"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rainy autumn evening along the whole extent of a long and deserted thoroughfare, is a perfect piece of imaginative precision. From under the edge of the hood his eyes look upon Crainquebille, who has just uttered in an uncertain voice the sacramental, insulting phrase of the popular slang—Mort aux vaches! They look upon him shining in the deep shadow of the hood with an expression of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... "Liberty." Hear the old bandogs of the Daily Press, Chained to their party posts, or fetter-free And running amuck against old party creeds, On-howl their packs and glory in the fight. See mangy curs, whose editorial ears Prick to all winds to catch the popular breeze, Slang-whanging yelp, and froth and snap and snarl, And sniff the gutters for their daily food. And these—are they our prophets and our priests? Hurra!—Hurra!—Hurra!—for "Liberty!" Flaunt the red flag and flutter the petticoat; Ran-tan the drums and let the bugles bray, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... historian above quoted. But he was in reality more of a Tory than it suited Macaulay to represent him, though he gloried in the name of Trimmer, and certainly showed what is called in modern political slang a 'crossbench mind' not only during the madness of the Popish plot, during the greater madness of James's assaults on the Church, the Constitution, and private rights, but also (after the Revolution) towards William of Orange. Born about 1630 he died in April 1695, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... 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" and ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... 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 loaded dice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his trade, and so remains at home in a shop and goes out with his hook no more, is called an ogre. A woman attaining this dignity is called an ogress. The terms are not idle ones. Like many of the words and phrases of slang they are based on the clearest conception of the merits of the case. An ogre or ogress without a daughter, real or adopted, lacks the first requisite for doing a successful business. The ogre or ogress has his or her especial workmen, who go out and scour the streets, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... doff, and dup. He would rather connect it with toedten, tuer. He cites as allied words Bohemian dusyti, to choke, to extinguish; Polish dusic, to choke, stifle, quell; and so arrives at the English slang phrase, "dowse the glim." As we find several other German words in thieves' English, we have little doubt that dowse is nothing more than thu' aus, do (thou) out, which would bring ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... as one hundred pounds apiece or more, but that becomes more like freighting than travelling. On a good level trail with strong big dogs, men sometimes haul two hundred pounds to the dog. These, however, are "gee-pole propositions," in the slang of the trail, and the man is doing hard work with a band around his chest and the pole in his hand. For quick travelling, fifty pounds to the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... seen in his "Ingoldsby Legends," is of a lower character, but shows that the author possessed a great natural facility. He had keen observation, but his taste did not prevent his employing it on what was coarse and puerile. Common slang abounds, as in "The Vulgar Little Boy;" he talks of "the devil's cow's tail," and is little afraid of extravagances. His metre often assists him, and we have often comic rhyming as where "Mephistopheles" answers to ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... girl rattled off slang as if thoroughly familiar with it. But this dampened Thornton's ardor for ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... astonishing with what alacrity not only the "best houses" around Merchester, but the upper-middle-class (its damsels especially) caught the contagion. Within a week "Are you Pageantising?" or, in more condensed slang, "Do you Padge?" became the stock question at all social gatherings in the neighbourhood of the Close. To this a stock ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 1863. The following year, Studies for Stories was published, of which the Athenaeum said, "They are prose poems, carefully meditated, and exquisitely touched in by a teacher ready to sympathize with every joy and sorrow." The five stories are told in simple and clear language, and without slang, to which she heartily objects. For one so rich in imagination as Miss Ingelow, her prose is singularly free from ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... soldier and everything—— Just like me, except Schoenstrom is different, from London, some ways! I always wanted to be a brakie, and then a yeggman. But I wasn't bright enough for either. I just became a garage man. And I—— Some day I'm going to stop using slang. But it'll take ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... he ejaculated furiously, and turned around. When he saw me, however, he did not wait for any retort on my part. He faded away—this is not slang; he did—he absolutely disappeared in the dusk without my getting more than a glimpse of his face. I had a vague impression of unfamiliar features and of a sort of cap with a ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... me," 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
... jabs at well-established Babbitry. And besides, of the thousand and one Hechts visible in the sketches, there were several that appear rarely, if at all, in his novels: The whimsical Hecht, sailing jocosely on the surface of life; the witty Hecht, flinging out novel word-combinations, slang and snappy endings; Hecht the child-lover and animal-lover, with a special tenderness for dogs; Hecht the sympathetic, betraying his pity for the aged, the forgotten, the forlorn. In the novels ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Granger for a fisher of men; greed had sent him into the South Florida land business. His bland self-possession, his impressive physique, his confidence-winning voice and bearing constituted a profitable stock in trade. In the slang of his craft—shall we say "graft"?—he "played the church game strong." Under the sway of his hypnotic personality God-fearing, bank-fearing old couples brought forth hidden wealth to place in his dexterous hands; school-teachers wrecked their savings ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... gradually he saw that, whether true or not, it had sufficient circulation to cast a shade of ambiguity on the persons concerned. Bessy alone seemed deaf to the rumours about her friend. There was something captivating to her in Mrs. Carbury's slang and noise, in her defiance of decorum and contempt of criticism. "I like Blanche because she doesn't pretend," was Bessy's vague justification of the lady; but in reality she was under the mysterious spell which such natures cast over the less venturesome ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... else," said Leonhard, looking up and smiling. "Excuse the slang. If you are where she is, you may feel very certain about her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... be zealous in keeping order and enforcing rules. She held a surprise inspection of the juniors' desks and drawers, and pounced upon illicit packets of chocolate; she examined their books, and confiscated any which she considered unsuitable; she put a ban upon slang, and wrote out a new set of dormitory regulations. Her efforts were hardly so much appreciated as they deserved. The girls grumbled at this unanticipated ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... everybody else in the changes that came. In six months (during which he diligently applied himself to the night school course) he shed his slang like a mantle. Instead of cheap detective stories hidden in ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... is admirable. Yes, I was hard up. But the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I became harder up. My financial state was described by a friend as 'stone broke.' I don't approve of slang, mind you, but such was my condition. But suppose we go in; there might be other people who would like to dine—it's a human ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... was a slang term of the day for a Whig. Roger North says that the Tories nicknamed the opposite party 'Birmingham Protestants, alluding to the false groats struck at that place'. Birmingham was already noted for spurious coinage. cf. Dryden's prologue to The ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... said Launcelot, moved to slang, by the intensity of his feelings. "I thought it was bad enough to be cut out of going to college, but if you and Anne go away, ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... the young ruffian, now using that half-whining, half-sneering form of discourse peculiar alike to the vicious chevalier of Paris and his confrere of the provincial centres. Accent and slang alone distinguish between them; the argot, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... ago when they'd first mapped out the big military manoeuvring grounds—we call 'em Areas for short—where the I. G. spend two-thirds of their time and the other regiments get their training. It was slang originally for beef on the hoof, because in the Military Areas two-thirds of your meat-rations at least are handed over to you on the hoof, and you make your own arrangements. The word 'heef' became a parable for camping in the Military Areas and all its miseries. There are two ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... us wind 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 visit to the ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... from the mainland and now formed an island of American territory in the harbor of Chefoo. Perhaps we were not content to sit at the mahogany table in the glistening white and brass bound wardroom surrounded by those eager, sunburned faces, to hear sea slang and home slang in the accents of Maine, Virginia, and New York City. We forgot our dark-skinned keepers with the slanting, suspicious, unfriendly eyes, with tongues that spoke the one thing and meant ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... love to have their roots in water-soaked mud or the beds of running streams, while leaves and flowers rise far above into the light. Other pools should become "beds" for the water-flowers that float upon the surface. In the slang of the rock garden the plants living and flourishing on upright rocks are called "verticals." If we must have a slang for the flora of the brook garden we will term them "horizontals"— the plants that lie flat on the water surface, and only ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... are afraid of giving me what is called, in the slang of the matrimonial market, encouragement. Just put all that out of your mind, Let me have a little enjoyment, however things may end, and, believe me, I'll never blame you. I am not going to trouble you with my hopes and wishes, not at least for some time; and then, whatever the upshot, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... portrait began to intermit its visits under its influence. What of that? Was this singular apparition—as full of character as of terror—therefore the creature of my fancy, or the invention of my poor stomach? Was it, in short, subjective (to borrow the technical slang of the day) and not the palpable aggression and intrusion of an external agent? That, good friend, as we will both admit, by no means follows. The evil spirit, who enthralled my senses in the shape of that portrait, may have been just as near me, just ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... gentlemen who have spoken on this subject—the Rev. Mr. Collyer, a gentleman standing as high as anybody, and I have nothing to say against him—because I denounced God who upheld murder, and slavery and polygamy, he said that what I said was slang. I would like to have it compared with any sermon that ever issued from the lips of that gentleman. And before he gets through he admits that the Old Testament is a rotten tree that will soon fall into the earth and act as a ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Civility, Command of temper, Inquiries by public, Complaints by public, Constable to readily give his number on request, Tact, Discretion, Forbearance, Avoidance of slang terms, Necessity of cultivating power of observation, Liberty of the subject (unnecessary interference, etc.), Offences against discipline ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... blowing off at a sad rate the smoke of that abstruse Institution.—"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles the Feldzeugmeister to himself. But "SI DEUS EST NOBISCUM," as Grumkow exclaims once to his beautiful Reichenbach, or NOSTI as he calls him in their slang or cipher language, "If God is with us, who can prevail against us?" For the Grumkow can quote Scripture; nay solaces himself with it, which is a feat beyond what the Devil is ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... as that passage with the Chinese waiter. This new attitude was loose in the back, tight across the shoulders, short in the seams—it was not made to fit Bertram Chester. When he launched out into rudimentary art criticism, stringing together the stock slang which he had picked up in the studios, when he tried to impress her with his refined acquaintance, his progress toward "society" of the conventional kind, her amusement took another turn in the circle of emotion, ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... twentieth century breaks with a new promise of emancipation to English Literature, for a new influence has freshened the blood of conventional style that in the decadence of the End of the Century had grown dilute. This adjuvant strain is found in the enthusiasm of Slang. Slowly its rhetorical power has won foothold in the language. It has won many a verb and substantive, it has conquered idiom and diction, and now it is strong enough to assault the very syntax ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... advertisements, and another couple was spewed forth from the maw of the metropolis—"Henery and Bessie Dobbs", as they subscribed themselves. "Henery" proved to be the adult stage of the East Side "gamin"; lean and cynical, full of slang and humor and the odor of cigarettes. He was fresh from a "ticket-chopper's" job in the subway, and he knew no more about farming than Thyrsis did; but he put up a clever "bluff", and was so prompt with his wits that it was ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... interpreted as a confession of jealous fear that I had been, in slang phrasing, "put wise." And sooth to say, I saw ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... hurt them to lie out in the open air," responded the Colonel; "that was proved in the South African War. The wounds often heal if you leave them alone in the open air. But you people come along and stir up and joggle them. In army slang, we ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... 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 ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... heart that she would marry him just as soon as Don Tiburcio was out of the way. Paulita became sadder and sadder in thinking about how the girls called cochers could occupy Isagani's attention, for the name had certain disagreeable associations that came from the slang of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... "dishonourable" trade of the show-shops and slop-shops—the plate-glass palaces, where gents—and, alas! those who would be indignant at that name—buy their cheap-and-nasty clothes. The two names are the tailors' own slang; slang is true and expressive enough, though, now and then. The honourable shops in the West End number only sixty; the dishonourable, four hundred and more; while at the East End the dishonourable trade has it all its own way. The honourable part of the trade is declining at the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... to find words to describe Nieuport as it is to talk of metaphysics in slang. The words don't seem invented that will convey that haunting sense of desolation, that supreme quiet under the shock of continually firing guns. Hardly anything is left now of the little homely bits ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... also typical of 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
... in his country; and, it is also beyond all cavil, that many respectable English persons, of both sexes, were occasionally found in it; but, it had this great defect:—every Englishman who wore a good coat, and had any of the slang of society, made his way into the outskirts, at least, of this set; and Rupert, whose own position was not yet thoroughly confirmed, had fallen a great deal into the association of these accidental comers and goers. They talked large, drank deep, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... [Footnote A: Caput—a German slang expression with the general significance of the English "gone to smash," but also a hundred other and wider meanings, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... awful slang. But what can you expect of a 'freshie'? I've got to make the most of my time, too, you know, for when I get to be a junior I'll have to begin the 'prune and prism' act," retorted the girl with a roguish wink. "Then"— suddenly straightening ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... 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 ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Susan'—"All in the Downs the fleet was moored." "Handled his fives well" of course refers to the "sparring" of the cabman who wanted to fight Mr. Pickwick. "Friend in the green jemmy" refers to Mr. Winkle, who, we are told in Chapter I., "wore a new green shooting-coat," &c. "Pig's whisper" is slang for a very brief space of time. Bartlett says the Americans have "pig's ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... college was founded in 1473 by Robert Woodlark, Chancellor of the University, and dedicated to "the glorious Virgin Martyr, St. Catherine of Alexandria." Undergraduate slang, alas! reduces all this to "Cat's." It was originally called St. Catherine's Hall, and is one of the smallest of the colleges. Although not claiming the strong ecclesiastical flavour of Corpus, it has educated quite a formidable array ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... wanderings from Billingsgate to Limehouse Hole, from Petticoat Lane to Whitechapel Road; out of eel-pie shop and penny gaff; out of tavern and street, and court and doss-house, he had gathered together slang words and terms and phrases, and they came back to him now, and he stood up against ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... hoped you would outgrow your slang, Zen," she remonstrated gently. "Men like Mr. Transley are likely to judge your training ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... one of her chapters, "I always bone my meat" (bone being the slang word of the day for steal), occasioned much merriment among her friends, and such a look of ludicrous surprise and reprobation from Liston, when he read it, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... get one yourself, and polish up your English. Your spelling and your vocabulary are, to use your own expression, 'something fierce;' how can you expect the poor little French child to understand your slang?" ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... might well be silent, as we were, save the quartermaster Poitevin. He was a veteran,—sallow, wrinkled, with hollow cheeks, mustaches an ell long, and a red nose, like all brandy drinkers. He had a lofty way of speaking, which he interspersed with barrack slang. When the rain came down faster than ever, he cried, with a strange burst of laughter: "Ay, ay, Poitevin, this will teach you to hiss!" The old drunkard perceived that I had a little money in my pocket, and kept near me, saying: "Young man, if your knapsack tires you, hand it to me." But ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... catastrophic and less definitive. It will not make war impossible in the ordinary meaning of the word, the bigger the gun and the viler the lethal implement the more possible does war become, but it will make war "impossible" in the slang use of five or six years ago, in the sense, that is, of its being utterly useless and mischievous, the sense in which Norman Angell employed it and so brought upon himself an avalanche of quite unfair derision. No nation ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... mysteries in the world, I admit—in chemistry as in biology—but they seem to me to be different in very essence from the 'mysteries' of spiritualism and all allied 'psychic phenomena,' which appear to me essentially absurd, ignoble—'ratty,' to use a slang phrase—a faith founded upon things done in the dark, always ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... expect to meet with the same difficulties which we have to encounter in the comparative study of languages. It may, no doubt, be argued with great force that no one knows English who is ignorant of the spoken dialects, of the jargon of sailors and miners, or of the slang of public-houses and prisons. It is perfectly true that what we call the literary and classical language is never the really living language of a people, and that a foreigner may know Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron, and yet fail ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... conference in the drawing-room was not tedious, nor indeed very secret, for anyone acquainted with the diplomatic slang in which such affairs were conducted might have learned in the lobby, or indeed in the hall, so mighty was the voice of the stranger, that there was no chance of any settlement without a meeting which was fixed to take place at twelve o'clock ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... had a different idea. They carefully studied the speech and the mannerisms and customs of the Satorians. They learned to imitate the slang and idioms. They went even further; they picked three Satorian spaceship navigators and studied them minutely every time they got a chance, in order to learn their habits and their speech patterns. The three Satorians were exceptionally large men, almost perfect doubles of the three Nansalians—and, ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... the country dressed in grotesque fashion, pretending to be mad and working upon the fears or the charity of people for alms. They were common in the time of Shakespeare, and were found even as late as the Restoration. The slang phrase "to sham Abraham," is a survival of the practice. There was a ward in Bethlehem (or Bedlam) Hospital, called the Abraham Ward, and hence probably arose the name of these beggars. Harmless lunatics who had been discharged were often to be seen roaming about the country ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... from other literary forms like the novel and the short-story. It must be told dramatically or it is not a stage story; and the dramatic element must permeate its every fibre. Not only must the language be dramatic—slang may in a given situation be the most dramatic language that could be used—and not only must the quality of the story itself be dramatic, but the scene-steps by which the story is unfolded must scintillate with the soul of ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... to admire in women precisely those qualities in 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 roughness, and gentleness to gentlemen. However, these obvious considerations have no ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... is the difficult part of the subject to make clear, the most vulgar slang like that quoted above, is scarcely worse than the attempted elegance which those unused to good society imagine to be the evidence ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... as soon as I have the time—say during our voyage to Cairo, whence we start inland up the Nile for Ethiopia—I shall make love whenever you like. And, confound it, Selina, I admire you no end—to use a slang phrase. You are a fine woman and a sensible woman, and I am afraid that you are throwing yourself away on a snuffy old ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... university slang the term Philister was applied to townsmen by students, and corresponded to the English university "snob." Hence it came to mean a person devoid of culture and enlightenment, and is used in this sense by Goethe in 1773. Heine was especially instrumental in popularizing the expression ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... were absolutely terrified by this act of 'boycotting' (the slang word then current for such acts of abstention). Their counsels became wild and vacillating to the last degree: one hour they were for giving way for the present till they could hatch another plot; the next ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... 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. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... shame, and will commonly bear much more. Especially to the American sense did their humorous and comic strokes, their negro-minstrelsy and attempts at Yankee comedy, seem in a minor key. There was not enough irreverence and slang and coarse ribaldry, in the whole evening's entertainment, to have seasoned one line of some of our most popular comic poetry. But the music, and the gymnastic, acrobatic, and other feats, were of a very high order. And I will say here that the characteristic flavor of the humor and fun-making ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... to be a thoroughly "bad lot:" low, ruffianly-looking men in their outward semblance, and—judging from their conversation, much of which, however, I failed to understand from their liberal use of what is now termed "slang"—utterly given over to the indulgence of the lowest and most degrading forms of vice, scoffing at all things pure and holy, and luxuriating in the recital of deeds of all manner of cruelty ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... compounded of dialect and the slang of workshop and barracks, seasoned with the latest inventions, blends us in the sauce of speech with the massed multitudes of men who (for seasons now) have emptied France and crowded ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... angle, and she knew just when to let Bud catch a slow, sidelong glance—of the kind that is supposed to set a man's heart to syncopatic behavior. She did not do it too often. She did not powder too much, and she had the latest slang at her pink tongue's tip and was yet moderate ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... Language itself in its very origination would seem to be traceable to individuals. Their peculiarities have given it its character. We are often able in fact to trace particular phrases or idioms to individuals; we know the history of their rise. Slang surely, as it is called, comes of, and breathes of the personal. The connection between the force of words in particular languages and the habits and sentiments of the nations speaking them has often been pointed out. And, while the many use language as they find it, the man of genius ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... enemy, the then Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Lancaster of Queen's—'Dr. Lancaster, when Bachelor of Arts, was plucked for his declamation.' But it is most unlikely that so good a Tory as Hearne would have used a slang phrase, unless it had become well established by long usage. 'Pluck', in the sense of causing to fail, is not unfrequently found in English eighteenth century literature, without any relation to ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... have done so, too, but she did not say it. While the talk lasted, she had a pleasure in the apt slang, and sinister wit and low wisdom, which made everything higher and nobler seem ridiculous. She tried helplessly to rise above the delight she found in it, and while she listened, she was miserably ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... champagne. The mild Hindoo imbibes it quietly, but approvingly, as he watches the evolutions of the Nautch girls, and his partiality for it has already enriched the Anglo-Bengalee vocabulary and London slang with the word "simkin." It is transported on camel-backs across the deserts of Central Asia, and in frail canoes up the mighty Amazon. The two-sworded Daimio calls for it in the tea-gardens of Yokohama, and the New Yorker, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... these unexpected juxtapositions. Thus, as with our Pundit's famous countryman Mr. Jaberjee, though they use the purest language, they can instantly express every shade of thought with grace and completeness without resorting to slang:—that ready cloak wherewith puny minds strive to cover their vulgarity ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... curls, so like floss silk, the delicate white camel's-hair shawl, the soft lace and appropriate black satin gown, the pretty old-fashioned manner, and we see that this is a real lady. She may have her tricks of old-fashioned speech; they do not offend us. To be sure, she has no slang; she does not talk about "awfully jolly," or a "ghastly way off;" she does not talk of the boys as being a "bully lot," or the girls as being "beastly fine;" she does not say that she is "feeling rather seedy to-day," etc. No, "our old lady" is a "lady," ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... by his vanity is very good: but I wish you would not let him plunge into a "vortex of dissipation." I do not object to the thing, but I cannot bear the expression: it is such thorough novel slang; and so old that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... 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. While multitudes turned up the whites of their eyes and denounced ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... slang, and the united recollections of his associates can adduce but two or three instances in which he sunk verbally so low as even to hint slang. He said that there was one town which in his capacity of public speaker he should like to visit. It ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... good? You go about Warwickshire, and fancy that from merely being born and wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands Shakspeare must have drunk in a portion of that frank artless sense of beauty which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in ennobling those who ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Slang!" said Massachusetts, looking up again. "One cent for the missionary fund. You will clothe the heathen at this rate, Maine. That is ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... hotel, and lay there till morning. The slight consternation of the cabaret-keeper and his wife over this long-haired phantom, with glittering, deep-set eyes, was soothed by a royally-flung gold coin, and a few words of French slang picked up in the arena, which, with the name of Havre, comprised Dick's whole knowledge of the language. But he was touched with their ready and intelligent comprehension of his needs, and their genial if not so comprehensive loquacity. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... would be difficult, to say the least of it, to prove that the slang phrase "shut up" and the Americanism "say" were never used in A.D. 1642, in the sense in which they are used in 1890, but they are scarcely characteristic of the modes of expression at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... of making a well-constructed story, in which every event shall come in naturally, and yet each bring us one step nearer to the journey's end, is now one of the lost arts of earth. But this is not all. A considerable portion of it must be pronounced decidedly slow. We use the word not in its slang application, but in the sense in which Goldsmith used it in the first line of "The Traveller," or rather, as Johnson told him he used it, when he said to him,—"You do not mean tardiness of locomotion; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... to turn out." Is turn out a slang phrase here, or is it a term commonly used in speaking of the assemblage of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... world. If there was anything they did not know—well, they did not know it; if there was anything they could not do—their motto was: "Show me!" Jimmie, not having been to school, found himself having a hard time with their weird slang. When one of these fellows hailed you, "Hey, pimp!" it did not necessarily mean that he did not like you: when he greeted you, "Hey, sweetness!" it did not mean that he felt for you any over-powering affection. If he referred to his officer ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... forgotten his fight, was elated at the proposition of his father, and, being asked whether, in his opinion, he could conduct a paper with ability, originality and success, replied, in the slang phrase of the day, that he "could n't do anything else," at the same time clenching his fist, as though to convince his sire that he ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... child exhibited an ingenuous amazement and admiration in presence of his wealth, which flattered his parvenu pride; and sometimes, when he teased her, she would break out with the droll phrases of a Paris gamine, slang redolent of the faubourgs, seasoned by her pretty, piquant face, inclined to pallor, which not even superficiality could deprive of its distinction. So he never ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wouldn't use those slang phrases. You let them out before Captain Littleton, just as though he ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... coffee-cream cakes had not been so good. The old Earl called me to him when he had finished, and talked so beautifully to me; he paid me some such grand old-fashioned compliments, and his voice sounds as if he had learnt elocution in his youth. There is not a word of slang or anything modern; one quite understands how he was able to wake up the House of Lords before his legs gave way. It seems sad that such a ninny as Charlie should succeed him. I feel proud of being related to him, but I shall never think of Lady Carriston except as ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... footsteps, it half raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the tarantula, which is extremely dreaded.—The Cape, by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... fact, the scientific world laughs most indecorously at the notion of the existence of either; and some are so lost to the sense of the scientific dignity, that they descend to the use of transatlantic slang, and call it a "bogus scare." As to my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer, I have every reason to know that, in the "Factors of Organic Evolution," he has said exactly what was in his mind, without any particular ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... or of later times. The drill of the student involved chiefly the acquisition of the special signals employed in railway work, including the numerals and abbreviations applied to save time. Some of these have passed into the slang of the day, "73" being well known as a telegrapher's expression of compliments or good wishes, while "23" is an accident or death message, and has been given broader popular significance as a general synonym for "hoodoo." All of this came easily to Edison, who had, moreover, as his ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... before, I learn languages with 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, had been strangely stimulated by many disorders, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "freak dinners," when the guests themselves would be dressed up, the men in women's clothes, the women in men's, the male imitating the piping treble of the female voices, and the female the over-vowelled slang of the male, until, tiring of this foolishness, they would end up by flinging the food at the pictures on the walls, the usual pellet being softened bread and the favourite target the noses in the family portraits, which, hit and covered with ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the walls—has a slang meaning: to be so drunk that you can't see, or can't lie down ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... source. It isn't every day of the week that Mr. GRUNDY tumbles upon A Pair of Spectacles in a volume of French plays. The period to which the very slight and uninteresting story of Haddon Hall belongs is just before the Restoration, but the dialogue of "the book" is spiced with modern slang, both "up to date" (the date being this present year of Grace, not sixteen hundred and sixty) and out of date. The "out-of-date" slang, which is, "I've got 'em on"—alluding to the Scotchman's trousers—has by far the best of it, as it comes at the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... nautical slang term. In the British navy there were formerly two days in each week on which meat formed no part of the men's rations. These were called banyan days, in allusion to the vegetarian diet of the Hindu merchants. Banyan hospital also became a slang term for a hospital for animals, in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... 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," ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... once—good fellow, bad fellow, cleverest chap I ever knew. Tremendous fop—ladies loved him—cheeks like roses—tongue like sulphuric acid. Beautiful to look at. Clothes like a fashion-plate—got any fashion-plates in Chaudiere? 'who's your tailor?'" he added, in the slang of the hour, with a loud laugh, then stopped suddenly and took off his hat. "I forgot," he added, with upturned eyes and a dramatic seriousness, "your tailor saved my life to-day-henceforth I am the friend of all tailors. Well, to continue. My friend that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... scholarship was possible for six- or seven-and-twenty was his. That he was more or less crazed with much learning and more drink was generally understood of him. Men of small originality and some memory said of Wilder that he could knock a slang song into Greek iambics in five minutes. His most fervent admirers were, perhaps, poor judges of Greek iambics. Fleet Street may at one time have been familiar with that kind of thing, but is not nowadays. But Wilder's reputation ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... watch, and kept all hands awake. They were amusing from their improbability, and, indeed, he never expected to be believed, but spun them merely for amusement; and as he had some humor and a good supply of man-of-war slang and sailor's salt phrases, he always made fun. Next to him in age and experience, and, of course, in standing in the watch, was an Englishman named Harris, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. Then came two or three Americans, who had been the common run ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... to penetrate the mystery of Parisian slang than the mystery of Parisian music. Christophe judged it with the passion which he brought to bear on everything, and the native incapacity of the Germans to understand French art. At least, he was sincere, and only asked to be put right if he was mistaken. And he did not regard himself as bound ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... having 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, and the strange, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... enjoys the comic page more than the present writer,—yet it spreads a demoralizing virus amongst children. Of what use is it to teach children good English when the newspaper deliberately teaches them the cheapest slang? Of what use is it to teach them manners and kindliness when the newspaper constantly spreads boorishness and "rough house" conduct? Of what use is it to raise taste when this is injured at the very outset of life by giving bad taste ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... that they came from some valley town thirty miles away called Wickenberg, and that they were of the small-town banking, professional, and wealthy-farmer class. They were full of spirits, laughter, and the latest jokes and catches sprung in the latest slang. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... educated, for he has used the usual business formulas, 'on receipt of this,' and 'advices received,' which I won't merely say I don't use, but which few but commercial men use. Next, here's a man who uses slang, not only ineptly, but artificially, to give the letter the easy, familiar turn it hasn't from beginning to end. I need only say, my dear Stacy, that I don't write slang to you, but that nobody who understands ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... 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 instructions, and ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... no desire to cast anchor there. The distractions of life are frequently alluring, and the embryonic artists of to-day assure us that they must, in modern jargon, keep "in touch" with modern thought with a view of, in modern slang, being "up-to-date." Ideas such as these—and they seem to me to be not only largely prevalent but almost universal—are in my opinion fatal, not only to the development but to the very existence of art. We see in this country the effect upon every department thereof. Poetry, painting, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... sake!" said Tom, "or we shall have you blue next, my good fellow. I'd go myself, but they'd not hear me, for certain; I am no Christian, I suppose: at least, I can't talk their slang:—but I know who can! We'll ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... jantu, "child, being, stock," jata, "son." Kind, 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 radical sprang the Modern High German Knabe, Old High German ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... his novels, the theories enunciated in his magazine articles, adulating the intrusion of positivism upon art. But in the works of his best pupil, Rosny, the only talented novelist who is really imbued with the ideas of the master, naturalism has become a sickening jargon of chemist's slang serving to display a layman's erudition, which is about as profound as the scientific knowledge of a shop foreman. No, there is no getting around it. Everything this whole poverty-stricken school has produced shows that our literature has fallen upon evil days. The grovellers! ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... accent, pronunciation or spelling, or the introduction of some words borrowed from a foreign language to express ideas of which no native term precisely conveyed the import. He may also remember hearing for the first time some cant terms or slang phrases, which have since forced their way into common use, in spite of the efforts of the purist. But he may still contend that "within the range of his experience," his language has continued unchanged, and ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... not be fair to credit such a noble creature with talking, or even thinking, slang, but Dick Darvall clearly understood her to say something of the sort, for after a while he reduced speed to a kind of india-rubber walk and patted her ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... has become a habit; they make more, the walls of exhibitions blush with them; and death finds these aged students still busy with their horn-book. This class of man finds a congenial home in artist villages; in the slang of the English colony at Barbizon we used to call them "Snoozers." Continual returns to the city, the society of men further advanced, the study of great works, a sense of humour or, if such a thing is to be had, a little religion or philosophy, are the means ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waiting near the door, and held out his hand with a dramatically significant gesture when the little Scotchman entered. "Put her there!" he exclaimed heartily, with an exuberant reversion to the slang ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... hostile may be drawn variously; for example, one may be run between the law-abiding and the criminal class. But the elements to which reference is here made are those immemorable and implacable foes which the slang of modern economics roughly and loosely distinguishes as "Capital" and "Labor." A more accurate classification—as accurate a one as it is possible to make—would designate them as those who do ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... off duty. She spends so much of her life under the all-pervading eye of authority, she is so drilled, and lectured, and ruled and regulated, that, when the eye of authority is off her, she seems naturally to degenerate into licence. No speech so interwoven with slang as the speech of a schoolgirl—except that of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... persons say I was the whole show. Of course, I'm joking now, but the women all take up for me and applaud everything I say, whether it has a point to it or not. 'Whole show!' I oughtn't to have said that. When I try to keep from using bookish expressions I drop plumb into slang; there is no ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... after, on the 22d of February, the President greatly damaged his cause by denouncing a Senator and a Representative, and using the slang of the stump against the Secretary of the Senate in the midst of an uproarious Washington mob. The people were mortified that the Executive of the nation should have ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... she shakes me, Dan!" laughed the other, lapsing into the slang of the men as his ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... attractive. The cherubs' wings with which imagination has endowed them drop off, and they subside into cheeky, and sometimes scrubby, little boys, with a tendency towards peppermints, and a strong bias in favour of slang and tricks. The choir-boys of Chenecote, however, had been well-trained under Mr. Smith's ascetic eye; and though he had not drained the humanity entirely out of them, he had persuaded them to perfect ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... welcomed us with a cheery smile. He had made mistakes, of course—who didn't? But he intended to come out on top, you bet your life! Western slang flowed freely from his lips. The blazing sun, which already had cracked the unpainted shingles on his roof, had bleached the crude blue of his jumper and overalls. His sombrero might have belonged to a veteran cowboy. Jim wore it with a rakish list to port, and ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... 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 ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... to enthusiasm as she called the school roll. "Kid McCoy uses too much slang. We'll teach her manners. Rosalie doesn't like to study. We'll pour her full of algebra and Latin. Harriet Gladden's a jelly fish, Mary Deskam's an awful little liar, Evalina Smith's a silly goose, ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... Hodder 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 which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... trowel to help you out! Remember that. Never forget that. Read it to your children, and to your children's children! And now, MOST THINKING PEOPLE, cast your eyes over my head to what the builder (I beg his pardon, the architect) calls the proscenium. No motto, no slang, no popish Latin, to keep the people in the dark. No veluti in speculum. Nothing in the dead languages, properly so called, for they ought to die, ay and be DAMNED to boot! The Covent Garden manager tried that, and a pretty business he ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... the old days they 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 minute calls "puppets" ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling |
