"Syllable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the terrible test. What unsurpassable beauty is in the simple story! It is remarkable, even among the scriptural narratives, for the entire absence of anything but the visible facts. There is not a syllable about the feelings of father or of son. The silence is more pathetic than many words. We look as into a magic crystal, and see the very event before our eyes, and our own imaginations tell us more of the world of struggle and sorrow raging under that calm outside than the highest art ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... continually pressed against by people, the generality of whose faces possessed nothing to interest, and with all of whom she was so wholly unacquainted that she could not relieve the irksomeness of imprisonment by the exchange of a syllable with any of her fellow captives; and when at last arrived in the tea-room, she felt yet more the awkwardness of having no party to join, no acquaintance to claim, no gentleman to assist them. They saw nothing of Mr. Allen; and after looking about them in vain ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... manifested all the interest he could desire. Her feelings were evidently touched by what she heard, for she grew paler as Gerald proceeded, while her breathing was suspended, as if fearful to lose a single syllable he uttered. At each more exciting crisis of the narrative, she betrayed a corresponding intensity of attention, until at length, when the officer described his mounting on the water butt, and obtaining a full ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... for the window; but it was too late. Strangwise who had not missed a syllable of the interrogatory was at the curtains in a flash. As he plucked the hangings back, Desmond made a rush for him; but Strangwise, wary as ever, kept his head and, drawing back, jabbed his great automatic almost in ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... John. Oh, not Nelly—Nelly is for you only. I would never let him call me that. But they are all for short names, one syllable—he is Phil, and Mariamne, well at home they call her Jew—horrible, isn't it?—because she was called after some Jewess; but somehow it seems queer when you see her, so fair and frizzy, like anything but ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... element of a language, the vowels, are well developed in Finnish, and their due sequence is subject to strict rules of euphony. The dotted o; (equivalent to the French eu) of the first syllable must be followed by an e or an i. The Finnish, like all Ugrian tongues, admits rhyme, but with reluctance, and prefers alliteration. Their alphabet consists of but nineteen letters, and of these, b, c, d, f, g, are found ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... the serjeant, "you shall give me your word of honour, or I will be cut into ten thousand pieces before I will mention another syllable." ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... however produced; meter, measure, and rhythm denote agreeable succession of sounds in the utterance of connected words; euphony may apply to a single word or even a single syllable; the other words apply to lines, sentences, paragraphs, etc.; rhythm and meter may be produced by accent only, as in English, or by accent and quantity combined, as in Greek or Italian; rhythm or measure may apply either to prose or to poetry, or to music, dancing, etc.; meter is more ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... better sailer of the two—kept critically circling the Richard, making lounging advances now and then, and as suddenly steering off; hate causing her to act not unlike a wheeling cock about a hen, when stirred by the contrary passion. Meantime, though within easy speaking distance, no further syllable was exchanged; but an incessant cannonade was ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... their construction, the syntax being formed by adding prefixes principally and also suffixes to the root, but no infixes (that is to say, no mutable syllable incorporated into the middle of the root-word).[7] (2) The root excepting its terminal vowel is practically unchanging, though its first or penultimate vowel or consonant may be modified in pronunciation by the preceding prefix, or the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... powerless to utter another syllable. A strong pair of arms were around his neck, and a handkerchief thrust into his mouth. He only looked towards Reist, but the look was such that Reist felt the shameful colour ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... his party, in the act of serving a writ, and the bailiff was murdered on the spot, while one of the murderers was killed by a shot from the police. Mr. O'Connell and the association demanded justice for the death of the latter; but not a word was said on the heinousness of his crime, or a syllable of regret was uttered concerning the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hearer and confidant was only Lucy Tempest. A strange comfort, but yet a natural one, as those who have suffered as Lionel did may be able to testify. At the time of the blow, when Sibylla deserted him with coolness so great, Lionel could have died rather than give utterance to a syllable betraying his own pain; but several months had elapsed since, and the turning-point was come. He did not, unfortunately, love Sibylla one shade less; love such as his cannot be overcome so lightly; but the keenness of the disappointment, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... inward, and now his deliberate ferocity was icy and devilish. Only a glint in his eyes told of exultation, and his words were sharp and incisive; one could well imagine one heard the click of his teeth as they bit off the consonants: every letter was clear-cut, every syllable startling ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... abandoning him not only to her subjects to treat him as they had done her, but to all strangers to subdue and conquer him. It was in vain to employ menaces against her: the fear of death or other misfortune would never induce her to make one step or pronounce one syllable beyond what she had determined. She would rather perish with honor, in maintaining the dignity to which God had raised her, than degrade herself by the least pusillanimity, or act what was unworthy of her station and of her race. Murden, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... man of war, as you know Vilcaroya, but I hope I am a man of honour. I have never breathed a syllable that could have given anyone an inkling of your secret, and I promise you solemnly that I never will. What Djama has done distresses me even more than it amazes me. I would have staked my life on his honesty, and if you will release him and ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... ever hear a syllable from the brave, unselfish man of disappointment at the way in which his worldly prospects were never advanced in the slightest by the nobly adventurous work he had done. By nature he was too bent on doing the work in hand to theorise about anything. By character he was too loftily absorbed ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... there was as striking an identity of form. In poetry this showed itself in the death of the lyric, as in the universal popularity of the rhetorical ode, in the loss of all delight in variety of poetic measure, and in the growing restriction of verse to the single form of the ten-syllable line. Prose too dropped everywhere its grandeur with its obscurity; and became the same quick, clear instrument of thought in the hands of Addison as in ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... rush to Jordan's house, enter the living room, his hair all dishevelled, sit down where the two sisters were working on Gertrude's trousseau, and never utter a syllable until Gertrude would come up to him and lay her hand on his forehead. He thrust her back, but she smiled gently. At times, though none too frequently, he would take her by the arms and pull her down to him. When he did this, Eleanore would smile with marked demureness, as if it were not right for ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... feels like it—well—pranks! She is the funniest creature that ever lived, I believe, and can mimic and imitate any mortal creature. She sat in the carriage this morning, and one might have fancied from her expression that she hardly heard a word, but I haven't a doubt that she could repeat every syllable that was uttered. Oh, here come the Bensons ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... the big windows, and the pictures off the walls.... Belike himself persaived I was flusthered, for, 'Take your time,' sez he; and after a while they stood steady enough. But, the Lord be good to me—sorra a syllable of the sinse come back. And be that I well knew it was all up wid me; and I was thinkin' me father's son had no business to be standin' there makin' a show of meself in the middle of Trinity College. So ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... radical magazines, whose style was so involved in his efforts to be both "different" and achieve an unremitting glitter, that he had recently received a petition to issue a glossary, was as amiable as a puppy in the society of his friends and when in the woods talked in words of one syllable and discovered a mighty appetite. His wife, who had demonstrated her originality by calling herself Mrs. Minor, was what is known as a spiffing cook and a top-notch dresser. She had, in fact, the most charming assortment of sports clothes in the camp. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... been told, nearly twice your age?" asked Madame Deberle with an appearance of profound interest, while Mademoiselle Aurelie cocked her ears so as not to lose a syllable of the conversation. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... of money for them." Whenever Zack found an opportunity of magnifying a friend's importance, he always rose grandly superior to mere matter-of-fact restraints, and seized the golden moment without an instant of hesitation or a syllable ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... and respectable characters do not deign to answer falsehood, or turn their attention from their sacred avocations by effectually repelling allegations which all men, women, and children, able to articulate a syllable, in the city of Montreal, have repeatedly pronounced to be utterly false, detestably ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... pills—whatever they may mean—Seidlitz powders, effervescing waters, and all that pharmacopoeia of aids to further indigestion, in which the afflicted who nurse their own diseases so liberally and innocently indulge, are tried in vain. I do not strain a syllable when I state that the worst forms of confirmed indigestion originate in the practice that is here explained. By this practice all the functions are vitiated, the skin at one moment is flushed and perspiring, and at the next moment it is pale, cold and clammy, while every other ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... a few more long and hard words, divided in the same manner, which you may first read by syllables, that is, one syllable at a time: ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... vowels, but especially the broad ones, have somewhat of a nasal sound when preceded or followed by m, mh, n, nn. No vowels are doubled in the same syllable ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... had attained the upright attitude, another peal of laughter came ringing from her lips, as wild as that with which she had announced her approach; but there was also in its tones a certain modulation that betokened scorn! Neither of us uttered a syllable; but, observing a profound silence, stood waiting to hear what she had to say. Another scornful laugh, and ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Atlas Building," Darrow smiled at her. "Well, here's a very good exposition in words of one syllable. I'll leave you the paper. Professor, what have you concluded ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... half-starved, ignorant brigand, gaining his living on the highways and byways by pilfering or assassination, that did not kneel on the church pavement and listen to orisons in an ancient tongue, of which he understood not a syllable, with a sentiment of Christian self-complacency to which Godfrey of Bouillon might have been a stranger. Especially those born towards the northern frontier, and therefore farthest removed from Moorish contamination, were proudest of the purity of their race. To be an Asturian or ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Spelling lessons may be taught at a more advanced age; but it will be found that a young child will learn to read much more quickly if they be dispensed with in the Primer. In words of more than one syllable, it is best to pronounce each syllable separately, car, pet,—po, ker,—and so on. In the lesson on "Things in the Room," point out each thing as the child reads the word, and indeed, wherever you can, try to associate the word with its actual meaning. Show a child the word ...
— Aunt Mary's Primer • Anonymous
... who (I was sure) must know Ann by sight, from having been in company with us once or twice, an address to —-, in —-shire, at that time the residence of my family. But to this hour I have never heard a syllable about her. This, amongst such troubles as most men meet with in this life, has been my heaviest affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must have been some time in search of each other, at the very same moment, through the ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... try it. Pit him and his kind against our keen-witted, sharp, aggressive young business men—men with business heads, business experience"—Bonner's emphasis on the first syllable was reinforced by a bang of the fist on the arm of his chair—"and, and, by gad! they'd be skinned alive—skinned out of their ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... too, that the same individualising of the Apostle, which led to his being thus greeted in the first thoughts of his risen Lord, led also to an interview with Him on that same day, about which not a syllable of detail is found in any Gospel, though the fact was known to the whole body of the disciples. For when the two friends who had met Christ at Emmaus came back in the night with their strange tidings, their eagerness to tell their joyful news is anticipated by the eagerness of the brethren ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... seen an angel from heaven who told me that your client was innocent." "Yes," said Mr. Mason, "and did he tell you how to prove it?" Unfortunately, in the dear old "American Anecdotes," there was not the name of any person, from one cover to the other, who would be responsible for one syllable of its charming stories. So there I was! And I went through library after library looking for that Roundhead song, and I could not find it. But when the time came that it was necessary I should know, I confessed ignorance. ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... erect, and gazed at it for a moment without a quiver in his glance. He looked taller, his face shone with a serenity that seemed to transfigure him. He stooped and picked up a handful of earth, and scattered it over the coffin crosswise. Then, in a voice so steady and clear that not a syllable was ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... that he can repeat, without the loss of a syllable, a discourse of fifteen minutes in length, of which he does not understand a word. Songs, too, in French or German, after a single hearing, he renders not only literally in words, but in notes, style, and expression. His voice, however, is discordant, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... anyhow. I may seem quiet to you, Lucinda, but if I do, it only shows all over again how little you know. This is a awful day an' if you knew how awful you'd be half way back to the barn right now. I ain't triflin'—I'm meanin' every word. Every syllable. Every letter." ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... was seated, and the first syllable, "Ex," was played with great success. It represented a scene ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... sense, enabled him to go straight to the point and to keep a firm hand upon the whole management of the case. No rambling or irrelevance was possible under him. His strong physique, and the deep voice which, if not specially harmonious, was audible to the last syllable in every corner of the court, contributed greatly to his impressiveness. He took advantage of his strength to carry out his own ideal of a criminal court as a school of morality. 'It may be truly said,' as he remarks, 'that to hear in their happiest moments the summing up of such ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... these that never fade the spirits elect Bind their resplendent locks.'' It should be noted that the proper spelling of the word is amarant; the more common spelling seems to have come from a hazy notion that the final syllable is the Greek word anthos, "flower,'' which enters into a vast ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... manifestation, to me. I am driven in sheer desperation to believe such testimonies and attainments as those of Teresa, if only to support my failing faith in the words of my Master. I had rather believe every syllable of Teresa's so-staggering locutions and visions than be left to this, that ever since Paul and John went home to heaven our Lord's greatest promises have been so many idle words. It is open to any man to scoff ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... the stranger and his horse, he went to Rustem, then asleep, and struck his staff violently on the ground, and having thus awakened the hero, he asked him, devil that he was, why he had allowed his horse to feed upon the green corn-field. Angry at these words, Rustem, without uttering a syllable, seized hold of the keeper by the ears, and wrung them off. The mutilated wretch, gathering up his severed ears, hurried away, covered with blood, to his master, Aulad, and told him of the injury he had sustained from a man like a black demon, with a tiger-skin cuirass and an iron ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... are practically made into one syllable, a thin space may be put before the apostrophe, except that don't, can't, won't, and shan't are consolidated. This use of a space serves to distinguish between the possessive in s and ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... same prosodial fault affects this name as that of Alexandria. In each name the Latin i represents a Greek ei, and in that situation (viz., as a penultimate syllable) should receive the emphasis in pronunciation as well as the sound of a long i (that sound which is heard in Longinus). So again Academia, not Academia. The Greek accentuation may be doubted, but ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... President of the Royal Academy, even though his Presidentship offer to do the nose with real carmine, and throw Judy and the little one into the back-ground, PUNCH would not give him a single eulogistic syllable unmerited. A word to the landscape and other perpetrators: none of your little bits for PUNCH—none of your insinuating cabinet gems—no Art-ful Union system of doing things—Hopkins to praise for one reason, Popkins ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... tardy blessing; for we are assured in the last pages of the book that he makes a marriage, which is a further step toward health and virtue. We are not assured that he conquers happiness either for himself or for his wife; and there is not a syllable to betray that he cherishes for her any romantic attachment. But the chances are that, in transforming and ennobling the Kurt heritage, he insures vigor and usefulness to his descendants. He bequeathes to them a more ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... rusty, pudgy steamboat lay at the down-stream side of the Foundry wharf. Her name was so long and her paddle-box so short, that the painter, beginning with ambitious large letters, had been compelled to abbreviate the last syllable. Her title ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... perfect in my list'ning ear, Yet nought but single darknes do I find. What might this be? A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire, And airy tongues, that syllable mens names On Sands and Shoars and desert Wildernesses. These thoughts may startle well, but not astound 210 The vertuous mind that ever walks attended By a strong siding champion Conscience.— O welcom pure-ey'd Faith, white-handed Hope, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... he read from the centre of the stage, with elocution true and syllable precise, Dryden's ponderous lines. The King nodded approvingly to the poet. The poet glowed with pride at the patronage of the King. The old-time audience were enchanted. Dryden sat with a triumphant smile as he dwelt upon his poetic lines and ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... hill,—I said, as neatly as if I had been a High-Church curate trained to snap at the last word of the response, so that you couldn't wedge in the tail of a comma between the end of the congregation's closing syllable and the beginning of the next petition. They do it well, but it always spoils my devotion. To save my life, I can't help watching them, as I watch to see a duck dive at the flash of a gun, and that is not what I go to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... conventional and mostly selfish standard. Moore could be a moralist, in this case, without any trouble, and with the advantage of winning Lord Lansdowne's approval; he could write some graceful verses which everybody would buy, and for the rest it is not hard to be a stoic in eight-syllable measure and a travelling-carriage. The next dinner at Bowood will taste none the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... simple and unaffected by his contacts with Europe, did none of the vulgar aping of the toady, coming away from the Peace Conference an unconscious provincial, who said "Eye-talian" in the comic-paper way, and Fiume pronouncing the first syllable as if he were exclaiming "Fie! for shame!"—an unspoiled Texan who must have cared as little what kings and potentates thought of him as a newsboy watching a baseball game cares for the accidental ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... is inevitable in the transition from one rule to another. The interesting point was that this exercise of tact and tolerance seemed to proceed not from any pressure of expediency but from a sympathetic understanding of the point of view of this people of the border. I heard in Dannemarie not a syllable of lyrical patriotism or post-card sentimentality, but only a kindly and impartial estimate of facts as they were and ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... the more thirsty the little rogues became. The idea of their perishing before our eyes was terrible. It would almost have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire cause of the catastrophe; but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered by their mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within. In the afternoon of the fifth day, to our inexpressible relief, some of the men returned with a supply of that fluid of which we had never ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... time, would swallow it themselves. Then they would obtain another morsel and apparently approach very near the nest, when their caution or prudence would come to their aid, and they would swallow the food and hasten away. I thought the young birds would cry out, but not a syllable from them. Yet this was, no doubt, what kept the parent birds away from the nest. The clamor the young would have set up on the approach of the old with ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... solidarity and stimulate class-consciousness! Jimmie would use these long words, which he had heard at meetings; but then, seeing that Lizzie did not understand them, he would go back and say it over again in words of one syllable. They had old man Granitch in a hole just now, and they must teach him a lesson, and at the same time teach the workers their power. Lizzie would sigh, and shake her head; for to her, old man Granitch was not a human being, but a natural phenomenon, like winter, or hunger. He, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... of feet in Boston, nor a pair of hands, either, that I'd rather have serve me than yours, no matter if they stumble and blunder all day! I shall love stumbles and blunders—if you make them. Now run home, and don't ever let me hear another syllable about ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... of that nature can exist to their writings. As to my own contributions I can only say that the Roman Story was read to my mother before it was published, and would have been read to you if you had happened to be at home. Not one syllable of censure ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... year. In the remarkable wood-cut with which "[Greek: OYTIS, NEMO]" commences, the object of which is not immediately apparent, it would seem that "VL." implied a play upon the initial letters of Ulysses and Ulricus. This syllable is put over the head of a person whose neck looks as if it were already the worse from unfortunate proximity to the terrible rock wielded by Polyphemus. I should be glad that "S.W.S." could see some manuscript verses in German, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... for them new assurances. You see, our spiritual on-rest is due to the fact that Humpy Joe's get-away left us broke, and we banked on you to pull us even. That first experience strained our credulity to the bustin' point, and—well, in words of one syllable, we come from Joplin." ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... loved his father with all his heart, and the letter had contained his father's last solemn blessing, of which not a single word remained whole; not even if one of those bits of floating paper that whirled and floated down the precipice had preserved a syllable of the message, was it in the power of human skill or strength to save it from reaching the bottom of the abyss and being swept away to the distant river by ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... them out. He declared to Lady Glencora every morning that it was only a question of time. "The vital spark is on the spring," said Sir Omicron, waving a gesture heavenward with his hand. For three days Mr. Palliser was at Matching, and he duly visited his uncle twice a day. But not a syllable was ever said between them beyond the ordinary words of compliments. Mr. Palliser spent his time with his private secretary, working out endless sums and toiling for unapproachable results in reference to decimal coinage. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... and a death in the bosom of his family. Cloridan cautiously put the sword's point in his throat, and there was an end of his dreams. Four other sleepers were despatched in like manner, without time given them to utter a syllable. After them went another, who had entrenched himself between two horses; then the luckless Grill, who had made himself a pillow of a barrel which he had emptied. He was dreaming of opening a second barrel, but, alas, was tapped himself. A Greek and a German followed, who had been playing ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... possessed very valuable information and to extort this they were placed in a line. The two first being questioned, answered, "No se" (I do not know), and were one after the other shot. The third also said "No se;" adding, "Fire, I am a man, and can die!" Not one syllable would they breathe to injure the united cause of their country! The conduct of the above-mentioned cacique was very different; he saved his life by betraying the intended plan of warfare, and the point of union in the Andes. It was believed that there were already six or seven hundred ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... christened "Tippy," also for a reason she could not or would not divulge. But one evening, to her secret amusement, Lilly found a sheet of paper in the litter of the desk, jotted all over with Zoe's joyous scrawl, "Zantippe," in every case the first syllable ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... emphasis strongly on the last syllable, and went at the neglected packing in earnest. Betty's train didn't go until nearly ten the next morning, but Helen left at nine and Madeline and Roberta ten minutes later, so there wouldn't be much time for anything ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... a vowel when it unites with a preceding vowel to represent a vowel sound, and y is a vowel when it has the sound of i, as in now, by, boy, newly. W and y are consonants at the beginning of a word or syllable. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the three, but it was impossible for the girls to hear a syllable. Instantly the sailor assisted Dubois and Mademoiselle Beaucaire to step down from the quay on board the smack. He followed them, and three other men, who appeared out of the chaos of sails and ropes, commenced to labour with a large ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... "Not a syllable, not a circumstance! The Queen of Navarre was far too much engrossed by the manoeuvres of her own bright eyes, to take heed of those of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... time-honored spirit that we owe the mysteries lying buried in every human word? In the word True do we not discern a certain imaginary rectitude? Does not the compact brevity of its sound suggest a vague image of chaste nudity and the simplicity of Truth in all things? The syllable seems to me ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... the old masters his life. And let it be especially observed, how extensive and how varied is the truth of our modern masters—how it comprises a complete history of that nature of which, from the ancients, you only here and there can catch a stammering descriptive syllable—how Fielding has given us every character of the quiet lake, Robson[65] of the mountain tarn, De Wint of the lowland river, Nesfield of the radiant cataract, Harding of the roaring torrent, Fielding of the desolate sea, Stanfield of the blue, open, boundless ocean. Arrange ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... to be." And now the Major spoke like an oracle, leaning forward on the table, uttering his words in a low voice, but very plainly, so that not a syllable might be lost. "When you remember how he ran at the Craven with 9 st. 12 lb. on him, that it took Archbishop all he knew to beat him with only 9 st. 2 lb., and what the lot at Chester are likely to be, I don't think that there can be seven to one against him. I should be very ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... R." on his collar. He carted human wreckage to the hospitals on the French front for two years before Uncle Sam decided to end the war. There's another one not long from the "Point," booted and spurred and moulded to his uniform. He speaks with a twang of old Virginia on every syllable and they say his family—but that has nothing to do with the fact that he is aid to a major general and is in these parts ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... days Muni Saraswata taught the Vedas to the ascetics. When the Vedas had been lost (in consequence of the Munis having forgotten them), Angirasa's son, seated at ease on the upper garments of the Munis (duly spread out), pronounced distinctly and with emphasis the syllable Om. And at this, the ascetics again recollected all that they had learnt before. It was there that the Rishis and the gods Varuna, Agni, Prajapati, Narayana also called Hari, Mahadeva and the illustrious Grandsire of great splendour, appointed ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... retorted the Billickin, throwing in an extra syllable for the sake of emphasis at once polite and powerful—'my informiation, Miss Twinkleton, were my own experience, which I believe is usually considered to be good guidance. But whether so or not, I was put in youth to a very genteel boarding-school, the mistress being ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... English Mercury, which appeared in April, 1588, and furnished food for Jonson's satire in his "Staple of News." His accusation has a familiar sound when he says that people had a "hunger and thirst after published pamphlets of news, set out every Saturday, but made all at home, and no syllable ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the music. To do this it is necessary to slur certain words and run others together; also, since the mistakes of Chaucer's copyists are repeated in modern editions, it is often necessary to add a helpful word or syllable to a line, or to omit others ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... [General Worth] knew nothing of the writer's purpose in writing the letter in question; that General Worth never saw it, and did not know, directly or indirectly, even the purport of one line, word, or syllable of it until he saw it in print; that this letter was not inspired by General Worth, but that both the "Tampico letter"—or rather the private letter to his friend which formed the basis of that letter—and this were written on ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... against combined Europe of the crippled French, the defection of the Saxons in the midst of the fight, the final driving of Napoleon across the Elster, the death of Poniatowski and the retreat to France. His voice was a deep, sonorous monotone and every syllable was caught eagerly by his auditors. They and the speaker were thoroughly at one in their intense German feeling. It was a celebration of triumph of the Fatherland. The significance of it all was not apparent, that ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... cowboy again—and I discovered that, on the whole, my estimate was incorrect. He's emphatically monosyllabic. I said sixteen nice things to him while I was waiting for Pete to wake up Saunders; and he answered in words of one syllable; one word, of one syllable. I'm beginning to feel that I've simply got to know that young man. There are deeps there which I am wild to explore. I never met any male human in the least like him. Did you? So ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... river Test into a number of streams, which again flow together to the south of the town, and at last, after a course of about seven miles, empty themselves into Southampton Water. But several derivations have been suggested for the first syllable of the name. Some writers derive it from Rome, and regard Romsey as a hybrid word taking the place of "Romana insula," the first word having been shortened and the second translated into Old English, or ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... must be well trained when to reply and to be neither too quick nor too slow in his replies. And not only he, but all the personages must be trained to speak composedly, and to fit convenient gesture to the matter of their speech. Nor must they foist in a syllable or clip one of the verse, but must enounce firmly and repeat what is set down for them in due order. Whosoever names Paradise is to ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... word is the town of Bui. The initial Bo or Bui is an old Northern name, signifying a colonist or settler, one who tills and builds. It was the name of a great many celebrated Northern kempions, who won land and a home by hard blows. The last syllable, well, is the French ville: Boswell, Boston, and Busby all signify one and the same thing—the town of Bui—the well being French, the ton Saxon, and the by Danish; they are half- brothers of Bovil and Belville, ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... her?" When I heard what she said, I gave her a kick in the breast and she fell over on to the edge of the estrade and struck her forehead against a peg there. I looked at her and saw that her forehead was cut open and the blood running; but she was silent and did not utter a syllable. She made some tinder of rags and staunching the wound with it, bound her forehead with a bandage; after which she wiped up the blood that had fallen on the carpet, and it was as if nothing had happened. Then she came ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... Caroline, and prevent her doing a more foolish thing, even if it were to be ultimately broken off by unforeseen circumstances. Caroline was as much absorbed by her own thoughts as I was during the ride, and not a syllable was exchanged between us till we were roused by the ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant jerking, hideous vibration that made his ideas spin round and round till they lost themselves in a whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead.... Only two days later came a letter in which not a syllable was written but 'We have heard THE CHIMES at midnight, Master Shallow,' and I knew he had discovered ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... playing from her first stumbling attempt at scales to the last simple waltz she had just learned. He attended many readings, beginning with words of one syllable, on up to such books as "The Leatherstocking Tales." He came in one day, however, as they were finishing a chapter in one of the Judge's favorite novels, and no sooner had Georgina skipped out of the room on an errand than he began to take her ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... marriage he settled with his young wife in Gainsborough, Tennessee, a mountain town on the Cumberland River, and here, in 1825, their first child, a boy, was born. They named him Orion—after the constellation, perhaps—though they changed the accent to the first syllable, calling it Orion. Gainsborough was a small place with few enough law cases; but it could hardly have been as small, or furnished as few cases; as the next one selected, which was Jamestown, Fentress County, still farther toward the Eastward Mountains. Yet Jamestown had the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the brass, and especially of the big drum, so filled my head with visions of Mr. Pickwick and his friend the Honourable Samuel Slumkey, that by the time I reached the market-place, I had forgotten every syllable of the speech which I had carefully learnt by heart. Nor was it the band alone that upset me; going up the hill the carriage was all but capsized by the frightened horses and the breaking of the pole. The gallant boiler-makers, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... volumes than authors, and looks with great admiration on the antique work of cobwebs. Printed books he contemns, as a novelty of this latter age, but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly, especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis between every syllable. He would give all the books in his study (which are rarities all,) for one of the old Roman binding, or six lines of Tully in his own hand. His chamber is hung commonly with strange beasts skins, and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... wholly accentual, except where accent and quantity happen to coincide. Much of the pronunciation of modern Italian may be traced in his remarkable accentuation of some words; like Italian, he both throws back the accent off a long syllable and slides it forward upon a short one. Assonance is used freely, but there is not more rhyming than is usual in the poetry of the late empire. Not only in pronunciation, but in grammatical inflexion, the beginnings of Italian here and there appear. The ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... cost me my place, at least, if it came to the Signor's ears. You must promise, lady, that nothing shall ever make you tell a syllable of the matter; I have been trusted in this affair, and, if it was known, that I betrayed my trust, my life, perhaps, might answer it. But I was concerned for you, lady, and I resolved ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... one or two Greek words? I would give anything to outshine Molly and make her look foolish, I would! She doesn't know one word of Greek—only Latin. Do, for pity's sake, tell me, if 'tis only one Greek word! and I won't say another syllable, not if Madam gives you a ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... prosperity in reward of his virtue. Heaven knows what form he expected this to take; but when he found himself in the store, he lost all courage; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a syllable of the fine phrases he had made to himself. He laid the cap on the counter without a word; the storekeeper came up and took it in his hand. "What's this?" he said. "Why, this is ours," and he tossed the cap into a loose pile of hats by the showcase, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... hall, not looking after me, but downward, and, as well as I could see, with the countenance of a man who has lost a game, and a ruinous wager too—that is black and desperate. I did not utter a syllable on the way up. When I reached my room, I began to reconsider the interview more at my leisure. I was, such were my ruminations, to have agreed at once to his preposterous offer, and to have been driven, while he smirked and grimaced behind my back at his acquaintances, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the test of his abilities, I appeal to the letter which he has dared to write to the board, and which I am ashamed to say we have suffered." Whatever that letter may be, I will venture to say there is not a word or syllable in it that tastes of such insolence and arbitrariness with regard to the servants of the Company, his fellow-servants, of such audacious rebellion with regard to the laws of his country, as are contained in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... maintain a lady in her two coaches a day, besides pages, monkeys, and paraquettoes, with such attendants as she shall think meet for her turn; and therefore there is more respect requirable, howso'er you seem to connive. Hark you, sir, let me discourse a syllable with you. I am to say to you, these ladies are not of that close and open behaviour as haply you may suspend; their carriage is well known to be such as it should be, both gentle ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... to say all this in self-justification. No member of the Bible Society would ever have heard a syllable respecting what I have undergone but for the question, 'What has Mr. Borrow been about?' I hope and trust that question is now answered to the satisfaction of those who do Mr. Borrow the honour to employ him. In respect to the expense attending the editing of such a work as the New Testament ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... and felt some misgivings about the result. The trepidation, however, soon passed away; and when Tazewell proceeded to establish point after point, and was in the full headway of his argument—a large audience, consisting of the ablest lawyers and statesmen of the Union, watching every syllable that fell from his lips, and following him through the mazes of his mighty plea—Randolph could restrain himself no longer, but said in a tone audible to those about him: "I told you so—I told you ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... valour!" At first there is an apparent incongruity between this high-sounding salutation and the bearing of the man to whom it was addressed. Surely such an address is far-fetched and fulsome; yet subsequent events prove that every syllable of it was deservedly true. Gideon was a mighty man of valour, and God was with him. The heavenly messenger read beneath the outward passing incident, and saw under the clumsy letters of the palimpsest the deep and holy characters which were awaiting ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... half-forward, half-backward step, as if they wanted to go on and could not, accompanying it, every time the right foot was raised, with an energetic, broken song, which, dying away, was again and again sounded—"hay-a, hay-a, hay-a," they went, laying the emphasis on the first syllable. A drum, similar to, though larger than a tambourine, covered with parfleche,[46] was beaten upon with a stick, producing with the voices ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... throat or smothering her, in concert, perhaps, with his friends Southey and Coleridge; and if he had thus found himself released from an engagement which had become irksome to him, or possibly from the threat of an action for breach of promise, then there is not a syllable in the poem with which he crowns his crime that is not alive with meaning. On any other supposition to the ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... of Prince Albert, now King of the Belgians. The African fever was in his veins. He heard that a mission was about to depart for Zanzibar and East Africa. A knowledge of English was a necessary part of the equipment of the chief officer. Francqui wanted this job but he did not know a syllable of English. He went to a ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... equal to the dulness. Herodotus, the only author Mr. Mitford here follows, expressly declares (I. v., c. 96) that Hippias sought to induce Artaphernes to subject Athens to the sway of the satrap and his master, Darius; yet Mr. Mitford says not a syllable of this, leaving his reader to suppose that Hippias merely sought to be restored to his country through the intercession of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thought my name would prove [Footnote: There is a play upon the name [Greek: Aias], the first syllable of which is an ejaculation of sorrow unreproduceable in English.] So correspondent to the bearer's state? Once and again that syllable of woe, Being with woe o'erwhelmed, I may repeat. My father once, from this Idaean land, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... might he mix freely with living folk. In ancient India, under similar circumstances, the supposed dead man had to pass the first night after his return in a tub filled with a mixture of fat and water; there he sat with doubled-up fists and without uttering a syllable, like a child in the womb, while over him were performed all the sacraments that were wont to be celebrated over a pregnant woman. Next morning he got out of the tub and went through once more all the other sacraments he had formerly partaken of from his youth up; in particular, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... his manifold critical observations on the Prussian campaigns of 1793-94 in the Vosges, talks a great deal about hills and valleys, roads and footpaths, but does not say a syllable about mutual strength. ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... "and let no syllable escape thee. Knowest thou not the young Lee, whom they call Albert, a malignant like his father, and one who went up with the young Man to that last ruffle which we had with him at Worcester—May we ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... doubt and contradiction? if it be not that the princes of that art, applying themselves with a peculiar attention to cull out portentous words and to contrive artificial sentences, have so weighed every syllable, and so thoroughly sifted every sort of quirking connection that they are now confounded and entangled in the infinity of figures and minute divisions, and can no more fall within any rule or ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... I was roused by the plaintive three-syllable call of an evening bird—a nightjar common in these woods; and was surprised to find that the sun had set, and the woods already shadowed with the twilight. I started up and began hurriedly walking homewards, thinking of Rima, and was consumed with impatience to see her; and as ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... spoken together, the one in English and the other in the ancient tongue of Khem, yet he had heard each syllable separately and comprehended both utterances perfectly. He felt a cold grip of fear at his heart as he looked towards the mummy-case, and, as his fear had warned him, it was empty. Then he looked at his daughter, and as their eyes ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... in the first and second folio, there is a syllable too much for rhythm; and the corrector properly abbreviates "Who would" into one syllable; but he does it, not by striking out all of "would" but the d, as a forger of modern days inevitably would have done: he scrupulously leaves the l, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... appear that Stoughton doubted as much as one syllable of this remarkable set of prevarications. The Union Army had learned by bitter experience that Stonewall Jackson was capable of materializing almost anywhere. So he climbed out of ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... memory for words in a similar way. Use simple words of one syllable, making five lists with eight words ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... Phronsie, at each syllable grasping Polly around the throat in perfect terror, and waving him off with a very crumpled, mangy bit of paper, that had already done duty to wipe off the copious tears during her anxious watch. "Don't let ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... maintain at first, but practice will make the habit unconscious. An instrument called a metronome may be had from a music shop (used for keeping time in practising), if a book be read aloud by the stammerer, pronouncing one syllable only to each beat, he will soon gain ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... so chaste and tender is his ear, In suffering any syllable to pass, That he thinks may become the honour'd name Of issue to his so examined self, That all the lasting fruits of his full merit, In his own poems, he doth still distaste; And if his mind's piece, which he strove to paint, Could ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... venting its spleen in papers the bourgeois never read, in pictures they don't trouble to understand. John Bull's indifference to the 'new' criticism is one of the most pleasing features of the time. Probably he has not yet heard a syllable of it, and, if he should hear, he would probably waive it aside with, 'I have something more to think of than these megrims.' And so he has. While these superior folk are wrangling about Degas and Mallarme, about 'style' and 'distinction,' he is doing the work ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... I should deem myself dishonored if my lips ever betray a syllable of the secret projects of my emperor!" ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... I tell you earnestly and authoritatively (I KNOW I am right in this), you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable—nay, letter by letter. For though it is only by reason of the opposition of letters in the function of signs, to sounds in the function of signs, that the study of books is called "literature," and that a man versed in it is ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... When we toss up the ball on the point of a stick Palamedus himself might have envied the trick; O Muse of the Loves and the Laughs and the Games, Come down and assist me, for, true to your aims, I have ruled off this paper in syllable squares. Come, help me— ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac |
