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Possessive   Listen
noun
Possessive  n.  
1.
(Gram.) The possessive case.
2.
(Gram.) A possessive pronoun, or a word in the possessive case.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Possessive" Quotes from Famous Books



... them, her own children, her heart swelled and opened wide to a conception of something greater and deeper in motherhood than she had had; but which she could have if she could deserve it; something so wide and sun-flooded that the old selfish, possessive, never-satisfied ache which had called itself love withered away, its power to ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... Gilman's sensibilities. He felt ashamed of himself for not being more enthusiastic as he searched records and helped to locate the owner of that particular spot. To John, there was a new tone in Peter's voice, a possessive light in his eyes as he studied the location, and made excursions in several directions, to fix in his mind the ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... no, not my name, I feel sure.' He accentuated the possessive pronoun strongly, and then proceeded to explain the accentuation, smiling more and more amiably as he did so. 'No, not my name; ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... st have the addition of a syllable in the possessive case and the plural, and instead of saying that "some little birds had built their nests near the posts of Mr. West's gate," a Sussex boy would say, "the birds had built their nestes near the postes of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... reveled in having refused his half-hearted invitation, but already she was aware that she would regret it. She was shaken with woman's fiercely possessive clinging ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... reacting upon those about her, gained both for herself and her opinions a degree of consideration to which she was unaccustomed and which she highly relished. Never had Serena presented so bold a front to her philanthropic and very possessive elder sister. Never had she enjoyed so much attention in the small and rigidly select circle of Slowby society, in which she and Miss Susan moved. Serena spoke with authority upon all subjects, on the strength of a purely fictitious affair of the heart. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... of a young goddess, her hair tumbling over her bare shoulders in a splendid golden confusion. Contarini watched her with possessive eyes, as she went and came back, bringing him the drink. She brought him yellow wine of Chios in a glass calix of Murano, blown air-thin upon a slender stem and just touched here and there with drops ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... farms, we may plough and sow and reap, we may make revolutions or wars, sending our armies marching through the countryside in creeping dusty columns, but we are only illusions on the page of history, shadows flitting across the face of the land; the rooks are perpetual, ineradicable, and possessive. They feed behind our plough; they flock in our green trees; they build in our valleys and in the shelter of our houses; summer and winter they are seen flying under our English skies; they mate and nest and bicker round our cathedrals ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... In the Yorkshire dialect, when the possessive case is followed by the relative substantive, it is customary to omit the S; but if the relative be understood, and not expressed, the possessive case is formed in the usual manner, as in a subsequent ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... in a double-lobed fin. Laid out on the platform, it kept struggling with convulsive movements, trying to turn over, making such efforts that its final lunge was about to flip it into the sea. But Conseil, being very possessive of his fish, rushed at it, and before I could stop him, he seized ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... Cic. in his Epist. to Lucceius says: If I cannot obtain this favor from you, I shall perhaps be compelled to write my own biography, multorum exemplo et clarorum virorum. When ipse is joined to a possessive pronoun in a reflexive clause, it takes the case of the subject of the clause. Cf. Z. 696, Note; ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... man has come up to her by this time, and is holding out his hand: silently she lays her own in it, and colors treacherously as his fingers close on hers in a close, tender, and possessive fashion. ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... beautiful fragment of dreamy metaphor. There is probably a slight misprint in the last line, since the construction there becomes somewhat obscure. "My Love's Eyes" has merit, but lacks polish. The word "azure" in the first stanza, need not be in the possessive case; whilst the use of a singular verb with a plural noun in the second stanza (smiles-beguiles) is a little less than grammatical. "Longing" exhibits the author at her best, the images and phraseology alike showing the touch ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... These possessive pronouns, meus, tuus, suus, noster, and vester, take after them these genitive cases,— ipsius, of himself, solius, of him alone, unius, of one, duorum, of two, trium, of three, &c., omnium, of all, plurium, of more, paucorum, of few, cujusque, of every one, and ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... was driven into an intimate and possessive tone with regard to Buntingford, which was more than the facts warranted, and soon reduced Helena to monosyllables, and a ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... borderi. Hem bordero. Hemisphere duonsfero. Hemorrhage sangado. Hemorrhoids hemorojdo. Hemp kanabo. Hen (fowl) kokino. Henbane hiskiamo. Hence de nun. Henceforth de nun. Hepatic hepata. Heptagon sepangulo. Her sxin. Her (possessive) sxia. Hers sxia. Herald heroldo. Heraldic heraldika. Heraldry (science) heraldiko. Heraldry blazono. Herb herbo. Herbalist herbovendisto. Herbivorous herbomangxanta. Herd brutaro. Herdsman pasxtisto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... meet one halfway, give and take; come to terms &c. (contract) 769; submit to arbitration, abide by arbitration; patch up, bridge over, arrange; straighten out, adjust, differences, agree; make the best of, make a virtue of necessity; take the will for the deed. % Section IV. POSSESSIVE RELATIONS <— That is, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... in hot pursuit of Rich Hilary. Until Allys came on the scene it had seemed the pursuit must be successful. They had gone abroad on the same steamer the year before, dawdled through a London season, and come home simultaneously—he rather bored and languid, she of a demure and downcast, but withal possessive, air. She had said they were not engaged—"oh, dear no, only excellent friends," but looking all the while a contradiction of the words. Then unwisely she had taken Hilary to that tiresome tea for the little Rhett girl—and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... under certain conditions, into whose and whom; but that and which always remain the same, with the exception of the possessive case, as ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... This was almost war. Mrs. Baxter was a regal and possessive widow from Baltimore whose long and regular visits to Mr. Lanley had once occasioned his family some alarm, though time had now given ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... His, indeed, was the age, and his the soul, for pleasure; the tumult of the camp was to him but a holiday exhibition—the march of an army, the exhilaration of a spectacle; the court as a banquet—the throne, the best seat at the entertainment. The life of the heir-apparent, to the life of the king possessive, is as the distinction between ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... into the work-room, dropped an allusion to her young cousin, the architect, the effect was the same on Charity. The hemlock garland she was wearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind of trance. It was so manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchard should talk of Harney in that familiar possessive way, as if she had any claim on him, or knew anything about him. She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earth who really knew him, knew him from the soles of his feet to the rumpled crest of his hair, knew the shifting lights in his eyes, and the inflexions of his ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... is my house," answered the Baron, taking his cigar from his mouth for the first time since he had lighted it, and holding it out at arm's length with a possessive sweep while he leaned back and looked at the ceiling again. "It all belongs to me," he said. "I took it for the ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... trees, into what seemed a thicker thicket, and found it to be a thatch of branches woven to screen the muzzles of a battery. The big guns were all about us, crouched in these sylvan lairs like wild beasts waiting to spring; and near each gun hovered its attendant gunner, proud, possessive, important as ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... chalchihuitl, jade, and cueitl, skirt or petticoat, with the possessive prefix, ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... technique improves. Perfected, he would never use them, and his sentences would flow untaught from his pen in absolutely clear reflection of his thought. As an example of what I mean by awkwardnesses, I would cite the use of "whose" as the possessive of "which." I know that adequate authority pronounces this correct, so it is not on that score I reject it. Moreover, I recognize that in myself the repulsion is somewhat of an acquired taste. When I began to write ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... after the funeral that it all came out. Lena and Ethel were sitting up together over the papers and the letters, turning out his bureau. I suppose that, in the grand immunity his death conferred on her, poor Lena had become provokingly possessive. I can hear her saying to Ethel that there had never been anybody but her, all those years. Praising his faithfulness; holding out her dead happiness, and apologizing to Ethel for talking about it when Ethel didn't ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... considered it," answered the deacon. "Captain Gar'ner volunteered to go across for the doctor in my boat—" with a heavy emphasis on the possessive pronoun—"and we had him to look at the patient. But, if the salt-water be good for consumptive people, as some pretend, I think there is generally little hope for seamen whose ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... of the genitive case, jong, is sometimes omitted for the sake of brevity, e.g. u ksew nga (my dog) for u ksew jong nga. The preposition la gives also the force of the possessive case, e.g. la ka jong ka jong (their own). There are some nouns which change their form, or rather are abbreviated when used in the vocative case, e.g. ko mei, not ko kmei Oh mother; ko pa, ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... addressed). interj., interjection. interr., interrogative. metath., metathesis. n., noun. na, marks a noun as taking the suffixed pronoun in the third singular only. neg., negative. neut., neuter. obj., object. part., particle. partic., participle. pers., person, personal. pl., plural. poss., possessive. pr., pronoun. pref., prefix. prep., preposition. S, Sa'a language. See Sa'a and Ulawa dictionary. sing., singular. sub., subject. suff., suffix, suffixed. term., termination. tr., transitive. U, Ulawa language. See Sa'a and Ulawa dictionary. v., ...
— Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language • Walter G. Ivens

... l, and s at the end of a monosyllable after a single vowel are commonly doubled. The exceptions are the cases in which s forms the plural or possessive case of a noun, or third person singular of the verb, and the following words: clef, if, of, pal, sol, as, gas, has, was, yes, gris, his, is, thus, us. L is not doubled at the end of words of more than one syllable, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... assistance of a French-English dictionary from "Il m'a arrache les cheveux," "Il me donne des coups-de-pied," "Il m'a lacere la figure de ses ongles." It is noticeable that our instructor as a rule endeavours to make the possessive pronoun agree with the substantive in number and gender in orthodox Portuguese fashion, and that like a true grammatical patriot he insists upon the substantive having the same gender as in his ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca

... a friendship not untinged by enmity. His enmity was awakened when she became too possessive in the demands which she made and especially when she let fall criticisms, however mild, concerning Terry. These occurrences set him thinking of the other casuals who had ventured on her doorstep, not meaning to stay, and had ended by hanging up their hats in her hall. Her enmity was roused by the ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... she'd had, to fall in love with a mere boy. But she knew in her heart that it was his youth she wanted most, partly because it was Martin's youth, partly because it called to something in her which was not youth, nor yet belonged to age—something which was wise, tender and possessive—something which had never yet ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... regarded her, had in them a smile that the girl instinctively resented. Was it a shade too possessive and complacently ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... putting a possessive hand on Lady's flank while the latter turned her dainty head and regarded the girl out of softly-wistful brown eyes. "I wanted her as ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope

... the polite forms mean "yours." To translate these terms, "my foolish wife," "my swinish son," is incorrect, because it twice translates the same word. In such cases the Japanese thought is best expressed by using the possessive pronoun and omitting the derogative adjective altogether. Japanese indirect methods for the expression of the personal relation are thus numberless and subtile. May it not be plausibly argued since the European ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... the point of this remark, though his eyes were on her. They were not like Rolfe's eyes, insinuating, possessive; they had the anomalistic quality, of being at once personal and impersonal, friendly, alight, evoking curiosity ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... curious, and none is more quaint and delightful than Old St. John's Cemetery at the very core of the town, with streets of quiet, old-time houses on two sides, and busy, bustling, modern thoroughfares on the others. Every citizen of Kingsport feels a thrill of possessive pride in Old St. John's, for, if he be of any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor buried there, with a queer, crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling protectively over the grave, on which all the main ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... vision came to Claire de Wissant. As she went down the cliff-side her lovely eyes rested on these sinister, man-created monsters with a feeling of sisterly, possessive affection. She had become so familiarly acquainted with each and all of them in the last few months; she knew with such a curious, intimate knowledge where they differed, both from each other and also from other submarine craft, not only here, in these ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... softened. Nothing pleased her so much as for Billie to make one family of the three. The young cousin had become such a fixture in her home that she had grown quite jealous of Duncan Campbell's possessive ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... entreating him for a word, for a mere sign of life. From the first she had shrunk from seeming to assert any claim on his future, yet in her aching bewilderment she now charged herself with having been too possessive, too exacting in her tone. She told herself that his fastidiousness shrank from any but a "light touch," and that hers had not been light enough. She should havekept to the character of the "little friend," the artless consciousness in which tormented genius may find ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... hand suddenly closed over hers, and at the strong, possessive touch the magnetism of the man made her blood race through her veins. She tried to draw her hand away, but he only held it more tightly, and his face was very engaging as he said, "I've a good mind not to tell you who the other woman is as you are ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... never, as the reader may possibly have observed, present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world. ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger

... language, placed before a noun, is the possessive pronoun, as the second person, thy or thine, and xul, means end, termination. It is also the name of the sixth month of the Maya calendar. Axul would therefore be thy end. Among all the nations which have recognized the existence of a SUPREME BEING, Deity has ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... to Spanish custom, a matron is known by prefixing her maiden name with de (possessive of) to her ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... method of forming the possessive, based on a misapprehension of the original Anglo-Saxon suffix -es, which was shortened in middle English to -is, and ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... give me," is the simplest type of the approximate arrangement. In pleonasms, which are comparatively prevalent among the uneducated, the same essential structure is seen; as, for instance, in—"The men, they were there." Again, the old possessive case—"The king, his crown," conforms to the like order of thought. Moreover, the fact that the indirect mode is called the natural one, implies that it is the one spontaneously employed by the common people: that is—the one easiest ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer

... noun to a verb, to another noun, or to a preposition is called its case. There are three cases called the nominative, objective, and possessive. When the noun does something it is in the nominative case and is called ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton

... ne-daw-yo-em, etc., throughout all the different persons. When these possessive pronouns are used with nouns, nearly all the syllables are omitted, except the first, which is added to the noun in the ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... not alone the only unity in us, but it is that which unifies all the rest, uses the "possessive case," and may subordinate all else in us to ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... before. At the thought, he flushed with the idea that the portrait's eyes were reading his face, and compelled himself to look bravely at it; but as he met the lovely eyes strange questions darted into his brain: whether he would not rather have been solely to blame; whether his all-possessive love of her would not be more flawless now if she had been a flawless eternal-feminine type, longing for motherhood, but denying it for his sake; whether he would not be happier now in looking at her portrait if some warm tint from a Renaissance Madonna had mellowed the radiant ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... to mention That this erudition sham Is but classical pretension, The result of steady "cram." Yet my classic love aggressive, If you'll pardon the possessive, Is exceedingly impressive When ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... and his master had become used to his faults. He had one advantage, and that was a consideration. Although he was a Negro by birth he did not speak like a Negro, and nothing is so irritating as that hateful jargon in which all the pronouns are possessive and all the verbs infinitive. Let it be understood, then, that Frycollin was ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... joking. Now, decline He.' 'Nominative he, possessive his, objective him.' 'You see, his is possessive. Now, you can say his book, but you can't say him book.' 'Yes, I do say hymn book, too,' said the impracticable scholar, with a quizzical twinkle. Each one of these sallies made ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... opposite Raven at the table, demure, self-contained, yet playing her wildest. It was a game she knew she was to have entirely alone. The game was that she and Rookie were living here in this house in some such potency of possessive bliss that nothing could separate them. She was careless over the terms of it. She was a child, she was a woman, she was everything Rookie wanted her to be. Here they were together, and the universe, finding the combination, Nan and Rookie, too strong to fight against, had given ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... are two kinds of discontent— Malignant, and progressive,— The latter is the proper sort, Of it, be quite possessive. The former, born of parentage Whose motive powers are evil, Serves but one purpose here below— To aid ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... saddle, he leisurely looked her over with eyes that smoldered behind half-shuttered lids. To most of her world she was in spirit still more boy than woman, but before his bold, possessive gaze her long lashes wavered to the cheeks into which the warm blood was beating. Her long, free lines were still slender with the immaturity of youth, her soul still hesitating reluctantly to cross the border to womanhood toward which Nature was pushing her so relentlessly. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... summarised, further and further, in the dim fire-dust of endless avenues; that was all of the essence of fond and thrilled and throbbing recognition, with a thousand things understood and a flood of response conveyed, a whole familiar possessive feeling ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... at or near its traditional source, the tiny Appalachian spring at the head of the North Branch where in 1746 Thomas Lord Fairfax's surveyors set an inscribed stone to mark the northwestern corner of that possessive nobleman's vast holdings. Abandoned strip coal mines lie within sight of the spot, and it is doubtful that the infant river trickles more than a few yards before receiving its first injection of the acidic mixture of substances ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... about the two great classes of mountain scenery which I have just stated, he will, I hope, at last cease to charge me with enthusiasm in anything that I have said of Turner's imagination, as always instinctively possessive of those truths which lie deepest, and are most essentially linked together, in the expression of a scene. I have only taken two drawings (though these of his best period) for the illustration of all the structures of the Alps which, in ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... the man watched her. His regard was disturbing. It had a quality of insistence. His eyes were cold yet devouring. They were possessive, not clear but opaque. They did not look at her as other eyes did. She felt the blood burning in ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... out, the moment the culprits appeared in view. "This is the kind of order you keep in my house—my house!" and he emphasized the possessive pronoun so severely that the poor little word must have had a hard time of it among his ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... quite hand-to-mouth. He had fine gross easy senses, but it was not his good-natured appetite that wrought confusion. If he had loved us for our dinners we could have paid with our dinners, and it would have been a great economy of finer matter. I make free in these connexions with the plural possessive because if I was never able to do what the Mulvilles did, and people with still bigger houses and simpler charities, I met, first and last, every demand of reflexion, of emotion—particularly perhaps those of gratitude and of resentment. No one, I think, paid the ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... Victoria, the eldest, demurred mildly. Ever since she had nursed in France, she had assumed a slightly possessive manner toward the war, as if she had in some mysterious way brought it into the world and was responsible for its reputation. She was tall and very thin, with a perfect complexion, a long nose, and a short upper lip which showed her teeth too much when she laughed. Her hair was fair and fluffy; ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... a possible, nay, a probable chance, might for ever have blasted his ambitious hopes, he for the first time spoke of France as his. Considering the circumstances in which we then stood, this use of the possessive pronoun "my" describes more forcibly than anything that can be said the flashes of divination which crossed Bonaparte's brain when he was wrapped up in his chimerical ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... no other strong solicitation, among artistic appeals to which one may compare it up and down the whole wonderful country, is the felt neighbouring presence of the overwrought Cathedral in its little proud possessive town: you may so often feel by the week at a time that it stands there really for your own personal enjoyment, your romantic convenience, your small wanton aesthetic use. In such a light shines for me, at all events, under such an accumulation and complication of tone flushes and darkens ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... 17th, Chamberlain dined with the Prince of Wales. In noting the invitation in my diary I put down: "The Prince of Wales has asked Chamberlain to dinner for Saturday. I call this 'nobbling my party.'" But the possessive pronoun with regard to the party was not according to my custom. We always said that the party consisted of three in all—two leaders and a follower—and Dillwyn acknowledged Chamberlain and ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest. This is no new discovery. The Gospel says: "Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" The thought we give to these things is taken away from matters of ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... around the church with what was almost a possessive eye. These people were his friends. He knew them all, and they knew him. They had, against his protest, put his name on the bronze tablet set in the wall on the roll of honor. Small as it ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the position of the possessive sign in such words as "men's," "writer's." If accurately placed, the writer may be presumed to understand punctuation, and will give evidence of ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn

... grinning at us through a small square window in the wall at one end of the veranda. Then he came round and once more vaulted the veranda rail, for he seemed to hold ordinary means of entry in contempt. His eye looked very possessive for that of one seeking employment as a guide, but he stood at respectful attention ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... more to Flora's subtlety and diligence. It refreshed Madame to see how well the fair strategist kept her purposes hid. Not even Irby called them—those he discerned—hers. In any case, at any time, any possessive but my or mine, or my or mine on any lip but his, angered him. Wise Flora, whenever she alluded to their holding of the plighted ones apart, named the scheme his till that cloyed, and then "ours" in a way that made it more richly his, even when—clearly to Madame, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... Stair's devotion. But then she had always accepted it as quite natural, which it was. Also as calling for no particular notice, except, as it were, for a certain graceful obliviousness on her part, modified by a possessive glance or two from her fearless black eyes—glances for which Stair watched more alertly than he had ever gazed into the night for the signal ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... "The word chinuchi is a Mongol term derived from Mongol cinoa (pronounced cino or cono which means 'wolf,' with the possessive suffix -ci, meaning accordingly a 'wolf-owner' or 'wolf-keeper).' One of the Tibetan designations for the mastiff is cang-k'i (written spyang-k'yi), which signifies literally 'wolf-dog.' The Mongol term is probably framed ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Westonhaugh's favour. There is an easy air of familiar proprietorship about an Englishman in love that is not to be mistaken. It is a subtle thing, and expresses itself neither in word nor deed in its earlier stages of development; but it is there all the same, and the combination of this possessive mood, with a certain shyness which often goes with ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... quarter. At first the old woman's face was expressionless. But she moved the coin nearer to her eyes and a smile broke and widened until her whole face was a wrinkle of joy. When she turned in the doorway, the interviewer noticed that the hand jammed into an apron pocket was clutched into a possessive fist, cradling the precious ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... fact remarked, that besides the use of his, her, hereof, thereof, of it, and the, it was customary to employ the unchanged word it for the possessive case. I will give an example or two. In the Genevan version, at Rom. viii. 20., we read "Not of it owne wille." This passage is thus quoted in 1611 and in 1622, but in a later edition of the same work, 1656, its ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various

... little Jack Horner, that ensconces itself in lazy heads, and, while it dwarfs every power to the level of its own littleness, keeps vociferating, "What a great man am I!" It is the essential vice of this glib imp of the mind, even when it infests large intellects, that it puts Nature in the possessive case,—labels all its inventions and discoveries "My truth,"—and moves about the realms of art, science, and letters in a constant fear of having its pockets picked. Think of a man's having vouchsafed to him one of those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... Charmian continued, still looking at him with those contemplative and possessive eyes. "Men don't notice what is ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... with dagesh Yod) is not equivalent to uzi (Ayin with qubuts Zayin with dagesh Yod nor vezimrat (Vav Zayin Mem Resh Tav) to vezimrati (Vav Zayin Mem Resh Tav Yod), but that ohzi (Ayin with qamats Zayin with dagesh Yod) is a substantive (without a possessive suffix, but provided with a paragogic "yod"), as in Psalm cxxiii. 1, Obadiah 3, Deut. xxxiii. 16. The eulogy (of the Hebrews) therefore signifies: it is the strength and the vengeance of God that have been my salvation. vezimrat (Vav Zayin Mem Resh Tav) is thus in ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... If he said: "My wife is here," and chose to seize her with possessive grasp, she must meekly fold her hands upon her breast, and say: "Even so, my lord. I am yours. Deal with me as ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... anyone may help himself. However, the finder becomes sole and exclusive owner of a bee's nest as soon as he sets up an indication of his ownership in the form of a split stick with a small crosspiece, and announces his possessive rights on his return to the settlement. The parted trunk has a form and significance similar to that which it has in connection with the selection of a new site. As far as I know a bee's nest once located by one individual is seldom appropriated by another, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... mosaic of the apse the Redeemer holds a book, on the open page of which is written: "The Lord, defender of the church of Pudens." In course of time the ignorant people changed the word Pudentiana, a possessive adjective, into the name of a saint; and the name Sancta Pudentiana usurped the place of the genuine one. It appears for the first time in a document of ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... the same way that she had done when she was ill and asked if I liked bitters concealed. She waited as long without reply. The pause grew oppressive, and I spanned it by an assurance of individual possessive happiness. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... consuming fire of his ardent gaze, and in the fierce embrace that was drawing her shaking limbs closer and closer against the man's own pulsating body. She writhed in his arms as he crushed her to him in a sudden access of possessive passion. His head bent slowly down to her, his eyes burned deeper, and, held immovable, she endured the first kiss she had ever received. And the touch of his scorching lips, the clasp of his arms, the close union with his warm, strong ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull



Words linked to "Possessive" :   genitive, genitive case, possessiveness, possessive case, possess, attributive genitive case, grammar



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