"Monosyllabic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... relations, after the manner of Aristotle, though not into ten, but into forty categories, or genera, or great classes, such as World, Element, Animal, and apparently species of animals, such as Bird, Fish, Beast: for each of these great classes he devised a monosyllabic name—e.g., De for Element, Za for Fish; each of these genera is subdivided into species indicated by the addition of a consonant, and these are again subdivided into subordinate species distinguished by a vowel affixed. For example—De means an Element, any of the four, Fire, ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... his own acquaintance and of his own years said of him, "We were all his lacqueys." Here we have in anticipation the aged Goethe whose Jove-like presence put Heine out of countenance; the god "cold, monosyllabic," of Jean Paul. But behind the stiff demeanour, in youth as in age, there was the mercurial temperament, the etwas unendlich Ruehrendes, which made him a problem at all periods of his life even to those who knew him most intimately. He has himself noted his youthful ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... opened it with a smile, and a glance which the vender of wine might probably have taught her himself after too large potations of his own spirituous manufactories. I was ushered into a small parlour—where sat, sipping brandy and water, a short, stout, monosyllabic sort of figure, corresponding in outward shape to the name of Briggs—even unto a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... speech the old man made during his visit, unless an occasional monosyllabic reply to a question could be thought so. He remained, by Sir Edward' positive order, until the following day; for having delivered his message, and receiving its answer, he was about to take his departure that evening, thinking he might get a good piece on his road homewards, as it ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... and painstakingly what of his great stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thornton was whittling the last touches on an axe-handle he had made from a stick of birch. He whittled and listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terse advice. He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty that it would not ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... his feet, obeying the monosyllabic summons, and followed Mr. Boner around the partition. Mr. Boner rated a private office, where he could worm information, trade secrets, and occasional concessions from travelling salesmen. There was nothing social about the ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... what was Donnegan to him? What was Donnegan but a worthless tramp? Without any answer to that last monosyllabic query, the brakie hunched forward, and began to work his ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... trying speculation of all. How big a boy's feet invariably look in a fashionable sister's eyes! how long his arms, and how shapeless his hands! Poor blushing youth, is not the ordeal worst for himself, at that period when he scarcely dares trust the most modest of monosyllabic discourses to be articulated by those lips that are warning a waiting public of the dawn of whiskerdom! Freddy, once so lithe and graceful and pretty, had been transformed into an ungainly being, all length, without breadth or thickness. He had not even the advantage of the average ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... quadrille, though I saw, or fancied I saw, the scowl on Mr. Vernor's sour countenance grow deeper as I led her away. My perseverance was not rewarded by any very interesting results, for my partner, who was either distressingly shy, or acting under constraint of some kind, made monosyllabic replies to every remark I addressed to her, and appeared relieved when the termination of the set enabled her to rejoin ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... and adorned with pictures by Frith and Goodall. Sally, who unfortunately knew no fear, talked defiantly; she addressed herself principally to her brother, and she questioned him persistently, although the replies she received were generally monosyllabic. As he chewed his meat with reflection and precaution, broke his bread with deliberate and well- defined movements, and filled his mouth with carefully chosen pieces, he gradually ventured to decide that he would not ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... observed complete silence in his presence: she acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of the head, and in reply to certain perfunctory queries of his—which he put to her in order to justify his appearance—she either nodded or gave curt monosyllabic answers through ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to dinner on the Sunday, and was well entertained with a fat chicken and a bit of bacon, for the Laffans were well-to-do people. She thoroughly enjoyed her dinner, though she spoke little and that little monosyllabic; but Margret was taciturn even as a girl, and her solitary habit for years seemed to have made speech more difficult for her. Mrs. Jack heaped her plate with great heartiness and made quite an honoured guest of her. But outside enjoying the dinner Margret did not seem to ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... a series of councils in the long house, or town-hall. Croghan made the Indians a present from the Governor of Pennsylvania; and he and Gist delivered speeches of friendship and good advice, which the auditors received with the usual monosyllabic plaudits, ejected from the depths of their throats. A treaty of peace was solemnly made between the English and the confederate tribes, and all was serenity and joy; till four Ottawas, probably from Detroit, arrived with a French flag, a gift of brandy ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... physiology, we are again completely baffled. The Coptic has been identified through many etymologies with the old Egyptian; and of the Coptic, though it became a dead language in the twelfth century, much literature remains. It is an uncultivated and formal tongue, with monosyllabic roots and rude inflexions totally different from the neighboring languages of Syria and Arabia, totally opposite to the copious and polished Sanscrit. The last fact at once severs Egypt from India, and destroys every presumption of affinity that may arise from the presence in both ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... and on, its only vehemence induced by the muddy ruts in the road. Mistress Benton, using every force to keep awake, interjected monosyllabic exclamations and questions. The two maids, exerting all their powers to fall asleep, gave little ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... monosyllables, (the most rudimentary form of speech), or of monosyllables pieced into words in the stiffest, most unwieldy manner, stuck together, as it were, with nothing to join them, wherefore this kind of language has been called agglutinative. Chinese belongs to the former class of languages, the "monosyllabic," Turkish to the latter, the "agglutinative." Further, the Turanians were probably the first to invent writing, but never went in that art beyond having one particular sign for every single word—(such is Chinese writing ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... of two, three, or more explanations. This is especially true of some of our commonest monosyllabic surnames. Bell may be from Anglo-Fr. le bel (beau), or from a shop sign, or from residence near the church or town bell. It may even have been applied to the man who pulled the bell. Finally, the ancestor may have been a lady called ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... declaration she brought a saber-edged heel down square upon the most afflicted toe of a very sore foot which the Tyro had been nursing since a collision in the squash court some days previous. Involuntarily he uttered a cry of anguish, followed by a monosyllabic quotation from the original Anglo-Saxon. The girl turned upon him a baleful face, while the long-distance conversationalist on the dock reverted to his original possession and faded from sight in a series of ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in the Dutchman's footsteps, and when they were inside, he listened intently as Peter recited a monosyllabic chant over the feather. "The chant is easy enough to learn," Peter assured him. "You will ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... off side by side. The first emotion of their meeting having passed away, he found it easier to talk to her, and he did so in an odd monosyllabic way which she yet found interesting. All her life she had been somewhat peculiarly situated with regard to companionship. Her father, having once taken her abroad and once to London for the season, considered that ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... freedom of the domestic circle, Clarence forgot Susy's capricious commands of yesterday, and began to address himself to her in his old earnest fashion, until he was warned by a significant knitting of the young lady's brows and monosyllabic responses. But in his youthful loyalty to Mrs. Peyton, he was more pained to notice Susy's occasional unconscious indifference to her adopted mother's affectionate expression, and a more conscious disregard of her wishes. So uneasy did he become, in his sensitive ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... not able to live on laughter, as they appeared to be, so presently turning to my acquaintance, who had told me his name was the plain monosyllabic An, and clapping my hand on his shoulder as he stood lost in sleepy reflection, said, in a good, hearty way, "Hullo, friend Yellow-jerkin! If a stranger might set himself athwart the cheerful current of your meditations, may such a one ask how far 'tis to ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... group; but he was kept back by the thought, "Would it not be a very great condescension on his part? Would it not be familiar? and would he not thereby lose his importance?" And in consequence of such reflections he always remained in the same dumb state, uttering from time to time a few monosyllabic sounds, and thereby earning the name of the most wearisome ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... lodgings which I had taken on Hampstead Heath. Each—for they were all very short—was written at a sitting, and all had their origin in true stories which had been told me in the heart of Quebec itself. They were all beautifully illustrated in the Illustrated London News, and in their almost monosyllabic narrative, and their almost domestic simplicity, they were in marked contrast to the more strenuous episodes of the Pierre series. They were indeed in keeping with the happily simple and uncomplicated life of French Canada as I knew it then; and I had perhaps greater joy in writing them and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there are not wanting evidences of a former monosyllabic tendency. The syllable bu, bun, or bung, for instance, occurs in a considerable number of words ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... English' of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. The Chinese at Maimaichin can reckon in Russian and understand the rudiments of that language very well. I observed at Maimaichin, as at San Francisco, the tendency to add an 'o' sound to monosyllabic consonant words. A Chinese merchant grew familiar during one of my visits, and we exchanged lingual lessons and cards. He held up a tea-spoon and asked me its name. I tried him repeatedly with 'spoon,' but he would pronounce it 'spoonee' in spite of my instructions. When I gave ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the young woman wished to go alone. I drank three cups of coffee, which accounted for my wakefulness later, and shamelessly watched the tableau before me. The woman's protest evidently went for nothing: across the table the man grunted monosyllabic replies and grew more and more lowering and sullen. Once, during a brief unexpected pianissimo in the music, her voice came ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ride Steve's bearing toward the third member of the party was too plain to escape notice, for he never looked at nor directed a word to Allison unless it was in reply to a direct question, and then his answers were almost monosyllabic. But Allison, who, as usual, gave his undivided attention to the country through which they were passing, in attitude toward the ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... was left alone with his father, he found that his best efforts at conversation elicited only monosyllabic replies, and at last, in the despairing desire to bring things to a head, he asked him if he had received his letter. An affirmative monosyllable, followed by the hissing of Lord Ashbridge's cigarette end as he dropped it into his coffee cup, answered him, and ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... zenith and sank slowly. It grew cooler in the forest through which he lurched, but he was hardly aware of it. Claire, too, was rapidly losing control over herself. She had ceased to talk, save to utter dull, monosyllabic commands to him. The pain from her ankle and her own thirst were blending into a dizzying maze ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... apt to become monosyllabic when a certain train of thought was forced on him. Also a short deep line of frown appeared under the white scar: but Christopher had not yet learnt to pay full heed to these signs: also he had a predilection for getting at the root ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... medium height, slender, dark. He was taciturn to the point of monosyllabic conversation, and the perpetual, smiling sneer on his face had gotten on ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... deny, my dear, that I have brought men—fluent conversationalists—round here for a pleasant evening's debate only to see them become abstracted and monosyllabic directly ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... if she were fully sensible of the want of politeness in Mrs. O'Connor's mode of praising. "But, my lord," pursued she, "you wrong Captain Andrews, if you attribute his monosyllabic replies either to stupidity or timidity. You have not guessed the reason why he never gives on any subject more ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... material, nouns, objects, verbs and movements were used. The words were always concrete, not abstract, by which it is meant that their meaning was capable of demonstration to the senses. With the exception of a few later specified series they were monosyllabic words. The nouns might denote objects of any size perceptible to the eye; the objects, however, were all of such a size that they could be shown through a 14x12 cm. aperture and still leave a margin. Their size ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... broke the trail. In silence followed close behind them the Missioner with his smooth-bore. In silence followed the French and half-breeds and Crees. Now and then came the sharp clink of steel as rifle barrel struck rifle barrel. Voices were low, monosyllabic; breaths were deep, the throbbing of hearts like that of engines. Here were friends who were meeting for the first time in months, yet they spoke no word of each other, of the fortunes of the "line," of wives or children. There was but one thought in their brains, pumping the blood ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... monologue was wasted on the moon, for no one argued with her. Grim led the way-off the highroad now, and down dark defiles that set the camels moaning, while their riders yelled alternately to Allah and apostrophized their beasts in the monosyllabic camel language. Camels hate downhill work, especially when loaded, and fall unless told not to in a speech they understand, in that respect ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... have also appealed to the growing taste for poetry that was less ornate and studied. His practice was to use a large number of concrete monosyllabic words of Anglo-Saxon origin to describe objects and forces common to rural life. A simple listing of the common nouns from the opening of "Fragment I" will serve to illustrate this tendency: love, son, ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... everybody were equally monosyllabic, how then? You would not get amused," suggested ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Her monosyllabic answers were perfectly colorless, and, with this last, she picked up an empty dish, and vanished. I endeavored to laugh, but there was no response in the eyes of the woman opposite. She dropped her fork, ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... of the Coptic language appear to have been generally monosyllabic, and the derivatives have been formed by a very simple system of prefixing, inserting, and affixing certain letters, which have usually undergone but little change, not having been incorporated with the root, nor melted down by crasis, nor softened ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... comfortably monosyllabic and disjointed, as is the breakfast talk of two people who understand each other. Amicable silence was the rule, broken only by the rustle of paper, the clink of china, an occasional, "Toast, dear?" And when Buck, in a low, vibrating tone (slightly muffled ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... were at first shy and silent, Eunane only giving me more than a monosyllabic answer to my remarks, and even Eunane never speaking save in reply to me. A trivial incident, however, broke through this reserve, and afforded me a first taste of the petty domestic vexations in store ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... conqueror when with a suffering, anxious human being, beseeching his aid. His left-hand neighbour, the wife of a Frankfort banker, who chatted rapidly about the architecture of the dining-hall and the Wagner performances at Bayreuth, received monosyllabic, hesitating replies, while he talked eloquently to the lady on his right, the hostess, upon the influence of ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the fire, and himself sprawled on the hearthrug at her feet. Already tall and strong beyond his years and confident in the full flush of his adolescence he had launched into a glowing anticipation of the life that lay before him. He had noticed that his mother's answers were monosyllabic and vague, and then when he had broken off, hurt at her seeming lack of interest, she had suddenly spoken—telling him what she had all the evening nerved herself to say. Her voice had faltered once or twice but she had steadied ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... give my love to your mother!" the child answers, "Yes, Mrs. Smith." In all monosyllabic replies a child must not say "Yes" or "No" or "What?" A boy in answering a gentleman still uses the old-fashioned "Yes, sir," "No, sir," "I think so, sir," but ma'am has gone out of style. Both boys and girls must therefore ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... might do very well together. Mrs. Robarts did attempt to bring about a joint conversation, which should include the three, and for ten minutes or so she worked hard at it. But it did not thrive. Miss Grantly was monosyllabic, smiling, however, at every monosyllable; and Lucy found that nothing would occur to her at that moment worthy of being spoken. There she sat, still and motionless, afraid to take up a book, and thinking ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the moment of her arrival, and, when a monosyllabic comment from the taciturn group threatened to reveal to the girl the threatened outbreak of the feud, he went ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Blavatsky makes some statements which are quoted here and which should be borne well in mind in considering what follows. "The Second Race had a 'Sound Language,' to wit, chant-like sounds composed of vowels alone." From this developed "monosyllabic speech which was the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard consonants still in use among the yellow races which are known to the anthropologist. The linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... hurt him that the good man—who usually approved of everything that Apollonius wanted to do, in advance, as if the latter could not do anything that he would not be obliged to approve—received his news with odd, wondering, monosyllabic coldness. He pressed him to tell him the reason for this change. The two good men understood each other easily. After recovering from his surprise at finding Apollonius in ignorance of it, the councilman told him ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... Frenchmen. And the hearer who caused him, there, that artistic sense, one might almost call it thrill of satisfaction—-was a Frenchman! All that was expressed on the part of this appreciative listener, being uttered by him instantaneously in a half-whispered, monosyllabic ejaculation. As we have already explained upon an earlier page, the Readings which took place in Paris, and which were in behalf of the British Charitable Fund in that capital, were given there ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... correspondents who have sent you specimens of monosyllabic poetry, I have seen no one who has quoted this very singular passage from Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island. It is far more striking than anything you have yet inserted on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... Europeans, but even to adopt in a measure their customs and their habits of thought, will raise them to the rank of a superior nation. The language of this people advances but slowly in the direction of grammatical perfection. Like many other Oriental tongues, it was at first purely monosyllabic; but as the Pali or Sanskrit has been liberally engrafted on it, polysyllabic words have been formed. Its pronouns and particles are peculiar, its idioms few and simple, its metaphors very obvious. It is copious to redundancy in terms expressive of royalty, rank, dignity—in ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... house, knew not where to turn for comfort. Often during her sleepless nights the Chevalier's carriage stopped before the door, the heavy strong-box was carried upstairs, the Chevalier flung out a few harsh monosyllabic words of command, and then the doors of his distant room were sent to with a bang—all this she heard, and a flood of bitter tears started from her eyes. In a state of the most heart-rending anguish she called upon Duvernet time after time, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... tongue, its proper parent, is attended with advantages that go far to compensate for all that is consequently lost in euphony, or in the liberty of transposition. Our formation of the moods and tenses, by means of a few separate auxiliaries, all monosyllabic, and mostly without inflection, is not only simple and easy, but beautiful, chaste, and strong. In my opinion, our grammarians have shown far more affection for the obsolete or obsolescent terminations en, eth, est, and edst, than they really ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... faltered out nonsense, while the two, hearing his voice, betook themselves to the upper terrace. Had her husband seen them? Vickers wondered. Something in the man's perfect control, his manner of listening to Vickers's phrases, made him feel that he had seen—all. But Lane in his ordinary monosyllabic manner pointed to a nest of ground sparrows beside the path. "Guess we had better move this establishment to a safer place," he remarked, as he carefully put the nest ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... undisturbed by what was about him, while he heard all that was said, and said little or nothing himself. His followers respected this privacy, and left him alone. He was their prophet, and had a right to seclusion. He was their chieftain, and while he sat in his monosyllabic solitude, his ragged tail reclined in various attitudes about him, and occasionally one man spoke, or another swore. Newspapers and tobacco were their resource in ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Miss Clarkson groaned inwardly. Was he only a little monosyllabic machine? The infant regarded with calm eyes the sweep of the New York landscape across which the train was passing. His patron opened the new novel with which she had happily provided herself, plunged ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... and matter-of-fact by nature, exact and careful in practical matters, and to a high degree imitative and industrious, the Chinese are singularly devoid of imagination and indisposed to philosophy. Their monosyllabic and uninflected language, belonging to one of the earliest strata of human speech, and ill fitted to express abstract or poetical ideas, is an index to their whole nature. If an awakening, as various signs appear to indicate, is now at hand for them, no one can tell how ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... couplet, nor does it affect any special ending; words of seven syllables or less are used by it indifferently. The trisyllabic ending, which is all but unknown to Ovid, occurs continually in Catullus; even the monosyllabic, which is altogether avoided by succeeding poets, occurs once. [124] Another licence, still more alien from Roman usage, is the retention of a short or unelided syllable at the end of the first penthemimer. [125] Catullus's elegiac belongs ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... In this late day certainly, no critical process can be conducted reasonably without eclecticism. Of [17] such eclecticism we have a justifying example in one of the first poets of our time. How illustrative of monosyllabic effect, of sonorous Latin, of the phraseology of science, of metaphysic, of colloquialism even, are the writings of Tennyson; yet with what a ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... a monosyllabic telegram from Naylor, instructing him to "stay," but after working in the Society's office for another three days he was about ready to give up all hope of getting at the facts. Some other reason, he scarcely knew what, kept him on. Perhaps it was Mrs. Athelstone herself. For though ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... late before Lance returned, tired and monosyllabic. He admitted they had mopped things up a bit—outside; and left a detachment, in support of the police, guarding the Mall. But—the city was in open rebellion. No white man could safely show his face there. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... duck," there is by no means present for the Chinese consciousness that childish, halting, empty feeling which we experience in the literal English translation. The three concrete concepts—two objects and an action—are each directly expressed by a monosyllabic word which is at the same time a radical element; the two relational concepts—"subject" and "object"—are expressed solely by the position of the concrete words before and after the word of action. And that is ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... and discovered that Morley had not reported for work. Having presented his card to a chilly, monosyllabic little man, he was shown, after a short wait, into a private office where, surrounded by several tons of mahogany, ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... fortress he was now besieging. The parasite was so full of himself, and so anxious to display himself to advantage, that with all his practice it was some time before he perceived he did not make all the way he could wish with Lothair; who was courteous, but somewhat monosyllabic and absent. ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... sharply. This is common in learning, and may be accounted for in several ways. In the first place, the easiest things come first. For example, when you are beginning the study of German, you are given mostly monosyllabic words to learn. These are easily remembered, hence progress is rapid. A second reason is that at the beginning there are many different respects in which progress can be made. For example, the beginner in German must learn nouns, ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... mind he ate his breakfast in almost complete silence, making only monosyllabic replies to the trader's ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... within the dark chamber, and while they had been dragging Tarzan to the inner court, no word had been spoken, but now several of them exchanged grunting, monosyllabic conversation in a language unfamiliar to the ape-man, and presently they left him lying upon the concrete floor while they trooped off on their short legs into another part of ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... arising from the fact that she had always been a favorite. She cried only from grief, and partially ameliorated bodily pain by jumping and by other excessive muscular movements. Like most mutes, she articulated a number of noises,—50 or more, all monosyllabic; she laughed heartily, and was quite noisy in her play. At this time it was thought that she had been heard to utter the words doctor, pin, ship, and others. She attached great importance to orientation, and seemed quite ill at ease in finding her way about when ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... do not like to be coddled. She began to talk cheerfully of the first thing that came into her head. He made the necessary monosyllabic responses when her speech put it up to him, but she saw that his mind was brooding over something else. Once she saw his gaze go up to the point on the cliff reached by ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... spirit and harmony. Ascham, in his "Schoolmaster," (1570,) had already suggested the adoption of the ancient hexameter by English poets; but Ascham (as afterwards Puttenham in his "Art of Poesie") thought the number of monosyllabic words in English an insuperable objection to verses in which there was a large proportion of dactyles, and recommended, therefore, that a trial should be made with iambics. Spenser, at Harvey's instance, seems to have tried his hand at the new kind of verse. He says,—"I like your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... which, like bosom and besom, may be monosyllabic or dissyllabic according to circumstances, I am persuaded that the last passage quoted (and all three refer to the same event) gives us the word wanting in the two others, and that Milton wrote, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... tense expression of suffering—either physical or mental—perhaps both. His blue eyes looked sunken and lustreless. It was scarcely to be believed that ten short months could have wrought such wreck. He talked little—his responses to their questions were monosyllabic. His eyes constantly wandered away from their faces to the passers-by. He had the look of a man ever on the alert, ever on the watch—waiting and watching for some one he could not see. Miss Howard had never seen him before, but from the depths of her heart she pitied him. Sorrow, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... to copy the metre in every detail. This is known as cro cummaisc etir casbairdne ocus lethrannaigecht, and consists of seven-syllable lines with trisyllabic rhymes, alternating with five-syllable lines having monosyllabic rhymes. Literally translated the sense would run, "Darerca my mother / she was not a bad woman // Beoit the wright my father / of the Latharna ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... His monosyllabic answer was calm: "Do." Then as she laid her hand on the knob of the door to enter the room: "Can ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... first to come leisurely into the panic then raging at Yorktown. 'The Small' was instantly surrounded by terror-stricken boats; the people of the big 'St. Mark' leaned, pale, over their bulwarks, to question us. Nothing could be more delightful than to be as calm and monosyllabic as we were. * * * * * We leave at daybreak for Harrison's Bar, James River, where our gunboats are said to be; we hope to get further up, but General Dix warns us that it is not safe. What are we about to learn? No one here can tell. * * * * * (Harrison's ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... undoubtedly an event of the highest importance in the history of culture, little though it may interest the Western world to-day. At the same time, as a philologist by profession, I agree with a continental authority[42] who holds that, owing to the monosyllabic character of the Chinese language and to the further disadvantage that it lacks wholly or partly several consonants,[43] it will be practically impossible, as the Japanese have already found, to apply the new alphabet to the traditional ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Coptic is an uncultivated and formal tongue, with monosyllabic roots and rude inflexions, totally different from the neighbouring languages of Syria and Arabia, totally opposite to the copious and ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... multiply every word into four; as difficult, says Mr. Astle, for an European to understand, as it is for a Chinese to comprehend the six pronunciations of the French E. In fact, they can so diversify their monosyllabic words by the different tones which they give them, that the same character differently accented signifies sometimes ten or more ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... tell them what he had heard: the footfalls, below and above, the extraordinary conversation which had broken for a moment the silence of the inner hall. The account was bare, the phrases monosyllabic. He reported only what had been registered on the sensitive tympanums of his ears, to the last whisper of footfalls stealing past the dark wall of the shop. Of all the formless tangle of thoughts, suspicions, interpretations, and the special and personal ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the tongue native to the old man, who was replying in his monosyllabic fashion while he kept all his regard for the stern-eyed white man, who, the squaw was explaining, represented all the unlimited ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... ought to cultivate the solitary sister-in- law, began asking about Miles; but unlike the typical colonist, she was very silent, and her replies were monosyllabic, till Rosamond created a diversion by talking to Frank; and then Raymond elicited that Glen Fraser was far up the country—King Williamstown nearer than any other town. They had sent thither for a doctor for Miles, and he stayed one night, but said that mother's ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are declined all monosyllabic masculine nouns having a short stem-vowel and ending in {-l} or {-r} (Sec. ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... great divisions, there are other languages, as the Chinese, and the monosyllabic tongues of south-eastern Asia, which possibly are connected lineally with it; the Japanese; the Malay-Polynesian, a well-developed family; the Hamitic (of which the Egyptian or Coptic is the principal member); the Dravidian ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the dialects of some American Red-Indian tribes, and in the Chinese speech of the inland Chinamen, the mountainous tribes of Kivang-ze—a language which was an admixture of the agglutinate and the monosyllabic, as it would be called by modern philologists. It was, in short, the language of the "Red-yellow" second or middle geological stock (we maintain the term "geological"). A strong percentage of the Mongoloid or 4th Root-race ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... everyone recognizes more or less clearly that he is likely to set the reserved witness suggestive questions and so to learn things that the witness never would have said. Not everybody, indeed, who makes monosyllabic replies in court has this nature, but in the long run, this common characteristic is manifest, and these laconic people are really not able to deliver themselves connectedly in long speeches. If, then, the witness has made only the shortest replies and a coherent well-composed ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the brown bell-tent, but the stranger came not. He wondered if Angela had become aware of the increased vision afforded him by the felled trees, and was careful to keep her strange friend away. He noticed some slight change in her disposition—a queer light in her eye and a mocking ring in the monosyllabic replies which she gave to any questions he found it ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... its noun it undergoes various changes. In its monosyllabic forms it drops its vowel after a short (un-accented) vowel, as in auga-t (the eye), but keeps it after a long vowel, as in ā-in (the river), trē-it (the tree). The dissyllabic forms drop their initial vowel almost everywhere; not, however, after the -ar, -r, ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet
... with much composure, and shaking off the ashes with which he was covered, instead of finding fault with me, he tried, after his fashion to lecture Patience. This was in reality by no means easy to do; yet nothing could have been less irritating than that monosyllabic censure throwing out its little note in the thick of a quarrel like an echo in ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... from that monosyllabic question and its answer, but its significance in Siddle's ears, could he have heard, would have been that of the passing bell tolling ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... will blaze and run, scorching all things; and, from Cadiz to Archangel, mad Sansculottism, drilled now into Soldiership, led on by some 'armed Soldier of Democracy' (say, that Monosyllabic Artillery-Officer), will set its foot cruelly on the necks of its enemies; and its shouting and their shrieking shall fill the world!—Rash Coalised Kings, such a fire have ye kindled; yourselves fireless, your fighters animated only ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the bulbuls, the chattering of the mynas, the screaming of the green parrots, the golden-backed woodpeckers and the white-breasted kingfishers, the mingled harmony and discord of the tree-pies, the sharp monosyllabic notes of the various warblers, the melody of the sunbirds and the flycatchers. The green barbets also call spasmodically throughout the month, chiefly in the early morning and the late afternoon, but the only note uttered by the coppersmith is a soft wow. The hoopoe emits occasionally ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... under the superintendence of Mr. Smith, since May, 1844. Up to October of the same year the average attendance of children had been sixty-three. In that short time the progress had been very satisfactory; all the children had passed from the alphabetical to the monosyllabic class, and most had mastered the multiplication table; eighteen could write upon the slate, and six upon paper; twelve girls had commenced sewing, and were making ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Perkins plied Diotti with all manner of questions; "How did it happen?" "How did you escape?" and the like, all of which Diotti parried with monosyllabic replies, finally saying: "I was dissatisfied with my playing and ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... left the company; yet this I found to be the case. The door was no sooner closed after him than his accustomed solemnity returned. He spake little, and that little was delivered with emphatical and monosyllabic brevity. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... suppressed with some difficulty the strong feeling of irritation that seized him at these monosyllabic answers. He knew that it would have been highly unreasonable on his part to have displayed annoyance, for had he not himself taught her to give a simple "Yes" and "No" when possible ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... dinner, and was not quite so monosyllabic in her replies. Her netting was a great resource when she went into the drawing-room after dinner, and she began to feel a little less rigid and confused, made some progress in acquaintance with Clara, and when she went to bed was not without hopes of, in time, liking both her ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... specimens of maidenhood, from among whom he was expected to make his choice, were at length seated in various constrained attitudes about the room, a dead silence fell, broken only by an occasional nervous remark from Mrs. McNally, and a monosyllabic response from the wooer. The relief was general when the "decent body," engaged to help for the day, opened the door with a very black hand, kicked it still further back with a gaping shoe, and finally entered the ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... Miss Constance Dickenson, however improbable it may seem, had wanted to say all this and a great deal more, and could not see her way to any of it, that she had become dry and monosyllabic. It was because of this compulsory silence that she felt that even her brief:—"Why?" in answer to Mr. Pellew's suggestion that an Orlando must have come on her stage though no Rosalind had come on his, struck her after it had passed her lips as ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... embarrassing when it was put to her in this very decisive way. "Oh," she cried with an Englishwoman's usual monosyllabic appeal for help to heaven and earth: "there are now a great number of ways. There are so many things that girls can do; there are things open to them that never used to be—they can even be doctors ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... shivered; a moment before, she had been oppressed with the heat. Her monosyllabic question was low and indistinct. She wondered whether Giovanni could hear the beatings of her heart, so slow, so loud they almost ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... circumstances. My own recollections of the evening, unclouded by its festivities, but confused by its multitudinous succession of introductions, are about as definite as the Duke of Wellington's alleged monosyllabic description of the battle of Waterloo. But A—— writes in her diary: "From nine to twelve we stood, receiving over three hundred people out of the four hundred and fifty we invited." As I did not go to Europe to ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... only a monosyllabic reply, and Lady Jane, with a little gesture of apology, continued ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... He evidenced no initiative in feeding himself, but swallowed food when it was placed in his mouth. Habits were very untidy; involuntary evacuation of bladder and bowels were present. His mental content could not be determined at the time, as his replies were indistinct and monosyllabic, and were obtained only after much effort. He appeared to comprehend what was wanted of him, although this was not absolutely certain. His perception was very dull, ideation slow and laborious. His attention could be gained only after considerable difficulty, ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... indeed that the Yebus, a people on the west coast of Africa, speak a polysynthetic language, and per contra, that the Otomis of Mexico have a monosyllabic one like the Chinese. Max Mueller goes further, and asserts that what is called the process of agglutination in the Turanian languages is the same as what has been named polysynthesis in America. This is not to be conceded. In the former the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... would not adapt himself to the blessings of this education, and the mere threats of the rod-switching deprived the child of his senses and threw him into convulsions. But though the little Napoleon was gloomy, monosyllabic, and quiet, yet was he from early childhood the favorite of all who knew him, and he already wielded over brothers, sisters, and companions, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... with a monosyllabic laugh which expressed intense bitterness. 'Say forty years during which I have felt myself upon the edge of a precipice every day and every hour. Security! But perhaps you are right, my lady, I am growing old and nervous, a feebler man than I was a few ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... embarrassment accompanied Dominie Graves to the breakfast table the next morning after the triumphant victory of Augusta Hall. He made no remark upon the disagreeable episode of the previous night, and ate silently amid the chatter of Babe and the monosyllabic answers of her mother. Teola to break the strain spoke of the sleigh-ride and dance ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... morning she was not visible. During the short evenings he could never get her attention. And he made no progress with the Duke. The Duke had been very courteous to him at Richmond, but here he was monosyllabic and almost sullen. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... monosyllabic reply was even shorter than it needed to have been for he gestured an almost imperceptible shrug, and hesitated while he again bestowed upon me that half quizzical glance which seemed to conceal ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... know, is the primitive monosyllabic stem to which we trace all of them. Nahual means knowledge, especially mystic knowledge, the Gnosis, the knowledge of the hidden and secret things of nature; easily enough confounded in uncultivated minds with sorcery ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... withdrew a little from the conversation. Crookes, as ever monosyllabic, took himself on in a little while, and Sweeny, his chair tipped back against the wall, his hands clasped behind his head, listened to Freye explaining to Cressler the plans of the proposed clique and the lines ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... beading Slavin's forehead, and now and then an oath burst unrestrained from his hairy lips. Hawes and Willis sat white-faced, bent forward anxiously over the table, their fingers shaking as they handled the fateful cards, but Hampton played without perceptible tremor, his utterances few and monosyllabic, his calm face betraying not ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... surly and monosyllabic a man that the children gave him the widest of berths, and therefore that theory ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... note of the cuckoo which has ousted the legitimate nest-holder, The whistle of the railway guard dispatching the train to the inevitable collision, The maiden's monosyllabic reply to a polysyllabic proposal, The fundamental note of the last trump, which is presumably D natural; All of these are sounds to rejoice in, yea, to let your very ribs re-echo with: But better than all of them is the absolutely last chord of the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... and a nod to include us both. Her pleasure was undisguised, however, and as we rode down the valley she chattered volubly between the business of driving in half a dozen horses and a herd of sheep. The monosyllabic replies of the hunter were delivered in a voice which seemed to come from a long way off or from out of the earth beneath his pony's feet. I was interested to see what greeting there would be upon ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... slept and rested. They had listened the evening before to the old accordian in the hands of Pete's wife; they had trotted the infant of the family on their knees; they had propounded another hundred questions to their uncommunicative host and gotten monosyllabic answers; but they had heard only that which was good to hear, and that which confirmed the leader in his mind that he had made a capital move in coming into ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... like the speech of children, have a fresh, natural, simple charm of their own. The changes of pronunciation, in German words, are curious. K becomes a light guttural ch, and a great number of monosyllabic words—especially those ending in ut and ueh—receive a peculiar twist from the introduction of e or ei: as gut, frueh, which become guet, frueeih. This seems to be a characteristic feature of the South-German dialects, though in none is it so pronounced as in the Alemannic. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... remained highly monosyllabic in everything pertaining to the management of the vessel and the prospects for a good or ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... English monosyllables, and the simplicity of style which he described as "one of the greatest perfections in any language," which seemed to him best exemplified in the English Bible, and which he himself practised so brilliantly, has in English a very marked monosyllabic character. ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... every one wished for the honour of his friendship. Humplebee looked uncomfortable. He had the sniffy beginnings of a cold, the result of yesterday's struggle in icy water, and his usual diffident and monosyllabic inclination were intensified by the position in which he found himself. Clappings on the shoulder from bigger boys who had been wont to joke about his name made him flush nervously; to be addressed as 'Humpy,' or 'Beetle,' or ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... the metaphorical signification of the same word. The character of languages also favors or retards such changes, pliable and easily modified ones, such as those of the American Indians, and in a less degree those of the Aryan nations, favoring a developed mythology, while rigid and monosyllabic ones, as the Chinese and Semitic types, offer fewer facilities to such variations. Furthermore, tribal or national history, the peculiar difficulties which retard the growth of a community, and the geographical and climatic character of its surroundings, give prominence to certain features ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... observing that, in the order of ideas, the simple precedes the complex, they necessarily ended by thinking that the smaller physical facts were the more simple. Hence the imaginary necessity that the most antique, primitive languages, had been monosyllabic, and that the progress of historical research must lead to the discovery of monosyllabic roots. But (to follow up the imaginary hypothesis) the first expression that the first man conceived may also have had a mimetic, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, sak. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, a friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... concourse of two vowels), not allowing it to himself even at the break between two sentences or two paragraphs; nor did he permit himself ever to use the same word twice, either in the same sentence or in two consecutive sentences, though belonging to different paragraphs: with the exception of the monosyllabic auxiliaries.[27] All this is well enough, especially the first two precepts, and a good way of breaking through a bad habit. But M. Comte persuaded himself that any arbitrary restriction, though in no way emanating from, and therefore necessarily ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill |
