"Diminutive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in sight, rising in an amphitheatre to a ridge studded with villas; the houses of the old town being crowded about the port. Sweeping round the mole, we found ourselves in a diminutive harbour, among vessels of small burthen. This basin is surrounded on three sides by tall gloomy buildings, of the roughest construction, piled up, tier above tier, to a great height. A man-of-war's boat shoves off from the shore in good style, and lands the Count's ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... as the Street of Tailors, and Curiosity Street, they differ only in the appearance of the article exposed for sale. They are quite narrow and used only by pedestrians. The only quadruped I recollect seeing in them was a diminutive jackass, standing before a shop in "Old China Street." How he came there, or for what purpose, I could not determine. It may have been out of compliment to the "Foreign Devils," that his long ears were exhibited; but if his position was ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... The innominate artery, 2, is the first to arise from it; the left common carotid, 6, and the left subclavian artery, 5, spring in succession. These vessels being destined for the head and upper limbs, we find that the remaining branches of the thoracic aorta are comparatively diminutive, and of little surgical interest. The intercostal arteries occasionally, when wounded, call for the aid of the surgeon; these arteries, like all other branches of the aorta, are largest at their origin. Where these vessels spring from G, the descending ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... more worthy of contemplation, and that at the same time tend to place the dispositions of our ancestors in a more amiable point of view, than the creation of this airy and fantastic race. They were so diminutive as almost to elude the organs of human sight. They were at large, even though confined to the smallest dimensions. They "could be bounded in a nutshell, and count themselves ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... have to start at the bottom?" she had protested. "You have never been quite fair to him, Clay." His boyish diminutive had stuck to him. "You expect him to know as much about the mill now as you do, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stood in such singular contrast that no stranger would have ever taken them for brothers,—Mark being, as we have before described him, a good-sized, and, in the main, a good-looking man; while the other, whom we have introduced as Arthur Elwood, was of a diminutive size, with commonplace features, and a severe, forbidding countenance, made so, perhaps, by intense application to business, together with the unfavorable effect caused by ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... that he was in debt to the extent of some 10 or 11 shillings; but as he felt that by refusing to pay the sum he would be striking a blow for the liberty of the subject, he manfully held out against what he considered an unjust punishment for such diminutive frivolities as he had indulged in." . . . At times incidents of a disturbing and playful nature have roused the wrath of the Chairman and Secretary to a pitch awful to behold. At one time Mr. H. (a member who soon resigned) spent a considerable part of a meeting under the table, till ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... rock-rabbit, but the savour of what the rock-rabbit had stored under the stone that had attracted Thor. And this booty still remained—a half-pint of ground-nuts piled carefully in a little hollow lined with moss. They were not really nuts. They were more like diminutive potatoes, about the size of cherries, and very much like potatoes in appearance. They were starchy and sweet, and fattening. Thor enjoyed them immensely, rumbling in that curious satisfied way deep down in his chest as he feasted. And then ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... time Maurice was ready to put his theories and studies into practice on an extensive scale. Compared with modern armaments, the warlike machinery to be used for liberating the republic from its foreign oppressors would seem almost diminutive. But the science and skill of a commander are to be judged by the results he can work out with the materials within reach. His progress is to be measured by a comparison with the progress of his contemporaries—coheirs with him of what Time ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... comfortable,—with pipe in mouth, and in full unbuttoned ease, his bushy cauliflower wig laid aside, by reason of the heat, reposed Dr. Small. Small, indeed, was somewhat of a misnomer, as applied to the worthy doctor, who, besides being no diminutive specimen of his kind, entertained no insignificant opinion of himself. His height was certainly not remarkable; but his width of shoulder—his sesquipedality of stomach—and obesity of calf—these were unique! Of his origin we know nothing; but presume he must, in some way ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Emily was used during the last century as a diminutive for Amelia. There is really no etymological connection ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... springless wagon. Naturally, the women and children were relegated to the wagons, and were there huddled together like so much live stock destined for the market. The men scrambled and even fought for the diminutive donkeys that were to bear them over the mountain pass. A circus knows no comedy like ours on that occasion. It is true we had but twelve miles to traverse, and some of these were level; but by and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... house-top, where the family would assemble with their dogs and cats, as on a pastoral lawn; there were no windows, and in my grandfather's expression, 'there was really no demonstration of a house unless it were the diminutive door.' He once landed on Ronaldsay with two friends. The inhabitants crowded and pressed so much upon the strangers that the bailiff, or resident factor of the island, blew with his ox-horn, calling out to the natives ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... or ring by way of handle, but close to the edge, and about half-way between top and bottom, I distinguished a diminutive keyhole, outlined with shining metal. I let the curtain drop again, though lingeringly. It could be only a cupboard, or a particularly secure wine cellar, perhaps, behind this dwarfish door, yet had I discovered it ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... diminutive stature and deformed from his birth. His physical infirmity, susceptible temperament, and incessant study rendered his life one long disease. He was, as his friend Lord Chesterfield said, "the most irritable of all the genus irritabile vatum, offended with trifles and never forgetting or ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... was very large for the size of the town. The diminutive town hall, which in reality was nothing but a watch-house, seemed to be a mere incident on its irregular expanse, to which the two-storey shops and dwellings made a low border. Behind this crimson, blue-slated border rose the loftier forms of a church ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... boy wants a drop of cognac! Get him some father!" The reluctant farmer procured a big bottle and a very diminutive glass known as the "petit verre," which held about a thimbleful. Paul would congratulate the good dame on her keen perception. At this period ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... in the crowd made a remark about the diminutive size of the speaker, and the ludicrous figure he would cut as a general, at which ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... after my arrival, I was again visited by the Gypsy of the withered arm, who I found was generally termed Paco, which is the diminutive of Francisco; he was accompanied by his wife, a rather good-looking young woman with sharp intelligent features, and who appeared in every respect to be what her husband had represented her on the former ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... by man, who loves, obeys, and enjoys. Nothing is gained by attributing to nature vicegerent forces. Is it not preferable to say that she responds to intelligent, loving Omnipotence? Our finiteness is illustrated by our initiation into organized being. Emerging from a rayless atom, too diminutive for the sight, we gradually develop and advance to the maturity of those conscious powers, the exercise of which furnishes indubitable evidence of our immortality. We are pervaded with invisible influences, which, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... leader of the second squadron of Arabs which joined the Egyptian armament against the crusaders. Tasso says of the Arabs, "Their accents were female and their stature diminutive" (xvii.).—Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered (1575). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... tiny figure are wrought out is the more admirable. The attitude is that of a man flinging himself forth in the abandon of a violent leap, with legs and arms extended. His straining muscles are indicated with perfect faithfulness, and even the veins in the diminutive hand and the nails of the tiny fingers are clearly marked. The hair had been formed by curling strands of thin gold wire inserted in the skull. There can be no doubt that these figures formed part of a scene like that of the toreador fresco, for the violent ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... sealing-wax. The cans were acting with outrageous perversity, for they were second-hand and the covers ill-fitting. Her blood was almost up to fainting heat, and she was worried all over. She had to do all her preserving in a pint cup, as she expressed it in her contempt for the diminutive proportions of the saucepan which she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... here our magnifiers blessed our panting hopes with specimens of conscious existence. In the shade of the woods we beheld brown quadrupeds having all the external characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any species of the bos genus in our natural history.' Then herds of agile creatures like antelopes are described, 'abounding on the acclivitous glades of the woods.' In the contemplation of these sprightly animals the narrator ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... he was a small gas-bag of diminutive size, beneath which was suspended a little car, the most ridiculous little travesty of an airship I have ever seen. He was nosing along at about 800 feet and making ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... said the emperor, stopping her diminutive elephants. "Do help him, please. There, now, Zenobia and her daughter are almost out of sight. Put your eggs and things in the cart, Will,—I mean in the chariot. Now let's start. Billy, you can walk in front ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... the educated village of Stockbridge nothing can be imagined more charming than the panorama that the course presents on a busy day. Across the soft, green stretches, diminutive caddies may be seen scampering with long buckling-nets, while from the river-banks numerous recklessly exposed legs wave in the air as the more socially presentable portions hang frantically over the swirling current. Occasionally an enthusiastic golfer, driving from the eighth or ninth tees, may ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... a question of some uncertainty. Is its cause something of absolute and substantive existence without me, or is it not? Is its cause something of the very same nature, as the thing that gave me a similar sensation in a matter of comparatively a pigmy and diminutive extension? ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... comes from the Greek words biblos (Matt. 1:1) and biblion (diminutive form) (Luke 4:17), which mean "book." Ancient books were written upon the biblus or papyrus reed, and from this custom came the Greek name biblos, which finally came to be applied to the sacred books. See Mark 12:26; Luke ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... round the garden, where they discovered a statue by Mahoudeau, very badly placed in a corner near the eastern vestibule. It was the bathing girl at last, standing erect, but of diminutive proportions, being scarcely as tall as a girl ten years old, but charmingly delicate—with slim hips and a tiny bosom, displaying all the exquisite hesitancy of a sprouting bud. The figure seemed to exhale a perfume, that grace which nothing can ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... matter of fact, the property was considerable; but Durant noticed that its owner applied the endearing diminutive to every object that appealed specially to his egotism. It was a peculiarity of the Colonel that he was ready to melt with affection over the things that belonged to himself, and was roused almost to ferocity by whatever interested ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... this stove sits, at least in wealthy houses, a black slave, whose name is generally a diminutive in token of familiarity or affection; in the present case it was Soweylim, the diminutive of Salim. His occupation is to make and pour out the coffee; where there is no slave in the family, the master of the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... diminutive of Anastasia; Nastenka, the same. Russian caressing names generally end in sia, sha, ousha, or oushka—as Vasia, (for Ivan;) Andriousha, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Tenerife that any traveller has ever written of any place. He confesses to having kept a meagre diary, not intending to publish a mere book of travels, and drew his picture probably from recollection and diminutive note-books. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... wall, leaving the Esplanade wholly unencumbered except by the soldiers. Down between the two ranks, which were formed facing each other, came the Sultan on a white steed—a beautiful Arabian—and having at his side his son, a boy about ten or twelve years old, who was riding a pony, a diminutive copy of his father's mount, the two attended by a numerous body-guard, dressed in gorgeous Oriental uniforms. As the procession passed our carriage, I, as pre-arranged, stood up and took off my hat, His Serene Highness promptly acknowledging the salute by raising ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... The locus is the mountains of Tirol. Laurin, the diminutive dwarf-king, has a rose-garden the trespasser upon which must lose a hand and foot. The arrogant Witege, Dietrich's man, wantonly tramples down the roses; whereupon Laurin assails him, in knightly fashion, on horseback. 2: The 'pommel' of ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... are here and there some huge white slabs of rough-hewn limestone, in consequence of which even carts drive round it instead of through it. In the very middle of an astoundingly dirty square rises a diminutive yellowish edifice with black holes in it, and in these holes sit men in big caps making a pretence of buying and selling. In this place there is an extraordinarily high striped post sticking up into the air, and near the post, in the interests ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... cook-room or kitchen of merchantmen on deck; a diminutive substitute for the galley of a man-of-war. It is generally furnished with ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... we found ourselves opposite a beach bordered by a broad line of surf, which indicated that the water here was very shallow for some distance from the shore. Both the surf and the beach seemed to be alive with black children, so diminutive were the forms who disported themselves in the breakers, or ran up and down upon the sand with the eagerness and agility generally displayed by boys at the seaside. As to the real ages of these people, however, we were ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... from three to four hundred yards wide below the cascade but in many places very shallow. The banks, bottom, and adjacent hills are formed of a mixture of sand and clay. The ground was overspread with small willows and the dwarf birch, both too diminutive for fuel, and the stream brought down no driftwood. We were mortified to find the nets only procured one salmon and five white-fish, and that we had to make another inroad upon ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... the second, if not the first place for fashion and life. Beyond this Ch'ang Men was a street called Shih-li-chieh (Ten Li street); in this street a lane, the Jen Ch'ing lane (Humanity and Purity); and in this lane stood an old temple, which on account of its diminutive dimensions, was called, by general consent, the Gourd temple. Next door to this temple lived the family of a district official, Chen by surname, Fei by name, and Shih-yin by style. His wife, nee Feng, possessed a worthy and virtuous disposition, and had a clear perception ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... much higher estimate of the negro character. It is impossible to see a negro and not feel kindly towards him; such cheerful, open, honest expressions and such fine muscular bodies. I never saw any of the diminutive Portuguese, with their murderous countenances, without almost wishing for Brazil to follow the example of Hayti; and, considering the enormous healthy-looking black population, it will be wonderful if, at some future day, it does not take place. There is at Rio a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... this plebeian perennial, meekly content with waste places, is rapidly inheriting the earth. Its beautiful spikes of butter-colored cornucopias, apparently holding the yolk of a diminutive egg, emit a cheesy odor, suggesting a close dairy. Perhaps half the charm of the plant—and its charms increase greatly when it is grown in a garden—consists in the pale bluish-green grass-like leaves with a ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Clatsops, Chinnooks, Cathlahmahs and Wac-ki-a-cums resemble each other as well in their persons and dress as in their habits and manners.- their complexion is not remarkable, being the usual copper brown of most of the tribes of North America. they are low in statue reather diminutive, and illy shapen; possessing thick broad flat feet, thick ankles, crooked legs wide mouths thick lips, nose moderately large, fleshey, wide at the extremity with large nostrils, black eyes and black ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... most women will understand, began to fashion scraps of embroidery and odds and ends of lace and insertion into tiny yokes and bands. After many a long day's work she sat by the shaded lamp finishing the diminutive garments with stitches worthy of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... drawers, sent to me by Nickola, and also the Rev. Mr. Brooks' "Family Prayer Book." This gave me great satisfaction. Soon after, he returned with his captain, who had one arm slung up, yet with as many implements of war, as his diminutive wicked self could conveniently carry; he told me (through an interpreter who was his prisoner.) "that on his cruize he had fallen in with two Spanish privateers, and beat them off; but had three of his men killed, and himself wounded in the arm"—Bolidar turned to me and said, "it is a d—n ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... the conditions are very dissimilar. In the first place the machine owing to its diminutive size as compared with the airship, offers a small and inconspicuous target. Then there is its high independent speed, which is far beyond that of the airship. Furthermore its mobility is greater. It can wheel, turn sharply to the right or to the left, and pursue an irregular undulating ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... and interesting interview to-day with a gaudily dressed and rather diminutive lieutenant, who applied for a passport to the Mississippi River, via Chattanooga, and insisted upon my giving him transportation also. This demand led to interrogatories, and it appeared that he was not going under special orders of the adjutant-general. It was unusual for ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... be more and more planted by them in the waste sand: intrusive chaos, and Triglaph held at bay by them," till at last in 1240, seventy years after the great Bear's death, they fortify a new Burg, a "little rampart," Wehrlin, diminutive of Wehr (or vallum), gradually smoothing itself, with a little echo of the Bear in it too, into Ber-lin, the oily river Spree flowing by, "in which you catch various fish;" while trade over the flats and by the dull streams, is widely possible. Of the Ascanien race, the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... broken hills until they reached a summit. From that point on, now and again the road elbowed into view of a wide plain, and in the center of the plain there was a diminutive ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... broad avenue, through the final arch of which, as through a huge Gothic window, I saw the hall in the distance. Everything about me looked strange, rich, and lovely. Accustomed to the scanty flowers and diminutive wood of my own country, what I now saw gave me a feeling of majestic plenty, which I can recall at will, but which I have never experienced again. Behind the trees which formed the avenue, I saw a shrubbery, composed ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... but varying shape and colour—diminutive bodies ovate and round—brown, grey, glossy black with brown edgings, pink with grey quarterings and grey fringe, whence radiate five sprawling slender "legs," a foot or so long. Though doubtful in appearance, more in consonance with the creepy imagery of a nightmare ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... resembling, as he comes back to me, the General Winfield Scott who lived so much in our eyes then. The oddity may well even at that hour have been present to me of its taking so towering a person to produce such small "drawing-cards"; it was as if some mighty bird had laid diminutive eggs. Mr. Coe, of a truth, laid his all over the place, and though they were not of more than handy size—very small boys could set them up in state on very small desks—they had doubtless a great range of number and effect. They were scattered far abroad ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... There in the doorway stood Major Cowan, and by his side was a neatly uniformed, diminutive member of the Royal Flying Corps. The men scrambled hastily to their feet. Yancey upset his chair with a clatter as he unwound his long, thin legs ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... our Lord's action. But it is also to be considered in the light of the woman's quick-witted retort, which drew out of it an inference which we cannot suppose that Christ did not intend. He uses a diminutive for 'dogs,' which shows that He is not thinking of the fierce, unclean animals, masterless and starving, that still haunt Eastern cities, and deserve their bad character, but of domestic pets, who live with the household, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... publishers so manage that he is identified with me. By strange coincidence, they hit upon a cover for his book which is almost a facsimile of the cover of my pamphlet novel, "An Original Belle," previously issued. The R in the name of this unfortunate man has been furnished with such a diminutive tail that it passes for a P, and even my friends supposed that the book, offered everywhere for sale, was mine. In many instances I have asked at news stands, "Whose book is that?" The prompt and invariable answer has been, "E. P. Roe's." I have seen book notices in ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... represented a condemned delinquent, suffering on, and still interminably on, in hell, thus complaining of the unfairness of his probation: "Oh, had it been possible for me to conceive even the most diminutive part of the weight and horror of this doom, I should have shrunk from every temptation to sin, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... had grown six inches out at sea, and though still short, was not diminutive; he was a small Apollo, a model of symmetry, and had an engaging, girlish beauty, redeemed from downright effeminacy by a golden mustache like silk, and a tanned cheek that ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... her to marry him, and she accepted him joyously, undismayed by the diminutive proportions ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Reno I meet a lone Washoe Indian; he is riding a diminutive, scraggy-looking mustang. One of his legs is muffled up in a red blanket, and in one hand he carries a rudely-invented crutch. "How will you trade horses?" I banteringly ask as we meet in the road; and I dismount ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... 'onher! Shure, it's only the sixth time these three weeks. Doesn't meself like to see yer smiling face, onyhow!" Here Mrs. Donahue commences complimenting the Judge in one breath, and laying no end of charges at the door of the very diminutive and harmless Mister ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... and ran out of the room. At dinner Sipiagin ordered champagne, and before drinking his son's health made a speech. He spoke of the significance of "serving the land," and indicated the road he wished his Nikolai to follow (he did not use the diminutive of the boy's name), of the duty he owed, first to his family; secondly to his class, to society; thirdly to the people—"Yes, my dear ladies and gentlemen, to the people; and fourthly, to the government!" By degrees Sipiagin became quite eloquent, with his ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... The diminutive Echo of those days (October 13 and 14, '85) followed suit of the Pall Mall Gazette and caught lightly the sounds as they fell from the non-melliferous lips of the charmer who failed to charm wisely. The precious article begins ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Inschriften, vol. i. xxxi. 1. 1, where the dwarfs and pigmies who came to the court of the king, in the period of the Ptolemies, to serve in his household, are mentioned. Various races of diminutive stature, which have since been driven down to the upper basin of the Congo, formerly extended further northward, and dwelt between Darfur and the marshes of Bahr-el-Ghazal. As to the Danga, cf. what has been said on p. 226 of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the mantel-piece, of which I knew by heart the pearls about the high and powdered "heads;" the velvets circling the white throats; the swell of the full muslin kerchiefs: the pattern of the lace sleeve-ruffles. Upon the mantel- shelf there were two china vases, some relics of a diminutive tea- service, as smooth as enamel and as thin as egg-shell, and a white centre ornament, a classic group in alabaster, preserved under glass. Of all these things I could have told the peculiarities, numbered the flaws or cracks, like any clairvoyante. Above all, there was a pair ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Flossie's features were so very correct. She had a correct little nose, neither straight nor aquiline, but a distracting mixture of both, and a correct little mouth, so correct and so small that you wondered how it managed to display so many white teeth in one diminutive smile. Flossie's eyes were not as her mouth; they were large, full-lidded, long-lashed, and blacker than her hair. No wonder if the poor clerk who passed her on her way to and fro in the City rejoiced as they looked up at him. She might be ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... no need of names, your highness." Georges Desmarets was diminutive, black-haired and corpulent. He was of dapper appearance, point-device in everything, and he reminded you ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... shrug. Ruan is a small town that faces Troy across the diminutive harbour, or perhaps I should say that Troy looks down upon it at this slight distance. When a Trojan speaks of it he says, "Across the water," with as much implied contempt as though he meant Botany Bay. There is no ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... hinder part of the skull. Altogether this man appeared so different from the rest, that for some time he was supposed to belong to a different class of people, but I afterwards often observed the same configuration of head combined with dark coloured skin and diminutive stature.) ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Emmet is a very old variation of Emma, and sometimes spelt Emmot; Sens is a corruption of Sancha, naturalised among us in the thirteenth century; and Collet or Colette, the diminutive of Nichola, a common and favourite name in the ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... kingdom kept in awe for above a year in daily dread of utter destruction, not by a powerful invader at the head of twenty thousand men, not by a plague or a famine, not by a tyrannical prince (for we never had one more gracious) or a corrupt administration, but by one single, diminutive, insignificant, mechanic. ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... short grave wrapped in fogs near Fort St. John; of fair curls and sweet childish limbs, and a mouth shouting to send echoes through the river gorge; of scamperings on the flags of the hall; and of the erect and princely carriage of that diminutive presence the men had called "my ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the machine no one yet really knows, but we had to be ignominiously towed, to the great amusement of the natives, at the end of a long rope by the power of a diminutive donkey which finally came along. The beast did not look as though he could draw a perambulator, but he buckled down to it with a will, and brought us safely through the half-kilometre or so of crooked streets which led to the centre ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... metal is always considered the property of the Captain-General, but his scribe avails himself of a lingering farewell at the door, to hint an immediate and pressing need for "a very small darkey!" Next day, the diminutive African does not appear; but, as it is believed that Spanish officials prefer gold even to mortal flesh, his algebraic equivalent is unquestionably furnished in ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... were strung out round the course, each with a "shepherd" standing to attention near its bridle, watch in hand. They could see Jim's great form standing sentinel over a tiny animal, whose diminutive rider was far too afraid of the huge Major to try to snatch even a yard of ground; nearer, Wally kept a wary eye on the experienced jockey on the blacksmith's racing mare, who was afraid of nothing, but nevertheless had a certain wholesome ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Leonora had evolved in solitude from their respective individualities was dissipated instantly. The parlour became nothing but the parlour, with its glass partition, its antimacassars, its Meshach by the hob, and its diminutive Hannah uttering fatuous, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... to enter this Castle, but besides being hung a little above the ground there seemed to be neither doors nor windows. She had no doubt (though really I cannot think why) that the moment had come in which to use the nut which had been given her. She opened it, and out came a diminutive hall porter at whose belt hung a tiny chain, at the end of which was a golden key half as long as the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... concerned your honour: no, Sir; I would be as delicate in such, as you yourself: more delicate, I will venture to say, because more uniformly so. How vain, how contemptible, is that pride, which shows itself in standing upon diminutive observances; and gives up, and makes a jest of, the most ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... light their lamps; and so by the jetties where foreign crews rest with elbows on bulwarks and stare down upon us idly through the dusk. She is after all but a little cutter of six tons, and we might well apologise, like the Athenian, for so diminutive a corpse. But she is our own; and they never saw her with jackyarder spread, or spinnaker or jib-topsail delicate as samite—those heavenly wings!—nor felt her gallant spirit straining to beat her own record before a tense northerly breeze. Yet even to them her form, in pure white with ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and my residence, but now I must introduce my grandmother; my dear, excellent, grandmother, whom I loved so much when she was living, and whose memory I shall ever revere. In person she was rather diminutive, but, although sixty years of age, she still retained her figure, which was remarkably pretty, and she was as straight as an arrow. Never had age pressed more lightly upon the human frame; for, strange to say, her hair was ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... scarcely possible to imagine any place more completely wretched. It was a swamp, containing a small space of firm ground at one end, and almost wholly unadorned with trees of any sort or description. There were, indeed, a few stinted [sic] firs upon the very edge of the water, but these were so diminutive in size as hardly to deserve a higher classification than among the meanest of shrubs. The interior was the resort of wild ducks and other water-fowl; and the pools and creeks with which it was ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... smoothly, in places, as to appear artificially levelled with the chisel; large tracts of it are covered with the Indian fig (cactus). In the shade of these grotesque growths lives a dainty flora: trembling grasses of many kinds, rue, asphodel, thyme, the wild asparagus, a diminutive blue iris, as well as patches of saxifrage that deck the stone with a brilliant enamel of red and yellow. This wild beauty makes one think how much better the graceful wrought-iron balconies of the town would look if enlivened with blossoms, with pendent carnations or pelargonium; ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... varieties of the Peruvian sheep, the llama, the one most familiarly known, is the least valuable on account of its wool. It is chiefly employed as a beast of burden, for which, although it is somewhat larger than any of the other varieties, its diminutive size and strength would seem to disqualify it. It carries a load of little more than a hundred pounds, and cannot travel above three or four leagues in a day. But all this is compensated by the little ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... of a sucking-pig, linked together like a chain in its belly. Apart from this it is boneless. Had Aristotle known this, Aristotle who records as a most remarkable phenomenon the fact that the fish known as the small sea-ass alone of all fishes has its diminutive heart placed in its stomach, he would ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... "Voyage to Lilliput" the follies and vanities of individuals and of parties are ridiculed by the representation of their practice among diminutive beings. Sir Robert Walpole suffered in the person of Flimnap the Lilliputian Premier, Tories and Whigs in the High-Heels and Low-Heels, Catholics and Protestants in the Big-endians and Small-endians. In the "Voyage to Brobdingnag," where Gulliver finds himself ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... leg, took his boot in his hands and gave a slight twist to the heel. There was a little click, and a sort of double drawer shot out of the front of the sole. It contained two sheafs of bank notes and a number of diminutive articles, such as a gimlet, a ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... race, not only on account of its undoubted antiquity, and, compared with other families, its well authenticated lineage, but also because of its many branches and subdivisions, ranging in size from the majestic and massive Clumbers to the diminutive toys which we are accustomed to associate with fair ladies' laps and gaily-decked pens ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... reign of Zeno[A] in Byzantium the power in the West was held by Augustus, whom the Romans used to call by the diminutive name Augustulus because he took over the empire while still a lad,[B] his father Orestes, a man of the greatest discretion, administering it as regent for him. Now it happened that the Romans a short ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... which might well belong to a woman between sixty and seventy, so faded it was and reticulated with wrinkles; and into a pair of eyes that wavered between ingenuousness and a childish cunning; and from them down to her slim ankles and a pair of dancing-shoes, so fairy-like and diminutive that they seemed scarcely to press ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... was speaking we had turned from the terrace and were nearing the Mazet—which diminutive of the Provencal word mas, meaning farm-house, is applied to the farm establishment at Vielmur partly in friendliness and partly in indication of its dependence upon the great house, the Chateau. At the arched entrance we found the farm family awaiting us: Old Jan, the steward of the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... on his spectacles and looked at the little hirelings more critically. Their youth and diminutive size had been a shock to him. He had expected bouncing children with rosy faces, long auburn hair, and a good deal of well-developed leg showing beneath a short frock. These, measured against his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... before the most remarkable specimen of the industry of an animal. It was a hut or bower close to a small meadow enameled with flowers. The whole was on a diminutive scale, and I immediately recognized the famous nests described by the hunters of Bruiju. After well observing the whole I gave strict orders to my hunters not to destroy the little building. That, however, was an unnecessary ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... ground in front of his assembled visitors. After this ceremony had been also repeated by the familiar, Chongi then took the gourd and twig, and sprinkled the contents all over us; retired to the Uganga, or magic house—a very diminutive hut—sprinkled pombe over it; and, finally, spreading a cow-skin under a tree, bade us sit, and gave us a jorum of pombe, making many apologies that he could not show us more hospitality, as famine had reduced his stores. What politeness in the midst of such barbarism!!! ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... indignant French, and grew angrier every moment as she found herself still loftily ignored. A warm fracas was in prospect, when a passing American fortunately cleared up the complication; the woman would have called in a gendarme unhesitatingly, to enforce her diminutive claim. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... carroty-haired little fellow, with a snub nose and eyes so diminutive and deeply sunken, that but for the sparks of light they emitted, they would have been undiscernible. The expression of his face was like that of a wiry terrier, being derived partly from his occupation, which, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the parents the child was never addressed as "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practical opinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not been baptized after his father, or after any male member of either the Machin or the Cotterill ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... it may, time soon matured this instrument of recreation into an engine of destruction; and the intended palliative of care and labour has proved the fostering nurse of innumerable evils. This diminutive cube has usurped a tyranny over mankind for more than two thousand years, and continues at this day to rule the world with despotic sway—levelling all distinctions of fortune in an instant by the fiat of its ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... pocket a diminutive vial, the smallest I had ever seen, in which were a number of little white granules, about the size of the head of a pin. A printed label was wound around the vial, and it bore the word "Arsenicum." It passed from hand to hand, and ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... furnished, and altogether a luxurious place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up in such a way that the modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me, that, among these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of modern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... to Mrs. Williams's room, where we found Mr. Allen the printer, who was the landlord of his house in Bolt-court, a worthy, obliging man, and his very old acquaintance; and what was exceedingly amusing, though he was of a very diminutive size, he used, even in Johnson's presence, to imitate the stately periods and slow and solemn utterance of the great man.—I this evening boasted, that although I did not write what is called stenography, or short-hand, in ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... crooked withal, his height being little more than that of the tall bird[A] which loves to strut along the sandy shore, picking up the fish as they flutter joyously along in the beams of the warm and cheering sun. But if he was diminutive in body he was great in his soul—what others lacked in wisdom he supplied. His name was Ohguesse, which signifies a Partridge. His brothers gave him this name because of his preferring peace to war—of his liking better to hunt ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... his circumstances that he was even then negotiating (so it was rumoured) with a travelling company of clowns and acrobats, who had had the misfortune to lose their performing dwarf, for the sale of his diminutive daughter Filomena. Sir Hercules arrived in time to save her from this untoward fate, for he was so much charmed by Filomena's grace and beauty, that at the end of three days' courtship he made her a formal offer of marriage, which was accepted ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... death (unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of his daily life. It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy, with three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a diminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof. Behind stood an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. One Mr. Bagford, otherwise unknown to us, had once "walked into the country" on purpose to ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... declares his voice was as unmusical as the sound of a broken tin whistle. Of him Lecky writes:—"Richard Lalor Shiel forms one of the many examples history presents of splendid oratorical powers clogged by insuperable natural defects. His person was diminutive and wholly devoid of dignity. His voice shrill, harsh, and often rising to a positive shriek. His action, when most natural, violent, without gracefulness, and ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... has not attained to the same exceptionally fine development as the flora. At Rawak the phalanger and the sheepdog in a wild state were the only quadrupeds met with. In Waigiou, the boar called barberossa, and a diminutive of the same race were found. But as to the feathered tribe, they were not so numerous as one might have supposed; the plants yielding grain necessary for the sustenance of birds not being able to thrive ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... psychology there was a strange mingling of the pitiful and comic—among a division (the 35th) known as the Bantams. They were all volunteers, having been rejected by the ordinary recruiting-officer on account of their diminutive stature, which was on an average five feet high, descending to four feet six. Most of them came from Lancashire, Cheshire, Durham, and Glasgow, being the dwarfed children of industrial England and its mid-Victorian cruelties. Others were from London, banded together ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... saying, "Nosis," that is, my grandchild. When he awoke, he actually heard the word repeated, and looking around, he saw a tiny little animal hardly big enough to be seen on the plain. While doubting whether the voice could come from such a diminutive source, the little animal said to him, "My grandson, you will call me Bosh-kwa-dosh. Why are you so desolate? Listen to me, and you shall find friends and be happy. You must take me up and bind me to your body, and never put me aside, and success in life shall attend you." ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the ward came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary. The one seemed as incurable as the other. Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the vocabulary on memorable occasions—to no avail; ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... The diminutive Duc de Fronsac never failed, when he came to pay his respects to the Queen at her toilet, to turn the conversation upon Trianon, in order to make some ironical remarks on my father-in-law, of whom, from the time of his appointment, he always spoke as ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... presented on the walls of ancient temples of Libya and the Thebaid, moved about in leather-girdled blue linen tunics and hide sandals, keeping account of the laden panniers, roped upon the backs of diminutive asses and carried to the winepresses as fast ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... strata of the middle class—the small trades-people, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... little book is this diminutive ancestor of the modern English Dictionary, to describe which adequately would take far more time than the limits of this lecture afford. It is divided into three parts: Part I contains the hard words with their ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... of water widens and very slowly we move from the quay, being dragged ignominiously backward across the great basin in which we lie by a diminutive steamer called a tug. We are not out in the river yet and our own engines have not begun to work. You can understand that it would be very difficult to load a ship if she stood always in the river, where there are rising and falling tides, so, to make this ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... summer-house. The brilliant contrast between its vermilion pilasters and its pale yellow wall, the delicate moulding of its slender bricks and the elaborate elegance of its decoration, not to omit its pleasing, though diminutive proportions, arising from the wild green turf of this melancholy region, can scarcely fail of affecting with at least a spark of fancy, the flattest spirit of this work-day world. For my own part, I should be much less disposed to pronounce it a temple than a tomb; and, in fact, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Arabic architecture in the Assembly Room, which seems to me to have been built upon a design of Palladio, and might be converted into an elegant place of worship; but it is indifferently contrived for that sort of idolatry which is performed in it at present: the grandeur of the fane gives a diminutive effect to the little painted divinities that are adorned in it, and the company, on a ball-night, must look like an assembly of fantastic fairies, revelling by moonlight among the columns of a ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... and broken hinges. Rhoda Gray's eyes traveled sharply around her in all directions. It was still light enough to see fairly well, and she might at some future time find the bearings she took now to be of inestimable worth. Not that there was much to remark! They crossed a diminutive and disgustingly dirty backyard, whose sole reason for existence seemed to be that of a receptacle for old tin cans, and were confronted by the rear of what appeared to be a four-story tenement. There was a back door here, and, on the right of the door, fronting the yard, a single window ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... at the boxes and I must confess that, as my eye traveled along the rows of impassive faces and noted the perfect though diminutive features, the tiny ears, the bristling hair, the frowning eyebrows—so discordant with the placid expression and peacefully closed eyes—a chill of horror crept over me. The whole thing was so unreal, so unnatural, so suggestive ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... back from his forehead, and rather suspended than poised. He stood before a table on which old newspapers were scattered, one of which he had taken up and, with his eye-glass on his nose, was holding out at arm's-length. It was that honourable but extremely diminutive sheet, the Journal de Geneve, a newspaper of about the size of a pocket-handkerchief. As I drew near, looking for my Galignani, the tall gentleman gave me, over the top of his eye-glass, a somewhat solemn stare. Presently, however, before I had time ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... stage made its appearance, with its four spirited horses, and the baggage was put on. Trunks, which were diminutive in size compared with those now used, were put on the rack behind, securely strapped; valises and packages were consigned to the depths of a receptacle beneath the driver's seat, and bandboxes were put on the top. The back seat was generally given to ladies and elderly gentlemen, while young men ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... given in the report, but more correctly Creacan or Criocan. It is used to express anything diminutive, when applied to potatoes, it means they are small ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... what is the history of the name,' said Albinia; 'it sounds like nothing but the diminutive of ewer. I hope she will not be the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him—a fear which deepened into speechless shaking horror when he stormed out at her in one of his black rages. Some women would have taken to drink, others to religion. Mrs. Thalassa sought consolation in two packs of diminutive and dog-eared cards. Her shattered spirit found something inexpressibly soothing in the intricacies of patience: in the patchwork of colour, the array of sequences, the sudden discovery of an overlooked move, the dear ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... since there are no hopes for thee of her returning favour—since some praise may lie for thy ingenuousness, having neither offered [as more diminutive-minded libertines would have done] to palliate thy crimes, by aspersing the lady, or her sex—since she may be made easier by it—since thou must fare better from thine own pen than from her's—and, finally, since thy actions have manifested that thy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... instigation of their riders, and jostling and knocking against one another in a way that would have disgusted any other pony in the world. Conspicuous among the crowd of riders, was the thirty-rupee Prime Minister, who on a most diminutive little animal, charged about in a way he never could have condescended to do, had he had the misfortune to have still remained a Rajah. Each time that the ball was sent into the goal, the striker, picking it up dexterously, without dismounting, came again at full ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... echoing, dreary house to which "Ecky" had returned with the hand of death already on his shoulder; a vision, too, of the long, rough country lad, perhaps a serious courtier of the lasses in the hawthorn den, perhaps a rustic dancer on the green, who had first earned and answered to that harsh diminutive. And I asked myself if, on the whole, poor Ecky had succeeded in life; if the last state of that man were not on the whole worse than the first; and the house in Randolph Crescent a less admirable dwelling than the hamlet where he saw the day and grew to manhood. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the anaemias is made still more complicated in that the diminutive cells do not preserve their normal shape, but assume the well-known irregular forms: pear-, balloon-, saucer-, canoe-shapes. Nevertheless in good dry preparations the smallest forms usually still shew the central depression. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... of a whistle answered, then the crunch and grind and scream of biting brake-shoes—and the big mountain racer, the 1012, pulling the second section of the Limited that night, stopped with its pilot nosing a diminutive figure in a torn and silver-buttoned uniform, whose hair was clotted red, and whose face was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... asked Danny Griswold, who had been prancing the deck like a diminutive admiral, stopping now and blowing a cloud of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... in placing the last cigar, assuming that they each will play in the best possible manner? The size of the table top and the size of the cigar are not given, but in order to exclude the ridiculous answer that the table might be so diminutive as only to take one cigar, we will say that the table must not be less than 2 feet square and the cigar not more than 41/2 inches long. With those restrictions you may take any dimensions you like. Of course we assume that all the cigars are exactly alike in every respect. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... but "Madam" walks the streets clad in sealskin and silk, a "Gainsborough" crowning her false "bang." I always think of Max O'Rell's clever saying, when I see her: "The sweat of the American husband crystallizes into diamond ear-rings for the American woman." My janitress sports a diminutive pair of those jewels and has hopes of larger ones! Instead of "doing" the bachelor's rooms in the building as her husband's helpmeet, she "does" her spouse, and a char- woman works for her. She is one of the drops in the tide that ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... only.' The force of the word when placed at the end is peculiar. Then it often has a diminutive or disparaging signification. 'He lived for their sakes,' and not for any more worthy reason. 'He gave sixpence only,' is an insinuation that ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... virtues and simple manners of humble life with which they may be contemplated. A man must be very insensible who would not be touched with pleasure at the sight of the chapel of Buttermere, so strikingly expressing, by its diminutive size, how small must be the congregation there assembled, as it were, like one family; and proclaiming at the same time to the passenger, in connection with the surrounding mountains, the depth of that seclusion in which ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... evidently was, had a meagre, wan, countenance; and a diminutive form. The servant ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... myself in the saddle," continued Huldbrand. "and seized the reins firmly, when a wonderful little man stood at my side, diminutive, and ugly beyond conception. His complexion was of a yellowish brown, and his nose not much smaller than the rest of his entire person. At the same time he kept grinning with stupid courtesy, exhibiting his huge mouth, and making a thousand ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... turned puritan, ill-husbandry in masquerade; whither people come, after toping all day, to purchase, at the expense of their last penny, the repute of sober companions: a rota-room, that, like Noah's ark, receives animals of every sort, from the precise diminutive band, to the hectoring cravat and cuffs in folio; a nursery for training up the smaller fry of virtuosi in confident tattling, or a cabal of kittling critics that have only learned to spit and mew; a mint of intelligence, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... that he had something on his hook, and with immense pride he flourished in the air a diminutive blackfish—so small that the Hermit proposed to use it for bait, a suggestion promptly declined by the captor, who hid his catch securely in the fork of two branches, before re-baiting his hook. Then Harry pulled out a fine perch, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... century stone screen-work round the choir side of the ambulatory, particularly at the back of the reredos and the north-east portion adjacent to it, is very interesting work. The lower part is panelled with tracery in low relief, with the arches springing from diminutive heads. All the shafting is ornamented with a small ball-like enrichment. Above the panelling is some open tracery of beautiful design. By reference to the plan it will be seen that much of this original screen-work has been ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... spaniel named Gyp that is particularly friendly with the cats. There are plenty of hens on the farm, and one spring a couple of bantams were added to the stock. The cats immediately took a great fancy to these diminutive bipeds, and watched them with the greatest interest. Finally the little hen had a flock of chickens. As the weather was still cold, the farmer put them upstairs in one of the barns, and every day Gyp would take seven or ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... to their every-day plodding life with vacant brains and unexpanded souls, while Archibald Mackie, in his non-suggestive hovel, gathered big thoughts and exalted ideas, and grew majestic in intellect, even as he was diminutive in his outward frame. Not a stone upon the waste before him but could tell him its thrilling tale of weary heads pillowed thereon, when all other resting-places failed; of scanty meals spread out upon them for ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... form of nouns is derived from these two classes, called diminutive nouns. These are formed by the termination "ens" or ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... statement, it is impossible not to credit rather the explanation given by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, moreover, affords the practically definite proof that the boy was at first, as a term of endearment, called "Pennini," which was later abbreviated to "Pen." The cognomen, Hawthorne states, was a diminutive of "Apennino," which was bestowed upon the boy in babyhood because he was very small, there being a statue in Florence of colossal ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... happened. Instead of running away, the boy took a step forward, and the man paused, scarcely believing his eyes. Another step forward, and yet another, came the diminutive figure, until almost within the aggressor's reach; then suddenly, quick as a cat, it veered, dropped upon all fours to the floor, and head first, scrambling like a rabbit, disappeared into the ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... up, the hoofs gilded and tied together over the right shoulder, to leave the right arm disengaged to strike, its head clothing the human head within, as Alexander, on some of his coins, looks out from the elephant's scalp, and Hercules out of the jaws of a lion, on the coins of Camarina. Those diminutive golden horns attached to the forehead, represent not fecundity merely, nor merely the crisp tossing of the waves of streams, but horns of offence. And our fingers must beware of the thyrsus, tossed about so wantonly by himself and his chorus. The pine-cone at its top ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... what is he, that hath hitherto been able to hide such an encircling, all-mastering Spirit, "he possesses every Quality that Art could have charm'd by: yet hath lent it to and concealed it in Nature. The Comprehensiveness of his Imagination must be truly prodigious! It has stretched out this diminutive mere Grain of Mustard-seed (a poor Girl's little, &c.) into a Resemblance of that Heaven, which the best of good Books has compared ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... facts a strong presumptive case having been made out, Mr. Watkins was thenceforth known not as Ezekiel or Emanuel, or whatever his original first name had been, but as Liver-Eating, or among friends by the affectionate diminutive of Liv for short. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... an excellent pasture plant for stock, they do not relish it so highly as some other pasture plants; when forming seed, it is least valuable for horses, owing to the extent to which it salivates them. Its diminutive habit of growth unfits it for making meadows, unless in conjunction with other hay plants. In nutritive properties, it is placed ahead of medium red clover. Some growers have spoken highly of it as a pasture plant ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... article in No. 16., "on Pet Names," had not been Scottish, I should have been less surprised at the author's passing over the name of Jock, universally used in Scotland for John. The termination ick or ck is often employed, as marking a diminutive object, or object of endearment. May not the English term Jack, if not directly borrowed from the Scottish Jock, have been ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... common reading is, in tympanidis rogum inlatus est. This passage has been the occasion of as many different opinions concerning both the reading and the sense as any passage in the whole treatise. Tympanum is used for a timbrel or drum, tympanidia a diminutive of it. Lambinus says tympana "were sticks with which the tyrant used to beat the condemned." P. Victorius ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in size, from the diminutive, fancy doily, for ornament rather than use, through all gradations, up to the largest sized dinner napkin. In using these do not spread over the entire lap, nor fasten under the chin bib-fashion, nor in the buttonhole, and, if a man, do not tuck in the vest pockets. All these are fashions ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke |
