"Substantive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Steed and Albatross. What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It is that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name he bears. The Albino is as well made as other men —has no substantive deformity —and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be so? Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but not the less malicious ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... taste in the elegantiae literarum. He was, nevertheless, a man of many strange notions. It is well known that about the commencement of the eighteenth century, in our English books, printed in the mother country, the substantive words were almost always begun with a capital; the like practice obtained in many newspapers; but Longworth, not content with the partial change which time had brought about, of sinking these prominent and advantageous upper case type, waged a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the same amount as the tithe-payment now exigible, and to be paid by the same parties who at present were liable. In the second place, he said, ministers proposed that this land-tax should be redeemable at the end of five years, by all who had a substantive interest in the estate. Thirdly, they proposed, he said, that so much of the land-tax as remained unredeemed on the 1st of November, 1839, should be converted into a real charge, equal to four-fifths of the land-tax, and payable by the owner of the first estate of inheritance in the land, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... cocamalotl, rainbow; tonameyotl, shining, brightness; ti, connective; mani, substantive verb. "The brightness of the rain bow is there." There is no conjunction "and"; Father Carochi seems to have carelessly taken ayauh, which is the form of ayauitl in composition, for the conjunction ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... because the big, ultimate words of every tongue connote a number of ideas which cannot be exactly rendered by a single word in another language. Let us be mildly philological for a moment, and realise that the word charis in Greek is the substantive of which the verb is chairo, to rejoice. We translate the word charis by the English word "grace," which means, apart from its theological sense, a rich endowment of charm and beauty, a thing which is essentially a gift, and which ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?—Oh, against all rule, my lord,—most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus,—stopping, as if the point wanted settling;—and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... such words as these of my text if He had simply thought of His death as a Plato or a John Howard might have thought of his, as being the close of his activity for the welfare of his fellows. Unless Christ's death has in it some substantive value, unless it is something more than the mere termination of His work for the world, I see not how the words before us can be interpreted. If His death is His glorifying, it must be because in that death something is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... men an assured majority, and on the seventh day, when the substitution of the minority for the majority report by a vote of 165 to 138 threatened to culminate in the South's withdrawal, the Douglas leaders permitted a division of their report into its substantive propositions. Under this arrangement, the Cincinnati platform was reaffirmed by a vote of 237-1/2 to 65. The danger point had now been reached, and Edward Driggs of Brooklyn, scenting the brewing mischief, moved to table the balance ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... conjure. Whereat they said how droll, how cheerful, what a flow of spirits! This put into its place, an ancient scholar read the inscription, which was in Latin; not in English; that would never do. It gave great satisfaction; especially every time there was a good long substantive in the third declension, ablative case, with an adjective to match; at which periods the assembly became very tender, and were ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... certain; and the intermediate steps are very clear. From dies, comes diurnus. Diu is, by inaccurate ears, or inaccurate pronunciation, easily confounded with giu; then the Italians form a substantive of the ablative of an adjective, and thence giurno, or, as they make it, giorno; which is readily contracted into giour, or jour' He observed, that the Bohemian language was true Sclavonick. The Swede said, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the demands of the spirit. It leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander without end. Then the heart resists it, because it balks the affections in denying substantive being to men and women. Nature is so pervaded with human life, that there is something of humanity in all, and in every particular. But this theory makes nature foreign to me, and does not account for that consanguinity which ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... said, I am the Son of God?" Here we have the first open passage of arms between the two opposing principles which led to the scene of Calvary as the final testimony of Jesus to the principle of Unity. He died because he maintained the Truth; that he was one with the Father. That was the substantive charge on which he was executed. "Art thou the son of the Blessed?" he was asked by the priestly tribunal; and the answer came clear and unequivocal, "I am." Then said the Council, "He hath spoken blasphemy, what ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... discerns, occur respectively at pp. 43. and 92. of Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure (Percy Society's edition). The noun substantive perseverancediscernment is as common a word as any of the like length in the English language. To omit the examples that might be cited out of Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure, I will adduce a dozen other instances; and if those ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... one God, the Father of the living Word, His substantive Wisdom, Power, and Eternal Image, the perfect Begetter of the perfect One, the Father of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... of his Art in this respect consists in his removing the Adjective, the Substantive, and even the Verb, from the Line or Verse in which the Sense is previously contained, and the grammatical Construction inverted, to the Beginning of the next Line. This has a wonderful Effect; especially when ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... some of the comments received in response to the NPRM had already been addressed, and some called for minor clarifications that have been made to the final regulations. Other comments, whether raised for the first or second time, raise substantive ...
— Supplementary Copyright Statutes • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... and other titles, such as "respectable" (spectabiles), "illustrious" (egregrie, illustres), were invented by the emperors of this century. They none of them appear to have conferred any substantive power. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... wrong, I shall be glad to see a better Account, how this Adjective and Substantive came to be join'd together. In the mean Time, I am very sure, that this is Nothing strain'd or forc'd in my Supposition. That the Words, in Tract of Time, are be come of greater Importance, I don't deny. The Words Clown and Villain have opprobrious Meanings annex'd to ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... now used in a most ignorant way; and from its misuse it has come to be a word wholly useless: for it is now never coupled, I think, with any other substantive than these two—faith and confidence: a poor domain indeed to have sunk to from its original wide range of territory. Moreover, when we say, implicit faith, or implicit confidence, we do not thereby indicate any specific kind of faith and confidence ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... sense of the verb in a substantive form, the participles in an adjective form; as "To rise early is healthful." "An early rising man." "The newly ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... thousands of ages, the question remains the same. With matter and time, you will not succeed in creating intelligence; this were an operation of transcendent alchemy utterly beyond our power. In the theory of slow causes, the adjective ends by devouring the substantive; it seems that by dint of becoming slow the causes become superfluous. A breath of reason upsets, like a house of cards, the structures of this erring and misnamed science. Time has a relative meaning and value. We reckon duration as long or short, by taking human life as our measure. But ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... productions, and in medical lectures generally, to overstate the efficacy of favorite methods of cure, and hence the premium offered for showy talkers rather than sagacious observers, for the men of adjectives rather than of nouns substantive in the more ambitious ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... will be often well to admit the license of using a substantive for epithet, (as one says rock-bird or sea-bird, and not 'rocky,' or 'marine,') in Latin as well as in English. We thus greatly increase our power, and assist the brevity of nomenclature; and we gain the convenience of using the second ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... corresponding development in the author's own emotions ignores the objectivity of Shakespeare's dramatic work. All phases of feeling lay within the scope of his intuition, and the successive order in which he approached them bore no explicable relation to substantive incident in his private life or experience. In middle life, his temperament, like that of other men, acquired a larger measure of gravity and his thought took a profounder cast than characterised it in youth. The highest topics of tragedy were naturally more congenial to him, and were certain ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the recognition of all the substantive rights of the human personality; guaranteed by judicial power, cemented in the principles in force in all the cultured nations; that the judicial authorities, when applying the laws, be penetrated by and identified with the spirit and the necessities of the locality; that the administration ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... chemical or merely physical, the fact remains that all adjective dyes need this preparation of the fibre before they will fix themselves on it. The use of a mordant, though not a necessity, is sometimes an advantage when using substantive dyes. ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... far-reaching as the other, is at least an exceedingly useful one. The two methods may be combined to a considerable extent. By the latter plan the colours may be conveniently divided into three groups: I., substantive colours; II., adjective colours; ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... its tent of light. Shelley was fond of the word Pavilion, whether as substantive or as verb. See St. 50: 'Pavilioning the dust ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... cease-fire in place since May 1994, and support the OSCE-mediated peace process, now entering its fifth year. Nevertheless, Baku and Xankandi (Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh region) remain far apart on most substantive issues from the placement and composition of a peacekeeping force to the enclave's ultimate political status, and prospects for a ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... verb, signifies to steady;—as a substantive, a comprehensive mind. A man is said to "lose his ballast" when his judgment fails him, or ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?' 'Oh, against all rule, my lord—most ungrammatically. Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus, stopping, as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... an example of absolute divergence of meaning, inherited from the Latin; but as they are different parts of speech, I allow their plea of identical derivation and exclude them from my list. On the other hand, the substantive beam is an example of such a false homophone as I include. Beam may signify a balk of timber, or a ray of light. Milton's address ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... their long and undeniable usage? Upon a reference to the services which were to be performed at the ceremony of the coronation, it was clear, from the separate rights held upon the performance of particular kinds of attendance upon the queen, that her part of the ceremony was substantive, independent, and principal; that her right was clearly within herself, and not dependent upon the mere will of the King. So essential, indeed, was it that she should be crowned with all the forms of pomp which belonged to such a solemnity, that the same ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... But another neighbor of ours, hardly less known to fame, though in a widely different line of usefulness, makes a very distinct picture in my mind; this was Ephraim Wales Bull, the inventor of the Concord grape. He was as eccentric as his name; but he was a genuine and substantive man, and my father took a great liking to him, which was reciprocated. He was short and powerful, with long arms, and a big head covered with bushy hair and a jungle beard, from which looked out a pair of eyes singularly brilliant ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... High German word for child is Kind, which, as a substantive, finds representatives neither in Gothic nor in early English, but has cognates in the Old Norse kunde, "son," Gothic -kunds, Anglo-Saxon -kund, a suffix signifying "coming from, originating from." The ultimate radical of the word is the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the Jewish Canon, down to Jeremiah and Zephaniah, knows absolutely nothing. The verb QR there used invariably and exclusively of the BURNING of fat or meal, and thereby making to God a sweet-smelling savour; it is never used to denote the OFFERING OF INCENSE, and the substantive QRT as a sacrificial term has the quite general signification of that which is burnt on the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... when other people criticize our own more exalted soul-flights by calling them 'nothing but' expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be made ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Queen and her Royal Consort, with a sum of L50.—Some singular decisions have recently been made by the Vice Chancellor. It seems that a Mr. Hartley deceased in 1843, left directions in his will that L300 should be set apart as a prize for the best Essay on "Natural Theology," treating it as a substantive science, and as adequate to constitute a true, perfect, and philosophical system of universal religion. It was ruled by the Vice Chancellor that this bequest was void, on account of the evident tendency ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... reasons we may sum up the Substantive Being of the All-originating Spirit as Life, Love, Light, Power, Peace, Beauty, and Joy; and its Active Power as that of Initiative and Selection. These, therefore, constitute the basic laws of the underlying universal mentality ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... boast of one's money; shishka [Bump or swelling.] (on pronouncing which one had to join one's fingers together, and to put a particular emphasis upon the two sh's in the word) meant anything fresh, healthy, and comely, but not elegant; a substantive used in the plural meant an undue partiality for the object which it denoted; and so forth, and so forth. At the same time, the meaning depended considerably upon the expression of the face and the context of the conversation; so that, no matter what new expression ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... /was./ The verb is attracted into the singular by the nearest substantive.—/slighted off/: contemptuously ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... generic name given to a whole literature consisting of treatises on the doctrine of sunyata, which vary greatly in length. They are classed as sutras, being described as discourses delivered by the Buddha on the Vulture Peak. At least ten are known, besides excerpts which are sometimes described as substantive works. The great collection translated into Chinese by Hsuean Chuang is said to consist of 200,000 verses and to comprise sixteen different sutras.[130] The earliest translation of one of these treatises into Chinese (Nanjio, 5) was made about 170 A.D. and everything indicates that portions ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... give a retrospective operation to the law which made slavetrading felony. But there was not the smallest injustice in enacting that the Central Criminal Court should try felonies committed long before that Court was in being. In Torrington's case the substantive law continued to be what it had always been. The definition of the crime, the amount of the penalty, remained unaltered. The only change was in the form of procedure; and that change the legislature was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of his subjects. These, and an infinite number of other instances, will better be understood, when we come regularly to consider the rules themselves, to which these incidental prerogatives are exceptions. And therefore we will at present only dwell upon the king's substantive or direct prerogatives. ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... "earing nor harvest" (Genesis). Without some acquaintance with the earlier forms of our mother tongue, one is liable to take earing to mean the same as "harvest," from the association of ears of corn. But it is the substantive from the Anglo-Saxon verb erian, to plough, to till: so that "earing nor harvest" "sowing nor reaping." From erian we may pass on to arare, and from that to arista: in the long pedigree of language they are scarcely ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... interlocutor, "should always precede the substantive, for we should never utter the name of God without first ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... agomeegwin, people of the other shore. Algic, often used synonymously, is an adjective manufactured by Mr. Schoolcraft "from the words Alleghany and Atlantic" (Algic Researches, ii. p. 12). There is no occasion to accept it, as there is no objection to employing Algonkin both as substantive and adjective. Iroquois is a French compound of the native words hiro, I have said, and koue, an interjection of assent or applause, terms constantly ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Latium, answering to the symbolic hearth in the aedes Vestae, and this very naturally took the name of the deity associated with entrances. Two other iani probably existed in the forum, and the name was later on transferred as a substantive to similar objects in Roman colonies, while a feminine form, ianua, came to be used for ordinary house entrances.[251] Whether there ever was a cult of the god at the real gateway of a city we do not ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... it." It shows the long-suffering nature of the poor blind players at this compulsory game of national football that they should ever for one moment permit so monstrous an assumption—permit the idea that one single player may wield a substantive voice and vote to outweigh tens of thousands of ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... object of a universal stare. At one time on the banks there were considerably over a thousand natives going through the several tenses and moods of the verb "to stare," or exhibiting every phase of the substantive, viz.—the stare peremptory, insolent, sly, cunning, modest, and casual. The warriors of the Sultana, holding in one hand the spear, the bow, and sheaf or musket, embraced with the other their respective friends, like ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... physical fatherhood.[378] There is, therefore, an important distinction in the social position of the two parallel systems. Among the Semang people, their totemic belief and custom do not carry with them a superstructure of society. They form the substantive cult of the scattered social groups, which are kinless groups dependent upon ties local in character and derived from the conscious use of the facts of nature surrounding them. Among the Arunta people, on the contrary, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... that U.S. relationships with Iran and Syria involve difficult issues that must be resolved. Diplomatic talks should be extensive and substantive, and they will require a balancing of interests. The United States has diplomatic, economic, and military disincentives available in approaches to both Iran and Syria. However, the United States should also consider incentives ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... me in point of religious opinion, was, first, to teach me the existence of the Church, as a substantive body or corporation; next to fix in me those anti-Erastian views of Church polity, which were one of the most prominent features of the Tractarian movement. On this point, and, as far as I know, on this point alone, he and Hurrell Froude intimately sympathized, though Froude's development of ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of "the survival of the fittest." This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words Natural Selection. I formerly thought, probably in an exaggerated degree, that it was a great advantage to bring into connection natural and artificial selection; this indeed led me to use ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... his head very little about that; and we still less. We should have been greatly surprised by the novelty and the forbidding look of such words in the grammatical jargon as substantive, indicative and subjunctive. Accuracy of language, whether of speech or writing, must be learnt by practice. And none of us was troubled by scruples in this respect. What was the use of all these subtleties, when, on coming out of school, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Some, upon the authority of Snorre in the above quoted passage, derive it from berr (bare) and serkr (comp. sark, Scotch for shirt); but this etymology is inadmissible, because serkr is a substantive, not an adjective. Others derive it from berr (Germ. Br ursus), which is greatly to be preferred, for in olden ages athletes and champions used to wear hides of bears, wolves and reindeer (as skins of lions in the south), hence the names Bjalfe, Bjarnhedinn, Ulfhedinn (hedinn, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... vi, cap. xxiv. Camaxtli is also found in the form Yoamaxtli; this shows that it is a compound of maxtli, covering, clothing, and ca, the substantive verb, or in the latter instance, yoalli, night; hence it is, "the Mantle," or, "the garb of night" ("la faja nocturna," Anales del Museo Nacional, Tom. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... recognize, not only the verisimilitude, but the truth of the conjecture: in the same way as we admit, with the confidence of intuitive conviction, the certainty of the well-known etymological process which connects the Latin preposition e or ex with the English substantive stranger, the moment that the intermediate links of the chain are ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... which constitute the organic basis of union, we perceive that vast as are the functions and the duties of the Federal Government, vested in or intrusted to its three great departments—the legislative, executive, and judicial—yet the substantive power, the popular force, and the large capacities for social and material development exist in the respective States, which, all being of themselves well-constituted republics, as they preceded so they alone are capable of maintaining and perpetuating the American Union. The Federal ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... back to the carriage instantly,' said Lady Palliser, almost shouting the substantive, in order that Jack might be reminded what kind of people he had insulted by his ruffianly bearing. 'I feel that I am bemeaning myself every moment I stay ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... recurrently instrumental. A blanket is of continual utility to a poor wretch through a severe winter, but the benevolent act of the donor is not termed useful, because it confers the benefit and ceases. Utility is too narrow to comprehend all the actions that deserve approbation. We want an uncompounded substantive expressing the two attributes of conferring and conducing to happiness; as a descriptive phrase, producing happiness is as succinct as any. The term useful is, besides, associated with the notion of what ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... such." "If you don't give me my price like." The monosyllable as is generally substituted for that; "the last time as I called," "I reckon as I an't one," "I imagine as I am not singular." Public characters are stigmatized by saying, "that they set poor lights." The substantive right often supplies the place of ought, as "farmer A has a right to pay his tax." Next ways, and clever through, are in common use, as "I shall go clever through Ullesthorpe." "Nigh hand" for probably, as he will nigh ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... expressed by a second and abstract substantive. This peculiarity is common in the South African family, as in Ashanti; but, as Bowdich observes, we also find it in Greek, e.g. , "heresies of destruction" for destructive. Another notable characteristic ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of an actual grisette, drawn by perhaps the greatest master of artistic realism (adjective and substantive so seldom found in company!) who ever lived, see that Britannia article of Thackeray's before referred to—an article, for a long time, unreprinted, and therefore, till a comparatively short time ago, practically ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Independence. The other principle is that of the existing Constitution of the United States, and has been adopted within the last dozen years by the Swiss Confederacy. The Federal Congress of the American Union is a substantive part of the government of every individual state. Within the limits of its attributions, it makes laws which are obeyed by every citizen individually, executes them through its own officers, and enforces them by its own tribunals. This is the ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... some haunting thoughts of; and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "speaking" words such as "rain," "sunrise," "lightning," which do not denote what would commonly be called actions. These words illustrate, incidentally, how little we can trust to the grammatical distinction of parts of speech, since the substantive "rain" and the verb "to rain" denote precisely the same class of meteorological occurrences. The distinction between the class of objects denoted by such a word and the class of objects denoted by a general name such as "man," "vegetable," or "planet," is that the sort of object which ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... again escaping it went scattering and wavering over her shoulders wonderingly, like nothing on earth but Winsome Charteris's hair. It was small wonder that the local poets grew grey before their time in trying to find a rhyme for "sunshine," a substantive which, for the first time, they had applied to a girl's hair. For the rest, a face rather oval than long, a nose which the schoolmaster declared was "statuesque" (used in a good sense, he explained to the village ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... philosophy which concerneth the soul or spirit—all these strangely commixed and confused; but being examined, it seemeth to me rather a depredation of other sciences, advanced and exalted unto some height of terms, than anything solid or substantive of itself. Nevertheless I cannot be ignorant of the distinction which is current, that the same things are handled but in several respects. As for example, that logic considereth of many things as they are ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... said to be a product of Boston—an excellent place for anybody or anything to come from. Many persons object to its use on the ground that there can be no such participial adjective, because there is no verb in use from which to form it. We have in use the substantive culture, but, though the dictionaries recognize the verb to culture, we do not use it. Be this objection valid or be it not, cultured having but two syllables, while its synonym cultivated has four, it is likely to find favor with those who employ short words when they convey their meaning ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... that purpose. The doctrines to which I refer are (1) the doctrine or concept of Federalism; (2) the doctrine of the Separation of Powers; (3) the concept of a Government of Laws and not of Men, as opposed especially to indefinite conceptions of presidential power; (4) and the substantive doctrine of Due Process of Law and attendant conceptions of Liberty. What I proposed to do is to take up each of these doctrines or concepts in turn, tell something of their earlier history, and then project against this background a summary account of what has ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... jumped now upon the stage a red-haired, laughing-hyena faced, fustian-coated biped, exclaiming—'My name is Wall! I have a substantive amendment to move to the resolution now proposed—('Go off, off! ooh, ooh, ooh! turn him out, out, out!') We are met in a place where religion is taught (groans). Well, then, we are met where they "teach the young idea how to shoot"'—(laughter, groans, and 'Go on, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... present tense there is no substantive verb. The predicate and subject are combined as in the examples already given (cf. p. 312, 2). But when the present indicates a state in opposition to one preceding it, ga is used before the adjective, or if in opposition to a ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... s have a plural appearance, and we are often perplexed to know whether to use this or these, and whether to employ a singular or a plural verb when the noun is used as a substantive. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... Trinity has its difficulties. It would be strange if otherwise. A 'Revelation' that revealed nothing, not within the grasp of human reason!—no religation, no binding over again, as before said: but these difficulties are shadows, contrasted with the substantive, and insurmountable obstacles with which they contend who admit the 'Divine authority of Scripture', with the 'superlative excellence of Christ', and yet undertake to prove that these Scriptures teach, and that Christ taught, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... which stands for "gold" as a substantive may also stand, as in English, for an adjective, and for a verb, "to gold," i.e. to regard ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... out defective averments in pleading; especially, in pleading in abatement, where the utmost certainty and precision are required. (Chitty on Pl., 457.) That the plaintiff himself was a slave at the time of action brought, is a substantive fact, having no necessary connection with the fact that his parents were sold as slaves. For they might have been sold after he was born; or the plaintiff himself, if once a slave, might have became a freeman before action ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... strange fashion Marlowe has mistaken the substantive "rudis" (the staff received by the gladiator on his discharge) with the adjective "rudis" (rude). The original has "Tutaque ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... especially for her benefit. What rapture to be questioned about those very rules in French grammar which one had rubbed up the week before; to have pet passages selected from Shakespeare, and find the Latin prose for translation become gradually intelligible, as one telling substantive gave the clue to the whole! Once assured of the meaning, it was easy to pick out the words, skimming lightly over difficult phrases, but making a great show of accuracy when opportunity arose. As to the elegance of the translation from English into Latin the less said the better, ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... plus or magis and maxime to the positive form. To take another illustration of the same characteristic of popular Latin, as early as the time of Plautus, we see a tendency to adopt our modern method of indicating the relation which a substantive bears to some other word in the sentence by means of a preposition rather than by simply using a case form. The careless Roman was inclined to say, for instance, magna pars de exercitu, rather than to use the genitive case of the word for army, magna ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... women. I wonder so much why they should have been women, and halt between two opinions in the matter. Sometimes I think it is because they were made by a man for men; sometimes, again, I think there is an abstract reason for it, and there is something more substantive about a woman than ever there can be about a man. I can conceive a great mythical woman, living alone among inaccessible mountain-tops or in some lost island in the pagan seas, and ask no more. Whereas if I hear ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it as part of the person or thing to which it was applied and as containing part of his life, like his hair, spittle and the rest of his body. He would have used names for a long period before he had any word for a name, and his first idea of the name as a part of the substantive body to which it is applied has survived a more correct appreciation. Thus if one knew a person's name one could injure him by working evil on it and the part of his life contained in it, just as one could injure him through the clippings of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... way to the Batemo, in the company of this remarkable commander, who ruled over one big gun, and was forbidden to waste his ammunition. Holroyd was learning Spanish industriously, but he was still in the present tense and substantive stage of speech, and the only other person who had any words of English was a negro stoker, who had them all wrong. The second in command was a Portuguese, da Cunha, who spoke French, but it was a different sort of French from the French Holroyd had learnt in Southport, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... or I scribble all day, My tunes are neglected, my verse flung away. Thy substantive here, Vice Apollo [2] disdains, To vouch for my numbers, or list to my strains. Thy manual sign he refuses to put To the airs I produce from the pen, or the gut: Be thou then propitious, great Phoebus, and grant Belief, or reward to my merit, or want, Tho' the Dean ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... does Theobald the justice to observe, that he, as well as the corrector of the folio, 1632, adds the necessary letter s to the word "creature," making the plural substantive agree with her other exclamation of, "Poor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... whether it takes its appellation from any place, being always used adjectively—"vin clairet," not vin de clairet. I am perhaps not quite correct in stating, that the word is always used as an adjective; for we sometimes find clairet used alone as a substantive; but I conceive that in this case the word vin is to be understood, as we say "du Bordeaux," "du Champagne," meaning "du vin de Bordeaux," "du vin de Champagne." Eau clairette is the name given to a sort of cherry-brandy; and lapidaries apply ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... O Ahu. In this instance the article still finds itself disunited from its substantive. To-day ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... a fool, adopts the sarcastic manner with Master Hulker, and says, "Mr. Hulker, may I take the liberty to inquire if your brilliant intellect has enabled you to perceive the difference between those words which grammarians have defined as substantive and adjective nouns?—if not, perhaps Mr. Ferdinand Timmins will instruct you." And Timmins ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... political supporters, by voting with the government in favour of the removal of Jewish disabilities. No ordinary degree of moral courage was needed for such a step by the member for such a constituency. 'It is a painful decision to come to,' he writes in his diary (Dec. 16), 'but the only substantive doubt it raises is about remaining in parliament, and it is truly and only the church which holds me there, though she may seem to some to draw me from it.' Pusey wrote to him in rather violent indignation, for Mr. Gladstone was the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... governments, by its opinions, in a word, by all the institutions that it was led to adopt on the plea of ameliorating its lot."[148] On lui fit adopter! But who were the on, and how did they work? With what instruments and what fulcrum? Never was the convenience of this famous abstract substantive more fatally abused. And if religion, government, and opinion had all aggravated the miseries of the human race, what had lessened them? For the Encyclopaedic school never attempted, as Rousseau did, to deny that the world had, as a matter of fact, advanced ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... earnestly insists that not only was it issued by him in the performance of what he believed to be an imperative official duty, but in the performance of what this honorable court will consider was, in point of fact, an imperative official duty. And he denies that any and all substantive matters in the said first article contained, in manner and form as the same are therein stated and set forth, do by law constitute a high misdemeanor in office within the true intent and meaning of the Constitution ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... l. 5 an ignorant. This is the reading of the 4tos. I take 'ignorant' as the obsolete substantive. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... substantive union of the soul with God was the distinguishing feature of the pantheistic religious creeds of India, as it was also of some of the Greek philosophical systems. In the Middle Ages, while many of the ablest exponents of Scholasticism were also distinguished mystics, yet more than once Mysticism ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... or substantive proper; first person singular, face—' Miss Darner stopped a moment, and then went on with, 'Miss Jane Adair,—temper, syntax; consisting of concord and government; speech, a preposition; voice, liquids; face, mind, and ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... of Athelstan we have five codes, of which the second and third are mere abstracts in Latin; but the others are in Saxon; and besides these a substantive ordinance bearing the special title of "The Judgments of the City of London." This has been described as follows:—"The rules of the guild composed of thanes and ceorls (gentlemen and yeomen), under the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... discussion about words the whole negotiation finally degenerated. And thus, the fear of compromising the dignity of England by some unguarded expression, or of failing from over caution to satisfy the demands of Ireland, had the effect of protracting the passage of a measure, upon the substantive justice and urgent necessity of ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... referring to a single person. This is not correct, for the moment the word is generally used to denote an individual, it is to be considered as a pronoun in the singular number, the following verb should be regulated by that circumstance and considered as in the singular.... Indeed, in the substantive verb, the word has taken the singular form of the verb, you was, which practice is getting the better of old rules and probably will be established." But old rules have considerable vitality, and ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... as a substantive, and so means to say that when Odysseus had changed his clothes and put on rags, there was no one so good for nothing ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... compare with this term others of similar termination, such as sanctimonia from sanctus, we shall find in them a confirmation of the etymology given above: monia serves to form the substantive, but does not otherwise ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... Subscribe (to a newspaper, etc.) aboni. Subscribe (sign) subskribi. Subscribe (money) monoferi. Subscription monoferado. Subscription abono. Subsequent sekva. Subside mallevi. Subsidy helpa mono. Substance substanco. Substantial fortika. Substantiate pruvi. Substantive substantivo. Substitute anstatauxi. Subterfuge artifiko. Subterranean subtera. Subterraneous subtera. Subtile maldika. Subtle ruza. Subtract elpreni. Subtraction elpreno. Suburbs cxirkauxurbo. Subvention helpa mono. Subversive detruanta. Succeed (order) postveni, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... itself to a modern versifier, from which there is no escape, which occurs perpetually, and which, choose as he may, presents him always with an evil. I mean in the instance of the particle (the). When this particle precedes a vowel, shall he melt it into the substantive, or leave the hiatus open? Both practices are offensive to a delicate ear. The particle absorbed occasions harshness, and the open vowel a vacuity equally inconvenient. Sometimes, therefore, to leave it open, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... spite of the want of fortune, she perceived that her brother's choice had been far better than if he had married that poor pale little Amabel, go silent and quiet that she never could make a figure anywhere, and had nothing like the substantive character that her brother must have in ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... word claret seems to me to be the same as the French word clairet, both adjective and substantive; as a substantive it means a low and cheap sort of claret, sold in France, and drawn from the barrel like beer in England; as an adjective it is a diminutive of clair, and implies ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... express belonged to the emotional, not the intellectual, side of the human character, so that any perfectly clear expression of it in words was entirely impossible. It must be borne in mind that the Chinese language lacks definite word categories like substantive, adjective, adverb, or verb; any word can be used now in one category and now in another, with a few exceptions; thus the understanding of a combination like "white horse" formed a difficult logical problem for the thinker of the fourth century B.C.: did it mean "white" plus "horse"? ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... Milton changed. He chooses his every word. You cannot guess the adjective from the substantive, nor the end of the phrase from its beginning. He is much given to inverting the natural English order of epithet and noun, that he may gain a greater emphasis for the epithet. His style is not a ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... object, or its essence, or virtues residing in it, or by many other different names. These metaphysical conceptions were regarded as intensely real, and at first as mere instruments in the hands of the appropriate deities. But the habit being acquired of ascribing not only substantive existence, but real and efficacious agency, to the abstract entities, the consequence was that when belief in the deities declined and faded away, the entities were left standing, and a semblance of explanation of phaenomena, equal ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... no alarming book of grammar was produced upon the occasion, nor did the father put on an unpropitious gravity of countenance. He explained to the smiling child the nature of a verb, a pronoun, and a substantive. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... inward experience; and there are other and eminent uses of words, of which more anon; but here let it be noted with sufficient emphasis that of minds there can be no mixture, and that speech can make no substantive conveyance of any mental product from one mind to another. Each soul must draw from its native fountains; though we must never forget that without conversation and social relationship its divine thirst would not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... therefore appears to be very doubtful. In Cordova's vocabulary, as given by Ternaux-Compans, "fleche" is given as the meaning of quii-lana. In Tzotzil gtox signifies "to split, break off, break open, to chop." In Maya we have tok; which, as a substantive, Perez explains by "pedernal, la sangria;" as a verb it signifies "to bleed, let blood." In this dialect tox denotes "to drain, draw ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... expression is harsh. Perhaps we may read,—with good lift, with good will, with sincere zeal for my service. I should have proposed,—with good lief, in the same sense, but that I cannot find lief to be a substantive. With good life may however mean, with exact presentation of their several characters, with observation strange of their particular and distinct parts. So we say, he acted to the life. (see ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... necessary to insert a Wilmot Proviso in a territorial government for New Mexico, that man would, of course, be of opinion that it is necessary to protect the ever-lasting snows of Canada from the foot of slavery by the same overspreading wing of an act of Congress. Sir, wherever there is a substantive good to be done, wherever there is a foot of land to be prevented from becoming slave territory, I am ready to assert the principle of the exclusion of slavery. I am pledged to it from the year 1837; I have been pledged to it again and again; and I will ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... with apertures. If I were to close them all but one, and keep that for the door? No: trees have betrayed me; I'll never trust another tree with you. Stay; I know, I know—a cavern." He uttered the verb rather loudly, but the substantive with a sudden feebleness of intonation that was amusing. His timidity was superfluous; if he had said he knew "a bank whereon the wild thyme grows," the suggestion would have been ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... it is not the less important that, if he do care to know aught about them, his knowledge should be exact, for there is no knowing beforehand how luxuriantly the minutest germ of theoretical error may ramify in practice, or into what substantive quagmire trust in deceitful shadows may lead. These respectable aphorisms may be beneficially borne in mind during perusal of what ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... only they were unluckily treated as strangers. Well; the same thing may the apologist for the Bible say,—merely adding, that it does more effectually the business of thus awakening 'dormant' powers, and giving a substantive form to the shadowy conceptions of mankind. But it is still, in either case, to the bulk of the world an external revelation, an outward aid which gives them the actual conscious possession of spiritual light, and secures the vaunted progress of humanity. Such are some of my ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... or writers from whom Manetho drew his information evidently mentioned certain kings hyku-Shausu; other passages, or, the same passages wrongly interpreted, were applied to the race, and were rendered hyku-Shausu "the prisoners taken from the Shausu," a substantive derived from the root haka "to take" being substituted for the noun hyqu "prince." Josephus declares, on the authority of Manetho, that some manuscripts actually suggested this derivation—a fact which is easily explained by the custom of the Egyptian record offices. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... universal 'footsteps' which are but 'the same footsteps of nature treading or printing in different substances.' 'There is formed in everything a double nature of good, the one as everything is a total or substantive in itself, and the other, as it is a part or member of a greater body whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conservation of a more general form.... This double nature of good, and the comparison thereof, is much more engraven upon MAN, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... ATTRIBUTES (such as "baked", "beautiful", "black", "broken", &c.: in fact, whatever can be "attributed to", that is "said to belong to", any Thing, is an Attribute). Whenever we wish to mention a Thing, we use a SUBSTANTIVE: when we wish to mention an Attribute, we use an ADJECTIVE. People have asked the question "Can a Thing exist without any Attributes belonging to it?" It is a very puzzling question, and I'm not going to try to answer it: let us turn up our noses, and treat ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll
... with which it defines the time of an action. The causative form is made by the use of a suffix. It does not use the verb "to go" or "come" in order to express a future tense. Numerous particles are used in the substantive verb sense. The Mandingo language is rather smooth. The letters v and z are not in it. About one-fifth of the verbs and nouns commence with vowels, and the noun always ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... more simply do this than by considering the proper collocation of the substantive and adjective. Is it better to place the adjective before the substantive, or the substantive before the adjective? Ought we to say with the French—un cheval noir; or to say as we do—a black horse? ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... between troubadour poetry and the popular poetry of folk-lore, a great gulf is fixed, the gulf of artificiality. The very name "troubadour" points to this characteristic. Trobador is the oblique case of the nominative trobaire, a substantive from the verb trobar, in modern French trouver. The Northern French trouvere is a nominative form, and trouveor should more properly correspond with trobador. The accusative form, which should have persisted, was ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... one party is to be cheated, the one who is freest from passion will be the winner of the game. As a maxim, after the fashion of Rochefoucauld, this doctrine may have enough truth to be plausible; but when seriously accepted and made the substantive moral of a succession of stories, one is reminded less of a really acute observer than of a lad fresh from college who thinks that wisdom consists in an exaggerated cynicism. When ladies of this variety break their ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... those which precede or follow it, he has mingled one or two others that had been used by our elder poets, but almost entirely rejected by the refiners of the couplet measure till the time of Langhorne; as where the substantive and its epithet are so placed, that the latter makes the end of an iambic in the second, and the former the beginning of a trochee ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... signifies "the upper part of the ridge of some elevated and exposed land." As a prefix, its meaning depends upon the fact whether the word attached to it be an adjective or a substantive. If an adjective be attached, it has the second signification; i.e. it is the upper part of some exposed land, having the particular quality involved in the adjective, such as, "Cefndu," "Cefngwyn," "Cefncoch," the black, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... Dorsenne again, jocosely, "that in the father's dictionary the word has another meaning: Conversion, feminine substantive, means to him income.... But let us reason a little, Countess. Why do you think it sad that the daughter should see her father's character in her own light?... You should, on the contrary, rejoice at it.... And why do you find ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... conjunctive, substantive, or grammar, no more than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet these will give you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear them, and peradventure shall trip as little in their language as the best masters of art in France. He knows ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne |
