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More "Plural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... high, and that the sun was just four miles from the earth. [17] George Fox had raised a tempest of derision by proclaiming that it was a violation of Christian sincerity to designate a single person by a plural pronoun, and that it was an idolatrous homage to Janus and Woden to talk about January and Wednesday. His doctrine, a few years later, was embraced by some eminent men, and rose greatly in the public estimation. But at the time of the Restoration the Quakers were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... relatives are deaf have a greater probability of producing deaf offspring, and also a greater probability of producing plural deaf offspring, than ordinary marriages, and two thirds of the congenitally deaf offspring of consanguineous marriages do have deaf relatives, it does not seem necessary to look beyond the law of heredity for ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... "of the spirits" is a primary religious duty for the Chinaman. The spirits, however, are an ill-defined set of beings; they are generally spoken of in the plural number, and sacrifice was offered to them as a body, no particular spirits being named. The spirits are connected with natural objects, every part of nature has its spirit. The sun, the moon, the five planets, clouds, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Asaroth. Apparently a variant of Ashtaroth, the plural of Ashtoreth, the Phoenician moon-goddess; here mistakenly used for the name ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... the defendant is shown by proper findings on the record to have been guilty—that is in effect the offences contained in the fifth and eighth, and all the subsequent counts. And I see no objection to the word offences, in the plural, being used, whether the several counts last enumerated do intend several and distinct offences, or only one offence described in different manners in those counts. For whilst the record remains in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... a country town, conceiving that the word clause was in the plural number, would often talk of a claw in an act ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... English insist on speaking of coal in the plural when they use it only in the singular is more than I can understand. Conceded that we overheat our houses and our railroad trains and our hotel lobbies in America, nevertheless we do heat them. In winter their interiors are warmer and less damp than the outer ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... this confederacy, but has brought to it most important aid; for, from it alone can be satisfactorily explained some of the conjugational endings in the other languages. For instance, the third person plural of the Latin, Persian, Greek, and Sanscrit ends in nt, nd, [Greek], [Greek], nti, or nt. Now, supposing, with most grammarians, that the inflexions arose from the pronouns of the respective persons, it is only in Celtic that we find a pronoun that can ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... the pubic arches: in the male pelvis it is really more of an angle than an arch. Also note how much longer and more solid the sacrum (with its attached bone, called the coccyx[2]) is in the male pelvis. The differences in the pelves (the plural of pelvis is pelves) of the male and female become fully marked at puberty, but they are present as early as the fourth month of ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... extremely timid that he never had had the audacity to tell the girl at the glove counter that he preferred bronze-green gloves, nor the boldness to show Maria Gerard his poems composed in her honor, in which he now always put the plural "amours," so as to make it rhyme with "toujours," which was an improvement. He never had dared to reply to the glance of the little maid on the second floor; and he was very wrong to be embarrassed, for one morning, as he passed the butcher's ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... plural in original. Chapter XII et seq.: "St. Martinsville" corrected to "St. Martinville" Chapter XXI: "Brownville", Texas, corrected to "Brownsville". Chapter XXXIV: the Grant in temporary command of Getty's division is Brigadier-General Lewis Grant, not U. ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... giving a fair account of its method and argument, offering by the way a few suggestions, such as might occur to any naturalist of an inquiring mind. An editorial character for this article must in justice be disclaimed. The plural pronoun is employed not to give editorial weight, but to avoid even the appearance of egotism, and also the circumlocution which attends a rigorous adherence to ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... wearily, "I do wish you wouldn't speak of your vital organs in the plural. Anyone would imagine you were a sort of freak, like the two-headed boy at the circus. It's ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... might of gimlet and of screw. Grin at the window, Williams, all is vain; The carpenter will come and let thee out again. Contrast with him the countenance serene And sweet remonstrance of the junior dean; The plural number and the accents mild, The language of a parent to a child. With plaintive voice the worthy man doth state, We've not been very regular of late. It should more carefully its chapels keep, And not make noises to disturb our ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... population into one common monotony had not yet laid a hand upon the people. They spoke a very beautiful old English there, full of the quaint plurals long since obsolete in most other places. "Shoon" and "housen," for example, and now and then a double plural—a compromise between the ancient manner and the new—would creep into their speech; "eysen" was the plural of "eye," "peasen" the plural for "pea;" and the patois was rich with many singularities which I have known often ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... confused mass of references. As regards the least definite of these, one finds phrases so vague as to suggest that the author himself might have had difficulty in identifying his source, phrases where the omission of the article ("in rhyme," "in romance," "in story") or the use of the plural ("as books say," "as clerks tell," "as men us told," "in stories thus as we read") deprives the words of most of their significance. Other references are more definite; the writer mentions "this book," "mine author," "the ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... numerous quirks: —the index is sometimes not in alphabetical order, in particular the plural of a headword often immediately follows the singular of a headword. —quotations are sometimes not in numerical line number order —index entries often contain full words, where the original quote contains ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... grammatical gender, distinguishing all nouns as masculine and feminine; and here also the feminine nouns immensely preponderate (p. 206). The pronouns of the second (me, pha) and third person (u, ka) have separate forms for the sexes in the singular, but in the plural only one is used (phi, ki), and this is the plural form of ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... her broad embrace, and steamers steer a bee-line course to their landings, the officers might have been able to say at what hour we should reach our destination. As it was, they merely reiterated the characteristic "Ne znaem" (We don't know), which possesses plural powers of irritation when uttered in the conventional half-drawl. Perhaps they really did not know. Owing to a recent decree in the imperial navy, officers who have served a certain number of years without having accomplished a stipulated amount of sea ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the irritation which existed, the resolution was amended, by changing the word "treaties" from the plural to the singular number, and by striking out the words "Dey and Regency of Algiers, the King of Great Britain, and certain Indian tribes north-west of the river Ohio," so that only the treaty with the King of Spain remained to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... must be taken as a compound term for "starry heaven." The parallel passage in the Assyrian version (Tablet I, 5, 27) has the ideograph for star, with the plural sign as a variant. Literally, therefore, "The starry heaven (or "the stars in heaven") was there," etc. Langdon's note 2 on page 211 rests ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... rode high and clear; "'Twas such a night as this," three years ago, Miss Kitty sang the song that two might hear. There is a walk where trees o'erarching grow, Too wide for one, not wide enough for three (A fact precluding any plural beau), Which quite explained Miss Kitty's company, But not why Grey that favored ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... for a short time, in the fourth century, bishop of Constantinople; and in the Moslemised cathedral of St. Sophia, in that city, according to Grelot, quoted in Collier's Dictionary, the same words—with the difference that "sin" is put in the plural, sic: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... sometimes in the plural Ladir, was the old capital of Drontheim, before Nidaros — the present Drontheim — was founded. Drontheim was originally the name of the country round the firth of the same name, and is not used in the old sagas ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... the syncretic force of the above line. Giles, in expressing his affection, felt the singular too small, and the vast plural quick supplied the void—Loves must be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... put it to the proof. Since the French have no first person singular imperative, they are forced to use either the plural, ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... education and training. An excellent piece of English—pithy, forcible, and even elegant—will often shatter on some simple grammatical reef, such as the use of "as" for "that" ("he did not know as he could"), or of the plural for the singular ("a long ways off"). Mr. James Lane Allen, the author of a series of refined and delicately worded romances, can write such phrases as "In a voice neither could scarce hear" and "Shake hands with me and tell me good-by." ("The Choir Invisible," ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... v[e]'o l[i]). (Plural of alveolus). Air cells. The cells, or cavities, that line the air passages and air sacs at the ends ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... by, bringing to Guy Landers a new Heaven and a new earth. Already the prosy old university town had begun to assume an atmosphere of home. The well-clipped campus, with its huge oaks and its limestone walks, had taken on the familiar possessive plural "our campus," and the solitary red squirrel which sported fearlessly in its midst had likewise become "our squirrel." The imposing, dignified college buildings had ceased to elicit open-mouthed observance, and among the student-body surnames had yielded precedence ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... of prayer which he has left us is manifestly intended primarily, not for secret worship, but for social worship. The pronouns of the "Lord's Prayer" are all in the plural number: "Our father who art in heaven;" "Give us this day our daily bread." For solitary prayer these phrases ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... considered, is a bare fact in the experience of the theorist, and the other facts of his experience are so many other momentary views, so many scant theories, to be immediately superseded by other "truths in the plural." Sensations and ideas are really distinguishable only by reference to what is assumed to lie without; of which external reality experience is always an effect (and in that capacity is called sensation) and often at the same time an apprehension ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... 18 districts (dzongkhag, singular and plural); Bumthang, Chhukha, Chirang, Daga, Geylegphug, Ha, Lhuntshi, Mongar, Paro, Pemagatsel, Punakha, Samchi, Samdrup Jongkhar, Shemgang, Tashigang, Thimphu, Tongsa, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... throat: he told us, however, some time after, when we had taught him to speak a little English, that they were going, with their kings, to fight a great battle. When he said kings, we asked him, how many kings? He said, there were five nation (we could not make him understand the plural s,) and that they all joined to go against two nation. We asked him, What made them come up to us? He said, "To makee te great wonder look."—Where it is to be observed, that all those natives, as also those of Africa, when they learn English, they always add two e's at the end of the words ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... stars during the darkness. But even this can scarcely be regarded as conclusive, because Venus may be seen when there is no eclipse, and may be quite conspicuous in an annular or a considerable partial eclipse. The exaggeration of a single object into a plural is in general very easy. Another difficulty is to be sure of the locality where the eclipse was total. It is commonly assumed that the description necessarily refers to something seen where the writer flourished, or where he locates his story. It seems to me that ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... word arpeggio (plural arpeggi) is a derivation of the Italian word arpa (meaning harp), and from this word arpa and its corresponding verb arpeggiare (to play on the harp) are derived also a number of other terms commonly used in instrumental music. Among these are—arpeggiamento, arpeggiando, arpeggiato, ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... travelling luncheon and to select the warmest railway rug she could find; for the teacher, though she was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart and affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word legibus (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third declension, legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this grammatical subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she had been Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had led to the ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... interruption, contrast, rivalry, etc. Thus, with a singular noun, 'inter coenam hoc accidit,' i.e., this interrupted the supper. And so with two nouns, 'inter me et Brundusium Caesar est.' And so with a plural noun, 'hoc inter homines ambigitur,' i.e., man with man. 'Micat inter omnes Julium sidus,' i.e., in the rivalry of star against star. 'Inter tot annos unus (vir) inventus est,' i.e., though all those years, one ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... and that the prayer has been heard which He made for Peter, and for those who should, in turn, exercise Peter's office and functions, and should speak in his name. Harken to the narrative, as given by St. Luke: "The Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you [observe, the plural number] that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed [not for all, but] for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren" (Luke xxii. 32) [observe the singular ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... From there to the house of the daughter of a leading statesman of the Manchus, she being a lady of small feet and ten children, who has offered a prize for the best essay on the ways to stop concubinage, which they call the whole system of plural marriage. They say it is quite unchanged among the rich. There we were given a tea of a rare sort, unknown in our experience. Two kinds of meat pies which are made in the form of little cakes and quite peculiar in taste, delicious; also cake. Then after ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... observe the forms of the imperative mood plural which occur so frequently throughout the poem in the Oriel copy. The forms ending in -eth are about 31 in number, of which 17 are of French, and 14 of A.S. origin. The words in which the ending -eth is dropped are 42, of which 18 are of French, and 24 of A.S. origin. The three following ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... the fourth scholarship, but I may have betrayed my surprise at the plural pronoun, for the blood rose under Ned's sensitive skin, and he said with an embarrassed laugh: "Ah, she so completely makes me forget that it's ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Zurita ("Rapport," etc., etc., p. 50): "The chiefs of the second class are yet called calpullec in the singular and chinancallec in the plural." (This is evidently incorrect, since the words 'calpulli' and 'chinancalli' can easily be distinguished from each other.) "'Chinancalli', however after Molina means 'cercado de seto' (Parte IIa, p. 21), or an ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... omitting the "Miss," notwithstanding that Alley had put in her claim for it by using the plural number. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... kept. This is indicated in the twentieth chapter of Revelation, where it is said, "And the books were opened." Notice that it is plural and not singular. There is a record in heaven kept by the Recording Angel. If it were in the memory of God it would be an awful thing, for while God does not remember forgiven sin, he cannot, from the very nature of the case, forget unpardoned sin, and if that is the record one day we shall ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... persons or families are invariable in the plural, e.g. les Corneille et les Racine, except certain well-known historical names, chiefly of dynasties, e.g. les Csars, les Tudors, les Bourbons. But when used as common nouns to denote 'persons like' or 'works ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... of terms in any way disappointed the gentleman from San Juan, my closest observation of his smile and glance failed to detect it. He merely quivered his shoulders—a sort of plural shrug—rolled his cigarette tighter between his thumb and forefinger, remarked that the memoranda were entirely satisfactory, and folding the paper slid it carefully into his pocket; then with a series of salaams that reminded me of a Mohammedan ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... number must agree with the nouns which they qualify. This and that qualify nouns in the singular; these and those belong to nouns in the plural. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... proposed the Referendum, but only to protect the Lords. From 1884 to 1911 neither Party had introduced any measure to democratize the House of Commons and so to increase the representation of labor. Kautsky reminds us of the plural voting, unequal electoral districts, and absence of primary and secondary elections. This he believes is evidence that the capitalists fear to extend political democracy farther. They even fear the purely economic reforms ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... director, so as to follow after his kind; but by Thy direction proveth what is that good, that acceptable, and perfect will of Thine: yea, Thou teachest him, now made capable, to discern the Trinity of the Unity, and the Unity of the Trinity. Wherefore to that said in the plural. Let us make man, is yet subjoined in the singular, And God made man: and to that said in the plural. After our likeness, is subjoined in the singular, After the image of God. Thus is man renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... and allowed the two to pass on. Waring had gazed within, meanwhile, and discovered the plural wives, more or less good-looking, generally less; they did not seem unhappy, however, not so much as many a single one he had met in more luxurious homes, and he said to himself, 'Women of the lower class are much better and happier when well curbed.' It did not occur ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... former always contrasts with spirit; so to confound the two is to ignore a distinction upon which everything depends in any, except the materialistic, philosophy. When the term substance is used in the currency of the term matter it admits of the plural form as well as the singular. Indeed, all the primordial elements known in chemistry are known as so many different substances. It is unscientific and absurd to confound all these elements by claiming the one-substance theory. It has been ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... "neque ut magistro magister, neque ut discipulo discipulus ... sed ut discipulo magister ... librum misisti." That Tacitus was not the author of one work only is clear from Pliny in another of his letters (vi. 16) speaking in the plural of what his friend had written: "the immortality of your writings:"— "scriptorum tuorum aeternitas;" also of "my uncle both by his own, and your works:"—"avunculus meus et suis libris et tuis." In the letter already referred ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... he pronounces it in this manner, yamukroure. There are phrases in this language that are beyond the ability of a foreigner to pronounce. It has no contractions, and often changes the first and second person of the personal pronoun, and the first and second person plural, by lowering or pitching the voice. The orthography remains the same, though the significations of those words are ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... boat was at length turned homeward, Bass writes "we did it reluctantly," coupling his willing little company with himself in regrets that discovery could not be pushed farther than they had been able to pursue it. Throughout his diary he writes in the first person plural, and he records no instance of complaint of the hardships endured or of quailing before ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... community of wives. And when we put aside Plato and the Platonic communities, the first fact to challenge attention is that the communities which established laws relating to sex relations which were opposed to the monogamic family, whether promiscuity, so-called free love; plural marriage, as in Mormonism, or celibacy, as in Harmonism and Shakerism, were all religious communities. In a word, all these experiments which antagonized the monogamic family relation were the result of various ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... AND ADVERBS Comparison Confusion of Adjectives and Adverbs Improper Forms of Adjectives Errors in Comparison Singular and Plural Adjectives Placing of Adverbs and ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... proved by the fact that his actual speech at Turin, as printed by himself in his book, with an English Translation (pp. 558-561), though in substance identical with the draft-copy, differs in some particulars. In the actual speech the plural, "Your Royal Highnesses," is changed into the singular, "Your Royal Highness," for address to the Duke only, though the Duchess-mother was present; the parenthetical comparison of Morland to the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... "Plural," said Silvia, softly. I opened my near eye and turned my head. The first thing I saw was a rosy arm, lying on the edge of ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... not the Dutch of Holland; nor yet a mere provincial dialect of it. Instead of the infinitive moods and plural numbers ending in -n as in Holland, the former end in -a, the latter in -ar. And so they did when the language was first reduced to writing,—which it has been for nearly a thousand years. So they did when the laws of the Old Frisian ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... Weatherly, who made the English adaptation, called the play and the character assumed by Canio in the comedy "Punchinello." This evoked an interesting comment from Mr. Hale: "'Pagliacci' is the plural of Pagliaccio, which does not mean and never did mean Punchinello. What is a Pagliaccio? A type long known to the Italians, and familiar to the French as Paillasse. The Pagliaccio visited Paris first ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Indies lay in the remotest part of the east, going eastwards, which he meant to discover in a western course, it might well be called India. After the actual discovery, and when both New Spain and Peru were found out, the name was made plural, and the new world was called the West Indies. These West Indies are the countries comprehended within the limits assigned to the crown of Castile and Leon, consisting of one hemisphere, or half the globe, being 180 degrees ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... kindly," laughed Phillips. "He is offering me an excuse to surrender gracefully. We must have a public meeting or two after Christmas, and clear the ground." They had got into the habit of speaking in the plural. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... certainly going to happen," the girl said, with an acceptance of the plural which deepened the intimacy of the situation, and which was not displeasing to Verrian when she added, "If our friend's vehicle holds out." Then she turned her face full upon him, with what affected him as austere resolution, in continuing, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... been necessary to say in order to account for existing attitudes. We must use the plural, since the attitude of the state officials is but one of several, and, inasmuch as the state officials themselves were not a theological caste but only secular servants of the community administering the regulations for ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... been satisfied with the common explanation of the name, and have stated that it was originally composed with the word tan['e] (seed, or grain), and the word hata (loom). Those who accept this etymology make the appellation, Tanabata-Sama, plural instead of singular, and render it as "the deities of grain and of the loom,"—that is to say, those presiding over agriculture and weaving. In old Japanese pictures the star-gods are represented according to this conception of ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... represented by somewhat arbitrary symbols. The commonest form of abbreviation is the substitution for a word of its initial letter; but, with a view to prevent ambiguity, one or more of the other letters are frequently added. Letters are often doubled to indicate a plural ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... their sin. With regard to Joseph it is probable that he warned his brethren, though Scripture does not say so. Or we may say that the sin was public with regard to his brethren, wherefore it is stated in the plural ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... we speak of a king and of the king's image, and not of two kings. The power is not parted nor the glory divided. The power ruling over us is one, and the authority one, and so also the doxology ascribed by us is one and not plural; because the honor paid to the image ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Mabinogion, [Footnote: The Mabinogion, from the Llyfr Coch O Hergest and other ancient Welsh Manuscripts, with an English Translation and Notes. By Lady Charlotte Guest. London and Llandovery, 1837-49. The word Mabinogi (in the plural Mabinogion) designates a form of romantic narrative peculiar to Wales. The origin and primitive meaning of this word are very uncertain, and Lady Guest's right to apply it to the whole of the narratives which she has published is open to doubt.] the pearl of Gaelic literature, the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... had been describing our Opera, not your own; we have just set out with one in what they call, the French manner, but about as like it, as my Lady Pomfret's hash of plural persons and singular verbs or infinitive moods was to Italian. They sing to jigs, and dance to church music -. Phaeton is run away with by horses that go a foot's-pace, like the Electress's(1338) coach, with such long traces, that the postilion was in one street and the coachman in another;—then ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... for the plural. I don't give 'us girls' anything. I am much too busy for that. But I know you think, Miss Marian, and have ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... of more constant use in recent sociology than this term "interests." We use it in the plural partly for the sake of distinguishing it from the same term in the sense which has become so familiar in modern pedagogy. The two uses of the term are closely related, but they are not precisely identical. The pedagogical emphasis is rather ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... CHERUBIM, the Hebrew plural of "cherub" (kerub), imaginary winged animal figures of a sacred character, referred to in the description of Solomon's temple (1 Kings vi. 23-35, vii. 29, viii. 6, 7), and also in that of the ark of the tabernacle ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... ever kings entered 1 Why do the heathen nations rise, into plots and And in mad tumults join! confederacies against the reign of God Almighty. 2 Confederate kings vain plots (1) devise Against the Almighty's reign: His Royal Title they deny, (2) What word does Whom God appointed Christ; that plural number belong to? 3 Let us reject their (2) laws, they cry, Their binding ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... have his genuine epistles, in which he gives considerable account of himself and his exploits. We have one portion of the Acts in which, contrary to the rest of that book, the author narrates in the first person plural, "we," which appears to be taken from the notes of one of Paul's companions—Luke, Timothy, Silas, or any other. Then we have the Talmud, with its numerous anecdotes about Acher, as the rabbis called Paul, which are of inestimable value to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... seem not to have liked a too frequent repetition of this letter, for it is omitted often when a following syllable contains it; as pejero for perjero; and grammarians have noticed that the genitive plural of the future participle is of rare occurrence. In the colloquial and provincial Latin, r is often dulled into l. Thus on one of the walls at Pompeii a part of the first line of the Aeneid was found written, "ALMA VILVMQVE CANO ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... the ring of New Orleans molasses; "those molasses," as the article was often called, with an admiring plural of majesty. ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Southey allowed me to make what observations I thought proper in the course of the work, provided that I affixed to them my initials; and, with the generosity which was natural to him, thus wrote in the preface: "The editors (for so much of the business has devolved on Mr. Cottle, that the plural term is necessary) have to acknowledge," &c. &c. "They have felt peculiar pleasure, as natives of the same city, in performing this act of justice to Chatterton's fame, and to the interests ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... dispute by a sentence, the judgment was assumed to be the result of direct inspiration. The divine agent, suggesting judicial awards to kings or to gods, the greatest of kings, was Themis. The peculiarity of the conception is brought out by the use of the plural. Themistes, Themises, the plural of Themis, are the awards themselves, divinely dictated to the judge. Kings are spoken of as if they had a store of "Themistes" ready to hand for use; but it must ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... The excitements of the past six hours had demoralised me altogether. I could not remember who or what gradus was—whether it was an active noun or a feminine verb or a plural conjunction, or what. In vain the faithful Dicky prompted me from behind and Graham minor from the side. As they both prompted at the same time, and each suggested different things, I only floundered deeper. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... are a saint, Meshe," said Malka, so impressed that she admitted him to the equality of the second person plural. "If everybody knew as much Terah as you, the Messiah would soon be here. Here are five shillings. For five shillings you can get a basket of lemons in the Orange Market in Duke's Place, and if you sell them in the Lane at a halfpenny ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... they did not suit the new roots; and the genius of the language, from having to deal with the newly imported words in a rude state, was induced to neglect the inflections of the native ones. This for instance led to the introduction of the s as the universal termination of all plural nouns, which agreed with the usage of the French language, and was not alien from that of the Saxon, but was merely an extension of the termination of the ancient masculine to other classes ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... America lecturing, carrying with him a whimsical panorama as affording texts for his numerous jokes, which he brought with him to London, and exhibited with the same accompaniment with unbounded success; he spent some time among the Mormons, and defined their religion as singular, but their wives plural (1834-1867). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in addressing one another changed the homely singular pronoun to the more polite, if less grammatical, second person plural. The boy laughed, nodded his head, and said, ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was more like some shrewd, old, humble friend who should have kept a lodge; yet he led the procession of becoming deaths, and began in the mind of Fleeming that train of tender and grateful thought which was like a preparation for his own. Already I find him writing in the plural of "these impending deaths"; already I find him in quest of consolation. "There is little pain in store for these wayfarers," he wrote, "and we have hope—more than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be heard in remote places. Where possible, I have retained the archaic order of the original Text. Such irregular constructions, as e.g., the use of a singular pronoun in the first half of a sentence, and of a plural in the second half, I have left unaltered; for the meaning was perfectly clear. In short, I have endeavoured to make Richard Rolle as he was as significant as possible to English men and women of to-day as they are, when they are not professed students ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... when we had taught him to speak a little English, that they were going with their kings to fight a great battle. When he said kings, we asked him how many kings? He said they were five nation (we could not make him understand the plural 's), and that they all joined to go against two nation. We asked him what made them come up to us? He said, "To makee te great wonder look." Here it is to be observed that all those natives, as also those of Africa when they learn English, always add two ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... first verse of the ninth chapter of Deuteronomy, where the received version reads, "Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself," the corresponding passage of the fragments substitutes the plural for the singular, "Ye" for '"Thou," while for "g'dolim," the word translated "greater," it reads "rabbim." But a far more complete idea of the variations of text and signification may be obtained from a comparison of the text of the Decalogue as it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... doctrine of the Trinity. This word is not found in Scripture, but the truth which it expresses is set forth there, dimly in the Old Testament, distinctly in the New. In the first chapter of Genesis the word "God" is in the Hebrew a plural noun, and yet it is used with a singular verb, thus early seeming to intimate what afterwards is clearly made known, that there is a plurality of Persons, who yet constitute the one living and true God. The same indication of ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... has been done by the Expedition, it should always be understood that Dr. Kirk, Mr. Charles Livingstone, Mr. R. Thornton, and others composed it. In using the plural number they are meant, and I wish to bear testimony to the untiring zeal, energy, courage, and perseverance with which my companions laboured; undaunted by difficulties, dangers, or hard fare. It is my firm belief that, were their services ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... from the Sanskrit kapi; kap in the same language means tremble; but the connection is not clear. Lemur, the name given to that low family of monkeys, is from the plural Latin word lemures, meaning ghost or spectre. This has reference to the nocturnal habits, stealthy gait, and weird expression of these large-eyed creatures. Antelope is probably of Grecian origin, and was originally ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... [Raisins.] meant a desire to 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 ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... constructional material interests me, and in this connection I would like to ask you what is or what are Prone? I have only seen it (or them) mentioned once, and from the context I gather that the word "prone" stands for the plural of "prone" (as "grouse" is the plural of "grouse," and as "house" might well stand for the plural of "house" nowadays, considering the shortage of dwellings), and that it (or they) is (or are) used either as a floor covering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... this is shown in a great many ways, not in the vocabulary merely, but in the grammar, which for philologists is of far more importance,—as, for example, the b-future, the passive in-r, the genitive singular and nominative plural of "o stems", etc. Thus the Old Irish for "man", nom. fer, gen. fir, dat. fiur, acc. fer n—, plur. nom. fir, gen. fer n—, is derived from the older forms viros, viri, viro, viron, nom. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... B.A., to whose book Mythical Monsters (1886) I am very largely indebted for my account of this bird, and from which I have culled extracts from the Chinese, is not of this opinion. Certainly the fact that we read of Fung Hwangs in the plural, whilst tradition asserts that there is only one phoenix, seems to point to ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... old, will please to observe that I have left myself entire freedom as to the sources of what may be said over the teacups. I have not told how many cups are commonly on the board, but by using the plural I have implied that there is at least one other talker or listener beside myself, and for all that appears there may be a dozen. There will be no regulation length to my reports,—no attempt to make out a certain number of pages. I have no contract to fill ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... an account, of the Grammar of this Tongue; I shall only give a few instances of their words, and leave it to the Learned to make their Conjectures. First, I will give you some of their Nouns Plural. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... easy task, though," he muttered, and, forced as he was to slacken his speed, he had the satisfaction of seeing, on glancing back along the gloomy passage, that the bears were also compelled to slacken their pace and climb over intervening rocks as he had done. And it was plural, for the second one had joined the first, and they were coming steadily on, their light coats showing with terrible plainness in the gloom ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... connection we often come upon the important word Dhamma (Sanskrit, Dharma). It means a law, and more especially the law of the Buddha, or, in a wider sense, justice, righteousness or religion[420]. But outside the moral and religious sphere it is commonly used in the plural as equivalent to phenomena, considered as involving states of consciousness. The Dhamma-sangani[421] divides phenomena into those which exist for the subject and those which exist for other individuals and ignores the possibility of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... respiration being continued, diminished gradually and were succeeded by analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.' That the respiration was not 'diminished,' is not only clear by the subsequent context, but by the use of the plural, 'were.' The sentence, no doubt, was thus intended: 'In less than half a minute, the respiration [being continued, these feelings] diminished gradually, and were succeeded by [a sensation] analogous to gentle pressure ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a plural, and in the sense attached to it by the French, is not to be found in any English dictionary that I have the means of consulting. And yet it seems now to be commonly used as an English expression, even by some of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... pendulum, appendix Pendo, pensum weigh compendium, expense Pes, pedis foot expedite, biped Peto seek impetus, compete *Plaudo, plausum clap, applaud explode, plausible *Plecto, plexum braid perplex, complexion *Pleo, pletum fill complement, expletive *Plus, pluris more surplus, plural Plico, plicatum fold reply, implicate Pono, positum place opponent, deposit Porto carry report, porter Potens, potentis powerful impotent, potential Prendo, prehensum seize comprehend, apprise *Primus, primatis first primary, primate Probo, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... there being no work nowadays for an honest man. At last he dropped asleep in the middle of a story about a vestry he worked for that hadn't acted fair and square by him like he had by them, or it (I don't know if vestry is singular or plural), and we went home. But before we went we held a hurried council and collected what money we could from the little we had with us (it was ninepence-halfpenny), and wrapped it in an old envelope Dicky had in his pocket and put it gently ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... monsters. Hippocrates, in his work on the "Nature of the Infant," tells us that twins are the result of a single coitus, and we are also informed that each infant has a chorion; so that both kinds of plural gestation (monochorionic and dichorionic) were known to the ancients. In this treatise it is further stated that the twins may be male or female, or both males or both females; the male is formed when the semen is ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... spots where he had been wounded, especially where he feared the world might have guessed the wound. Did she imply that he had no hand for love-letters? Was it her meaning that women would not have much taste for his epistolary correspondence? She had spoken in the plural, with an accent on "men". Had she heard of Constantia? Had she formed her own judgement about the creature? The supernatural sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby shrieked a peal of affirmatives. He had often meditated on the moral obligation of his unfolding to Clara the whole truth of his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... escape, and the child would speak to no one,—indeed, she hardly would when she came to our camp. She was almost white, and this officer wished to adopt her, but the mother said, "I would do anything but that for oonah," this being a sort of Indian formation of the second-person-plural, such as they sometimes use. This same officer afterwards saw a reward offered for this family in a ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... completely unknown to them. Other peculiarities characteristic of the Altaic languages are the vocal harmony occurring in many of them, the inability to have more than one consonant in the beginning of a word, and the expression of the plural by a peculiar affix, the case terminations being the same in the plural as in the singular. The affinity between the different branches of the Altaic stem is thus founded mainly on analogy or resemblance ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... an English and a Latin ending, the former is usually given with the word and the other is added: e.g. aequilate -us, instead of aequilatus, there being no difference in the application. Usually the singular form of the word is first given, and the plural ending is added; e.g. ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... laws, children may be adopted on trial for a year. If the children are kept after that date, the parents bind themselves in law and in morality to bring them up exactly as if they were their own. I keep using the plural throughout this paragraph because I assume, of course, that you will adopt at least two children if it becomes necessary for you to plan in this way your version of a splendid American family—strong, loving, and creative of ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... be observed that after the word "friend" an [s] follows in brackets. In the original the word was followed by a small mark which might or might not give it the plural form. It could be read either "friend" or "friends"; but as we do not usually find ourselves called upon to bury more than one friend at a time, the hasty reader would not notice the mark, but would read it "friend." So did I; and only afterward, in consequence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... a laugh for her plural possessive. "The point is of course that if there was a conscious bargain, and our action on Mrs. Brash is to deprive her of the sense of keeping her side of it, various things may happen that won't be good either ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... forgiving, not a word of endearment; and we suspect the word madam had, when written, more blame in it than it now retains—and how do the words "my daughter Sophy and I" cut off the forlorn one from the family!—and the plural "persons" avoiding the individuality, the personality of her daughter was another deep cut into the very flesh of the lost one's heart. Now then comes the reproof, and the good man shines in the glory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... "bone" in a quite indefinite sense; to our English word clings the notion of singularity. The Nootka Indian can convey the idea of plurality, in one of several ways, if he so desires, but he does not need to; hamot may do for either singular or plural, should no interest happen to attach to the distinction. As soon as we say "bone" (aside from its secondary usage to indicate material), we not merely specify the nature of the object but we imply, whether we will or no, that there is but one of these objects to be considered. And this increment ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Women are better than men. Slaves are always better than their masters." "Do you refer to polygamy?" was asked. "Indeed I do not," she answered. "I believe in polygamy. My father and mother were Mormons, and I am a Mormon.... A plural wife isn't half as much of a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives, she has three weeks of freedom every single month.... Of course it is all at an end now, but I think the women of Utah think, with me, that we were better off in polygamy.... ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... neither be referred to Shem alone—for, in that case, they would be an useless repetition, as in ver. 25 Canaan had been doomed to be a servant to his brethren—nor can they be referred to Shem and Japheth at the same time; the analogy of the [Hebrew: lmv] in the preceding verse, where the plural referred to the plurality represented by the one Shem, forbids this. If, then, the last clause can refer to Japheth only, the clause in which the dwelling in the tents of Shem is spoken of, must likewise be referred to Japheth. To these arguments we may ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... interesting, because it shows the intimate connection between the farming life of the community and its religion. The Lares were originally the group of gods who looked after the various farms; they were in the plural because they were worshipped where the boundary lines of several farms met, but though several of them were worshipped together, each farm had its one individual Lar. But the care of the farm included also the protection ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... old Norse word is rlg, which is plural, (from r Ger. ur, and lg, laws,) and means the primal law, fate, weird, doom; the Greek moira. The idea of predestination was a salient feature in the Odinic religion. The word rlog, O.H.G. urlac, M.H.G. urlone, Dutch orlog, had special reference ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... is initiated into the mysteries of his faith here. The Mormon's religion is singular and his wives are plural. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... not "existences." Why do I say "existence", and not "existences"? Why, with a fine handsome plural ready to hand, do I wind you up and turn you off, so to speak, with a piffling little singular not fit for a half-starved newspaper fellow, let alone a fine, full-fledged, intellectual and well-read vegetarian and teetotaller who writes in the reviews? Eh? Why do I say "existence"?—speaking ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... intelligible and even gastronomically correct were it not for this word "fish." However, we cannot accept Lister's reading lacertis. We prefer the reading, laridis, bacon. The French have another term for this—petits sales. Both this and the Torinus term are in the plural. They are simply small strips of bacon to which Torinus again refers in the above formula, salsum, coctum in media pones—put the bacon, when done, in the center (of the dish). Regarding salsum also see note ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... Balfour, "I have subscribed myself with the usual compliments. You observe I have said 'some of your friends'; I hope you can justify my plural?" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... organized, especially in the industrial centres of the South, wanted to take a direct share in political life. Under pressure of public opinion, the demand for a revision of the Constitution was at last taken into consideration in 1891, and in 1893 a new law granted universal suffrage tempered by plural voting. In 1902 a new campaign was launched by the allied Liberal-Socialist opposition in favour of universal suffrage pure and simple, without obtaining any result, but when, in 1913, a general strike supported the demand, the ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... Richards, and Dr. Owen Pughe, is a Fairy, a goblin, etc. The plural of Gwyll would be Gwylliaid, or Gwyllion, but this latter word Dr. Pughe defines as ghosts, hobgoblins, etc. Formerly, there was in Merionethshire a red haired family of robbers called Y Gwylliaid Cochion, or Red Fairies, of whom ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... beast he always detailed to his few cronies in camp: the other gunbearers, and one or two from his own tribe. He always used the first person plural, "we" did so and so; and took an inordinate pride in making out his bwana as being an altogether superior person to any of the other gunbearer's bwanas. Over a miss he always looked sad; but with a dignified sadness as though we had met with undeserved ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... on Gothic buildings, especially on castles. This at Coulyng is remarkable from being in English, at a time when Latin was employed in all charters; it contains that early form of the plural 'beth' instead of 'are.' The inscription measures thirty-two inches by fourteen, and the diameter of the seal is no less than seven and a quarter ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... 50 pounds in his pocket, setting out to turn it into 300 pounds by a book of travels. I have avoided mention of Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, and all common watering-places; I have talked of physicians in the plural; in short, no one who reads that paragraph, but will suppose that you are a young man of rank and fortune, to whom money is no object, and who spends hundreds to cure that which might be effected by a little regularity, and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... "flag-ships" plural in original. Chapter XII et seq.: "St. Martinsville" corrected to "St. Martinville" Chapter XXI: "Brownville", Texas, corrected to "Brownsville". Chapter XXXIV: the Grant in temporary command of Getty's division is Brigadier-General Lewis Grant, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... of its organization, and the pith of all its problems of sex and age, leadership and training, aims and objectives. He should also know thoroughly the policies of denominational and interdenominational Sunday school bodies, and, where there are denominations in plural quantity, this may mean a task worth while. Sometimes it is a slow process. Surely, so! The Kingdom, with all the wisdom of Heaven, has been twenty centuries in the building, and it has been wrought out in the Church. ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... name of some fish, having been first interlined, was afterwards inserted at random in the text, and mis-spelt by a transcriber who did know its meaning," appears to me very improbable; and the very form of the words (sprote, saliu, supposing them substantives), which have not plural terminations, would, in my mind, render his supposition untenable. For, be it recollected, that throughout the answers of the Fiscere, the fish are always named in the plural; and it is not to be supposed that there would be an exception in favour of sprote, whether intended for sprat ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... laughter. Even Mrs. Shuster hadn't the "cheek" to try and attract the man's attention, and we returned to our own class thanking our conductor for "all the interesting things he had shown us." I wondered if he knew that while we spoke in plural ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... Modifications. [Footnote: Those grammarians that attempt to restrict number, case, mode, etc.—what we here call Modifications—to form, find themselves within bounds which they continually overleap. They define number, for instance, as a form, or inflection, and yet speak of nouns "plural in form but singular in sense," or "singular in form but plural in sense;" that is, if you construe them rigorously, plural or singular in form but singular or plural form in sense. They tell you that case is a form, and yet insist that nouns have three cases, though only two forms; and speak ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Conygre (Vol. vii., pp. 182. 241. 368.).—There are many fields in the midland counties which bear the name of conigree. In some instances they are in the vicinity of manor-houses. The British name of a rabbit is cwningen, plural cwning. That of a rabbit warren is cwning-gaer, that is, literally, rabbits' camp. The term coneygar is so like this, that it may be supposed to have ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... agitated soul. My brain only works from synthesis to analysis, and formerly it was the contrary. Now, what presents itself to my eyes when I awaken is the planet; I have considerable trouble in finding again there the MOI which interested me formerly, and which I begin to' call YOU in the plural. It is charming, the planet, very interesting, very curious but rather backward, and as yet somewhat unpractical; I hope to pass into an oasis with better highways and possible to all. One needs so much money and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... The plural of caste names and a few common Hindustani words is formed by adding s in the English manner according to ordinary usage, though this is not, of course, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... in solemn discourse, and you in common language. Ye (plural) is also used in serious addresses, and you in ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... and, forced as he was to slacken his speed, he had the satisfaction of seeing, on glancing back along the gloomy passage, that the bears were also compelled to slacken their pace and climb over intervening rocks as he had done. And it was plural, for the second one had joined the first, and they were coming steadily on, their light coats showing with terrible plainness in the ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... the coast of Hampshire, until the northernmost point of the Isle of Wight is reached, where its chief stream, the Medina, flows into the strait through an estuary about five hundred yards wide. Here is Cowes, divided by the river into the West Cow and the East Cow, the plural form of the name being modern. It is a popular bathing-place, but gets the most fame from being the headquarters of the Royal Yacht Club; their house is the old castle at the Medina entrance, built by Henry VIII., it is said, with ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... God in respect to His supremacy, as when we call Paul an apostle; the faculties of his power are set forth in an accompanying adjective, as El, great, awful, just, merciful, &c., or else all are understood at once by the use of El in the plural number, with a singular signification, an expression ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... all urthur boys en hit wuz a long thing lak a slip dat kum ter our knees. Our Mistress had a big fier place en w'en we would kum in cole she would say ain't you all cole. (You all was always used in the plural and not singular as some writers have it). W'ile we wuz warmin' she often played de organ fer ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... word used to designate one supposed to have supernatural powers, and is applied alike to human beings and to the spirits invoked in the formulas. Some of the mythic heroes famous for their magic deeds are spoken of as ada[']w[)e]h[)i] (plural anida[']w[)e]h[)i] or anida[']we), but in its application to mortals the term is used only of the very greatest shamans. None of those now belonging to the band are considered worthy of being thus ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... i, 2. The word Vanity (remarks Hurwitz, the translator) occurs twice in the plural, which the Rabbi considered as equivalent to four, and three times in the singular, making ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... consistent with being understood. They inflect both their nouns and verbs regularly; and denote the cases of the former and the tenses of the latter, not like the English by auxiliary words, but like the Latins by change of termination. Their nouns, whether substantive or adjective, seem to admit of no plural. I have heard Mr. Dawes hint his belief of their using a dual number, similar to the Greeks, but I confess that I never could remark aught to confirm it. The method by which they answer a question that they cannot resolve is similar to what we sometimes use. Let for example the following question ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... bahadur! I ride away to visit my estates (he spoke of them always in the plural, as though he owned a county or two). You have under you the best eyes and the keenest blades along the border for I attended to it! Be ruthless! Use them, work them—sweat them to death! Keep away from messes and parades; seek no praise, for you will get none in any case! ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... the thien," or simply "the thien" taken as plural. But in Chinese the character called thien {.} denotes heaven, or Heaven, and is interchanged with Ti and Shang Ti, meaning God. With the Buddhists it denotes the devas or Brahmanic gods, or all the inhabitants of the ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... bee-line course to their landings, the officers might have been able to say at what hour we should reach our destination. As it was, they merely reiterated the characteristic "Ne znaem" (We don't know), which possesses plural powers of irritation when uttered in the conventional half-drawl. Perhaps they really did not know. Owing to a recent decree in the imperial navy, officers who have served a certain number of years without having accomplished a stipulated amount of sea service are retired. Since ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... common explanation of the name, and have stated that it was originally composed with the word tan['e] (seed, or grain), and the word hata (loom). Those who accept this etymology make the appellation, Tanabata-Sama, plural instead of singular, and render it as "the deities of grain and of the loom,"—that is to say, those presiding over agriculture and weaving. In old Japanese pictures the star-gods are represented according to this conception of their respective ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... that he never had had the audacity to tell the girl at the glove counter that he preferred bronze-green gloves, nor the boldness to show Maria Gerard his poems composed in her honor, in which he now always put the plural "amours," so as to make it rhyme with "toujours," which was an improvement. He never had dared to reply to the glance of the little maid on the second floor; and he was very wrong to be embarrassed, for one morning, as he ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... of the subjects of King Custom than the other two put together; his name is Fiddlefaddle, the toy-shop keeper; and the other two put him forward to do their worst work. In return, he often uses their names without authority. He took Etymology to witness that means to an end must be plural: and he would have any one method to be a mean. But Etymology proved him wrong, King Custom referred him to his Catechism, in which is "a means whereby we receive the same," and Analogy—a subordinate of {326} Etymology—asked whether he thought it a great new to hear that ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... superior to that of the animals, preceding or preparing the evolution of Self-consciousness proper, in the forms of "I" and "Thou" and the grammar of personal actions and relations. "They show that the plural and all other forms of number in grammar arise not by multiplication of an original 'I,' but by selection and gradual EXCLUSION from an original collective 'we.'" (3) According to this view the birth of self-consciousness in the human family, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... number only, may be extended to several persons or things; and words importing the plural number only may be applied to one person, or thing; and words importing the masculine gender only may be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... researches about the protoxide of azote: 'In less than half a minute the respiration being continued, diminished gradually and were succeeded by analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.' That the respiration was not 'diminished,' is not only clear by the subsequent context, but by the use of the plural, 'were.' The sentence, no doubt, was thus intended: 'In less than half a minute, the respiration [being continued, these feelings] diminished gradually, and were succeeded by [a sensation] analogous to gentle ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... verse of the ninth chapter of Deuteronomy, where the received version reads, "Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself," the corresponding passage of the fragments substitutes the plural for the singular, "Ye" for '"Thou," while for "g'dlm," the word translated "greater," it reads "rabbm." But a far more complete idea of the variations of text and signification may be obtained ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... admitted to a partnership with two corn-merchants at Liverpool, his contribution to the total capital of four thousand pounds being fifteen hundred, of which his father lent him five hundred, and a friend another five at five per cent. In 1787 he thought the plural ending of his name sounded awkwardly in the style of the firm, Corrie, Gladstones, and Bradshaw, so he dropped the s.[12] He visited London to enlarge his knowledge of the corn trade in Mark Lane, and here became acquainted with Sir Claude Scott, the banker (not yet, however, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the forms of the imperative mood plural which occur so frequently throughout the poem in the Oriel copy. The forms ending in -eth are about 31 in number, of which 17 are of French, and 14 of A.S. origin. The words in which the ending -eth is dropped are 42, of ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... the plural, for Miss Wheeler, who found the skipper exceedingly bad company, had also risen, and was scrutinising the house with a gaze hardly less eager than his own. A suggestion of the mate that he should wave his handkerchief was promptly negatived by Miss Tyrell, on the ground that it would not be ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... noticeable feature is that the middle character, although passing from the singular to the plural number, suffers no change of ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... length; "I am a lonely woman, and my life has been broader for knowing you. I mean that you in the plural, for there have been a good many of you. Some have been successful, some have not; a few have become famous, just as you are doing. Some of them have been sent to me; some have come of their own accord. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... great river by Orellana, a knight of Truxillo. The fabled women-warriors were said to have been seen in this notable voyage, and hence the name of the river Amazon, a name which in Spanish and Portuguese is in the plural. It was not until nearly one hundred years after Orellana was in his grave that a voyage of discovery ascended the river. In 1637 Pedro Teixeira started from Para with an expedition of nearly two thousand ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... laudable in each professor to magnify his department, and to seek to make it the first in the world if he can. But of course this tendency must be corrected by securing in the constitution of the college a power in the head (whether singular or plural) of coordinating all the parts. Else, important departments will be overlaid, as in Oxford and in Harvard, natural history was until now. Now, it looks as if natural history would obtain in time to come the like predominance as mathematics have here, or Greek at ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Christians in Constantine's army to be great. Why my opponent should ridicule my use of the phrase Christian regiments, I am too dull to understand. ("Who would not think," says he, "that it was one of Constantine's aide-de-camps that was speaking?") It may be that I am wrong in using the plural noun, and that there was only one such regiment,—that which carried the Labarum, or standard of the cross (Gibbon, ch. 20), to which so much efficacy was attributed in the war against Licinius. I have no time at present, nor any need for further inquiries on such matters. It is ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... forget, a bad start spoils all. No, be the garden a prince's or a cottager's, the climaxes to be got by superiority of stature, by darkness and breadth of foliage and by splendor of bloom belong at its far end. Even in the one-house garden I should like to see the climaxes plural to the extent of two; one immediately at the back of the house, the other at the extreme rear of the ground. At the far end of the lot I would have the final storm of passion and riot of disclosure, and then close about the rear of ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... Dictionary, quotes two amusing instances of ghost words in a communication to Notes and Queries (7th S., vii. 305). He says: "Possessors of Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary will do well to strike out the fictitious entry cietezour, cited from Bellenden's Chronicle in the plural cietezouris, which is merely a misreading of cietezanis (i.e. with Scottish z y), cieteyanis or citeyanis, Bellenden's regular word for citizens. One regrets to see this absurd mistake copied from ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... and the child would speak to no one,—indeed, she hardly would when she came to our camp. She was almost white, and this officer wished to adopt her, but the mother said, "I would do anything but that for oonah," this being a sort of Indian formation of the second-person-plural, such as they sometimes use. This same officer afterwards saw a reward offered for this family ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... same adventures of fancy and of soul.... My fairies must be thy fairies and my gods thy gods. Hand-in-hand we must thrill with a single rapture—'le coeur en fleur et l'ame en flamme.'" For myself I am well content (whether he addresses me in the second person singular or plural, or both—as here) to have vicariously achieved such heights in the person of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... under our system, but were not very general, and plural wives were usually sisters. The missionaries, and in some instances the Federal authorities, have required elderly men to abandon all but one wife, leading to difficult problems. Many of the younger ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... a question, we believe, not yet set at rest by the learned in these sort of matters, whether the word devil be singular or plural, that is to say, whether it be the name of a personage so called, standing by himself, or a noun of multitude. If it be singular, and used only personal as a proper name, it consequently implies one imperial devil, monarch or king of the whole clan ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... signifying I and he, and one signifying we, more than two, including the speaker and those present; and another including the speaker and persons absent. He will also find personal pronouns in the second and third person, perhaps with singular, dual, and plural forms. ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... brought home to me by my experience of the nearest approximation to Proportional Representation which has ever been actually adopted in England. In 1870 Lord Frederick Cavendish induced the House of Commons to adopt 'plural voting' for School Board elections. I fought in three London School Board elections as a candidate and in two others as a political worker. In London the legal arrangement was that each voter in eleven large districts should be given about ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... anfractuosus, winding), twisting and turning, circuitousness; a word usually employed in the plural to denote winding channels such as occur in the depths of the sea, mountains, or the fissures (sulci) separating the convolutions of the brain, or, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... provinces (changwat, singular and plural); Amnat Charoen, Ang Thong, Buriram, Chachoengsao, Chai Nat, Chaiyaphum, Chanthaburi, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Chon Buri, Chumphon, Kalasin, Kamphaeng Phet, Kanchanaburi, Khon Kaen, Krabi, Krung Thep Mahanakhon (Bangkok), Lampang, Lamphun, Loei, Lop Buri, Mae Hong Son, Maha Sarakham, Mukdahan, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... although obliged to pay a proportion of the decimes,[Footnote: Decime, in the singular, was an extraordinary tax levied on ecclesiastical revenue for some object deemed important. Decimes, in the plural, was the tax paid annually by benefices. Dime, tithe (see Littre, Decime). It seems a question whether the proportion of the decimes paid by the parish priests was too large. See Revue des questions historiques, 1st July 1890, 102. Necker, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... of folly? For us also makes that mystical Psalmist, though I remembered it not in its right place, "Remember not the sins of my youth nor my ignorances." You see what two things he pretends, to wit, youth, whose companion I ever am, and ignorances, and that in the plural number, a number of multitude, whereby we are to understand that there was no small company ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... time of his departure is at hand," q.d., "gar cyrdd," from "cerdd" a walk. The adopted reading, however, is very strongly corroborated by passages in other poems, where "cyrdd" is unmistakeably used as the plural of "cerdd," ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of talent and women of superior sentiments cannot hide their contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men,—if indeed I can speak in the plural number,—more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I know not; all I know, The night was June's, the moon rode high and clear; "'Twas such a night as this," three years ago, Miss Kitty sang the song that two might hear. There is a walk where trees o'erarching grow, Too wide for one, not wide enough for three (A fact precluding any plural beau), Which quite explained Miss Kitty's company, But not why Grey that favored one ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... afternoons. Did you use to dote on horse-chestnuts? Queer boys should. But I rather like them myself, in a way,—out of the way! We have picked up a hundred and seventeen." Miss Salome dropped into the plural number innocently, and Elizabeth laughed over John's shoulder. Elizabeth did the reading between the lines. ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... quotes the various aspects under which Life appeared to the wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First comes Hafiz, whose well-known lines are quoted beginning with Shab-i-tarik o bim-i-mauj, etc. Hur is the plural of Ahwar, in full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where they should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly "Houries." Follows Umar-i-Khayyam, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or Sooffeism, even as ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... editions read hema-punkha and silasita in the instrumental plural; the correct reading ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... CHAS. GOULD, B.A., to whose book Mythical Monsters (1886) I am very largely indebted for my account of this bird, and from which I have culled extracts from the Chinese, is not of this opinion. Certainly the fact that we read of Fung Hwangs in the plural, whilst tradition asserts that there is only one phoenix, seems to point to a ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... "Dog" should be spelt, properly and precisely, "dog." When it is used in the sense to mean not "a dog" or "one dog" but two or more dogs—in other words what we grammarians are accustomed to call the plural—it is proper to add to it the diphthong, s, pronounced with a hiss like ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... what has been done by the Expedition, it should always be understood that Dr. Kirk, Mr. Charles Livingstone, Mr. R. Thornton, and others composed it. In using the plural number they are meant, and I wish to bear testimony to the untiring zeal, energy, courage, and perseverance with which my companions laboured; undaunted by difficulties, dangers, or hard fare. It is my firm belief that, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... and to select the warmest railway rug she could find; for the teacher, though she was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart and affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the word legibus (dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third declension, legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this grammatical subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she had been Professor ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... ring of New Orleans molasses; "those molasses," as the article was often called, with an admiring plural of majesty. ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... declined the noun very well," said I; "that is in the singular number; we will now go to the plural." ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... but there is not more rhyming than is usual in the poetry of the late empire. Not only in pronunciation, but in grammatical inflexion, the beginnings of Italian here and there appear. The case-forms of the different declensions are beginning to run into one another: the plural, for example, of insignis is no longer insignes, but, as in Italian, insigni; and the case-inflexions themselves are dwindling away before the free use of prepositions, which was already beginning to show itself in the ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... There still seemed to linger upon his palate the flavor of Aunt Eunice's pullets, from which he had been despoiled by his first enforced call upon her ward, and though he had regretfully heard Susanna say "chicken" without the plural "s," he knew that, being himself "company," he would get his full share of the fowl, which he trusted ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... such as the acephalous type, and those due to excess, such as the double monsters. Hippocrates, in his work on the "Nature of the Infant," tells us that twins are the result of a single coitus, and we are also informed that each infant has a chorion; so that both kinds of plural gestation (monochorionic and dichorionic) were known to the ancients. In this treatise it is further stated that the twins may be male or female, or both males or both females; the male is formed when the semen ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... proposed to give the vote to every woman of property if she chose to take the trouble to get it, and at the same time enfranchise only about one-tenth or one-fifteenth of the working women of the country. That was simply a roundabout way of doubling the plural voters and no democrat could possibly support it, so long as there remained a single alternative. The solution that most appeals to me is the one embodied in the Dickinson Bill, that is to say, a measure conferring the vote on women householders and on the wives of married electors; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... and interesting, we are? Frankly now is it possible to be MORE artistic, MORE strange and interesting, than this? You surely won't deny that we're remarkable." I was irritated by her use of the plural pronoun, for she had no right to pair herself with her brother; and moreover, of course, I couldn't see my way to—at all genially—include Mrs. Ambient. Yet there was no doubt they were, taken together, unprecedented enough, and, with all allowances, I had never been left, or condemned, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... geometrical cube, the die used in play, and the temple at Mecca, which is of the same figure. The Persic name for 'die' is 'dad,' and from this word is derived the name of the thing in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, namely, dado. In the old French it is det, in the plural dets; in modern French de and dez, whence our English name 'die,' and its plural 'dies,' ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... place below the earth where the dead go (gimokud, "spirit;" -an, plural ending); that is, [the place ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... reference occurs most frequently after collective nouns, such as mob, crowd, council, jury, assembly; after distributive pronouns, such as everyone, anybody, nobody; and after two or more singular and plural nouns, where the reporter forgets momentarily to which he is referring. In the following sentences note that each of the italicized pronouns violates one or more of these principles, thereby polluting the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... or Lada, and sometimes in the plural Ladir, was the old capital of Drontheim, before Nidaros — the present Drontheim — was founded. Drontheim was originally the name of the country round the firth of the same name, and is not used in the old sagas for a town. (2) The country round the Christiania ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... of battle was "Spirito Santo Cavaliere", i.e. Cavalier in the singular number. The plural number has been employed in the text, as somewhat more animated, and therefore better adapted to the kind of poetry into the service of which ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... mad, don't it?" he inquired genially. "You are not accustomed to that sort of treatment. Most of 'em run the other way, don't they? I should, in their place! But you mustn't be hard on old George. When I said 'you,' I used the word as a plural, not as applying with any special significance to your charming self. It is womankind as a whole which he finds terrifying. Run a mile any day rather than meet a woman face to face! You must not imagine that ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... direct share in political life. Under pressure of public opinion, the demand for a revision of the Constitution was at last taken into consideration in 1891, and in 1893 a new law granted universal suffrage tempered by plural voting. In 1902 a new campaign was launched by the allied Liberal-Socialist opposition in favour of universal suffrage pure and simple, without obtaining any result, but when, in 1913, a general strike supported the demand, the Catholic ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... carefully this ardent confidence on the part of Catholic France; he recommended to his partisans attention to little pious and popular practices. "I send you some paternosters [meaning, in the plural, the beads of a chaplet, or the chaplet entire]," he wrote to his wife, Catherine of Cleves; "you will have strings made for them and string them together. I don't know whether you dare offer some of them to the queens and to my lady mother. Ask advice ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... which have been most widely advocated, at least in recent years, are four in number: (1) a fresh apportionment of seats in the Commons in accordance with the distribution of population; (2) the extension of the franchise to classes of men at present debarred; (3) the abolition of the plural vote; and (4) the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... influence over its members, and of its attractiveness to its proselytes, viz., the peculiarity of the "Mormon" institution of marriage. The Latter-day Saints were long regarded as a polygamous people. That plural marriage has been practised by a limited proportion of the people, under sanction of Church ordinance, has never since the introduction of the system been denied. But that plural marriage is a vital tenet of the Church is ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... as to the elevation of the Emperor Maximin, and once as to his death[104]. Usener thinks that the 'Anecdoton Holderi' authorises us henceforward to assign these quotations without doubt to the younger, Christian Symmachus, not to his Pagan ancestor. To me the allusion to parentes (in the plural), whose industry as historians the Symmachus there spoken of imitated, seems to make it at least as probable that the earlier, not the later member of the family composed the history which is here quoted ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... BACTERIA (the plural of bacterium).—Exceedingly minute, spherical, oblong, or cylindrical cells which are concerned in putrefactive processes. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... in Madras, of non-Brahmans, or, in the large cities, of Europeans and of Eurasians, besides still more specialised constituencies for the representation of land-holders, universities, commerce, and industries. There was no female suffrage, and no plural vote. No elector could vote both in a "general constituency" and in a "special" one. The qualifications laid down for the franchise were of a very modest character. Illiteracy was no bar, as to have made it so in a country where barely 10 per cent of the adult males attain to the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... relieved," said David. "It's much easier to understand the plural of girl. Girl in the first ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... It is also, and perhaps chiefly, in this case, a pun on the meaning of the plural noun "cenci," "rags," or "old rags." The cry of this, frequent in Rome, was at first mistaken by Shelley for a voice urging him to go on with his play. Mr. Browning has used it to indicate the comparative unimportance of his contribution to the Cenci story. The quoted ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and speaking; of a "jeering temper," and of a most grasping avarice. He was ridiculed on the stage in Middleton's play, The Game of Chess, as the "Fat Bishop." "He was well named De Dominis in the plural," says Crakanthorp, "for he could serve two masters, or twenty, if they ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... is the plural of "animalcule"? Ans. Animalcules or animalculae.—Write a sentence containing ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... he calls Intelligences the Scriptures call angels. Both are pure forms and incorporeal. Their rationality is indicated in the nineteenth Psalm, "The heavens declare the glory of God." That God rules the world through them is evident from a number of passages in Bible and Talmud. The plural number in "Let us make man in our image" (Gen. 1, 26), "Come, let us go down and confuse their speech" (ib. 11, 7) is explained by the Rabbis in the statement that "God never does anything without first looking at the celestial ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... the whole battery, wasn't it?" asked Gordon, "and two huts is plural. I said houses of the people. I couldn't say two houses of the people. Just you send this as you get it. You are not an American consul at the present moment. You are an under-paid agent of a cable company, and you send my ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... declined and actual building ceased, its technical secrets became ritual secrets, though they must always have had symbolical meanings. Further, while we have record of only one oath—which does not mean that there was only one—signs, tokens, and words are nearly always spoken of in the plural; and if the secrets of a Fellowcraft were purely technical—which some of us do not believe—they were at least accompanied and protected by certain signs, tokens, and passwords. From this it is clear that the advent of an Apprentice into the ranks ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... cherry comes from the old English cheri, chiri, and that probably from the French cerise, that from the Latin cerasus, and that from the Greek kerasos. "Cheri or chiri was a corruption of cheris or chiris, the final s being mistaken for the plural inflection; the same mistake occurs in several other words, notably in pea as shortened from ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... newspaper where we had tea and cake at about four. From there to the house of the daughter of a leading statesman of the Manchus, she being a lady of small feet and ten children, who has offered a prize for the best essay on the ways to stop concubinage, which they call the whole system of plural marriage. They say it is quite unchanged among the rich. There we were given a tea of a rare sort, unknown in our experience. Two kinds of meat pies which are made in the form of little cakes and quite peculiar in taste, delicious; also cake. Then ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... need to say much of Peas, but it may be worth a note in passing that in old English we seldom meet with the word Pea. Peas or Pease (the Anglicised form of Pisum) is the singular, of which the plural is Peason. "Pisum is called in Englishe ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... word AUR, in the singular, signified light, but in the plural, AURIM, it denoted the revelation of the divine will; and the aurim and thummim, literally the lights and truths, constituted a part of the breastplate whence the high priest obtained oracular responses to ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... numbers: singular and plural; three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, as in OHG. and NHG., from which the gender of nouns in MHG. does not materially differ; four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative. Traces of an old locative occur in what is called the uninflected dative singular ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... writers mentioned in this book to whose lovers exactly the same kind of apology is desirable as it is in the case of Nodier. "Where," I hear reproaching voices crying, "is Jean Sbogar? Where is Laure Ruthwen ou les Vampires in novel-plural or Le Vampire in melodrama-singular? Where are a score or a hundred other books, pieces, pages, paragraphs, passages from five to fifty words long?" They are not here, and I could not find room for them here. "But you found more room ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... rallying power is gone: "the clouds return after the rain."—The keepers of the house shall tremble: Cheyne understands of the hands and arms, the trembling of which is a natural accompaniment of old age.—The strong men shall bow themselves: the stooping frame; the plural is merely by attraction to 'keepers.'—The grinders cease because they are few: obviously of the teeth.—Those that look out of the windows be darkened: the eyes becoming dim.—The doors shall ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... in any way disappointed the gentleman from San Juan, my closest observation of his smile and glance failed to detect it. He merely quivered his shoulders—a sort of plural shrug—rolled his cigarette tighter between his thumb and forefinger, remarked that the memoranda were entirely satisfactory, and folding the paper slid it carefully into his pocket; then with a series of salaams that reminded me ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for foreigners to learn to pronounce, and the uncertainty of its accentuation; (2) its illogical and chaotic spelling, inevitably leading to confusions in pronunciation; (3) the grammatical irregularities in its verbs and plural nouns; and (4) the great number of widely different words which are almost or quite similar in pronunciation. A vast number of absurd pitfalls are thus prepared for the unwary user of English. He must remember that the plural of ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the beauty of his plural pronoun as she had judged he might be with that of her own; but she knew now so well what she was about that she could almost play with him and with her new-born joy. "You say 'about the time you speak of.' But I don't think you speak of ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... is "Fordringsaegare." This indefinite form may be either singular or plural, but it is rarely used except as a plural. And the play itself makes it perfectly clear that the proper translation of its title is "Creditors," for under this aspect appear both the former and ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... of the paths (of our lives)," Ha[']-no-o-na wi-la-po-na. Not only these gods, but all supernatural beings, men, animals, plants, and many objects in nature, are regarded as personal existences, and are included in the one term a-ha-i, from a, the plural particle signifying "all," and ha-i, being or life,"Life," "the Beings." This again leads us to the important and interesting conclusion that all beings, whether deistic and supernatural, or animistic and mortal, are regarded as belonging to one system; and that they are likewise ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... cultivated—so much so, that it exports for the Ujiji and other distant markets. The Africans have no religion, unless Fetishism may be considered such. They use charms to keep off the evil eye, and believe in fortune-tellers. Their church is called Uganga, and the parson Mganga, the plural of which, priests, changes to Waganga. The prefixes, U, M, and Wa, are used uniformly throughout this land from Zanzibar, to denote respectively, U, country or place, M, an individual, and Wa for plurality, as in tribe or people: thus, Uganga, Mganga, Waganga; ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... was also a goddess called Fauna, or Bona Dea], the grandson of Saturn, was worshipped as the god of fields and shepherds, and also as a prophetic god. His name in the plural, Fauns, expressed a class of gamesome deities, like the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... familiarly used of the birth of a man, as "Mizraim begat Pathrusim, and Casluhim out of whom came Philistim,"" Gen. x. 13, 14. This is a very awkward quotation on the part of Mr. Everett, as it says nothing in favour of his views, but directly favours mine: for Philistim is a word in the plural number, and is used in the Hebrew Bible, to express "the Philistines;" and the word translated "come"[fn33] is also in the plural number, see Simon's Hebrew Bible. The passage therefore in Genesis x. 13. 14. imports that the Philistines were derived or descended ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... consisted of a mud wall about three feet high, inclosing perhaps half an acre of bare clayey soil. Outside the wall was a moat, upward of a foot deep, and inside was a barrack. This barrack—I avoid using the plural purposely—was a wooden shanty that had been whitewashed once, but had practically recovered from it since; and its walls were pierced—for artillery-fire, no doubt—with two windows, to the frames of which a few fragments ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... established system? Should I not, in a moment so untoward, more than ever desire to merge my insignificant unit in the mysterious importance which the smallest Singular obtains when he makes himself a Plural, and speaks not as 'I,' but as 'We'? We are insensible to the charm of young ladies; We are not bribed by suppers; We, like the witches of 'Macbeth,' have no name on earth; We are the greatest wisdom of the greatest number; ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Associators; myself grown quite indifferent upon the point; and the principal Tories, such as the Duke of Beaufort, &c., and those who would have been active, if they had been desired to be so half a year ago, never spoke to. Mr. Robinson,(144) in his letters to me, has always spoke in the plural number, our friend and I; so it is a scheme adopted by both, I am to suppose, and a hazardous one it is. But one Member they will have, I believe, and I wish they had fixed upon any one but ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... instance, is the memory of the Scaean Gate in the Great Tower of Ilium, and the constant use of the name Scaean Gate in the plural, because it had to be described as double, and in fact it has been proved to be a double gate. According to the lines of the Iliad, it now seems extremely probable that, at the time of Homer's visit, the King of Troy declared that his race was descended ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... proper to observe, that by the unavoidable idiom of our language the ideas of perception, of recollection, or of imagination, in the plural number signify the ideas belonging to perception, to recollection, or to imagination; whilst the idea of perception, of recollection, or of imagination, in the singular number is used for what is termed "a reflex idea of any of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... mountains. God, like men in this region, has various names, as Chiuta, 'God in space and the rainbow sign across;' Mpambe, 'God Almighty' (or rather 'pre-excellent'); Mlezi, 'God the Sustainer,' and Mulungu, 'God who is spirit.' Mulungu God, 'not spirits or fetish.' 'You can't put the plural, as God is One,' say the natives. 'There are no idols called gods, and spirits are spirits of people who have died, not gods.' Idols are Zitunzi-zitunzi. 'Spirits are supposed to be with Mulungu.' God made the world and man. Our author says 'when ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... French disease, or Morbus Gallicus which attained the proportions of an epidemic in Europe about 1494. The expression "The Pox" in the older medical literature always refers to the Lues Venereal The word "pox" is the plural form of pock; the spelling "pox" is phonetic; "pocks" is the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... explained, wearily, "I do wish you wouldn't speak of your vital organs in the plural. Anyone would imagine you were a sort of freak, like the two-headed boy at the circus. ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... question,' he says, talking as he does sometimes in the historical plural of his philosophic chair,—'this question, rather than objection,'—[it was much to be preferred in that form certainly]—'whether we talk of perfecting NATURAL PHILOSOPHY alone, according to our method, or the other sciences such as—ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Canney and Principal Bennett tell me that the derivation of duda-im from dodim is improbable; and the former authority suggests that duda-im may be merely the plural of dud, a "pot".[383] Now I have already explained how a pot came to symbolize a woman or a goddess, not merely in Egypt, but also in Southern India, and in Mycenaean Greece, and, in fact, the Mediterranean generally.[384] Hence the use of the term dud for the mandrake ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... were assembled a great concourse of warriors. Inside I could see the heads of women and children peering over the top of the wall; and also, farther back, the long necks of lidi, topped by their tiny heads. Lidi, by the way, is both the singular and plural form of the noun that describes the huge beasts of burden of the Thurians. They are enormous quadrupeds, eighty or a hundred feet long, with very small heads perched at the top of very long, slender necks. Their heads are quite forty feet from the ground. Their gait ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the Book of Foundations, Father Garcia de Toledo, her confessor at St. Joseph's Convent, is said to be responsible for the order to rewrite the "Life"; but in the Preface to the "Life" St. Teresa speaks of her "confessors" in the plural. Fathers Ibanez and Banez may be included in the number. See also ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... for individuals: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you,—all of you," that is; the pronoun is plural— "that he might sift you as wheat; but I made supplication for thee"— "thee, Peter"; now the singular pronoun is used—"that thy faith fail not." The words point to a definite crisis in the experience of Peter, when ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... acknowledge, very dull of understanding; they is in the plural number, and speaks is in the singular. Will you thus all your life offend grammar? [Footnote: Grammaire in Molire's time was pronounced as grand'mre is now. Gammer seems the nearest approach to ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... expressiveness, the absence of an equivalent, and the fact that it may still be heard in remote places. Where possible, I have retained the archaic order of the original Text. Such irregular constructions, as e.g., the use of a singular pronoun in the first half of a sentence, and of a plural in the second half, I have left unaltered; for the meaning was perfectly clear. In short, I have endeavoured to make Richard Rolle as he was as significant as possible to English men and women of to-day as they are, when they are ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... as the name of anything that can be thought of, John, boy, paper, cold, fear, crowd. There are three things about a noun which indicate its relation to other words, its number, its gender, and its case. There are two numbers, singular meaning one, and plural meaning more than one. ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... of the daughter of a leading statesman of the Manchus, she being a lady of small feet and ten children, who has offered a prize for the best essay on the ways to stop concubinage, which they call the whole system of plural marriage. They say it is quite unchanged among the rich. There we were given a tea of a rare sort, unknown in our experience. Two kinds of meat pies which are made in the form of little cakes and ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... In 1874 the Poland Act, and in 1882 the Edmunds Act, introduced reforms. Criminal law was now much more efficiently executed against Mormons. In 1891 the Mormon officials pledged their church's obedience to the laws against plural marriages ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... heard of the fourth scholarship, but I may have betrayed my surprise at the plural pronoun, for the blood rose under Ned's sensitive skin, and he said with an embarrassed laugh: "Ah, she so completely makes me forget that ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... by a blot: and Father Arnall held it up by a corner and said it was an insult to any master to send him up such a theme. Then he asked Jack Lawton to decline the noun MARE and Jack Lawton stopped at the ablative singular and could not go on with the plural. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... you not to speak of my sisters when you write to me. I mean, do not use the word in the plural. Ellis Bell will not endure to be alluded to under any other appellation than the nom de plume. I committed a grand error in betraying his identity to you and Mr. Smith. It was inadvertent—the words, "we ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... an open throat: he told us, however, some time after, when we had taught him to speak a little English, that they were going, with their kings, to fight a great battle. When he said kings, we asked him, how many kings? He said, there were five nation (we could not make him understand the plural s,) and that they all joined to go against two nation. We asked him, What made them come up to us? He said, "To makee te great wonder look."—Where it is to be observed, that all those natives, as also those of Africa, when they learn English, they always ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... tent is one form of the Dakota "wake[']ya," the plural of which, "wake[']yapi," undoubtedly gave rise to the familiar "wick[']iup" of the plains, and ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,
... charm of variety, is formal in its phrasing. There the literary master has the superiority, though he, too, can in effect but say—and often says it in the very phrase—"I can highly recommend." Only usually he uses the word "We," there being some occult virtue in the first person plural which makes it specially fit for critical and royal declarations. I have a small handful of these sea appreciations, signed by various masters, yellowing slowly in my writing-table's left hand drawer, rustling under my reverent touch, like a handful ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... because of these germ truths enshrined in the ancient myths that so many bygone modes of thought and expression last on into the new order. Ruskin, in genuine mythological style, often used the term "gods," and explains his meaning thus: "By gods, in the plural, I mean the totality of spiritual powers delegated by the Lord of the universe to do in their several heights, or offices, parts of His will respecting man, or the world that man is imprisoned in; not as myself knowing, or in security believing, that there are such, but ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... domestic situation in Byron's house at the time of his wife's expulsion was one so grave as to call for family counsel; for Lady Byron, generally accurate, speaks in the plural number. 'His nearest relatives' certainly includes Mrs. Leigh. 'His family' includes more. That some of Lord Byron's own relatives were cognisant of facts at this time, and that they took Lady Byron's side, is shown by one of his own chance ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... life, as with death! Philosophy will chill your best impulses and most generous enthusiasms,—it will make you over-cautious and doubtful of your friends,—it will cause you to be indifferent to women in the plural, but it will hand you over, a weak and helpless victim to the one woman,—when she comes,—as she is bound to come. There is no one so hopelessly insane as a philosopher in love! Love ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Meshe," said Malka, so impressed that she admitted him to the equality of the second person plural. "If everybody knew as much Terah as you, the Messiah would soon be here. Here are five shillings. For five shillings you can get a basket of lemons in the Orange Market in Duke's Place, and if you sell them in the Lane at a halfpenny ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... contingent of the Salvation Army Brass Band!—and there is a lot of "brass" about the Army still unaccounted for! What an enervating part of the world this is! One quite realises what "lotus-eating" means, even though there are no lotuses about!—(I wonder if that's the correct plural?—or is it "Loti"? which looks like French, only wants "PIERRE" as Christian name. Or if additional "t" introduced, it would be "Lotti," suggestive of COLLINS' Ode to Boom, &c.; but I am wandering)—and it requires enormous energy to do anything more than loll about and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... literature. A grammaticus is what the French express by the word litterateur. We unfortunately have no corresponding term in English: a man of letters is our awkward periphrasis in the singular, (too apt, as our jest books remind us, to suggest the postman;) whilst in the plural we resort to the Latin word literati. The school which professes to teach grammatica, professes, therefore, the culture of literature in the widest and most liberal extent, and is opposed generically to schools for teaching mechanic arts; and, within its own sub-genus ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... neighborhood of ten or fifteen hundred of them grouped together to cover a spot as large as a full stop or period used in punctuating an ordinary newspaper. This rough estimate applies to the globular and the egg-shaped bacteria, to which is given the name "coccus" (plural, cocci). The cane or rod shaped bacteria are rather larger plants. Fifteen hundred of these placed end to end would reach across the head of a pin. Because of the resemblance of these latter to a walking stick they have been termed bacillus ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... a variant of Ashtaroth, the plural of Ashtoreth, the Phoenician moon-goddess; here mistakenly used for the name of ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... Guy Landers a new Heaven and a new earth. Already the prosy old university town had begun to assume an atmosphere of home. The well-clipped campus, with its huge oaks and its limestone walks, had taken on the familiar possessive plural "our campus," and the solitary red squirrel which sported fearlessly in its midst had likewise become "our squirrel." The imposing, dignified college buildings had ceased to elicit open-mouthed observance, and among the student-body surnames had yielded precedence to Christian names—oftener, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... question, answered in a surly tone, and with a kind of disdain, So as we eat, so shall we work. This he spoke aloud, so that he might be sure the captain heard him and the rest of the men also, and it was evident that as he spoke in plural numbers, We, so he spoke their minds as well as his own, and words which they ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... emphasize by wearing shoes, all other native troops going barefoot. Beyond the Moluccas, across the Banda Sea, sprawls the Celebes,[1] familiar from our school-days because of its fantastic outline, the plural form of its name being due to the supposition of the early explorers that it was a group of islands instead of one. And finally, crossing Makassar Straits, we come to Borneo, the habitat of the head-hunter and the orang-utan. Though ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... whole battery, wasn't it?" asked Gordon, "and two huts is plural. I said houses of the people. I couldn't say two houses of the people. Just you send this as you get it. You are not an American consul at the present moment. You are an under-paid agent of a cable ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Taiwan (singular and plural) note: example - he or she is from Taiwan; they are from ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... the recollection. After the preparation which we have recommended, the singular number of a declension will be learnt in a few minutes by a child of ordinary capacity, and after two or three days repetition, the plural number may be added. The whole of the first declension should be well fixed in the memory before a second is attempted. During this process, a few words at every lesson may be translated from Latin to English, and such nouns as are of the first declension, ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... all is not so easy to define—and be it noted carefully that the true traitor in this case was not singular, but very plural ... ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... to God had been offered in Ku, at the commencement of the expedition; that to the Father of War, on the army's arriving at the borders of Khung. We can hardly tell who is intended by the Father of War. K Hs and others would require the plural 'Fathers,' saying the sacrifice was to Hwang T and Khih Y, who are found engaged in hostilities far back in the mythical period of Chinese history. But Khih Y appears as a rebel, or opposed to the One man in all the country who was then fit to rule. It is difficult ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... written very illegible hands, and Dean Stanley—one of the most accomplished men of his day—could never be persuaded that eighteen pence was not the equivalent of 1s. 8d. Zealots for various "knowledges" (to use the curious plural sanctioned by Matthew Arnold) will urge the indispensability of their respective hobbies. One will say let everybody learn that the earth is round; another, that James I. was not the son of Queen Elizabeth. But let us leave, these pribbles and prabbles. Let every boy be coerced into learning ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... other nations had also its peculiar name in the Council, distinct from the mere local designation by which it was commonly called. Thus the Caniengas had for their "Council name" the term Tehadirihoken. This is the plural form of the name of their leading chief, Tekarihoken. Opinions differ much among the Indians as to the meaning of this name. Cusick, the Tuscarora historian, defines it "a speech divided," and apparently refers it to the division ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... meteors, and the soft note of Philomel from the grove came upon the soul-delighted ear like the sweet breathings of the Eolian harp, or the celestial cadences of that heart-subduing cherub, Stephens; when we set out on our romantic excursion. Reader, you may well start at the introduction of the plural number; but say, what man could abandon his friend to such a dangerous enterprise? or what moralists refuse his services where there was such a probability of there being so much need for them? But we are poor frail mortals; so a truce with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Ecclesia, translated Church. It will be worth our while to spend a few moments on the use of this name and its significance. We find mention in the New Testament of "the Church" and of "Churches." What is the relation between the singular term and the plural historically, and what did the distinction import? The sublime passages concerning the Church as the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ occur in the Epp. to the Colossians and Ephesians[3], which are not among the early Pauline Epistles. Nevertheless ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... syncretic force of the above line. Giles, in expressing his affection, felt the singular too small, and the vast plural quick supplied the void—Loves must be more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Plural. Pick any known animal—any one—and tell me how many genetic changes would have to take place before you'd come up with an animal anything like this one." Again he tapped the bathygraph. "Take that ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett
... adjective aionos (aionios) (Eng. aeonian), coming from the noun aion (aion) (Eng. aeon), an age, an epoch, a long period of time. This noun cannot mean eternity for it is repeatedly used by St. Paul in the plural "aeons" and "aeons of aeons." As we speak of great periods of time, "the Ice Age," "the Stone Age," etc., so the Bible speaks of "this age" (aeon), "the coming age" (aeon), and "the end of the age," etc. These aeons or ages are thought of in Scripture as vast periods past, present and future ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... Spirits.—The worship "of the spirits" is a primary religious duty for the Chinaman. The spirits, however, are an ill-defined set of beings; they are generally spoken of in the plural number, and sacrifice was offered to them as a body, no particular spirits being named. The spirits are connected with natural objects, every part of nature has its spirit. The sun, the moon, the five planets, clouds, rain, wind, the five great mountains, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... large synovial cavity, and in close proximity to it bone. We may, in fact, and do get in it exactly similar changes to those termed 'synovitis' and 'arthritis' elsewhere. Therefore, we include the changes occurring in it in this chapter, and hence the plural use of the word to ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Lidgerwood marked the persistent plural of the personal pronoun, and a great fear laid hold upon him. None the less, the president's invitation was a little like the king's—it was, in some sense, a command. Lidgerwood merely asked for a moment's respite, and went down ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... ("Rapport," etc., etc., p. 50): "The chiefs of the second class are yet called calpullec in the singular and chinancallec in the plural." (This is evidently incorrect, since the words 'calpulli' and 'chinancalli' can easily be distinguished from each other.) "'Chinancalli', however after Molina means 'cercado de seto' (Parte IIa, p. 21), or an inclosed area, and if we connect it with the old original ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... empty thing, And woe a forgotten old trick: And battle will come as a challenge to drink; As a warrior's wound each transient sting. She leads to the Uppermost link by link; Exacts but vision, desires not vows. Above us the singular number to see; The plural warm round us; ourself in the thick, A dot or a stop: that is our task; Her lesson in figured arithmetic, For the letters of Life behind its mask; Her flower-like look under ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... one to the noun. For this very reason the declensions are more perfect in Slavic than in German and Greek; for the different cases, as in Latin, are distinguished by suffixed syllables or endings. The Singular has seven cases; the Plural only six, the vocative having always the form of the nominative. As for the Dual, a form which the Slavic languages do not all possess, the nominative and accusative, the genitive and local; the dative and instrumental ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... excitements of the past six hours had demoralised me altogether. I could not remember who or what gradus was—whether it was an active noun or a feminine verb or a plural conjunction, or what. In vain the faithful Dicky prompted me from behind and Graham minor from the side. As they both prompted at the same time, and each suggested different things, I only floundered deeper. I felt myself smiling vacantly first at one, then at the other, then at ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... was June's, the moon rode high and clear; "'Twas such a night as this," three years ago, Miss Kitty sang the song that two might hear. There is a walk where trees o'erarching grow, Too wide for one, not wide enough for three (A fact precluding any plural beau), Which quite explained Miss Kitty's company, But not why Grey ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... to Thesmophoro, under the influence of the 'Mother and Maiden' idea; Dittenberger Inscr. Sylloge 628, Ar. Thesm. 84, 296 et passim. The plural hai Thesmophoroi used in late Greek is not, as one might imagine, a projection from the whole band of worshippers; it is merely due to the disappearance of the dual from Greek. I accept provisionally the derivation of these thesmoi from thes- in thessasthai, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... deficiency of semen, such as the acephalous type, and those due to excess, such as the double monsters. Hippocrates, in his work on the "Nature of the Infant," tells us that twins are the result of a single coitus, and we are also informed that each infant has a chorion; so that both kinds of plural gestation (monochorionic and dichorionic) were known to the ancients. In this treatise it is further stated that the twins may be male or female, or both males or both females; the male is formed when the semen is ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... of me. She was tall, gaunt, and bony, with a sharp aquiline nose, pomegranate cheek- bones, and large saffron teeth ever much in evidence. Her speciality, as I soon discovered, was sentiment. Like her sisters, she had had her 'affaires' in the plural. A Greek prince, so far as I could make out, was the last of her adorers. But I sometimes got into scrapes by mixing up the Greek prince with a Polish count, and then confounding either one or both ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... admitted that the word Elohim is the name for Deity, as worshipped by the Hebrew patriarchs; Jehovah, the conception of Deity which is at the root of the Mosaic theocracy.(789) El, or the plural Elohim, means literally "the powers," (the plural form being either, as some unreasonably think, a trace of early polytheism, or more probably merely emphatic,(790)) and is connected with the name for God commonly used in the Semitic nations. Jehovah(791) means "self-existent," and is the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... to be a derivative from Addik, the reindeer, and the plural form of the generic Gumee, water, implying deer of ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... senses. We derive knowledge through one sense only, or, shall I say, a super-sense? We see and hear and touch and taste and smell and feel and know, not through any one organ, but through our whole structure. The homogeneous force of our omni-substance subjects the plural world to the processing of a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... was gracefully worded in the plural, but your pallid wife could not claim her share of it, and you should have realized the fact. And the reason she could not was that she had sacrificed her health in your service, in giving your children to you, and ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... an odd name for a town, whether we regard it as a genitive singular, or as a nominative plural. The story goes, that the first settlers appointed a committee of one to name the place. The gentleman selected for this duty had been a schoolmaster, and he brought to bear upon the task all the learning appertaining to his former vocation. He desired to express in the name of the future ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... with a striking picture. A fair and queenly woman stands in the crowded resorts of men, and lifts up a voice of sweet entreaty—authoritative as well as sweet. Her name is Wisdom. The word is in the plural in the Hebrew, as if to teach that in this serene and lovely form all manifold wisdoms are gathered and made one. Who then is she? It is easy to say 'a poetical personification,' but that does not add much to our understanding. It is clear that this book means ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Museum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and plaster figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... those artists represent something which they themselves do not always understand. There is a legend about each; she is either an angel of purity and light, or a beautiful monster of iniquity; she has turned the heads of kings—'kings' in a vaguely royal plural—completely round on their shoulders, or she has built out of her earnings a hospital for crippled children; the watery-sentimental eye of the flash crowd in its cups sees in her a Phryne, a Mrs. Fry, or a Saint Cecilia. Goethe said that every man must be either the hammer ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... stupidity and swank, are the privilege of the diarist. He may indulge himself in the delightful luxury of making post-mortem enemies. He may wonder what the average reviewer thinks he means by always referring to single publishers in the plural. A note which we often see in the papers runs like this: "Soon to be issued by the Dorans (or Knopfs or Huebsches)," etc., etc. This is an echo of the old custom when there really were two or more Harpers. But as long ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... said, with a rueful attempt at a smile, "what's the past participle, passive, plural, of the Latin ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sorts of spices were mentioned to Moses on Sinai. Rav Hunna asked, "What Scripture text proves this?" (Exod. xxx. 34), "Take unto thee sweet spices" (the plural implying two), "stacte, myrrh, and galbanum" (these three thus making up five), "sweet spices" (the repetition doubling the five into ten), "with pure ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Frankland, 768-814), for example, found it necessary to order that priests and monks must show themselves capable of changing the wording of the masses for the living and the dead, as circumstances required, from singular to plural, or from masculine ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... solemn discourse, and you in common language. Ye (plural) is also used in serious addresses, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... writing and speaking; of a "jeering temper," and of a most grasping avarice. He was ridiculed on the stage in Middleton's play, The Game of Chess, as the "Fat Bishop." "He was well named De Dominis in the plural," says Crakanthorp, "for he could serve two masters, or twenty, if they paid ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... for Lumley promised to watch till morning. I'm not fit to be seen. If you'll wait till I put on a little of the aspect of a white man, I'll join you." He had been conscious of a feverish impatience to get back to the ladies, having carefully, even in his thoughts, employed the plural, and he had feared that they ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... prepared for the plural number, and she was a woman whom it took many plurals to disconcert. "I'm sure Guy is longing for another dance with you," she rejoined, ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... no plural form. deux mille 2000; deux milles means two miles. Mil is used in Christian era, ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous
... that the idea of God must have preceded that of gods, as the plural always implies the singular, he yet claims very justly that the exclusive conception of monotheism as against polytheism could hardly have existed. Men simply thought of God as God, as a child thinks of its father, and does not even raise the question of a second.—See ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... abandoning rumoured intention of forcing crisis by throwing out Army Bill on Second Reading, passed the stage without debate. In the Commons Plural Voting Bill read ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... dies a disputed succession and much fighting are expected. In reference to the term Monomotapa, it is to be remembered that Mono, Moene, Mona, Mana, or Morena, mean simply 'chief', and considerable confusion has arisen from naming different people by making a plural of the chief's name. The names Monomoizes, spelled also Monemuiges and Monomuizes, and Monomotapistas, when applied to these tribes, are exactly the same as if we should call the Scotch the Lord Douglases. Motape was the chief of the Bambiri, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... GOULD, B.A., to whose book Mythical Monsters (1886) I am very largely indebted for my account of this bird, and from which I have culled extracts from the Chinese, is not of this opinion. Certainly the fact that we read of Fung Hwangs in the plural, whilst tradition asserts that there is only one phoenix, seems to point to a ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... what I wanted to talk to you about," said Adrian. "I made some reply to our dear boy which he has slightly misinterpreted. Our second person plural is liable to misconstruction by an ardent mind. I said 'see you,' and he supposed—now, Mrs. Richard, I am sure you will understand me. Just at present perhaps it would be advisable—when the father and son have settled their accounts, the daughter-in-law ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... temple at Mecca, which is of the same figure. The Persic name for 'die' is 'dad,' and from this word is derived the name of the thing in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, namely, dado. In the old French it is det, in the plural dets; in modern French de and dez, whence our English name 'die,' and its ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... good vicar, who was unaware that "to spit into the basket" is to be guillotined. This wealth of vocabulary was discounted by abject poverty in other branches of the language. No one could give a list of the words in "al" that took "s" in the plural, no one knew anything at all about the defective verb echoir, and the orthography of the school would have disgraced a kindergarten. The head mistress suspected a lack of method in the teaching of M. Pujol, and one day paid his ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... divergent views were held as to the constitution of the chief executive office. After the initial question, whether the office should be single or plural, was decided, the manner of election remained to be considered. The early proposal to make the President elective by the national legislature was dropped as the office assumed greater importance in the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... with him in order to celebrate the triumph of "their" plan. Selwyn was amused at the plural. They went to a near-by club and remained for several hours talking of things of general interest, for Selwyn refused to discuss his victory after they had left the ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... as the father of the Egyptians: on which account one might expect to meet with many memorials concerning him: but his history is so veiled under allegory and titles, that no great light can be obtained. It is thought, by many learned men, that the term, Mizraeim, is properly a plural; and that a people are by it signified, rather than a person. This people were the Egyptians: and the head of their family is imagined to have been, in the singular, Misor, or Metzor. It is certain that Egypt, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... them, however, accompanied the writer in his further exploration of the ensuing day, for he uses the plural number, and speaks of his 'friend.' We thus condense his statements: One day (7th March) is described as having been spent in Wady es-Sabaiyeh, or the plain before Mount Sinai. After having penetrated into this wady, he says: 'We ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... all the others all she loves is love, Which grows a habit she can ne'er get over, And fits her loosely—like an easy glove, As you may find, whene'er you like to prove her: One man alone at first her heart can move; She then prefers him in the plural number, Not finding that the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... writers, he knew very little about the language historically or critically. His prose and poetry swarm with locutions that would have made Lindley Murray's hair stand on end. How little he knew is plain from his criticising in Ben Jonson the use of ones in the plural, of "Though Heaven should speak with all his wrath," and be "as false English for are, though the rhyme hides it." Yet all are good English, and I have found them all in Dryden's own writing! Of his sins against idiom I have a ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... to hinder its being published at once. In all probability, then, the book was in the main written and lost during the reign of Manasseh (circa 660 B.C.). It has been observed that in some sections the 2nd pers. sing, is used. in others the pl., and that the tone of the plural passages is more aggressive than that of the singular; the contrast, e.g., between xii. 29-31 (thou) and xii. 1-12 (you) is unmistakable. We might, then, limit the conclusion reached above by saying that the passages in which a milder tone prevails probably came from Hezekiah's reign, ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... about to build). Consequently anything new in constructional material interests me, and in this connection I would like to ask you what is or what are Prone? I have only seen it (or them) mentioned once, and from the context I gather that the word "prone" stands for the plural of "prone" (as "grouse" is the plural of "grouse," and as "house" might well stand for the plural of "house" nowadays, considering the shortage of dwellings), and that it (or they) is (or are) used either as a floor covering or otherwise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... lens into her hand and bade her survey one of the phials with it. Eleanor's scepticism fled. That something was there, in pretty active life, was evident. Somethings. The kinds were plural. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... 3. The plural speakes of moe then one; as, handes, trees, sheep, horses, men, tuo, three, foure, or moe, or how ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... unknown to them. Other peculiarities characteristic of the Altaic languages are the vocal harmony occurring in many of them, the inability to have more than one consonant in the beginning of a word, and the expression of the plural by a peculiar affix, the case terminations being the same in the plural as in the singular. The affinity between the different branches of the Altaic stem is thus founded mainly on analogy or resemblance in the construction of the languages, while the different tongues in the material of language ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... lexicographer. Dr. Trench could also make large reclamations, and several others. There is beside an unpleasant assumption of superiority in the book. An author who says that paganus means village, who makes ocula the plural of oculus, and who supposes that in petto means in little, is not qualified to settle Dr. Webster's claims as a philologer, much less to treat him with contempt. The first two blunders we have cited may be slips of the pen or the press, but this cannot be true of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... to be consider'd is, Virgil's mixing the Singular and Plural Numbers. This has a wonderful Effect, and is very diligently attended to by Virgil; but I believe never once thought of by Ovid, or any other Roman Writer in the ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... Rat stretched himself with feline grace. "I'm sorry" he replied with his tantalizing good-natured smile, "to be forced to object to your use of the plural pronoun in conjunction with that certain tract, piece and parcel of land known and described as the Baby Mine claim. The fact of the matter is, I have already staked it. You see, I was thinking of the little one that will be waiting for me in San Berdoo when I get back. See the point? ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... nowadays for an honest man. At last he dropped asleep in the middle of a story about a vestry he worked for that hadn't acted fair and square by him like he had by them, or it (I don't know if vestry is singular or plural), and we went home. But before we went we held a hurried council and collected what money we could from the little we had with us (it was ninepence-halfpenny), and wrapped it in an old envelope Dicky had in ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... which perhaps justified the Ullathorne people in their severity. He loved to consort with low people. He not only drank—that might have been forgiven—but he drank in tap-rooms with vulgar drinkers; so said his friends, and so said his enemies. He denied the charge as being made in the plural number, and declared that his only low co-reveller was Roger Scatcherd. With Roger Scatcherd, at any rate, he associated, and became as democratic as Roger was himself. Now the Thornes of Ullathorne were of the very highest order of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... had not derogated from their high estate. Originally, one of the first families here, the centuries, few but plural, had increased what is happily known as their prestige. Monty Paliser was conscious of that, but not unwholesomely. The enamellings that his father had added gave him no concern whatever. On the contrary. He knew that trade ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... American forests, led to the descent of the great river by Orellana, a knight of Truxillo. The fabled women-warriors were said to have been seen in this notable voyage, and hence the name of the river Amazon, a name which in Spanish and Portuguese is in the plural. It was not until nearly one hundred years after Orellana was in his grave that a voyage of discovery ascended the river. In 1637 Pedro Teixeira started from Para with an expedition of nearly two thousand (all but seventy of whom ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... that it was issued to the fleet when off Toulon, in anticipation of a possible meeting with the French squadron there, when the disparity of force was less—say, eight to ten. This impression is confirmed by the "Plan of Attack" speaking of the junior "Admirals"—in the plural. There was but one such in the pursuit to the West Indies. It is quite possible, however, that the same order was re-issued upon the later occasion, re-copied without change of words. In any event, it confirms other statements and actions of Nelson's, that an enemy should not be fought ship to ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... work is not for every reader. "Poets? where are they?" Wordsworth is said, on the authority of De Quincey, to have asked, with a want of graciousness of manners uncommon even in him and never forgiven by Hogg, when the latter used the plural in his presence, and in that of Wilson and Lloyd. It was unjust as well as rude, but endless allowance certainly has to be made for Hogg as a poet. I do not know to whom the epigram that "everything that is written in Scotch dialect is not necessarily poetry" is ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... view of the tendency that we have found characteristic of the religion, whereby powerful gods absorb the functions of weaker ones whose attributes resemble their own. But while the god disappears, the name survives. Nun-gal with the plural sign attached becomes a collective designation for a group of powerful demons.[193] In this survival and use of the name we have an interesting example of the manner in which, by a species of differentiation, local gods, unable ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... Jacob, and the ark being made of acacia wood. But even these may have been in J or E originally, and left out when JE was combined with P. Steuernagel divides the legal as well as the hortatory parts of D between two authors, one of whom uses the 2nd person plural when addressing Israel, and the other the 2nd person singular; but as a similar alternation is constantly found in writings universally acknowledged to be by the same author, this clue seems anything but trustworthy, depending as it does on the presence or absence of a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... burden of our separateness and loneliness. Our experience exists for no other; but at least it is in some mysterious way shared by That which lies behind all otherness, not destroying, but fulfilling. "We know not why it is," says St. Catherine of Genoa, "we feel an internal necessity of using the plural pronoun instead of the singular." Perhaps it was that she saw in a purer and clearer light what we only half feel in the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Almighty has endowed us all with a certain amount of brains; but we don't all use them." (Cheers).—Mr. TICKLER in the debate on the Plural ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... spoils all. No, be the garden a prince's or a cottager's, the climaxes to be got by superiority of stature, by darkness and breadth of foliage and by splendor of bloom belong at its far end. Even in the one-house garden I should like to see the climaxes plural to the extent of two; one immediately at the back of the house, the other at the extreme rear of the ground. At the far end of the lot I would have the final storm of passion and riot of disclosure, and then close about the rear of the house there should be the things of supreme richness, exquisiteness ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... different ways, according to the termination of the substantive, or according as it designates an animate or inanimate object.* (* Tamanacu, a Tamanac (plur. Tamanakemi): Pongheme, a Spaniard (properly a man clothed); Pongamo, Spaniards, or men clothed. The plural in cne characterizes inanimate objects: for example, cene, a thing; cenecne, things: jeje, a tree; jejecne, trees.) In Chayma the plural is formed as in Caribbee, in on; teure, himself; teurecon, themselves; tanorocon, those here; montaonocon, those below, supposing that ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... be grouped into three main types, so far as form is concerned. These are spherical, elongated, and spiral, and to these different types are given the names, respectively, coccus, bacillus and spirillum (plural, cocci, bacilli, spirilla) (fig. 1). A ball, a short rod, and a corkscrew serve as convenient models ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... Gothic buildings, especially on castles. This at Coulyng is remarkable from being in English, at a time when Latin was employed in all charters; it contains that early form of the plural 'beth' instead of 'are.' The inscription measures thirty-two inches by fourteen, and the diameter of the seal is no less than seven and a quarter ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... XI: "flag-ships" plural in original. Chapter XII et seq.: "St. Martinsville" corrected to "St. Martinville" Chapter XXI: "Brownville", Texas, corrected to "Brownsville". Chapter XXXIV: the Grant in temporary command of Getty's division ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... of college classrooms; women who made plural nouns the running mates of singular verbs; women who were novices in housework; women drilled in drudgery from childhood—all expanding, all dwelling in a democracy that had begun its life afresh in ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... [by analogy with {VAXen}] Fanciful plural of {box} often encountered in the phrase 'Unix boxen', used to describe commodity {{Unix}} hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the memory of the Scaean Gate in the Great Tower of Ilium, and the constant use of the name Scaean Gate in the plural, because it had to be described as double, and in fact it has been proved to be a double gate. According to the lines of the Iliad, it now seems extremely probable that, at the time of Homer's visit, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... to you," said Eleazer, almost in a raucous voice, "something that you will be surprised to see." And the lapse in his speech from the Quaker "thee" to the plural "you" struck ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... to do, and the like: When he talk'd with any of the Whig Lords, for there was a Squadron of them left, that had a great sway yet in the Country, then he would talk of him, and Party and Queen, as one Knot, in the plural Number, most haughtily, thus: We are resolved to do so and so, and we must have none but such ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... various aspects under which Life appeared to the wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First comes Hafiz, whose well-known lines are quoted beginning with Shab-i-tarik o bim-i-mauj, etc. Hur is the plural of Ahwar, in full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where they should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly "Houries." Follows Umar-i-Khayyam, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or Sooffeism, even as the Soofis (Gnostics) spiritualized Moslem Puritanism. The verses ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... of what has been done by the Expedition, it should always be understood that Dr. Kirk, Mr. Charles Livingstone, Mr. R. Thornton, and others composed it. In using the plural number they are meant, and I wish to bear testimony to the untiring zeal, energy, courage, and perseverance with which my companions laboured; undaunted by difficulties, dangers, or hard fare. It is my firm belief that, were their services required in any other capacity, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... whether prophecy, (not, whether we are prophets;) whether ministry, (not, whether we are deacons, ministers:) and both prophecy and ministry are put in the accusative case; and both of them have relation, and are joined unto the participle of the plural number having, intimating that divers do share in prophecy, pastor and teacher; divers in ministry, deacon and ruling elder. But all the other are expressed concretely, and in the nominative case, and in the singular number, and to every of them the single article is prefixed, translated He—He ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... dispensation not uncommon in the affairs of life, was on principle suspicious of Mr. Craggs; and Mrs. Craggs was on principle suspicious of Mr. Snitchey. 'Your Snitcheys indeed,' the latter lady would observe, sometimes, to Mr. Craggs; using that imaginative plural as if in disparagement of an objectionable pair of pantaloons, or other articles not possessed of a singular number; 'I don't see what you want with your Snitcheys, for my part. You trust a great deal too much to your Snitcheys, I think, and I hope you may never find my words ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... Tilly's own peculiar fashion; her most common method of amusement being to reproduce for its entertainment scraps of conversation current in the house, with all the sense left out of them, and all the nouns changed to the plural number, as—"Did its mothers make it up a beds then! And did its hair grow brown and curly when its cap was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... know that mamma is a noun of the feminine gender and singular number; men is a noun masculine and plural; ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... your Majesty command that I should yet accompany farther' ["BEFEHLEN, command," in the plural is polite, "your Majesty, that I yet ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... events at the theater, and not of a pleasant sort. Mr. Brunton, the manager, is in "difficulties" (civilized plural for debt), and it seems that last night during the play one of his creditors put an execution into the theater, and laid violent hands upon the receipts, which, as it was my father's benefit, rather dismayed us. So after breakfast this morning, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... waggon was the most uncomfortable Nic had passed. It was hot; there was a chest beneath him which had suddenly developed a hard edge and an awkward corner; the dogs, too, were uneasy, and barked a good deal at the moon. Then some kind of animal in the plural number seemed to be holding a meeting up among the branches of the huge tree under which they encamped, for there were endless squealings and skirmishes about, which woke the boy again and again, to lie and listen, and think about his new home in the great Australian wilderness, ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... use of the phrase Christian regiments, I am too dull to understand. ("Who would not think," says he, "that it was one of Constantine's aide-de-camps that was speaking?") It may be that I am wrong in using the plural noun, and that there was only one such regiment,—that which carried the Labarum, or standard of the cross (Gibbon, ch. 20), to which so much efficacy was attributed in the war against Licinius. I have ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... kind—even more than of other literary kinds—lies in the direction of mould and mechanism—of the production, by the thousand, of things of no individual quality and character. This danger has been and is being amply exemplified. But the Peacocks (would the plural were more justified!) save us from it by their own unconquerable individuality in the first place and, in the second, by the fact that even the best in this kind is "caviare to the general," while anything ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... earth where the dead go (gimokud, "spirit;" -an, plural ending); that is, [the place ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... and the Platonic communities, the first fact to challenge attention is that the communities which established laws relating to sex relations which were opposed to the monogamic family, whether promiscuity, so-called free love; plural marriage, as in Mormonism, or celibacy, as in Harmonism and Shakerism, were all religious communities. In a word, all these experiments which antagonized the monogamic family relation were the result of various interpretations of the Bible and ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... satire. Miss Ambient's perpetual gaze seemed to put to me: "Do you perceive how artistic, how very strange and interesting, we are? Frankly now is it possible to be MORE artistic, MORE strange and interesting, than this? You surely won't deny that we're remarkable." I was irritated by her use of the plural pronoun, for she had no right to pair herself with her brother; and moreover, of course, I couldn't see my way to—at all genially—include Mrs. Ambient. Yet there was no doubt they were, taken together, unprecedented enough, and, with all allowances, I had never been left, or ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... Single Person (or Thing) in the Universe at large. The Number Two corresponds with the Dual Number in Grammar, and with the Couple or Pair in the World of Persons (and Things); and finally the Number Three corresponds with the Plural Number in Grammar and with Society or the many among Persons (and Things); ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... be at the trouble of referring to the instrument itself, he would see that the backers of Dr. Reasono were mentioned in the plural number, while that of Sir John himself was alluded to only in ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... name is Sheepshanks. On the Grampian Hills his father kept his flocks—a thousand sheep,' and, I make no doubt, shanks in proportion. Excuse you, Sheepshanks? My dear sir! At this altitude one shank was more than we had a right to expect: the plural multiplies the obligation." Keeping a tight hold on his hysteria, Dalmahoy steadied himself by a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... capital I at the risk of being accused of egotism. Apparently it is more modest to be conceited in the third person, like the child who says "Tommy is a good boy," or in the first person plural, like the leader-writer of "The Times," who bids the Continent tremble at his frown. By a singular fallacy, which ought scarcely to deceive children, it is forgotten that everything that has ever been written since the world ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... of two things, the quartering of the army among them, and a vigorous assault on the practice of polygamy. Judge Eckles's District Court had begun its spring term at Fort Bridger on April 5, and the judge had charged the grand jury very plainly in regard to plural marriages. On ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... (Cyrus) is the title of several ancient kings of Persia, and is here used in the plural to denote monarchs in general. The term "kiblah," fronting-point, signifies the object towards which the worshipper turns when ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... half a minute the respiration being continued, diminished gradually and were succeeded by analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.' That the respiration was not 'diminished,' is not only clear by the subsequent context, but by the use of the plural, 'were.' The sentence, no doubt, was thus intended: 'In less than half a minute, the respiration [being continued, these feelings] diminished gradually, and were succeeded by [a sensation] analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.' A hundred similar instances go to show that the MS. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the West, but there was but one empire. The two emperors, though they may have resided, one in Constantinople and the other in Italy, were considered as being but one person. In addressing one of them the word "you" (in the plural) was used, as if both were addressed at the same time. This was the first use of the pronoun of the second person in the plural for such a purpose; for throughout antiquity even kings and emperors were addressed ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... himself before acting on the impulse. This, obviously, was what counted in a man as delicacy. If her friend had blurted or bungled he would have said, in his simplicity, "Did we do 'everything to avoid' it when we faced your remarkable marriage?"—quite handsomely of course using the plural, taking his share of the case, by way of a tribute of memory to the telegram she had received from him in Paris after Mr. Verver had despatched to Rome the news of their engagement. That telegram, that acceptance of the prospect proposed ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... be a mystery in the mind of some why we read in the Bible of churches, when God has but one church. A little attention to the word will convince any honest mind that the church of God is plural only in regard to its geographical location. The people in the different communities could not go up to Jerusalem in order to assemble themselves together in worship, for the distance in some instances would have been too great. Thus, it became necessary for many to form home congregations. ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... as struck with the beauty of his plural pronoun as she had judged he might be with that of her own; but she knew now so well what she was about that she could almost play with him and with her new-born joy. "You say 'about the time you speak of.' But I don't think you speak ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... are also indicated by the nature of the passage itself viewed in the light of the state of religion at the time. Here, sober judgment must guard against unnecessary conjectures. Some changes are apparent, as the plural oaks in Genesis xiii. 18, xiv. 13, xviii. 1, Deuteronomy xi. 30, for the singular oak; and the plural gods in Exodus xxxii. 4, for the singular god. So 2 Sam. Vii. 23, (comp. 1 Chron. xvii. 21, and LXX);(70) and Deuteronomy xxxii. 8,(71) have been ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... environment, or any superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a supernatural remedy. On the whole, the Latin races have leaned more towards the former way of looking upon evil, as made up of ills and sins in the plural, removable in detail; while the Germanic races have tended rather to think of Sin in the singular, and with a capital S, as of something ineradicably ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and never to be removed by any superficial piecemeal ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... provided that I affixed to them my initials; and, with the generosity which was natural to him, thus wrote in the preface: "The editors (for so much of the business has devolved on Mr. Cottle, that the plural term is necessary) have to acknowledge," &c. &c. "They have felt peculiar pleasure, as natives of the same city, in performing this act of justice to Chatterton's fame, and to the interests ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... with the Queen's titles. In these letters the plural "we" and "our" are employed instead of "I" and "my," and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Italian for master. It is a title of courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.) "Pollo is one chicken by itself; when there are enough present to constitute a plural, it is POLLI." ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... The neuter plural governing, as they call it, a verb singular is one of the many instances in Greek of the inward and metaphysic grammar resisting successfully the tyranny of formal grammar. In truth, there may be Multeity in things; but there can only ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... there seems a show of reason in it from Micah, Saul's daughter putting one in David's bed to deceive her father's messenger, while he escaped. This, it is possible, alludes to some divination by the Teraphin which she used in his behalf, for Teraphin is the plural number; therefore, could not signify only one image; neither could the gods which Rachel stole from her father, Labon, be one god as big as a man, for she sat on them and hid them. The word is here in the original "Teraphin," although translated gods. Then, in Hosea, chapter 3, verse 4, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... meaning "You two be strong," used by the Eskimos as a greeting. The singular of the same is Oksunae, and the plural ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... grammarians never understand? Would they abandon Genesis, shall we say, because Elohim and Jehovah are sometimes interchanged in the text? Can they believe that any Jew, who could concoct a book like Genesis, did not also know that Elohim was a plural noun? Can they any more, then, believe that a Celtic man with brains enough to fabricate poems like Fingal and Temora did not know that the Gaelic name for the sun was feminine? Can they see no other way of accounting for such alleged variations of gender, and number, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... things, because of this doctrine they practise—this wickedness of spiritual wives, plural wives. Think of it, Joel—that if I were your ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... pelvis it is really more of an angle than an arch. Also note how much longer and more solid the sacrum (with its attached bone, called the coccyx[2]) is in the male pelvis. The differences in the pelves (the plural of pelvis is pelves) of the male and female become fully marked at puberty, but they are present as early as the fourth ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... that since the date of said declaration the members and adherents of said church have generally obeyed said laws and have abstained from plural ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... of the collection as originally published is obviously ambiguous—is Shepheardes' to be considered as singular or plural? There is a tendency among modern critics to evade the difficulty in such cases by quoting titles in the original spelling. I confess that this practice seems to me both clumsy and pedantic. In the present case there can be little doubt that the title of Spenser's work ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... yourself confronted with the verb "to love"—invariably the normal type of the first conjugation. In every language on earth the student may be heard declaring, with more zeal than discretion, that he and you and they and every other person, singular or plural, have loved, and do love, and will love. "To love" is the model verb; expressing the archetype of activity. Once you can love grammatically there is a world of things you may do without stumbling. For, strange to say, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... their opinions changed, for there arrived from Nantes the commission, perfectly constituted, and wanting, as we have said, neither president, procureur du roi, secretary, nor even executioners. We use the plural, for there ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... new in constructional material interests me, and in this connection I would like to ask you what is or what are Prone? I have only seen it (or them) mentioned once, and from the context I gather that the word "prone" stands for the plural of "prone" (as "grouse" is the plural of "grouse," and as "house" might well stand for the plural of "house" nowadays, considering the shortage of dwellings), and that it (or they) is (or are) used either as a floor covering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... follow after his kind; but by Thy direction proveth what is that good, that acceptable, and perfect will of Thine: yea, Thou teachest him, now made capable, to discern the Trinity of the Unity, and the Unity of the Trinity. Wherefore to that said in the plural. Let us make man, is yet subjoined in the singular, And God made man: and to that said in the plural. After our likeness, is subjoined in the singular, After the image of God. Thus is man renewed in the ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... discrimination of the intercession. He 'hath desired to have you'—that is plural; 'I have prayed for thee'—that is singular. The man that was in the greatest danger was the man nearest to Christ's heart, and chiefly the object of Christ's intercession. So it is always—the tenderest of His words, the sweetest of His consolations, the strongest of His succours, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... root; his body, the stem; his limbs and head, the formative elements, prefixes and suffixes, case-endings and what not. Let him loose in the sentence, and see how he wriggles gaily from state to state: with a flick of the tail from nominative to genitive, from singular to plural: declaring his meaning, not by means of what surroundings you put about him, but by motions, changes, volitions so to say, of his own. 'Now,' says he, 'I'm pater, and the subject; set me where you will, and I am still the subject, and you can make nothing else of me.' Or, 'Now,' says he, 'I'm ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Congress to consider what, in the execution of the laws against polygamy, is to be the status of plural wives and their offspring. The propriety of Congress passing an enabling act authorizing the Territorial legislature of Utah to legitimize all children born prior to a time fixed in the act might be justified by its humanity to these innocent children. This ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... singular and plural) and 4 special cities* (si, singular and plural); Chagang-do (Chagang Province), Hamgyong-bukto (North Hamgyong Province), Hamgyong-namdo (South Hamgyong Province), Hwanghae-bukto (North Hwanghae Province), Hwanghae-namdo (South Hwanghae Province), Kaesong-si* (Kaesong City), Kangwon-do ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... that the memorial be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary with leave to report at any time. It was so referred. The Judiciary Committee of the Senate brought in a bill legitimatizing the offspring of plural marriages to a certain date; also authorizing the president to grant amnesty for past offenses against the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Mahomedans, or, in the Punjab, of Sikhs, or, in Madras, of non-Brahmans, or, in the large cities, of Europeans and of Eurasians, besides still more specialised constituencies for the representation of land-holders, universities, commerce, and industries. There was no female suffrage, and no plural vote. No elector could vote both in a "general constituency" and in a "special" one. The qualifications laid down for the franchise were of a very modest character. Illiteracy was no bar, as to have made it so in ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... example of Early English or First Pointed, which can generally be told from something else by bold projecting buttresses and dog-tooth moulding round the abacusses. (The plural is my own, and it does not look right.) Lincoln Castle was the scene of many prolonged sieges, and was once taken by ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... influence. Thus in Babylonian the name for "sun" or the Sun-god would be Shamash or Shamshu, not Samsu; in the second half of the name, while ilu ("god") is good Babylonian, the ending na, which is the pronominal suffix of the first person plural, is not Babylonian, but Arabic. We need not here enter into a long philological discussion, and the instance already cited may suffice to show in what way many of the names met in the Babylonian inscriptions of this ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... forced as he was to slacken his speed, he had the satisfaction of seeing, on glancing back along the gloomy passage, that the bears were also compelled to slacken their pace and climb over intervening rocks as he had done. And it was plural, for the second one had joined the first, and they were coming steadily on, their light coats showing with terrible plainness in the gloom among ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... This is indicated in the twentieth chapter of Revelation, where it is said, "And the books were opened." Notice that it is plural and not singular. There is a record in heaven kept by the Recording Angel. If it were in the memory of God it would be an awful thing, for while God does not remember forgiven sin, he cannot, from the very nature of the case, forget unpardoned sin, and if that ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... I ride away to visit my estates (he spoke of them always in the plural, as though he owned a county or two). You have under you the best eyes and the keenest blades along the border for I attended to it! Be ruthless! Use them, work them—sweat them to death! Keep away from messes and parades; seek no praise, for you will get ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... some of the steps,—the little steps, such as you and I could take, toward accomplishing? Yet, even while I ask the question, I see something of what the answer must be. 'Christian homes opening to receive them!' That is a new thought to me, and in the plural number I do not see how just now, it could be done, but one Christian home,—I ought to be able to manage that. Mr. Ried, that is the way to begin it, you may depend. Indeed, I suppose you have tried it? ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... division, viz., interruption, contrast, rivalry, etc. Thus, with a singular noun, 'inter coenam hoc accidit,' i.e., this interrupted the supper. And so with two nouns, 'inter me et Brundusium Caesar est.' And so with a plural noun, 'hoc inter homines ambigitur,' i.e., man with man. 'Micat inter omnes Julium sidus,' i.e., in the rivalry of star against star. 'Inter tot annos unus (vir) inventus est,' i.e., though all those years, one by one, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... out upon a ledge of rock near her feet. "Mrs. Acton was good enough to imply that she had been expecting me more or less anxiously for several days," he rejoined in a tone of reproach. "In fact, she used the plural pronoun, which led me to believe that somebody else must have shared her anxiety. She did not, however, point out who it was that ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... formalism, and has stamped itself on the language in some very odd ways. The tendency common to all tongues, towards a disuse of the second person singular, as too blunt and familiar, is carried so far in Spanish and Portuguese as to disuse the second person plural also, except in the family circle, and to substitute the indirect phrases, vuestra Merced (in Spanish) and vossa Merce (in Portuguese), both much contracted in speaking and familiar writing, and both signifying "your Grace." The joke of invariably applying ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... apparent wrong traits, that Christ, Truth, casts out. By no possible interpretation can this passage mean several individuals cast out of another individual no bigger than themselves. The term, being here em- [20] ployed in its plural number, destroys all consistent sup- position of the existence of one personal devil. Again, our text refers to the devil as dumb; but the original devil was a great talker, and was supposed to have out- talked even Truth, and carried ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Century, and the Eighteenth Century remains; but to continue—"back to the days of the Edwards and the Henrys." But why go back to any other century than the "so-called Nineteenth"? Isn't it only a very few years ago that the EDWARDS, the singular HENRY with plural surname of EDWARDS, sat for Weymouth? What other HENRYS or EDWARDS could ever occur to any ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... fact that it may still be heard in remote places. Where possible, I have retained the archaic order of the original Text. Such irregular constructions, as e.g., the use of a singular pronoun in the first half of a sentence, and of a plural in the second half, I have left unaltered; for the meaning was perfectly clear. In short, I have endeavoured to make Richard Rolle as he was as significant as possible to English men and women of to-day as they are, when they are not professed ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... unknown, your person is invulnerable: at the same time your aim is sure, for you may take it at your leisure; and your blows fall heavier than those of any Writer whose name is given, or who is simply anonymous. There is a mysterious authority in the plural, We, which no single name, whatever may be its reputation, can acquire; and, under the sanction of this imposing style, your strictures, your praises, and your dogmas, will command universal attention; and be received as ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... titles. In these letters the plural "we" and "our" are employed instead of "I" and "my," and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Young made were: 1, That some of the pictures of the hieroglyphics stand for the names of the objects delineated; 2, that other pictures are at times only symbolic; 3, that plural numbers are represented by repetition; 4, that numerals are represented by dashes; 5, that hieroglyphics may read either from the right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the animals and human figures face; 6, that a graven oval ring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... that which eats or devours,) is made up of two Greek words, signifying together flesh-eating, and was applied by the ancients to a species of stone, used for making coffins. Hence, sarcophagus came to signify a stone-coffin. The form of the plural in Latin, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... deal more to say than one has any right to say, and when at the same time one is expected to say particularly little, it is very hard to write a good note. All sorts of ideas creep in and express themselves automatically. A misplaced plural for a singular, a superlative adjective where the vaguer comparative belongs; the vast and immeasurable waste of weary years that may lie between "dear" and "dearest," the gulf placed between "sincerely yours, John Smith," and "yours, J.S.," and "your J.," until the blessed state is reached wherein ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of the paper were as follows: [The joke of this bill consists chiefly in its being written in very bad Russian, with continual mistakes as to plural and singular, prepositions and ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... prepositions, as expressive of relations, being completely unknown to them. Other peculiarities characteristic of the Altaic languages are the vocal harmony occurring in many of them, the inability to have more than one consonant in the beginning of a word, and the expression of the plural by a peculiar affix, the case terminations being the same in the plural as in the singular. The affinity between the different branches of the Altaic stem is thus founded mainly on analogy or resemblance in the construction of the languages, while the different tongues in the material of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... book so speckled with your presence. Still, world, hear me; mercifully spare a poor grammarian the penance of perpetual third persons; let an individual tender conscience escape censure for using the true singular in preference to that imposing lie, the plural. Suffer a humble unit to speak of himself as I, and, once for all, let me permissively disclaim intentional self-conceit in the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... souls or spirits is as improper as the term gods. Soul or Spirit signifies Deity and nothing else. 466:21 There is no finite soul nor spirit. Soul or Spirit means only one Mind, and cannot be rendered in the plural. Heathen mythology and Jewish 466:24 theology have perpetuated the fallacy that intelligence, soul, and life can be in matter; and idolatry and ritualism are the outcome of all man-made beliefs. The Science ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... her plural possessive. "The point is of course that if there was a conscious bargain, and our action on Mrs. Brash is to deprive her of the sense of keeping her side of it, various things may happen that won't be good either for her or for ourselves. She may ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... buildings, especially on castles. This at Coulyng is remarkable from being in English, at a time when Latin was employed in all charters; it contains that early form of the plural 'beth' instead of 'are.' The inscription measures thirty-two inches by fourteen, and the diameter of the seal is no less than seven ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... such as the formation of the compound tenses, the formation and the use of the passive voice, and so on. But attempts at inductive teaching of concrete elements of mechanical memory, such as the gender and plural of nouns, or the principal parts of strong verbs, are a misunderstanding of the principles of induction. It goes without saying that thorough drill is much more valuable than the most explicit explanation. It holds good ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... rough world, sustained by an abiding vision of noble womanhood and the sanctity of home. It is an extraordinarily appealing phrase and Lady Moyne used it for all it was worth. As addressed by her to wives and sisters of the Belfast working-men, it had a further value. The plural possessive pronoun bracketed McConkey with Lord Moyne. McConkey's wife, assuming for the moment that he had not abstained from matrimony as he had from tobacco, shared his joys and sorrows, his hopes and fears, ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... these islands are the group now known as that of PULO CONDORE, in old times an important landmark, and occasional point of call, on the route to China. The group is termed Sundar Fulat (Fulat representing the Malay Pulo or Island, in the plural) in the Arab Relations of the 9th century, the last point of departure on the voyage to China, from which it was a month distant. This old record gives us the name Sondor; in modern times we have it as Kondor; Polo combines both names. ["These may also be the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... same time that there is an infinite without us, is there not an infinite within us? Are not these two infinites (what an alarming plural!) superposed, the one upon the other? Is not this second infinite, so to speak, subjacent to the first? Is it not the latter's mirror, reflection, echo, an abyss which is concentric with another abyss? Is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Essentially a Cheese Puff, this is also au gratin when topped with both cheese and browned bread crumbs. By a sort of poetic cook's license the name is also applied to any kind of cake containing cheese and cooked in the identifying one-portion ramekin. It is used chiefly in the plural, however, together with the name of the chief ingredient, such ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... a pocket lens into her hand and bade her survey one of the phials with it. Eleanor's scepticism fled. That something was there, in pretty active life, was evident. Somethings. The kinds were plural. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Governor imperturbably, "that we must and will get away with it." His emphasis on the plural pronoun caused Archie to cringe. "It strikes me as highly amusing that we have unloaded those bills of Leary's on a good sport like Seebrook. As I locked that stuff in his trunk I got to laughing—really, I did—and a chambermaid roaming the hall must have heard me, for the key rattled ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... November he announced his intention of introducing during the coming session of 1912 the Electoral Reform Bill which he had foreshadowed in 1908; he said that in this Bill all existing franchises would be swept away, plural voting abolished and the period of residence reduced. The new franchise to be created was, he added, to be based on citizenship and votes were to be given to "citizens of full age and competent understanding," but no ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... must agree with the nouns which they qualify. This and that qualify nouns in the singular; these and those belong to nouns in the plural. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... me ornieres and lumieres in the plural, my dear Pelisson," said La Fontaine, clapping his hand on the shoulder of his friend, whose insult he had quite forgotten, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... think you had been describing our Opera, not your own; we have just set out with one in what they call, the French manner, but about as like it, as my Lady Pomfret's hash of plural persons and singular verbs or infinitive moods was to Italian. They sing to jigs, and dance to church music -. Phaeton is run away with by horses that go a foot's-pace, like the Electress's(1338) coach, with such long traces, that the postilion was in one street and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... prophecy, (not, whether we are prophets;) whether ministry, (not, whether we are deacons, ministers:) and both prophecy and ministry are put in the accusative case; and both of them have relation, and are joined unto the participle of the plural number having, intimating that divers do share in prophecy, pastor and teacher; divers in ministry, deacon and ruling elder. But all the other are expressed concretely, and in the nominative case, and in the singular number, and to every of them the single article is prefixed, translated ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... of her own forgiving, not a word of endearment; and we suspect the word madam had, when written, more blame in it than it now retains—and how do the words "my daughter Sophy and I" cut off the forlorn one from the family!—and the plural "persons" avoiding the individuality, the personality of her daughter was another deep cut into the very flesh of the lost one's heart. Now then comes the reproof, and the good man shines in the glory of goodness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... the word AUR, in the singular, signified light, but in the plural, AURIM, it denoted the revelation of the divine will; and the aurim and thummim, literally the lights and truths, constituted a part of the breastplate whence the high priest obtained oracular responses to ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... which He made for Peter, and for those who should, in turn, exercise Peter's office and functions, and should speak in his name. Harken to the narrative, as given by St. Luke: "The Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you [observe, the plural number] that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed [not for all, but] for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren" (Luke xxii. 32) [observe the singular ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... should die for them in visible and invisible wars; and should be among them an eternal king." Nor is that observation of a learned foreigner of my acquaintance to be despised, who takes notice, that as seeds in the plural, must signify posterity, so seed in the singular may signify either posterity, or a single person; and that in this promise of all nations being happy in the seed of Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, etc., it is always used in the singular. To which I shall add, that it is sometimes, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... (or, in other words, the results of induction), when reduced to their simplest expression. It is, however, something to have advanced so far, as to see that the study of nature is the study of laws, not a law; of uniformities, in the plural number: that the different natural phenomena have their separate rules or modes of taking place, which, though much intermixed and entangled with one another, may, to a certain extent, be studied apart: that (to resume our former ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... is also, and perhaps chiefly, in this case, a pun on the meaning of the plural noun "cenci," "rags," or "old rags." The cry of this, frequent in Rome, was at first mistaken by Shelley for a voice urging him to go on with his play. Mr. Browning has used it to indicate the comparative unimportance ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to Latin as can be. Thus mouse in the common Sanskrit is mushas or mushika, both derivative forms if compared with the Latin mus, muris. The Vaidik Sanskrit has preserved the same primitive noun in the plural mush-as Lat. mures. There are other words in the Veda which were lost altogether in the later Sanskrit, while they were preserved in Greek and Latin. Dyaus, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the ordinary ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... but who hadn't it in their power to notice anybody. That made such a difference! These were otherer yet! And for all that they were girls,—girls! Ever so much of young life, and glow, and companionship, ever so much of dream, and hope, and possible story, is in just that little plural of five letters. A company of girls! Heaven only knows what there is not represented, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... forms are commonly used where the German forms would naturally be expected (i.e., in exclusively Brazilian German publications, etc.). Among the forms most frequently used in this manner (in full or abbreviated form, singular or plural) are the following:[53] ...
— The German Element in Brazil - Colonies and Dialect • Benjamin Franklin Schappelle
... the classifier or the searcher has an invention to place or to find including two or more different kinds of characteristics, for each of which a subdivision is provided, but no subdivision for the plural characteristics, it will be known that the invention should be in the subclass for that characteristic which stands before the subclass for ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... to me by my experience of the nearest approximation to Proportional Representation which has ever been actually adopted in England. In 1870 Lord Frederick Cavendish induced the House of Commons to adopt 'plural voting' for School Board elections. I fought in three London School Board elections as a candidate and in two others as a political worker. In London the legal arrangement was that each voter in eleven large ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... their native literature under several heads, probably as an aid to the memory of the professional poets or story-tellers whose stock-in-trade it was, and to one of these divisions they gave the name Tainte, plural of Tain. By this term, which is most often followed by the genitive plural bo, "cows," they meant "a driving," or "a reaving," or even "a drove" or "herd" of cattle. It is only by extension of meaning that this title is applied ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... may perhaps have heard the world floe (plural floes) applied to floating sheet-ice, as it is to be found so applied extensively in Captain Parry's Journal of his Second Voyage; but it remains to be shown whether such a term existed in Shakspeare's time. I think it did not, as after diligent search ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... bore a striking resemblance to the waltz-loving Diana Clapperton, up and down ball-rooms, to the unspeakable terror of squadrons of turbaned old ladies. Deafening peals of bells, rung by troops of Freddy ColeMEN (which I take to be the correct plural of Coleman), were rousing night-capped nations from their slumbers in alarm, to whom flocks of frightened mayors were bleating forth bewildered orders, which resulted in perplexing everybody; and through it ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the Prologue to the Book of Foundations, Father Garcia de Toledo, her confessor at St. Joseph's Convent, is said to be responsible for the order to rewrite the "Life"; but in the Preface to the "Life" St. Teresa speaks of her "confessors" in the plural. Fathers Ibanez and Banez may be included in the number. See ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... as the Tuscan Maremma, ora maritime, or Maremme—for the plural form is most generally used—lies upon and near the western coast of Tuscany, and comprises about 1,900 square miles English, of which 500 square miles, or 320,000 acres, are plain and marsh including ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... derived. Pedro de Angelis, in his 'Coleccion de Obras y Documentos', derives it from 'gua', paint, and 'ni', sign of the plural, making the signification of the word 'painted ones' or 'painted men'. Demersay, in his 'Histoire du Paraguay',* thinks it probable that the word is an alteration of the word 'guaranai', i.e., numerous. Barco de la Centenera** ('Argentina', ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... is at the end of a line, a short vowel counts either as long or is dropped according to the exigencies of the metre. In the Hashw the u or i of the pronominal affix for the third person sing., masc., and the final u of the enlarged pronominal plural forms, humu and kumu, may be either short or long, according to the same exigencies. The end-vowel of the pronoun of the first person ana, I, is generally read short, although it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... seemed to put to me: "Do you perceive how artistic, how very strange and interesting, we are? Frankly now is it possible to be MORE artistic, MORE strange and interesting, than this? You surely won't deny that we're remarkable." I was irritated by her use of the plural pronoun, for she had no right to pair herself with her brother; and moreover, of course, I couldn't see my way to—at all genially—include Mrs. Ambient. Yet there was no doubt they were, taken together, unprecedented enough, and, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... return to England I mentioned this inscription to a friend who, as a young man, had been an excellent Latin scholar; he took a panic into his head that "eritis" was not right for the second person plural of the future tense of the verb "esse." Whatever it was, it was not "eritis." This panic was speedily communicated to myself, and we both puzzled for some time to think what the future of "esse" really ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... is meant by "Doctor of Medicine"?—Give the abbreviation.—What does LL.D. mean? Ans. It stands for the words legum doctor, doctor of laws: the double L marks the plural ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... brought in to break a British strike; it cannot amend a Bill to give old-age pensions to 600,000 people. It can thwart a Government in the minute details of its legislation; it cannot touch the whole vast business of finance. It can prevent the abolition of the plural voter; but it could not prevent the abolition of the police. It can refuse a Constitution to Ireland, but not, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... traditional drama, in which pagan elements seem to have mingled with the Herod story, is still performed by the Roumanians during the Christmas festival. It is called in Wallachia "Vicleim" (from Bethlehem), in Moldavia and Transylvania "Irozi" (plural from Irod Herod). At least ten persons figure in it: "Emperor" Herod, an old grumbling monarch who speaks in harsh tones to his followers; an officer and two soldiers in Roman attire; the three Magi, in ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... signifying we, more than two, including the speaker and those present; and another including the speaker and persons absent. He will also find personal pronouns in the second and third person, perhaps with singular, dual, and plural forms. ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... 1: The employment of the plural—"in sins"—may be explained by the custom of the Divine Scriptures in the frequent use of the plural for the singular, e.g. "They are dead that sought the life of the child"; or by the fact that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... hardly would when she came to our camp. She was almost white, and this officer wished to adopt her, but the mother said, "I would do anything but that for oonah," this being a sort of Indian formation of the second-person-plural, such as they sometimes use. This same officer afterwards saw a reward offered for this family in ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... ku,—whence the supposed Indian names, aje, age, niame, igname, used indiscriminately of any edible roots. The African names of the manioc have come from Arabic 'uruq "roots," notably in the Congo languages, y[o]ka, y[e]ke, edioko, plural madioka, whence, as the plant was introduced into America, it was known there as vuca, mandioca. As to sweet potatoes and peanuts, the former were cultivated in Asia before the discovery of America, while the latter, mentioned by Ibn Batutah as an article of food in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... return to Florence he became Secretary of the Commune, and he was the master of Dante and Guido Cavalcanti. His principal literary work was Li Livres dou Tresor, written in French, an interesting compend of the omne scibile. He died in 1290. Dante uses the plural "you" in addressing him, as a sign ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... four articles in Khasi; three in the singular, u, (masculine), ka (feminine), and i (diminutive of both genders); and one in the plural for both ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... markets. The Africans have no religion, unless Fetishism may be considered such. They use charms to keep off the evil eye, and believe in fortune-tellers. Their church is called Uganga, and the parson Mganga, the plural of which, priests, changes to Waganga. The prefixes, U, M, and Wa, are used uniformly throughout this land from Zanzibar, to denote respectively, U, country or place, M, an individual, and Wa for ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... rather crude English adaptation of the Latin term "Punctus contra punctum" which refers to the notes as punct[u]s (plural) or dots which were pricked with a stylus into the medieval manuscripts. In this phrase the emphasis is on the contra, signifying a combination of different melodies and rhythms, and calling attention to that higher importance which, everywhere ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... not certain changes be made in the house at Munster Court in reference to—well, to a nursery. A room to be baby's own she had called it. She had thus made herself understood, though she had not said the word which seemed to imply a plural number. "But you'll be down at Manor Cross," ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... applied to the legal profession. Consuming professional jealousy finds similar disparaging epithets for fellow-travelers in every walk of life, and every calling has its special insult. The scorn flung into the words homme de loi, homme de lettres, is wanting in the plural form, which may be used without offence; but in Paris every profession, learned or unlearned, has its omega, the individual who brings it down to the level of the lowest class; and the written law has its connecting link with the custom right of the streets. There are ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... though they must always have had symbolical meanings. Further, while we have record of only one oath—which does not mean that there was only one—signs, tokens, and words are nearly always spoken of in the plural; and if the secrets of a Fellowcraft were purely technical—which some of us do not believe—they were at least accompanied and protected by certain signs, tokens, and passwords. From this it is clear that the advent of an Apprentice into the ranks of a Fellow was in fact a degree, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... words as follows:—There is no such process known to the English language as the formation of a noun-singular out of an adjective by the addition of "s": neither is there any process known by which a noun-plural can be formed from an adjective, without the previous formation of the singular in the same sense; except in such cases as "the rich, the poor, the noble," &c., where the singular form is used in a plural sense. C.B. instances "goods, the shallows, blacks, for mourning, greens." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... the literary master has the superiority, though he, too, can in effect but say—and often says it in the very phrase—"I can highly recommend." Only usually he uses the word "We," there being some occult virtue in the first person plural which makes it specially fit for critical and royal declarations. I have a small handful of these sea appreciations, signed by various masters, yellowing slowly in my writing-table's left hand drawer, rustling under my reverent touch, like a handful of ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... regard to change of number: not only is the style improved by the use of those words which, though singular in form, are found on inspection to be plural in meaning, as in ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... of Company Interpreter lie in the fact that I once, in company of various other youths of my age, spent a fortnight in and around the Casino at Trouville. Peters of our company knows a long list of nouns taking "x" instead of "s" in the plural, but my knowledge is ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... in y, form the plural of nouns, the persons of verbs, participial nouns, past participles, comparatives, and superlatives, by changing y into i, when the y is preceded by a consonant; as, spy, spies; I carry, thou carriest, he carries; carrier, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... commune, met and legislated according to their needs. To be a freeman one had to own property; to "have a stake in the country." Nowadays nearly all the men who have no property can vote, and some that have property cannot. In England, they are doing away with "plural voters." Heretofore it was thought just, when a man owned land in more than one place, that he should have his say in the government of all; but this is now forbidden. The right was never recognized in this country, partly ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... as a demonstrative pronoun, both in the singular and plural, for this and these, it maybe observed, as well as of the pronunciation of many other words in the west, that we have no letters or combination of letters which, express exactly the sounds there given ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... in some of these instances the Canons are spoken of in the plural, when the particular infraction which occasions their mention relates only to one of them. This shows they were collected into a code, if, indeed, that need be proved; for, in truth, that various Canons should exist, and be in force, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Chapter XI: "flag-ships" plural in original. Chapter XII et seq.: "St. Martinsville" corrected to "St. Martinville" Chapter XXI: "Brownville", Texas, corrected to "Brownsville". Chapter XXXIV: the Grant in temporary command of Getty's division is Brigadier-General Lewis Grant, not U. S. Grant as in the rest ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... was the most uncomfortable Nic had passed. It was hot; there was a chest beneath him which had suddenly developed a hard edge and an awkward corner; the dogs, too, were uneasy, and barked a good deal at the moon. Then some kind of animal in the plural number seemed to be holding a meeting up among the branches of the huge tree under which they encamped, for there were endless squealings and skirmishes about, which woke the boy again and again, to lie ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... "existence" and not "existences." Why do I say "existence", and not "existences"? Why, with a fine handsome plural ready to hand, do I wind you up and turn you off, so to speak, with a piffling little singular not fit for a half-starved newspaper fellow, let alone a fine, full-fledged, intellectual and well-read vegetarian and teetotaller who writes in the reviews? Eh? Why do I say "existence"?—speaking ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Mr. Francis Galton, Professor Karl Pearson, and Mr. Bernard Shaw are advocating a scheme of state endowment for motherhood. Now you can see for yourself what that would mean. In politics it would mean the establishment of a motherhood suffrage with plural voting based on the size of the family. In the economic sphere it would mean that we shall be supporting our papas and mammas. In art, which must reflect the actualities of life, it would mean almost the elimination of the element of love, since the world is to be a children's world. In other ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... the name, and have stated that it was originally composed with the word tan['e] (seed, or grain), and the word hata (loom). Those who accept this etymology make the appellation, Tanabata-Sama, plural instead of singular, and render it as "the deities of grain and of the loom,"—that is to say, those presiding over agriculture and weaving. In old Japanese pictures the star-gods are represented ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... house of the daughter of a leading statesman of the Manchus, she being a lady of small feet and ten children, who has offered a prize for the best essay on the ways to stop concubinage, which they call the whole system of plural marriage. They say it is quite unchanged among the rich. There we were given a tea of a rare sort, unknown in our experience. Two kinds of meat pies which are made in the form of little cakes and quite peculiar in taste, delicious; also cake. Then after we went to the restaurant ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... (Podere is Italian for master. It is a title of courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.) "Pollo is one chicken by itself; when there are enough present to constitute a plural, it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 'Arna') corresponds with our plural 'men;' An (pronounced 'Arn'), the singular, with 'man.' The word for woman is Gy (pronounced hard, as in Guy); it forms itself into Gy-ei for the plural, but the G becomes soft in the plural like Jy-ei. They ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... custom," said I. "Every one speaks of a bicycle as a wheel, and I shall not introduce the plural into the name of ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... then by way of noticing the plural allusion in the speech added: "It was your young lady's look which wounded me the most. And she said something. I don't suppose you'd care to tell me what she said? It wasn't flattering, I'm sure of that, but it was on the tip of her tongue. I admit I'm mildly ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... going to happen," the girl said, with an acceptance of the plural which deepened the intimacy of the situation, and which was not displeasing to Verrian when she added, "If our friend's vehicle holds out." Then she turned her face full upon him, with what affected him as austere resolution, in continuing, "But I can't let ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a title for a business, was a little misleading because of the plural ending of the last word. There was only one consultant, and that was Samson Francis Bending. His speciality was the engineering design of atomic power plants—both the old fashioned heavy-metal kind and the ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... southward movement when it became evident that the national prosecution against plural marriage was to be pushed to the extreme. January 4, 1883, with the idea of finding an asylum for the Saints in Mexico, Apostle Thatcher traveled from St. David on the San Pedro, to the southeast as far as Corralitos, where some ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... us, however, some time after, when we had taught him to speak a little English, that they were going, with their kings, to fight a great battle. When he said kings, we asked him, how many kings? He said, there were five nation (we could not make him understand the plural s,) and that they all joined to go against two nation. We asked him, What made them come up to us? He said, "To makee te great wonder look."—Where it is to be observed, that all those natives, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... still seemed to linger upon his palate the flavor of Aunt Eunice's pullets, from which he had been despoiled by his first enforced call upon her ward, and though he had regretfully heard Susanna say "chicken" without the plural "s," he knew that, being himself "company," he would get his full share of the fowl, which he trusted might be a ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... note of Philomel from the grove came upon the soul-delighted ear like the sweet breathings of the Eolian harp, or the celestial cadences of that heart-subduing cherub, Stephens; when we set out on our romantic excursion. Reader, you may well start at the introduction of the plural number; but say, what man could abandon his friend to such a dangerous enterprise? or what moralists refuse his services where there was such a probability of there being so much need for them? But we are poor frail ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... country town, conceiving that the word clause was in the plural number, would often talk of a claw in an act ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... aphides abound, whether in hop-ground, bean-field, or rose-garden, there are lady-birds gathered together, and they are welcomed by the cultivator, if not by the aphis. (Aphis is the singular noun, and aphides its plural form.) But enough of aphis enemies, and now for the friends, which, as well as foes, they owe to the sweet milk—the honey-dew—which they give out. So these friends, you see, are fair-weather friends, interested friends; and among them are several varieties ...
— The Nursery, September 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... was morally and physically present and he gave Sacramental Absolution to all, using the plural, "Ego vos absolvo ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... unsettled state of minor grammatical relations in Shakspeare's time," it is possible that he wrote whom as a nominative (Vol. V. p. 393). But the most extraordinary instance is where he makes a nominative plural agree with a verb in the second person singular, (Vol. III. p. 121,) and justifies it by saying that "such disagreements ... are not uncommon in Shakspeare's writings, and those of his contemporaries." The passage reads as follows ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... modification of terms in any way disappointed the gentleman from San Juan, my closest observation of his smile and glance failed to detect it. He merely quivered his shoulders—a sort of plural shrug—rolled his cigarette tighter between his thumb and forefinger, remarked that the memoranda were entirely satisfactory, and folding the paper slid it carefully into his pocket; then with a series of salaams that reminded me of a Mohammedan spreading a prayer rug, and an "A Dios, ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Mother," he explained, wearily, "I do wish you wouldn't speak of your vital organs in the plural. Anyone would imagine you were a sort of freak, like the two-headed boy at the circus. It's ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... severity. He loved to consort with low people. He not only drank—that might have been forgiven—but he drank in tap-rooms with vulgar drinkers; so said his friends, and so said his enemies. He denied the charge as being made in the plural number, and declared that his only low co-reveller was Roger Scatcherd. With Roger Scatcherd, at any rate, he associated, and became as democratic as Roger was himself. Now the Thornes of Ullathorne were of the very highest order of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... in the verbs, to all which might explain the active person, how and in what time it acts, if it acts alone or with others: in a word, with the Chinese, the same word is substantive, adjective, verb, singular, plural, masculine, feminine, &c. It is the person who hears who must arrange the circumstances, and guess them. Add to all this, that all the words of this language are reduced to three hundred and a few more; that they are pronounced in so many different ways, that they signify eighty ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... went on board the "Harmony," accompanied by most of our hosts, who lingered long with us. As we got into the boat, the Eskimoes bade us an affectionate good-bye, "Aksunai, aksuse." (Aksunai, Be thou strong, or its plural, Aksuse, Be ye strong, are used both for "How ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... this manner, yamukroure. There are phrases in this language that are beyond the ability of a foreigner to pronounce. It has no contractions, and often changes the first and second person of the personal pronoun, and the first and second person plural, by lowering or pitching the voice. The orthography remains the same, though the significations of those words ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... folly? For us also makes that mystical Psalmist, though I remembered it not in its right place, "Remember not the sins of my youth nor my ignorances." You see what two things he pretends, to wit, youth, whose companion I ever am, and ignorances, and that in the plural number, a number of multitude, whereby we are to understand that there was no small ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... speak a little English, that they were going with their kings to fight a great battle. When he said kings, we asked him how many kings? He said they were five nation (we could not make him understand the plural 's), and that they all joined to go against two nation. We asked him what made them come up to us? He said, "To makee te great wonder look." Here it is to be observed that all those natives, as also those of Africa when they learn English, always add two e's at the ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... timid that he never had had the audacity to tell the girl at the glove counter that he preferred bronze-green gloves, nor the boldness to show Maria Gerard his poems composed in her honor, in which he now always put the plural "amours," so as to make it rhyme with "toujours," which was an improvement. He never had dared to reply to the glance of the little maid on the second floor; and he was very wrong to be embarrassed, for one morning, as he ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... has changed. Boy denotes one lad; boys, two or more lads. This change in the form and meaning of nouns is called Number. The word boy, denoting one thing, is in the Singular Number; and boys, denoting more than one thing, is in the Plural Number. ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... those of Lord Ronsdale were full of sardonic meaning. "Friends who had trusted you; who," softly, "had admitted you to their firesides, not knowing—" he broke off. "They," he still adhered to the plural, "would have been deeply shocked, pained; would still ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... I prefer, as more logical, the plural form chansons de gestes, and have so written it in my Short History of French Literature (Oxford, 4th ed., 1892), to which I may not improperly refer the reader on the general subject. But of late years the fashion of dropping ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... once more to the passage in Beowulf. It is established, accordingly, that the suspected mistake in the MS. is no mistake at all; that the form hrinde is correct, being a contraction of hrindge or hrindige, plural of the adjective hrindig, which is preserved in our dialects, in the form rindy, to this very day. In direct contradiction of a common popular error that regards our dialectal forms as being, for the most part, "corrupt," it will be found by experience that they are remarkably ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... clear. I know the people I live among don't know everything. I grant you all that. But Woman Free! Woman Free! Madame Mafflu wants to know what liberty—or what liberties—singular or plural; do you take me?—ha! ha! There ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... When he dies a disputed succession and much fighting are expected. In reference to the term Monomotapa, it is to be remembered that Mono, Moene, Mona, Mana, or Morena, mean simply 'chief', and considerable confusion has arisen from naming different people by making a plural of the chief's name. The names Monomoizes, spelled also Monemuiges and Monomuizes, and Monomotapistas, when applied to these tribes, are exactly the same as if we should call the Scotch the Lord Douglases. Motape was the chief ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... numskull would be incapable of finish or fine style. At Savage we met the missionary barque JOHN WILLIAMS. I tell you it was a great day for Savage Island: the path up the cliffs was crowded with gay islandresses (I like that feminine plural) who wrapped me in their embraces, and picked my pockets of all my tobacco, with a manner which a touch would have made revolting, but as it was, was simply charming, like the Golden Age. One pretty, little, stalwart minx, with a red flower behind her ear, had searched ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the various aspects under which Life appeared to the wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First comes Hafiz, whose well-known lines are quoted beginning with Shab-i-tarik o bim-i-mauj, etc. Hur is the plural of Ahwar, in full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where they should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly "Houries." Follows Umar-i-Khayyam, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or Sooffeism, even as the Soofis (Gnostics) spiritualized Moslem Puritanism. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... wives. And when we put aside Plato and the Platonic communities, the first fact to challenge attention is that the communities which established laws relating to sex relations which were opposed to the monogamic family, whether promiscuity, so-called free love; plural marriage, as in Mormonism, or celibacy, as in Harmonism and Shakerism, were all religious communities. In a word, all these experiments which antagonized the monogamic family relation were the result of various interpretations of the Bible and the efforts of ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... (e.g., Alford), the word here translated "power" denotes not MIGHT, but GOVERNMENT, COURT, HIERARCHY; and in this sense it was always used by the ecclesiastical writers, whose conception is best rendered by our plural—"powers." See Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... before acting on the impulse. This, obviously, was what counted in a man as delicacy. If her friend had blurted or bungled he would have said, in his simplicity, "Did we do 'everything to avoid' it when we faced your remarkable marriage?"—quite handsomely of course using the plural, taking his share of the case, by way of a tribute of memory to the telegram she had received from him in Paris after Mr. Verver had despatched to Rome the news of their engagement. That telegram, that ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... quotation; j Unnecessary in the title of a theme, or as a label for humor or irony 97. The Apostrophe: a In contractions; b To form the possessive; c To form the possessive of nouns ending in s; d Not used with personal possessive pronouns; e To form the plural of certain signs and letters 98. The Question Mark: a After a direct question; b Not followed by a comma within a sentence; c In parentheses to express uncertainty; d Not used to label irony; e The Exclamation Point 99. EXERCISE 100. ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... Confusion of Adjectives and Adverbs Improper Forms of Adjectives Errors in Comparison Singular and Plural Adjectives Placing of Adverbs and Adjectives ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... districts (dzongkhag, singular and plural); Bumthang, Chhukha, Chirang, Daga, Geylegphug, Ha, Lhuntshi, Mongar, Paro, Pemagatsel, Punakha, Samchi, Samdrup Jongkhar, Shemgang, Tashigang, ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... other. Having brought a common vision to bear upon the glories of nature and art which they had beheld, they were spared the little squabbles over matters of aesthetic taste which often are so disastrous to the serenity of a honeymoon. Touchingly they expounded their views in the first person plural. Even Adrian, whom I must confess to have regarded as an unblushing egotist, seldom delivered himself of an egotistical opinion. "We don't despise the Eclectics," said he. And—"We prefer the Lombardic architecture to the purely Venetian," said ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... names of persons or families are invariable in the plural, e.g. les Corneille et les Racine, except certain well-known historical names, chiefly of dynasties, e.g. les Csars, les Tudors, les Bourbons. But when used as common nouns to denote 'persons like' or 'works by' those named, they are variable. ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... the title of several ancient kings of Persia, and is here used in the plural to denote monarchs in general. The term "kiblah," fronting-point, signifies the object towards which the worshipper ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... and virtue of mankind by the actions of the souls of men in a state of pre-existence. No signs or miracles are referred to in the account of 'the just man'; and that it was intended as a generalization is evident from the change of the singular into the plural number in the ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... grammaticus is what the French express by the word litterateur. We unfortunately have no corresponding term in English: a man of letters is our awkward periphrasis in the singular, (too apt, as our jest books remind us, to suggest the postman;) whilst in the plural we resort to the Latin word literati. The school which professes to teach grammatica, professes, therefore, the culture of literature in the widest and most liberal extent, and is opposed generically ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... rigid in its adherence to its own accepted principles than formal speech is, which is likely to be influenced by convention or conventional associations. To take an illustration of what I have in mind, the ending -s is the common mark in English of a plural form. For instance, "caps," "maps," "lines," and "places" are plurals, and the corresponding singular forms are "cap," "map," "line," and "place." Consequently, granted the underlying premise, it is a perfectly logical ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... She spoke in the plural, for Miss Wheeler, who found the skipper exceedingly bad company, had also risen, and was scrutinising the house with a gaze hardly less eager than his own. A suggestion of the mate that he should wave his handkerchief was promptly ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... sheriff's of London are the one sheriff of Middlesex; thus constituting in the latter case, what may be denominated, in the words of George Colman the Younger, (see his address to the Reviewers, in his vagaries,) 'a plural unit.' Henry the First, in the same charter by which he declared and confirmed the privileges of the City of London, (and among others, that of choosing their own sheriffs,) conferred on them, in consideration of an annual rent of 300l., to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
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