"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stock Exchange slang, Bulls are speculators for a rise, Bears for a fall. A lame duck is a man who cannot pay his dififerences, and is said to waddle off. The patriotism of the money-market is well touched by Ponsard, in his comedy La ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... at school, he very soon picked up our language with all its slang, and quickly came to the fore in athletics. In running, swimming and rowing no one could keep pace with him. On foot he was fleet as a deer, and in the water could swim like a fish, while at archery he was a dead shot. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... abruptness, her forbearance from gush, her umbrellas and jackets and shoes—as these things sketched themselves to Milly—and something rather of a breezy boy in the carriage of her arms and the occasional freedom of her slang. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... May. (She used the word "swipe," which somehow made the suspected deed sound less a crime and more an amusing peccadillo than the word "steal" would have done. Have you ever noticed how adroitly we tone down or magnify certain misdeeds simply by using slang or dictionary words as the case ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... saying that it is all O.K." He laughed, and stretched out his long legs comfortably. "You've got the idea. That's the way to get the good of traveling and seeing other kinds of folks. You learn my queer slang words, and I'll ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... talks; this is all very fine; but at the end of the reckoning one is no cleverer than the next man—and no more brave. Brave! This is always to be seen. I have rolled my hump (roule ma bosse)," he said, using the slang expression with imperturbable seriousness, "in all parts of the world; I have known brave men—famous ones! Allez!" . . . He drank carelessly. . . . "Brave—you conceive—in the Service—one has got to be—the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... learned much street slang during his visits to Cottonton, and considered its acquisition a benefit and its ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... One wears a simple suit of black serge, with trousers of a godly fulness; in it he might fitly hand round the plate in church. His manner is almost startlingly candid, his speech, what there is of it, is ungarnished with stable slang, his face might belong to an imperfectly shaved archbishop. Yesterday he bought twenty young horses; next week he will buy forty more; next year he will place them in the English shires at prices never ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... bow. His yarns frequently stretched through a 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 Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the site of the Whitehall Cockpit, which had been placed there by Henry VIII. It was converted into offices for the Privy Council in 1697. The Ministerial meetings being held there, the word, in political slang, was used for a meeting either ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... you will keep your eye on. Of course Anneke couldn't be "electrified"—but you may find many less evident blunders than that would be. She might be shocked, but couldn't "receive a shock." We need free colloquial slang and common expressions; but while "get out" seems all right from Stuyvesant to Bogardus, for Barry to say "Skedadle" would put him in the 87th New York Vols., 1861-64. Yet I doubt whether we have any more classic and revered slang ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... on the presentation of the national petition created some perplexity among his aristocratic relatives and acquaintances. It was free from the slang of faction—the voice of a noble who had upheld the popular cause, who had pronounced that the rights of labour were as sacred as those of property, that the social happiness of the millions should be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... retorted, trying hard to hold back her anger. "Mother, I should think you'd make Graham stop using his horrid slang!" ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... and swore if anyone abused him he ought to be 'set straddle on an iceberg, and shot through with a streak of lightning.'" Somewhere between the dignified despair of Daniel Webster, and the adulatory slang of these gentry we must look for the actual truth about Jackson's administration. The fears of the statesman were not wholly groundless, for it is always hard to count in advance upon the tendency of high office to make men more reasonable. The enthusiasm ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... diligence hath not been wanting in the research. Johnson's Dictionary and old Bailey, have been ransacked; but neither the learned Johnson, nor the recondite Bailey, throw much light upon this matter. The Slang Dictionary, to which I should in the first place have directed my attention, was unfortunately not within my reach. The result of all my inquiries amounts to this—that bore, boor, and boar, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... stuff!" She had never before employed Felicity's brand of slang. It came unpleasantly from her tongue. "The wages of sin and all ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... it was discussed pro and con.; the usual protests were launched at Carter for having in his chapter lowered the theme to the level of burlesque; praise was accorded to the Goblin for the dexterity with which he had rescued the plot. Blair's chapter had been full of American slang which had to be explained to the others. "Joe," the Rhodes Scholar hero, had shown a vein of fine gold under Blair's hands: he bade fair to win the charming Kathleen, although the story had not been finished owing to the ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... new-found friends, unheeding for some moments their loose remarks and familiar banter. At length he shook off his abstraction, and surrendering himself to the coarse humours of his companions, soon eclipsed them all by the gusto of his slang and the mocking profligacy of his sentiments; for here he no longer played a part, or suppressed his grosser instincts. That uncurbed dominion of the senses, to which his very boyhood had abandoned itself, found a ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instruction is given, but with less special, though no slight attention to Latin and Greek, and more to mathematics and practical branches, even then he must acquire from one of the gymnasia the exemption-and-maturity-right. In the slang of student-life, the gymnasiast is styled a Frog, the school itself a Pond; between the time of his declaration of maturity and his reception as student, he is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... of the fashions of the hour—a phase of etiquette as ill-bred as the poorest social slang—not to introduce strangers. Mrs. Byram and her daughters were nothing if not fashionable, and in this case the mode served their inclination, and beyond a few formal words they willingly left their awkward guest to ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... man's leading pursuits. And we must be prepared to tear off a mask before we understand the most of our fellows, for society and all of life is permeated with disguise. Now and then one seeks to appear worse than he is, hates fuss and praise, but this rare bird (to use slang and Latin in one phrase) is the exception that proves the rule that men on the whole try to appear better than they are. Rarely does a man say, "I am after profit and nothing else," although occasionally he does; rarely does ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... nose as you would if you sat on a roof in London—a thing which I never heard of anybody except cats doing. But she was tired, and I suppose it would have been ladylike for me to be, only I was much too excited. So Mr. Doremus stayed, and he and Mr. Parker talked more slang in an hour than I think I ever heard in my whole life, though I have always considered Stan talented in ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... not choosing it of the most beautiful kind; on the contrary, it shall be a piece reaching as low down as he ever allows Scotch to go—it is perhaps the only unfair patriotism in him, that if ever he wants a word or two of really villainous slang, he gives it in English or ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... is awfully nice. He did not forget my birthday, but he says that at that time he was stoney, in student's slang that means that he hadn't any money, and then he could not find anything suitable, but that he will repair the omission as soon as we get back to Vienna. But I don't know what I should like. Oswald is going to stay until we all go back ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... disliked her boy husband very much for hours at a time. He discovered that he was getting up at unearthly hours in order to have time, later in the morning, to go for a walk with Maisie Maidan. He discovered himself using little slang words that she used and attaching a sentimental value to those words. These, you understand, were discoveries that came so late that he could do nothing but drift. He was losing weight; his eyes were beginning ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... du Maurier written by Mr. Henry James in the eighties to which we have referred. It describes the type of woman revealed in Mrs. de Tomkyns when we have followed her adventures up a little way in the back numbers of Punch. But, if we may be permitted the slang, the type itself is anything but "a back number." Du Maurier's work bids fair to live in the enjoyment of many generations, from the fact that its chaff, for the most part, is directed against vanities ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... fairy-land, and saw only the sparkling creatures who danced and sung in a world of light and beauty; but, presently, she began to listen to the songs and conversation, and then the illusion vanished; for the lovely phantoms sang negro melodies, talked slang, and were a disgrace to the good old-fashioned elves whom she knew and loved ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... thoughtlessness, or from yielding to the bad bit in them, join in silly school talk, silly mysteries, giggling, criticizing other people, boasting about home, loud, rough ways of talking, slang, cliques and exclusive friendships (every one of which is underbred, as well as silly or unkind), and are yet, three-quarters of them, fit for something better,—at home they would be better, and at school ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... uncontrollable, hasty activity, rose high. Everywhere was violent advertisement, until his brain swam at the tumult of light and colour. And Babble Machines of a peculiarly rancid tone were abundant and filled the air with strenuous squealing and an idiotic slang. "Skin your eyes and slide," "Gewhoop, Bonanza," "Gollipers ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... of slang had ever before passed the lips of the judge: for slang might indeed be unintelligible to a judge who knew not what a race-course was, and would ask in court, "What is the 'Stock Exchange'—is it a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Juan's scheme was. When they find out what Juan has done, and see the holes in the bottom of all the pots, they cannot help laughing. The captain, however, addresses Juan with all the epithets found in a common slang dictionary. The captain now decides never to let Juan stay in the house alone, and from that time on takes him with ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... slang word, which is "poppycock." The Century Dictionary speaks disrespectfully of it as a "United States vulgarism," but personally I consider it a first-class word. The Century Dictionary defines it as meaning, "Trivial talk; nonsense; stuff and rubbish," which ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... ordinary conversation. When an occasion arose which seemed to demand a special effort, the talk around the "chuck-wagon" was so riddled with slang from all corners of the earth, so full of startling imagery, that a stranger might stare, bewildered, unable to extract a particle of meaning. And through it blazed such a continual shower of oaths, that were themselves sparks of satanic poetry, that, in the phrase ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... the window,' but rather 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
... must possess energy, decision, and force, and these qualities should be conspicuous in his correspondence in order to command respect. Never use loose or slang expressions. The business man should be a gentleman. Indulge in no display of superior knowledge or education, but temper each paragraph with respect and deference to others. The learner who would ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... more commonly known by the name of slang, is much in use among a certain class of conveyancers, who disregard the distinctions of meum and tuum. Furthermore, it constitutes a great part of the familiar discourse of most young men in modern times, particularly lawyers' clerks and medical students. It bears a very close affinity ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... meadow, glade are among them. Young New Zealanders know what these mean because they find them in books, but would no more think of employing them in speaking than of using "inn," "tavern," or "ale," when they can say "hotel," "public-house," or "beer." Their place is taken by slang. Yet if a nation is known by its slang, the New Zealanders must be held disposed to borrow rather than to originate, for theirs is almost wholly a mixture of English, American, and Australian. Most of the mining terms come from California; most of the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... one," he muttered, unconsciously using the slang of the Street which he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... through the window with tireless perseverance, making an effort to wring or dry each article in turn. The other gentleman on top received them all rather grimly, and had not perhaps been amused by the situation but for the exploit of his hat. It was of the sort called in Italian as in English slang a stove-pipe (canna), and having been made in Italy, it was of course too large for its wearer. It had never been any thing but a horror and reproach to him, and he was now inexpressibly delighted to see it steal out of the diligence in company with one of the red-leather cushions, and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... suspecting Roscius took care to make his speech when he knew the king was within earshot—a little bit of that 'artifice' of his which has left such an impression in the theatre, that the phrase, 'As deep as Garrick,' is still current stage slang."[219] ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... social position of girls in domestic service, especially in the towns and cities, is peculiarly hard for a self-respecting girl to bear. It is in large part a reflection upon her sacrifice of independence. The derisive slang term "slavey" expresses the generally prevalent public contempt. It is small wonder that a girl fears to brave such a sentiment and as a result avoids what is perhaps in itself congenial work in pleasanter surroundings ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... amount of slang and fun that's allowable, but noblesse oblige must always come first. You don't understand French yet? Well, never mind. All that matters is that you simply must realize, Rona—do listen, please—that all of us here, including you, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... for courage and for crime; his vessels were usually secreted in the land-locked bay of Barataria, to the westward of the mouth of the river. They were, however, soon extirpated by the American government. The language of the adjacent States is still adulterated with the slang of those scoundrels, proving how short a period it is since they disappeared, and how they must have mixed up with the reckless population, whose head-quarters were then at the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... thong superfluous; the bright steel curbs, with the chains jingling as the horses tossed and pawed impatient for a start; the tapering holly whip; the bear-skins covering the seats; the top-coats spread above them— every thing, in a word, without bordering on the slang, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... 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 muscular labor and those who do not. The ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... of the chief, and under it they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the slang goes, Uncle Dick!" ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... dried opium poppy-plant material, other than the seeds. 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, Adam), phenmetrazine ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... not attempt to conceal a slight gesture of horror. The tall Russian looked down upon him commiseratingly. 'He is of the Few?' he asked of Ernest, that being the slang of the initiated for a member of the aristocratic ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... word with him; a slang word used to express uncommon pleasure, such as had been afforded by a trip abroad, or by a run to Cuba or Mexico, or by the perusal of something especially ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... 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 more. She's ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... was also evidenced in the signs on their stores. The first Australian to stroll down those streets was amazed to see, in huge lettering, "The Melbourne Store," next door to "The Sydney Shop." They even knew our slang, for here was "The 'Fair Dinkum' Store," and across the way "Ribuck Goods." Prices were pretty much what you liked to pay. At any rate I never failed to get an article by paying only a ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... Rutherford sat in the stern of the Tortoise and shouted encouraging remarks from time to time. She had, apparently, boated on the Thames at some time in her life, for she was mistress of a good deal of rowing slang which she used with vigour and effect. It cheered Frank greatly to hear the more or less familiar words, for he realised almost at once that neither Priscilla nor Jimmy Kinsella understood them. He felt a warm affection for Miss Rutherford rise in his heart when she told Jimmy, who sat humped ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... vocabulary available and in common use, and we possess slang not only of the different nations constituting the United Kingdom, but also slang from the United States, and from our Colonies, whilst we have a lawlessness in the use of our language not permitted to the French. There are disadvantages ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... where is the Darling!" and he says "In Kennington Station House." I was dropping at his feet Stone at the image of that Innocence in cells with murderers when he adds "He followed the Monkey." I says deeming it slang language "O sir explain for a loving grandmother what Monkey!" He says "Him in the spangled cap with the strap under the chin, as won't keep on—him as sweeps the crossings on a round table and don't want to draw his sabre more than he can help." Then I understood it all and most ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... confidence; spoke, in a voice of surpassing sweetness, with decision and considerable overt contempt for the phraseology of convention—swearing without the least affectation, slanging heartily when slang best suited her humour.... ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 and lack ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... exception to the learned individuals about me, either in my relish for the good things, or my appetite to enjoy them. Dulce est desipere in loco, says some one, by which I suppose is meant, that a rather slang company is occasionally good fun. Whether from my taste for the "humanities" or not, I am unable to say, but certainly in my then humour, I should not have exchanged my position for one of much greater pretensions to elegance and ton. There was first a general onslaught upon the viands, crashing ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... consists in the use of such expressions as "dogmatism," "intolerance," "presumptuous," "arrogant." Together with accusations of such various faults a "virtual abandonment of the inductive method," and the use of slang ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... things as discreetly as possible, frightened by the very words he spoke, the horrors he had to relate in that sphere of superlative luxury and enjoyment, before those happy ones who possessed all the gifts of this world; for—to use a slang expression—he fully realised that he sang out of tune, and in most uncourteous fashion. What a strange idea of his to have called at the hour when one has just finished dejeuner, when the aroma ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... inspiration of the treasury." On the following evening Lord Durham, son-in-law of the premier, assuming that he was the party pointed at, attacked what he called "the bishop's gross and virulent invective—his malignant, calumnious, and false insinuations—his well-known powers of pamphleteering slang." Here the noble lord was called to order, and the Earl of Winchelsea moved that the words "false insinuations" and "pamphleteering slang" should be taken down. After some observations from Earl Grey, Lord Holland, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... her, "Alice and Dick will revel in these vulgar westernisms. See if they don't. Why Mother, it's by slang that a language is enriched, didn't you ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... feel happier. He'd have hated reporting the old man. Something in the outdated slang made him feel—almost patriotic. The old man was a part of America, ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... long, Beckey received not only "the best" foreigners (as the phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang), but some of "the best" English ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... bit of slang, and I like to use bits of English slang when I can; they'll be so useful to know by-and-by when I am scolding my people. Not ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... country from which he came was against him. The bishop was not without his prejudices, and was disposed to father all the materialistic spirit of the age upon his guest, whether or no. He had noted that lapse into slang, and his attitude had become like that of the loiterers in the hall of Caiaphas, the high priest. Had his thought become vocal, it would have run like a garbled version of their triumphant charge against St. Peter: "Thou art a Westerner, and ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... word to be used delicately from its connection with Gehenna. You say, e.g. "bring me a light, a coal (bassah)" etc.; but if you say "bring me fire! " the enemy will probably remark "He wanteth fire even before his time!" The slang expression would be "bring the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... dealer into whose hands the picture passed, sold it as a curiosity, not an original portrait, for L5. The buyer, being a person of ingenuity, and fonder of money than curiosities, fabricated a series of letters to and from Sir Kenelm Digby, and, passing over to France, planted—the slang term used among the less honest of the curiosity-dealing fraternity—the picture and the letters in an old chateau near Paris. Of course a confederate managed to discover the plant, in the presence of witnesses, and great ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... into the library and confessed in a bit of new slang, which he said was delightful, that he was all balled up by Lemuel's leaving him, and asked Sewell what he supposed ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... sitting of the court brought in one or more from neighboring settlements, and, being thus circumstanced, without opposition, and the only representative of his craft, he was literally, to employ the slang phrase in that quarter, the "cock of the walk." He was, however, not so much regarded by the villagers a worthy as a clever man. It required not erudition to win the credit of profundity, and the lawyer knew how to ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... deeds and noble life of our forefathers—and we have had burlesques in which the loved fairy tales that have charmed the imaginations of thousands, or subjects of mythology that belong to the religious history of the greatest people on record, are turned into coarse pot-house jests, with slang for wit, but without the playful elegance by which Planche justifies his sport. It is a sign of intellectual barrenness in the writers; for what is easier than parody? what means of raising a laugh ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... I imagine," said Hugh. "If the phrases ever had any meaning, it has long ago vanished into obscurity. I have seen explanations given of many popular terms but never of these. After I am gone, though, Bessie, you had better give up slang. It is all very well with me, and to tell the truth, I have taught you all you know, but it would not do with any ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... 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 stands firm on her foundation. ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... say that he found out as many as seventeen words incorrectly spelt in one letter. But she deftly excused herself by saying that she used archaic forms. "Never mind St. George," she writes good-humouredly, to Mrs. E. G. Burton, "I like old spelling." She did not excuse her slang by calling it old, or refer her friends ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... that there is a small stream of that name in Kentucky, the passage of which is made difficult and laborious, as well by its tortuous course as by numerous shallows and bars. The real application of the phrase is to the unhappy wight who propels the boat, but politically, in slang usage, it means the man rowed ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... become fulfilment. Dakie Thayne was wild with rejoicing that dear old Noll was to marry Sue. "She had always made him think of Noll, and his ways and likings, ever since that day of the game of chess that by his means came to grief. It was awful slang, but he could not help it: it was ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... no chances of gettin' 'made,' see?" Murphy answered. "Made," John remembered, was the slang of detectives for identification. When a person was ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... reason that such newspaper literature as found its way into Briar Farm filled her with amazement, repulsion and disgust. There was nothing in any modern magazine that at all resembled the delicate, pointed and picturesque phraseology of the Sieur Amadis! Strange, coarse slang-words were used,—and the news of the day was slung together in loose ungrammatical sentences and chopped-up paragraphs of clumsy construction, lacking all pith and eloquence. So, repelled by the horror of twentieth-century "style," she had hidden her manuscripts deeper than ever ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... room with an air which would have befitted a grand duchess, leaving her astonished auditors to look at each other a moment in silence, and then to express themselves fully and freely and unreservedly with regard to American effrontery, American manners, and American slang, as ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... elder brother, who later on becomes his nephew's confederate in gambling. The elder brother is true to the old religion, and as the law stood in the last century, the younger brother, by changing his religion, was able to turn him out. Barry, when a boy, learns the slang and the gait of the debauched gentlemen of the day. He is specially proud of being a gentleman by birth and manners. He had been kidnapped, and made to serve as a common soldier, but boasts that he was at once fit for the occasion when enabled to show as a court gentleman. "I ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... nothing in these two paragraphs except a little ginger, and a good deal of slang, but this may prove the most effective stimulant to a man's energy, the kind of persuasion to ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... my father!' and ejaculates 'hi-hi-hi!' in tones of piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told; oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the growling and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... work without effort on the part of the people, we can sit at home while elections run themselves so well that only what the good people desire in political action will necessarily result. We want the equivalent of what, in the slang of practical mechanics, we call a fool-proof machine, because anybody can run it and no fool can interfere with its normal operation. So these political reformers are hunting a corrupt-politician-proof machine for government. ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... and in a powerful but not very musical voice began to sing a hymn full of cowboy slang. His singing had a quality not usual in street singers, and a crowd quickly gathered about him. His song was long and not without a rude poetry. He began his address at last by issuing a defiance to his enemies. This would mean ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... Bard it is simpler the sense to glean.) You Polyphemus shall swallow and fill his mighty maw, What time he maketh an end of the Priests, the Police, and the Law, And then, ah, who shall purchase the poems of old that I sang, Who shall pay twelve-and-six for an epic in Saga slang? But perchance even "Hermes the Flitter" could scarcely expound what I mean, And I trow that another were fitter to sing you ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... the faults of his kind, not inveterately, for he spoke good English to women; but as he indulged in his dear island slang to men, he felt bound to use it to himself. "This poor little woman is thorough game," he said to himself. "I can see that she is as tender as a little bird, yet she has shown as much pluck as a six-foot grenadier? She has not flinched at all. I can ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... sprung in. For the sake of the uninitiated, I must explain that, in digger's slang, a "canary" and ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... word awfully, except in its correct sense? Remember that we hold the English tongue in trust—it belongs to the nation and not to us—and we have no more right to profane England's language by the introduction of coined words and slang expressions than we have to disendow her institutions ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead; and the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell upon his face to ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... her capital letter, had divined this near-at-hand truth along with the rest. Lowell, almost the greatest and finest realist who ever wrought in verse, showed us that Elizabeth was still Queen where he heard Yankee farmers talk. One need not invite slang into the company of its betters, though perhaps slang has been dropping its "s" and becoming language ever since the world began, and is certainly sometimes delightful and forcible beyond the reach of the dictionary. I would not have any one go about for new words, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "What dreadful slang. Fancy calling Bradshaw a chicken!" she exclaimed. "Besides, you have a college called Keble, and my father knew Dr. Keble, so that can't be hundreds of years old. No, Cambridge have chosen ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... much at the slang as at the friendly spirit which prompted it. "It doesn't hurt at all now," she answered, truthfully, and then she told Constance ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... high-strung Harris, whose great eyes almost popped from his head at the continuous display of tropical marvels, and whose exclamations of astonishment and surprise, enriched from his inexhaustible store of American slang and miner's parlance, burst from his gaping mouth at every turn of the sinuous trail. From the outset, he had constituted himself Carmen's special protector, although much to Rosendo's consternation, for the lank, awkward fellow, whose lean shoulders bent under the weight of some ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Oh dear me! I desired to shape a Democratic Budget! But I fear 'twill be a fizzle, howsoe'er I fake and fudge it! Second E. M. Don't talk like that, my H-RC-T, for such cynic slang is shocking! But—the Revenue Returns, no doubt, our dearest hopes are mocking. First E. M. Oh, I know you ape the casuist, and love the pleonastic, But how tackle our taxation in a manner really drastic With a Revenue declining! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... what the public want. No, sir, we have catered too long for the public not to know what its size is. You might print the most learned article you could get hold of, it might be written by What's-his-name De Vinci, and be full of art slang, and all that sort of thing, but it wouldn't touch the ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... Jim; "slang Billy. What's he here for, I'd like to know! I only want you to go round 'em every day, and see that they're ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... equipped to such a high point of pedestrianism that a 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 ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... motionless in the middle of a picture. (Mr. Parham-Carter did not, of course, use such beautiful similes as these; he employed the kind of language customary to men who have received a public school and university education, half slang and half childishness; but he waved his hands at me and distorted his features, and conveyed, on the whole, the kind of impression I have just attempted ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... advise you to avoid slang, my dear cousin,—professional slang especially; and to remember that in London there are no professions after six ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald |
