long as the public will pay for gross personalities, obscenity, and slang, decent journals will be outbidden in the market. The fact that the La Crosse Democrat found a ready sale in all parts of the country showed that Mr. Pomeroy fairly reflected the popular taste. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... recently," she observed, "got into a new way. Whatever slang you happen to hear outside you come and tell me. And whenever you read any improper book, you poke your fun at me. What! have I become a laughing-stock ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... English life in all its phases, he was particularly fitted. Born in a high rank, he was perfectly at home in his descriptions of the upper classes, and never slow in exposing their vices. His studies of men took so universal a form that he became familiar even with the slang terms of pickpockets and house-breakers. "What Will He Do With It?" combines examples of the heroic, the humorous, the pathetic, and the villainous, and affords, perhaps, the best general view of the author's varied talents. Sir ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... use of slang terms. There are surely words enough in the English language to express all the thoughts and ideas of the mind, and it is a sign of pure vulgarity to employ synonyms, the only remarkable part of which is that they derive their existence solely from vulgar sources. In ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... glanced involuntarily at her wonderful crown of hair. She had taken off her hat. He was thinking of the typical crime of American parents,—and suddenly it struck him that her speech had changed, that she had dropped the suggestive slang of the surroundings in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... you; but that's only slang. You have been here long enough, I should guess from your talk, to get on to our American guff. Well, we're ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... word of slang," Jack laughed. "He will remember the slang word for anything when he forgets the real word! What did they do to you, Chang?" he ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... necessary I should grow fat, and necessary that good Joseph, your master, should grow lean. I could have pretended to be lame, but that no horse, least of all an angel-horse would do. So I must be lame, and so I sprained my ankle—for the angel-horses have ankles—they don't talk horse-slang up there—and it hurt me very much, I assure you, Diamond, though you mayn't be good enough to be ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... standardized, nationally advertised wares; the newspapers of sections three thousand miles apart have the same "syndicated features"; the boy in Arkansas displays just such a flamboyant ready-made suit as is found on just such a boy in Delaware, both of them iterate the same slang phrases from the same sporting-pages, and if one of them is in college and the other is a barber, no one may ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... he thought, for the fiftieth time, that his farm was too near the city. Tim was picking up all the city boys' false pride as well as their slang. Unconscious Tim resumed his tune. He knew that it was "Annie Rooney" if no one else did, and he mangled the ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... cynical person might have been reminded of loud calls for wine at some hostelry in the land of opera bouffe. He was speaking fluently, though with a detestable accent, in a rough-and-ready, pick-up dialect of Parisian slang, evidently under the pleasant delusion that he employed the French language, while Pere Baudry contributed his share of the conversation in a slow patois. As both men spoke at the same time and neither understood two consecutive words the other said, it struck me that the ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... fires or in the snug tents. There are old campaigners among us, men who have served in Mexico and Utah, and others whose lives have been passed upon the Plains; they tell us campaign stories, and teach the green hands the slang and the airs of the camp. But the unfailing amusement is the band. This is the special pride of the General, and soon after nightfall the musicians appear upon the little plaza around which the tents are grouped. At the first note the audience gather. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Lenape and the Mingwe on their joint wars. At least that was the way it sounded to the people who heard it. Along the eastern front of these nations it was softened to "Zowie!" and in that form you can hear the people of eastern New York and Vermont still using it as slang. ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... interchangeably and indifferently through several pages consecutively—just as Canter and Canterbury gallop, of which the one was at first the mere shorthand expression of the other, were at one period interchanged, and for the same reason. The abbreviated form wore the air of plebeian slang at its first introduction, but its convenience favoured it: soon it became reconciled to the ear, then it ceased to be slang, and finally the original form, ceasing to have any apparent advantage of propriety or elegance, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... up this chapter of accidents with an account of the manner in which a party of strangers, to use a slang but expressive phrase, came to grief during a ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... the reaction of the Romantic School, which includes Sir Walter Scott, Byron, and Burns; so here there must be an inevitable reaction from austerity to a daring freedom which will take many various forms. From Carlyle's solemnising liturgy we were bound to pass to the slang and colloquialism of the man in the street and the woman in the modern novel. Body and spirit are always in unstable equilibrium, and an excess of either at once swings the fashion back to the other extreme. Carlyle had his day largely in consequence of what one may call the eighteenth-century ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... tired. The woman who gave me the work was like a machine,—as if she just fed out centrepieces to people who came for them. I'm sure she hasn't smiled for fourteen years. The only gay one in the place was the red-headed boy; and he talked such fearful slang it cured me of ever using it again! Father will be glad of that, anyway. Hereafter I shall converse in Henry James diction. Why, Nan, he said, 'Pipe de ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... black-haired, and of medium height. He was like Beth only in a "family" manner. His nose was a trifle large for his face, but something in his modest, good-natured way, coupled to his earnest delivery of slang in all his conversation, lent him a certain charm that no one ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... this contention—that all Literature is personal and therefore various—into a field much exploited by the pedant, and fenced about with many notice-boards and public warnings. 'Neologisms not allowed here,' 'All persons using slang, or trespassing ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... jolliest little fellow in the world,' and Lieschen was the only 'good-natured body going,' and knew no end of Mahrchen. The boy spoke a very odd mixture of Lieschen's German and of English, pervaded by stable slang, and was altogether a curious study of the effects of absentee parents; nevertheless Honora and Lucilla both took a considerable fancy to him, the latter patronizing him to such a degree that she hardly allowed him to eat the much-needed breakfast, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... races and steeple-chases, as a hunter on the Roman Campagna, and the driver of a "stage" on the Corso, Ruspoli is unrivaled. He breeds racers, and he has an English stud-groom, who has taught him to speak English with a drawl, enlivened by stable-slang. He is slim, fair, and singularly awkward, and of a uniform pale yellow—yellow complexion, yellow hair, and yellow eyebrows. Poole's clothes never fit him, and he walks, as he dances, with his legs far ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... the true and the false in belief ever grow up. Truth grafts itself on previous truth, modifying it in the process, just as idiom grafts itself on previous idiom, and law on previous law. Given previous law and a novel case, and the judge will twist them into fresh law. Previous idiom; new slang or metaphor or oddity that hits the public taste:—and presto, a new idiom is made. Previous truth; fresh facts:—and our ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... would fall familiarly on her ear. There was the drawback, however, that he always preferred to talk in a marvelous English, combining Castilian precision with what he fondly believed to be Californian slang. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Elsie, to whom the slang term was new, looked at the speaker with a slightly puzzled expression; but Edward, who fully understood it, drew himself ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... of his effervescence, Ben Todd threw his slang overboard and started in to a political speech in good English, on the immense possibilities of the Valley in which they were privileged to dwell; the era of prosperity just ahead—in fact, with some already reached; on the increasing demand ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... to fear Aristophanes than any fool living. Oh, that he could but hear you trying to imitate the slang of Straton (See Aristophanes; Equites, 1375.) and the lisp of Alcibiades! (See Aristophanes; Vespae, 44.) You would be an inexhaustible subject. You would console him ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... long past the lunch hour when the prima donna and the prize-fighter, properly embellished, were snapped on the copy hook. The prima donna had chattered in French; the prize-fighter had jabbered in slang; but the charming old maid, who spoke Milwaukee English, was to make better copy than a whole chorus of prima donnas, or a ring full of fighters. Copy! It was such wonderful stuff ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... bough for a few minutes. Then: "Why would you have to learn bad things of other girls?" she demanded. "I wouldn't let anybody teach me anything I didn't want to know. I should think it would be nice to have you teach them good grammar if you know it, and not to use slang, and all that. She must think you are soft! My mother says if you are made of putty, you will get dented all over and never be more than an unshapely lump, but if you are made of good stone, you can be carved into something lovely and lasting. But that is just your grandmother," said the girl. "Where ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... Young—Hervey—Sturm—what you will, in the way of meditation. I could not choose but wonder at myself when I looked back to this time last year, and remembered my idle evenings in third-rate cafes, on the rive gauche, playing dominoes, talking the foul slang of Parisian bohemia, and poisoning my system with adulterated absinthe. And now I feast upon sweet cakes and honey, and think it paradisiac enjoyment to play whist—for love—in a farm-house parlour. I am younger by ten years than I was twelve ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... take in party fray, With troops from Billingsgate's slang-whanging tartars, I fear no Pope—and let great Ernest play At Fox and Goose with Foxs' Martyrs! I own I laugh at over-righteous men, I own I shake my sides at ranters, And treat sham-Abr'am saints with wicked banters, I even ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... had chosen yet? Didst thou in masterly disdain of too much law Not only limn the truths no others saw But also, lord not slave of written word, Lend ear to what no other poet heard And, liberal minded on the Mermaid bench With bow for blade and chaff for serving wench Await from overseas slang-slinging Jack Who brought the new ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... cigar-shop; in which a showily-dressed young Jewess sat behind the counter, right underneath a glaring gas-light—with a narrow stripe of greasy black velvet across her forehead, and long ringlets resting on her shoulders—bandying slang with two or three other such creatures as Titmouse and Huckaback. Our friends entered and purchased a cigar a-piece, which they lit on the spot; and after each of them had exchanged an impudent wink with the Jewess, out they went, puffing away—all the remains ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... them perversions or corruptions, countenanced even by eminent writers; some, misapplications that weaken and disfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, downright vulgarisms—that is, phrases that come from below, and are thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them. These last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. Against such abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of some of them, they get so incorporated into daily ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... don't mean slang words like those. The girls had no business to be using them. You must copy the ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... smiling, "is not perhaps the perfect husband of whom every young girl dreams; but then no one is so foolish as to search for the perfect husband in the world to which your friend belongs! He is not exactly a viveur,—but he is, to use the slang of the day, essentially a jouisseur. Is not that so?" He added, with a rather twisted grin, "If every lady whose husband lives to enjoy himself were to commit suicide, there would be very few women ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... been expended upon persons of infinitely small merit, what was to be done when those of real superiority entered upon the scene? It was impossible to apply to them the forms of laudation adapted to their inferiors. Well, then, a species of slang was invented, by which it was thought practicable to make the genuine great men conceive they had passed into the condition of demigods. A language was devised that was to express the fervor of the adorers who were suddenly allowed to penetrate into Olympus, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... other world, to take places in the stage, and to see that the first come were the first served. My pen was always in my hand, for Doctor Sangrado had more practise than any physician of his time in Valladolid. He had got into reputation with the public by a certain professional slang, humored by a medical face, and some extraordinary cases more honored by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various |
