"Idiom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as if continuing a sentence he was running over in his mind. "Casse! Pauvre Pierre, un peu casse, le pauvre bonhomme, but then, he's good for several years yet; cracked he is, but only cracked like a good old basin, and (in the idiom) he'll still hold well ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... born," say the French in a slyly witty proverb, which is a circumlocutory way of saying that a man won't set the Thames on fire. For "he has not invented gunpowder" is the French equivalent for this idiom of ours, and it is obvious to the meanest intellect that a man whose birth was celebrated by fireworks could not have been the inventor of gunpowder. And yet there were fireworks of a kind from the earliest times, from the first appearance of stars in the firmament with their wandering habits ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... translation, likewise, of Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War, diminished the motives thereto. In the translation, I have endeavoured to render my author literally, wherever I was not prevented by absolute differences of idiom; but I am conscious, that in two or three short passages, I have been guilty of dilating the original; and, from anxiety to give the full meaning, have weakened the force. In the metre I have availed myself of no other liberties, than those which Schiller had permitted ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... have a mere coincidence of idiom; in the former a proverbial allusion.[57] An uncritical pursuit of such mere accidents of resemblance has led Mr. Feis to such enormities as the assertion that Shakspere's contemporaries knew Hamlet's use of his tablets to be a parody of the "much-scribbling Montaigne," who had avowed ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... acquired a full line of Fifth Avenue dialect and conversation with trills and grace notes from France and Italy. He had been slowly recovering from that trouble for a year or so when I met him. Now and then a good, strong, native idiom ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... able, and less inclined, to encounter the hardships of so severe a climate and so barren a soil, never attempted to mix with the original and more sturdy inhabitants of that unfavoured spot; but left them and their language, which could only be a Celtic idiom, in the primitive state in which they ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... that you are one of the enlightened ones, I will confess to you that I did keep a little establishment a la Pierre Loti. My Japanese teacher thought it would be a good way of improving my knowledge of the local idiom; and this knowledge meant an extra hundred pounds to me for interpreter's allowance, as it is called. I thought, too, that it would be a relief after diplomatic dinner parties to be able to swear for an hour or so, big round oaths in the company of a dear beloved ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... sea idiom is assuredly proper in a maritime people, especially as many of the phrases are at once graphic, terse, and perspicuous. How could the whereabouts of an aching tooth be better pointed out to an operative dentist than Jack's ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... answer to the following anonymous letter, sent to Mr. Walpole by Miss Hannah More, ridiculing the prevailing adoption of French idioms into the English language. There is not in this satirical epistle one French word nor one English idiom:— ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... this point there seems to be a diversity of opinion between Basil and Chrysostom. The latter says that there is only one heaven (Hom. iv in Gen.), and that the words 'heavens of heavens' are merely the translation of the Hebrew idiom according to which the word is always used in the plural, just as in Latin there are many nouns that are wanting in the singular. On the other hand, Basil (Hom. iii in Hexaem.), whom Damascene follows (De Fide Orth. ii), says that there are many heavens. The difference, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... manuscript extant of this poem, (still preserved at Bivar, the hero's birth-place,) bears the date of 1207, or at latest 1307, for there is some obscurity in the writing. Its learned editor, Sanchez, has been led by the peculiarities of its orthography, metre, and idiom, to refer its composition to as early a date as 1153. (Coleccion de Poesias Castellanas anteriores al Siglo XV. (Madrid 1779-90,) tom. i. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... trivial argument (or instantia, the scholastic term for an argument not latent merely, or merely having the office of sustaining a truth, but urged as an objection, having the polemic office of contradicting an opponent) is in Shakespeare's idiom, when viewed as against a substantial ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... help smiling, nor could the rest, except David, who for politeness tried to be blank, and thoroughly warmed himself by the inward struggle, turning quite red. When the captain got us back to the road and "fell us out" (note the idiom!) we had calisthenics, with pushing matches that put warmth into us. And then we marched in skirmish line through low bushes for half a mile, till the captain lined us up for blank ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... him, and he said, "Ah, a little sooner than I thought." And why not "sooner" as well as "earlier"? But when, on the same road, two white girls in an ox-cart hailed me with the question, "What time 't is?" I thought the interrogative idiom a little queer; almost as queer, shall we say, as "How do you do?" may have sounded to the first man who heard it,—if the reader is able to imagine such ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... language of his time, but should I so write at all, I fear the pleasure of perusal would but poorly pay for the trouble, as the English of the Bluff King is almost a foreign tongue to us. I shall, therefore, with a few exceptions, give Sir Edwin's memoir in words, spelling and idiom which his rollicking little old shade will probably repudiate as none of his whatsoever. So, if you happen to find sixteenth century thought hob-nobbing in the same sentence with nineteenth century English, be not disturbed; I did it. If the little ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... pine and beech and fir, and there are windfalls and slashes which sometimes bridge the creeks. There are still black ash swales and dry beech ridges, but they are not as massive as further south. There are still the haunting deer and the black bear and the ruffed grouse, the "partridge" in the idiom of the country, the "pheasant" of the South and Southwest. There are scores of tiny lakes, deep and pure and tenanted, and babbling streams, and there are the knighted speckled trout, the viking black bass and that rakish aristocrat, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... had learned, all right, and here, on this new world, in this fresh start, he would show how well he had learned. In the idiom of Ventura Boulevard, he'd hit 'em with the whole deck, deuces wild. He'd give 'em sex and money and superstition and to ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban
... now set up for themselves in various departments of literature. Not only their talents, but also their nations and dialects, were so various, that our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at Babel. We had the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, and foreign idiom, twanged off by the most discordant vociferation; for as they all spoke together, no man had any chance to be heard, unless he could bawl louder than his fellows. It must be owned, however, there was nothing pedantic in their ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made a ten-strike, I hear," he volunteered, in an expressive, if inelegant, idiom of the money game; "there's a story going the rounds that Mills and Severance have been gunning together and that some one else got burned. Anyway, I hear they've lined their pockets. Severance ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... took another turn. In all probably this augmentation of Semitic religious influence was due to the increased numbers of the Semitic population, and at the same period the Sumero-Akkadian language began to give way to the Semitic idiom which they spoke. When at last the Semitic Babylonian language came to be used for official documents, we find that, although the non-Semitic divine names are in the main preserved, a certain number of them have been displaced by the Semitic equivalent names, such as Samas for ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... is lost. A Latin idiom (as Keightley points out) male perditur: Prof. Masson, however, would regard it as equivalent to "there is little ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... the antithesis, "Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into his hand." The rendering of the English version, "The Lord is with them that uphold my soul," is literally accurate, but does not convey the meaning of the Hebrew idiom. God is not regarded as one among many helpers, but as alone the supporter or upholder of his life. Believing that, the psalmist, of course, believes as a consequence that his enemies will be smitten with evil ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... generally of a certain length) was that which was sent down to Cambridge, and honoured with the prize. I was determined however, upon consulting with my friends, to translate from the former. This has been faithfully done with but few[003] additions. The reader will probably perceive the Latin idiom in several passages of the work, though I have endeavoured, as far as I have been able, to avoid it. And I am so sensible of the disadvantages under which it must yet lie, as a translation, that I wish I had written upon the subject, without ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... rapid current to swell the volume of the Orinoco,—we shall observe, at distant intervals upon the plain, irregular groups of palm-trees surmounting the wavy level of the grass. These isolated clumps or groves, called matas in the provincial idiom, form the landmarks of the Venezuelan Plains; and in the neighborhood of each we shall find the hato or dwelling of a Llanero. The building, we shall find in every case, is a roughly-constructed hut, consisting of a floor raised a couple of feet above the spongy soil, and covered with a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... the sonnets and the love-intoxicated letters she is believed to have addressed to him? I would not say that every word of the latter is genuine; through the several translations—from the French original (which is lost) into the Scotch idiom, from this into Latin, and then back into French as we now have them—they may have suffered much alteration: we have no right to lay stress on every expression, and interpret it by the light of later events: but in the main they are without doubt genuine: they contain ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... other, sir, may be both charitably and accurately described in your native idiom ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... conceive, Monsieur, with what mixed feelings I descend next morning. On the one 'and, I must keep the sharp look-out for my uncle, for 'im I must avoid till he shall have—what do you say in your idiom? Yes, I have it—simmered down and tucked in his shirt. On the other 'and, I must watch for my lady of the parrot. I count the minutes ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... language," says Addison, "sunk under him." But the truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a perverse and pedantick principle. He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and condemned; for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the beauty, nor awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry, that his call is obeyed without resistance, the reader feels himself in captivity to a higher ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... with things great and small, with everything that concerns men, is the literary expression of this view of life. Its language is the new-Hebrew, a simple, nervous idiom suited to practical life, but lacking the power and poetry of the Biblical Hebrew. It is a more useful but less polished instrument than the older language. The subject-matter of the Mishnah includes ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.") The absence of a love affair will deprive him of the only "human interest" he can be really sure of. The Chestertonian idiom, above all, will soon lead him to expect nothing, because he can never get any idea of what he is to receive, and will bring him to a proper submissiveness. The later stages are simple. The reader will wonder why it never before occurred to him that area-railings ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... the beguilements of evil spirits better than we have, for the contemplative orders were more kindred to those earlier times than to-day. Monasticism of today takes another turn. Love of God is eternal, but we must love God in the idiom and spirit of our time." And Father Daly believed that there was no surer method of escaping from the danger than by active work, by teaching, which, he argued, was not incompatible with contemplation, not carried to excess; and there were also the poor people, and ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... there was no need to be so literal," returned Mrs. Challoner, reprovingly; for she was a gentlewoman of the old school, and nothing grieved her more than slipshod English or any idiom or idiotcy of modern parlance in the mouths of her bright young daughters: to speak of any young man except Dick without the ceremonious prefix was a heinous misdemeanor in her eyes. Dulce would occasionally trespass, ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... sir. It is not that. It iss that I—" His face worked. He had dropped back to the old idiom, after years of painful struggle to abandon it. "It iss that I am a German, also. I have people there, in the war. To make shells to ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... anecdotes have been selected and carefully compiled under appropriate headings, alphabetically arranged, making the many stories easily available for the private reader and public teacher. Mr. Moody's idiom has been strictly preserved. He tells the story. "Gold" will be found scattered through the volume, which includes Mr. Moody's terse declarations of many precious ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... declared the mother, using an effective German idiom. "Jennie has gone walking with him once or twice. He has called here at the house. What is there now in that for the people to talk about? Can't the girl ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... fearful heart, Be strong I fear not."[1] "Quit yourselves like men; be strong."[2] "O man greatly beloved, fear not! Peace be unto thee! Be strong, yea, be Strong."[3] When, at some occasional test, dismay or self-pity took hold of me I formed a habit of saying to myself, in our expressive American idiom: "This is your special stunt. It's up to you to do this thing just as if you had all the facilities. Go at it boldly, and you'll find unexpected forces closing round you and Coming to ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... a clever Indian girl, who understands Spanish as well as her native idiom, and who translated various Castilian words for us into the original Tarrascan, which sounds very liquid and harmonious. To-morrow we shall leave Uruapa and this hospitable family, whose kindness and attention to us we never can forget. It seems ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... foreign language made at no time any part. In them he sought for incidents, and he found images; but for the treasures of diction he was content to dig on British soil. He had all he wanted in the old wells of "English undefiled," and the still living, though fast shrinking, waters of that sister idiom which had not always, as he flattered himself, deserved the name ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... for wisdom. It is probably more instructive to entertain a sneaking kindness for any unpopular person, and among the rest, for Lord Braxfield, than to give way to perfect raptures of moral indignation against his abstract vices. He was the last judge on the Scots bench to employ the pure Scots idiom. His opinions, thus given in Doric, and conceived in a lively, rugged, conversational style, were full of point and authority. Out of the bar, or off the bench, he was a convivial man, a lover of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Anglicism, which has become an idiom in all languages, so gracefully does it depict the nuptial season which is so fugitive, and during which life is nothing but sweetness and rapture; the expression survives as illusions and errors survive, for it contains the most odious of falsehoods. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... bishops, of that of which they charged him with as great a fault for meddling with civil and secular affairs; for they not only looked upon them to form the army and to purge it of such as whom, in their idiom, they called Malignants, but really such as were loyal to the King; and also would have no Acts of Parliament to pass without their consent and approbation. Their proselytes in the laity were also heavy upon and uneasy to such as they found or conceived to have ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... thee home, and tell thee what I mean, by the way," said Penn, using the idiom of his sect, into which familiar manner of speech he naturally fell when talking confidentially ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... startlingly American, as when the original betrayer of the heroine is excused on the ground that, being English, his morality would naturally not rise to native level (I swear I'm not laughing—see page 168); and so full of the idiom of the Transatlantic stage as to be a perfect vade mecum for visiting mimes from this side. For the rest, vivacious, wildly sentimental and obviously written from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... induce the belief that modern Wales may be divided into two parts, in one of which the inhabitants call each other Bach and follow a code of morals that I simply will not stoop to characterise; while the other is at once more Saxon in idiom and considerably more melodramatic in its happenings. It is to the latter province that I must assign A Little Welsh Girl (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), the Romance, with a big R, of Dylis Morgan, who pushed an unappreciated suitor over a precipice and came to London ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same time apologetic to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the bye, his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... however, appears to us mere conjecture, as in the time of Klaproth the interpretation of cuneiform inscriptions had not been accomplished, and too little was known of the language of the Medes for any one to judge of its resemblance to the Ossete idiom. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... in choice Eskimo, which we render into English with as much fidelity to the native idiom as seems consistent with the ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... love the more, Because they are so old and grown so dear! The backs of tarnished gold, the faded boards, The slightly yellowing page, the strange old type, All speak the fashion of another age; The thoughts peculiar to the man who wrote Arrayed in garb peculiar to the time; As though the idiom of a man were caught Imprisoned in the idiom of a race. A nothing truly, yet a link that binds All ages to their own inheritance, And stretching backward, dim and dimmer still, Is lost in a remote antiquity. Grapes do not come of thorns nor figs of thistles, And even a great poet's divinest thought ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... of speech used by the samurai, and other superior classes, differed considerably from those of the popular idiom; but these differences could not be effectively ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... style is more nearly correct and freer in movement. She improves in idiom, although she still omits articles and uses the "did" construction for the simple past. This is an idiom common ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... said Horace laughing, for indeed he spoke French with a fine English accent and idiom. "Let me hear you. Where ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... like that?" I interrupted. "What does Anarky know about the popular idea concerning the Chinese? About as much as I should know if you were to talk to me about the Teutonic idiom for mezzo-tinted phonetics." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... most familiar forms of factory-made humour. Now the English people are apt to turn away from the whole field of slang. In the first place it puzzles them—they don't know whether each particular word or phrase is a sort of idiom already known to Americans, or something (as with O. Henry) never said before and to be analysed for its own sake. The result is that with the English public the great mass of American slang writing (genius apart) doesn't go. I have even found English people of undoubted literary ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... a fixed idiom that the sentence, if it has the verb be, seems awkward or affected without this ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... whole matter, a poet must first be certain that the word he would introduce is beautiful in the Latin; and is to consider, in the next place, whether it will agree with the English idiom. After this he ought to take the opinion of judicious friends, such as are learned in both languages; and lastly, since no man is infallible, let him use this licence very sparingly; for if too many foreign words are poured ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... of Harden. His favourite residence was Oakwood Tower, a place of great strength, situated on the banks of the Ettrick. The motto of his family was "Reparabit cornua Phoebe," which being interpreted by his countrymen, in their vernacular idiom, ran thus—"We'll hae moonlight again." Now, the young laird was one who considered it his chief honour to give effect to both the spirit and the letter of his family motto. Permitting us again to refer to honest Falstaff, it implied that they were "gentlemen of the night;" and he was not one ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... refers to the Arab idiom, "His hand (or arm) is long or short," i.e. he is a man ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... Purity of the English Language! it being almost impossible (considering the Stile of our Author, which is a little more figurative than the present Taste of the English allows in their Writings,) not to retain something of the Idiom of the Original; but where the Sense of the Matter is made plain, the Stile may not be thought so material, in Writings ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... partly to their constant duplication, Jain manuscripts had early conformed to a certain rigid type. The painting was marked by lean and wiry outlines, brilliant red and blue and above all by an air of savage ferocity expressed through the idiom of faces shown three-quarter view with the farther eye detached and projecting into space. This style was exercised almost exclusively on Jain subjects and in the year 1400 it was the main style of painting in Western India and ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... take a chapter by itself if we were writing a biography, this now very usual episode of the return of the young American from the foreign conditions in which he has learned his professional language, and his position in face of the community that he addresses in a strange idiom. There has to be a prompt adjustment between ear and voice, if the interlocutor is not to seem to himself to be intoning in the void. There is always an inner history in all this, as well as an outer one—such, however, as it would ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... largest and most thriving town between Manaos and Iquitos, a distance of twelve hundred miles. It is also one of the oldest settlements on the river, having been founded during the English revolution, or nearly two centuries ago. Tupi is the common idiom. The productions of the country are cacao, sarsaparilla, Brazil nuts, bast for caulking vessels, copaiba balsam, India-rubber, salt fish, turtle-oil, manati, grass hammocks, and tiles. Bates calculates the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... written to me, sending a cutting of an advertisement of a month back of a spiritualist from Abville, which he thinks may be my husband's. I am sure it is, I know the Greek idiom put into English. It decides me on what I had thought of before. I shall offer my services as nurse or physician, or whatever they will let me be in that stress of need. I may find him, or if he have fled, I may, if I live, trace him. At any rate, by God's grace, I ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Swanson, heavy, slow-moving, blond as Harold Haarfagar, a veritable Scandinavian colossus; Wyndham, clean-bred, clean-built, an English gentleman to his fingers' tips; old Ike James, whose tongue carried the idiom and soft-slurring drawl of his native South; Eugene Brule, three parts Quebec French and one part Cree; Carter, O'Gara, Bullen, Westwick, ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... and herrin' to his dejeune, but a scholar's book open against the ale-jug." A poor Baron (of a vastly different state from the Baron of France), English spoken too, with not much of the tang of the heather in his utterance though droll of his idiom, hospitable (to judge from the proffered glass still being fumbled for in the cupboard), a man who had been in France on the right side, a reader of the beau langage, and a student of the lore of arme blanche—come, here ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... a noble idiom will count in the final result, as the writers of early English made possible the language of the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton. We are perfecting a medium to be used as long as Chinese ideographs have been. It will no doubt, like the Chinese language, record in the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... and rolls; and among them a volume in an unknown tongue, and which, although very ancient, had especially escaped destruction. This nobody in the monastery could read, nor could they at that time find any one who understood the writing or the idiom; it was exceedingly ancient, and the letters evidently were most beautifully formed; the inscriptions or titles were written in gold, and encircled with ornaments; bound in oak with silken bands, which still retained their strength and beauty; so perfectly ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... can distinguish the foreigner; and when he himself travels, is struck with the aspect of a strange country, the moment he passes the bounds of his own. The air of the person, the tone of the voice, the idiom of language, and the strain of conversation, whether pathetic or languid, gay or severe, are ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... tout bois, mais de fagots de mes transcriptions. The literal translation is, "Obliges me to utilise, not the wood, but the faggots of my transcriptions," the point of the sentence turning upon the French idiom "faire fleche de tout bois," which in English is rendered by a totally different idiom.—Trans.] for which I am now paid in Germany, Russia, France, at the rate of from twelve to 1500 marks apiece, for ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... While our English poets have conceived and executed without regard for the opinion of the learned and without obedience to the usages of language—Shakspere, for example, producing tragedies which set Aristotle at defiance, and Milton engrafting Latinisms on the native idiom—the Italian poets thought and wrote with the fear of Academies before their eyes, and studied before all things to maintain the purity of the Tuscan tongue. The consequence is that the Italian and English literatures are eminent for very different excellences. All that is forcible in the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... The Old Cattleman's face offered full hint of his amazement as he repeated in the idiom of his day and kind the substance of ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... her uncomprehendingly. Primmie's equipment of Cape Cod slang and idiom, rather full and complete of itself, had of late been amplified and complicated by a growing acquaintance with the new driver of the grocery cart, a young man of the world who had spent two hectic years ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... possessed of a little entirely worthless land, which formed the basis of his transactions. His frauds were discovered while he was in our country, and he was obliged to leave between two days, according to your so picturesque idiom. Needless to say his application for permission to visit Leeward Island for any purpose would instantly have been refused, but as a matter of fact it was ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... sisters were running nastily over a catalogue of the books kept for circulation, as an elderly lady, of foreign accent and dress, entered; and depositing a couple of religious works on the counter, she inquired for the remainder of the set. The peculiarity of her idiom and her proximity to the sisters caused them both to look up at the moment, and, to the surprise of Jane, her sister uttered a slight exclamation of pleasure. The foreigner was attracted by the sound, and after a moment's hesitation, she respectfully curtsied. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... Such is the force of the Hebrew idiom in the last clause of xxxvi. 16; for the different attitude of the princes in 608 see ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... on a common plan of alphabetical notation, they would generally be found to the eye, as they are to the ear, nearly identical. The discrepancies would be rendered less in cases in which they appear to be considerable, and the peculiarities of idiom, as they exist, would be made more striking and instructive. I have heard both idioms spoken by the natives, and therefore have more confidence in speaking of their nearness and affinity, than I could have had from mere book comparison. I am told that Mackenzie got his vocabulary from ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... of the Greek provinces were ignorant of the language that disposed of their lives and properties; and the barbarous dialect of the Latins was imperfectly studied in the academies of Berytus and Constantinople. As an Illyrian soldier, that idiom was familiar to the infancy of Justinian; his youth had been instructed by the lessons of jurisprudence, and his imperial choice selected the most learned civilians of the East, to labor with their sovereign in the work of reformation. The theory of professors ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... certain line of conduct and no other. Five minutes had not gone by in talk before each found in the other's presence that sense of repose which comes from similar habits of thought and a common native idiom. Whatever grounds for difference they might find, they were, at least, ranged on the same side in that battle which the two hemispheres half unconsciously wage upon each other as to the main purposes of life. Thus they were able to approach their subject without that first preliminary shock which ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... pewee (Contopus virens), the Tl[)a]niw[)a] or mythic hawk, the Gul[)i]sgul[)i] or great crested flycatcher (Myiarchus crinitus), the Tsts or martin (Progne subis), and the Anigstaya or chimney swift (Chtura pelasgia). In the idiom of the formulas it is said that these "have just come and are sticking to them" (the players), the same word (dantsglani'ga) being used to express the devoted attention of a lover to his mistress. The Watatuga, a small species of dragon-fly, is also invoked, together with ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... two of the instances are qualified by the context in such manner as to leave no possible doubt as to the meaning. The first time they occur the words of the passage are, "prope latitudinem quadraginta trium graduum aut eo circa versus septentrionem." The free translation into modern idiom is beyond doubt, "near the forty-third degree of north latitude or thereabout;" and the direction toward the north must be along a meridian line on which latitude is measured, or due north. Messrs. Mudge and Featherstonhaugh, instead of connecting in their translation the words "versus ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of an efficient and healthy climate, both naturally and philosophically, one in which tradition, history, and experience reign supreme," Wagner said in such a way that I couldn't help but think that it had served as an idiom of ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... not unfamiliar, tap on the shoulder, with the words (gratifying under quite other circumstances and from quite different lips) "I want you," might incapacitate him from prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely idiom—less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse); finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant Hooper ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... achieves his end in the shortest time possible. He is for ever correcting the same mistakes and rebuking the same stupidity, and the wonder is, not that he loses his temper, but that he should ever be able to preserve it. He understands men, and approaches them in an idiom that is likely to ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... against the Presbyterians, of the government of the English Church by bishops. No work of equal dignity and scope had yet been published in English prose. It was written in sonorous, stately and somewhat involved periods, in a Latin rather than an English idiom, and it influenced strongly the diction of later writers, such as Milton and Sir Thomas Browne. Had the Ecclesiastical Polity been written one hundred, or perhaps even fifty, {91} years earlier, it would doubtless have been written ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... none of my business," he said presently; "but from your general appearance, from bits of idiom you occasionally drop, and from the way you handled those two boes the night we met I should rather surmise that at some time or other you had been less than a thousand miles from ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as literal in constructions, Master Skimmer, as a school-boy's version of his Virgil. There is an idiom in diplomacy, as well as in language, and one who treats so sensibly should not be ignorant of its phrases. Bless me, Sir; an hypothesis is not a conclusion, any more than a promise is a performance. That ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Guyenne is almost a conclusive proof that such of the Anglo-Saxon stock as followed the Norman leaders into Aquitaine, and who remained in the country any length of time, were not sufficiently numerous to impose their idiom upon others. They probably did not preserve it long themselves; but, like the English grooms who find occupation in France today, they quickly adopted the language that was generally spoken around them. Patient ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... over, the diabolical farce is over, and she is "tied," as their idiom has it, "tied to the stone." Oh, she is tied indeed, tied with ropes Satan twisted in ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... was made in choice Romaic—and which, doubtless, sounded much more heroic and elegant in that idiom than in simple English, was highly applauded by his followers—indeed, had they ever heard of Homer, they would have considered it equal in substance and talent to anything ever uttered by the most valiant of the heroes he speaks of. It was scarcely concluded, however—and they were ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... that, although the phrase Los Reyes Catolicos, as applied to a female equally with a male, would have a whimsical appearance literally translated into English, it is perfectly consonant to the Spanish idiom, which requires that all words, having reference to both a masculine and a feminine noun, should be expressed in the former gender. So also in the ancient languages; Aemen tyrannoi, says Queen Hecuba; ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... an instant. 'Oh yes!' she said, using her favourite English idiom. 'The door was open as always, monsieur, and I shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain. Listen! When I enter the room of madame from the other door in there—ah! but if monsieur will give himself the pain to enter ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... and their riders most seriously sometimes. Having still about eight miles to go, we were galloping gaily over a wide open plain, our only anxiety arising from the fast failing daylight; but the horses were still quite fresh, and, as the French idiom would have it, devoured the ground at a fine pace; when, in an instant, the ground appeared to rise up to meet me, and I found myself dragged along on the extreme point of my right shoulder, still grasping both reins and whip. I was almost under the feet of the other horse, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... as in many things of that kind, that related to the offending other men, for his own sake un-counsellable; [Footnote: i.e. according to Clarendon's idiom, less amenable to advice than it would have been in his own interest to be.] not that he did not know that it exposed him to the censure of some men who lay in wait to do him hurt, but because he neglected those censures, nor valued the persons who ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... reproducing these minutiae without doing too much violence to the English idiom was an extremely difficult one, the experienced reader need not be told. Liszt, it is true, writes generally in a simple and straightforward manner, and his letters, especially those written in French, present no very great obstacles; but with Wagner the case is different. He also is plain and lucid ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... of indigenous English alone forms the adequate barrier and the assured racial ground. (Oh the queer reversions observed on the part of Latinized compatriots in the course of a long life—the remarkable drops from the quite current French or Italian to the comparatively improvised native idiom, with the resulting effect of the foreign tongue used as a domestic and the domestic, that is the original American, used as a foreign tongue, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... in a manner he proceeds to describe. Now the three parts of the sentence which has been given above in the original do, to the best of my judgment, clearly refer to three different species of food; and I would appeal to the candid opinion of any competent Greek scholar, whether, according to the idiom of that language, the second part of it is so expressed, as to connect it with, and make it explanatory of, the first. We want, for this purpose, a relative, either with or without [Greek: esti]; and the change of gender in haematia seems perfectly ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... the words "Hold the Fort," but it is difficult, as the teacher explained to me, for the translator to avail himself of the usual word for "hold," as it conveys more the idea of "take hold," "seize," and the young Kafir missionary thoroughly understood all the nicety of the idiom. There was another class for women and children, but it was a small one. Certainly, the young men seemed much in earnest, and the rapt expression of their faces was most striking, especially during the short prayer which followed the hymn and ended ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... speech of the Netherlands, which in the Middle Ages, like the other European languages, passed through the different Germanic, Norman, and French phases, and ended in the present Dutch language, in which there is still a foundation of the primitive idiom and the evidence of a slight Latin influence. Certainly, there is a striking similarity between Dutch and German, and, above all, there are a number of root-words common to the two; but there is, however, a great difference in ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... however, been added to the Book of Leinster version for the purpose of comparison. In the renderings given of these romances the translation of the prose is nearly literal, but no attempt has been made to follow the Irish idiom where this idiom sounds harsh in English; actives have been altered to passive forms and the reverse, adjectives are sometimes replaced by short sentences which give the image better in English, pronouns, in which Irish is very rich, are often replaced by ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... interposed Morris Woolridge, who had been giving the native lessons in English, for he mixed with it the German idiom. ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... animated in an instant. "Oh, yes," she said, using her favorite English idiom. "The door was open as always, monsieur, and I shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain. Listen! When I enter the room of madame from the other door in there—ah! but if monsieur will give himself the pain to enter the other room, all ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley |
