"Idiomatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the same way, the pupils translating the words previously given and the instructor giving the meaning of the new words only. Then making use of the first idiomatic expression "il y avait," an explanation is given, showing how it can be changed into the interrogative form "y avait-il?" and the pupils are questioned rapidly as follows, using only the words ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber
... constant dwelling upon such models of simple, pure, idiomatic English is the easiest and on all accounts the best way for children to acquire a mastery of ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Adams," she said, in idiomatic English, "you have candid eyes. You make me feel like telling stories when you gaze at me so appealingly. Don't be shocked"—the girl had coloured—"perhaps I ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Among the idiomatic terms adopted by United States Marines everywhere, the expression "shove off" is used more frequently than any other. In the sea-soldier lingo, if a Marine goes home on furlough, leaves his camp or garrison or goes anywhere, ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... pages of this unusual book. In a comparatively temperate review, August 4, 1860, the Cosmopolite, of Boston, while deploring that nature is treated here without fig-leaves, declares the style wonderfully idiomatic and graphic, adding: "In his frenzy, in the fire of his inspiration, are fused and poured out together elements hitherto considered antagonistic in poetry—passion, arrogance, animality, philosophy, brag, humility, rowdyism, spirituality, laughter, tears, together with the most ardent ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... withdraw from the college for three months in order that we might "reconsider our opinions", so that possibly we might "be led by Divine guidance to such views as would be compatible with the retention of our present position". Idiomatic English was clearly not a strong point with the council. Of course we refused. If we had consented it might have been reasonably concluded that we had taken very little trouble with our "views". Again we asked for compliance with our requests, but the only answer we got was that our "connexion ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... GAMBLER AND OTHER STORIES by Fyodor Dostoievsky (The Macmillan Co.). These two new volumes continue the complete English edition of Dostoievsky which is being translated by Constance Garnett. The renderings have the same qualities of idiomatic speech and subtly rendered nuance which is always to be found in this translator's work, and although both of these volumes represent the minor work of Dostoievsky, his minor work is finer than our major ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Latinising of vocabulary and disorderly syntax of sentence. In regard to the first, Browne Latinises somewhat more than Jeremy Taylor, hardly at all more than Milton, though he does not, like Milton, contrast and relieve his Latinisms by indulgence in vernacular terms of the most idiomatic kind; and he is conspicuously free from the great fault both of Milton and of Taylor—the clumsy conglomeration of clauses which turns a sentence into a paragraph, and makes a badly ordered paragraph ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... German, and didn't care who knew it. He was unlike the man who had disguised himself as an English officer, at the house of the heliograph, but had betrayed himself and set this whole train of adventure going by his single slip and fall from idiomatic English that Harry Fleming's ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... In writing the above, I was thinking rather of the mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as brahman, atman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that brahman, neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in that sense in ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... of great authors partake of the nature of idioms: they are taken out of the sphere of grammar and are exempt from the proprieties of language. Every one knows that we often put words together in a manner which would be intolerable if it were not idiomatic. We cannot argue either about the meaning of words or the use of constructions that because they are used in one connexion they will be legitimate in another, unless we allow for this principle. We can ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... flags, those of America, Germany, and England, twined together and mingling their colours in friendly harmony. He walked over, gathered the combined flags in his hand, and turning to the Admiral exclaimed in idiomatic American: "See here, Admiral; that is exactly as it should be, and is what I am trying ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... talkative, the talkative three being M. Defourcambault, Laurencine and Lucas. The diplomatist, though he could speak diplomatic English, persisted in speaking French. Laurencine spoke French quite perfectly, with exactly the same idiomatic ease as the Frenchman. Lucas neither spoke nor understood French—he had been to a great public school. Nevertheless these three attained positive loquacity. Lucas guessed at words, or the Frenchman obliged with bits of English, or Laurencine ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... example. The combinations and permutations are infinite; they give a healthy knowledge of word-building, and can be used in putting whole pages of carefully prepared idiomatic English into Esperanto. Practical experience shows that, given the necessary crude roots, the necessary suffixes, and a one-page grammar of the Esperanto language, an intelligent person can produce in Esperanto a translation of a page of idiomatic English, not Ollendorfian phrases, without ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... speech; a larger, freer diction upon the whole than that of the Londoner born and bred; more racy, less clipped and formal, but, in certain ways, more correct. The society cliche, and the society fads of abbreviation and accent, were missing; and in their place was an easy, idiomatic directness, distinctly noticeable to a man like myself who had actually never been out of England. This it was that first struck me about Miss Grey; this and the warm brilliance of her eyes: a graphic, moving speech, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales. Mr. Lawson shows us what living in the bush really means. The result is a real book—a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic." ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... ever fate less perverse ? Partly in wretched French to the officer and partly in idiomatic English to the dragoman, he proclaimed his fiery desire to accompany the expedition. The officer immediately beamed upon him. In fact, he was delighted. The dragoman had naturally told him many falsehoods concerning Coleman, incidentally referring to himself more as a philanthropic ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... author, wearied of the old cry that the literature of our country is only a continuation of that of Europe, had resolved to prove, by vigorous effort, that it is possible to set forth, not merely the incidents of our industrial life in many grades, in its purely idiomatic force, but to make the world realize that in it vibrate and struggle outward those aspirations, germs of culture and reforms which we seldom reflect on as forming a part of the inner-being of our very practical fellow-citizens. The work has two characteristics,—it breaks, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pursuit of fortune. In half-an-hour's time they had pulled all Edward's cherished sedums and saxifrages up by the roots and turned over most of the smaller rocks without discovering the treasure. A conference in loud idiomatic Cornish then took place, with the result that two musicians were despatched to a neighbouring farm for picks, crow-bars and more lanterns; the remainder squatted on the flower-beds and whiled away the time of waiting by blasting "Good ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... ease, grace, and various power of Scott's,—or the racy, idiomatic character of Thackeray's,—or the exquisite purity and transparency of Hawthorne's: but it is a manly, energetic style, in which we are sure to find good words, if not the best. It has certain wants, but it has no marked defects; if it does not always command admiration, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... all idea, or spiritual intuition of God, and allow yourself to bring Him as plaintiff or defendant into a common-law court,—and then I cannot conceive a clearer or cleverer piece of special pleading than Asgill has here given. The language is excellent—idiomatic, simple, perspicuous, at once significant and lively, that is, expressive of the thought, and also of a manly proportion of feeling appropriate to it. In short, it is the ablest attempt to exhibit a scheme of religion without ideas, that the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... commendation from military men, and for them it is now specially issued in its present form. For the general public it may be as well to add that, where translations are appended to the French phrases, those translations usually follow the idiomatic and particular meaning attached to these expressions in the argot of the Army of Algeria, and not the correct or literal one given to such words or sentences ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... and difficult. Luther's complaints concerning the seriousness of his task in attempting to teach the patriarch Job to speak idiomatic German might doubtless have found an echo in the experience of this corps of scholars in forcing Luther into idiomatic English. We are confident, however, that, as in Luther's case, so also here, the general verdict of readers will be that they have been eminently ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... joy or sorrow, of peace or temptation, is put into the form and discourse of a living character. Other allegorists write in poetry and their characters are shadowy and unreal; but Bunyan speaks in terse, idiomatic prose, and his characters are living men and women. There are Mr. Worldly Wiseman, a self-satisfied and dogmatic kind of man, youthful Ignorance, sweet Piety, courteous Demas, garrulous Talkative, honest Faithful, and a score ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... from the Old Irish must continue to be, for some time to come, rather exactness in rendering than elegance, even at the risk of the translation appearing laboured and puerile. This should not, however, be carried to the extent of distorting his own idiom in order to imitate the idiomatic turns and expressions of the original. In this translation, I have endeavoured to keep as close to the sense and the literary form of the original as possible, but when there is conflict between the two desiderata, I have ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Credner, who is followed by the author of 'Supernatural Religion,' argues from this that Eusebius had not seen the work in question [Endnote 239:2]. This inference is not by any means conveyed by the Greek. [Greek: Ouk oid' hopos] (thus introduced) is an idiomatic phrase referring to the principle on which the harmony was constructed, and might well be paraphrased 'a curious sort of patchwork or dovetailing,' 'a not very intelligible dovetailing,' &c. Standing in the position it does, the ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... represents the high-water mark of classical translation, has given us the following reminders: "An English translation ought to be idiomatic and interesting, not only to the scholar, but also to the unlearned reader. It should read as an original work, and should also be the most faithful transcript which can be made of the language from which the translation is taken, consistently with the first requirement of all, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... calculated to display his intelligence, his delicacy, or his good-breeding. The patience, gentleness, and kind feeling, with which he contrived at once to excuse and to remedy certain blunders made by the workmen in the execution of his orders, and the clearness with which, in perfectly correct and idiomatic English, slightly tinged with a foreign accent, he explained the mechanical and scientific reasons for the construction he had suggested, gave evidence at once of no common talent, and of a considerate-ness and good-nature in its exercise more valuable than all the talent ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... Maarten Maartens, have some of them equalled but none of them surpassed him. Yet he was a man grown when he began to speak and to write English, though I believe he studied it somewhat in Norway before he came to America. What English he knew he learned the use of here, and in the measure of its idiomatic vigor we may be proud ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... perfect specimen of our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner of the Orientalist who "commences" and "concludes"—never begins and ends, who never uses a short word if he can find a long word, who systematically rejects terse and idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism is to be employed and whose pompous stilted periods are the very triumph of the "Deadly-lively"! By arts precisely similar the learned George Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied inspiration of Arabian ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... must have him form the letter to see that he really knows the outline, the ultimate aim is to enable him to form these practically without conscious direction. In language work, also, the child must acquire many idiomatic expressions as ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... and Popular Quotations, which are in constant use; taken from the Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Greek languages, (also including a complete collection of Law Maxims) translated into English, with illustrations, historical and idiomatic. Third American edition, corrected, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... little country fair at Cobham; pleasant and purely English. It was very picturesque, with its flags, banners, gayly bedecked booths, and mammoth placards, there being, as usual, no lack of color or objects. I wonder that Mr. Frith, who has given with such idiomatic genius the humors of the Derby, has never painted an old-fashioned rural fair like this. In a few years the last of them will have been closed, and the last gypsy will be ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... most beautiful of Canon Bright's liturgical compositions, the Collect beginning, "O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment and light riseth up in darkness for the godly." Of this exquisite piece of idiomatic English, the reviewer allows himself to speak as being "a very ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... played dragon at his classes, all would have gone well. He would have made his pupils conjugate irregular verbs, rendered them adepts in the mysteries of the past participle and the subjunctive mood, and turned them out quite innocent of the idiomatic quaintnesses of the French tongue. But dis aliter visum. The gods always saw wrong-headedly otherwise in the case of Aristide. A weak-minded governess—and in a governess a sense of humour and of novelty ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... indicated the nature of the great contest in language between the conventional and the idiomatic. Idioms are just what their name implies. They are the commonalty of language,—private, proletarian words, who do the work, "dum alteri tulerunt honores." They come to us from all handiworks and callings, where you will always find them at their posts. Sharp, energetic, incisive, they do the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... undoubtedly is faulty, robbed of the thought and beauty of his smooth diction, and gives but imperfect meaning and interpretation to many idiomatic expressions. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... arithmetical questions arising in the course of life would necessarily assume a vocal value instead of a digital one. No longer would fifteen be counted by holding out ten fingers and five toes, but an idiomatic phrase, descriptive of the former sign-language, "of two hands and one foot's worth" would be used, just as to-day an African would express the same problem in a number of cows, and as the comparatively modern Roman used such pictorial phrases as "to condemn a person of his ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... on the principle that a translation must reproduce the exact thought of a language, that idiomatic utterances of the one language must be replaced by similar utterances in the other, and that the genius of both the language from which and the one into which the translation is made must be observed by the translator, Luther has every rhetoric and grammar on his side. Those who find ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... easy, idiomatic, and nervous style marks all Thackeray's work for his twenty-six years of activity, and is equally perfect for whatever purpose it is used, and in whatever key he may choose to compose. It naturally culminates in Vanity Fair, written just in the middle of his literary career. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... a yet different kind is an imitation of Rabelais, which is not so badly done, but cannot be well translated into English, because of its grotesque and idiomatic character. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... the meeting, however, was entirely neutralised by the fact that in the same passage stood the study of Rigby, the head of the house. Also Rigby was trying at the moment to turn into idiomatic Greek verse the words: "The Days of Peace and Slumberous calm have fled", and this corroboration of the statement annoyed him to the extent of causing him to dash out and sow lines among the revellers like ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... us close with the words of a most [16] versatile master of English—happily not yet included in Mr. Saintsbury's book—a writer who has dealt with all the perturbing influences of our century in a manner as classical, as idiomatic, as easy and elegant, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... M'Catchley, but he had fixed in his heart of hearts upon that occasion (when surrounded by all his splendour, and assisted by the seductive arts of Terpsichore and Bacchus) to whisper to Mrs. M'Catchley those soft words which—but why not here let Mr. Richard Avenel use his own idiomatic and unsophisticated expression? "Please the pigs, then," said Mr. Avenel to himself, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me in after life, as a literary man, was, that I heard them as often in the Irish language as in the English, if not oftener, in circumstance which enabled me in my writings to transfer the genius, the idiomatic peculiarity and conversational spirit of the one language into the other, precisely as the people themselves do in their dialogue, whenever the heart or imagination happens to be moved by the ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... belong to the family. They have a proverb, the pithiness of which is much lost in this paraphrase, "No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity." The mildness of all government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalised by their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or forbidden—viz., "It is requested not to do so and so." Poverty among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held in common, or that all are equals in the extent of their possessions or the size and luxury of their habitations: but there ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... shall not violate the sacred soil of my country." A publication that also interested me was a weekly paper brought out in Hamburg and written in English. It was filled with jokes, beneath which were German notes explaining any difficult or idiomatic words and phrases. With all their hatred of England the Huns still ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... required for simply reading a book. Though there are few provincialisms, and all classes of the people use the same words—except the words of foreign origin, which are used only by the upper classes—the peasant always speaks in a more laconic and more idiomatic ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... were not left as he would have prepared them for the press if his life had been prolonged, yet much of the book will afford, on what he regarded as the chief study of his life, excellent examples of his style, so vigorously fresh and so happy in idiomatic and ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... would learn to express with energy his indignation at meanness, feebleness, wrong, and tyranny, while from the lyric poets he would learn the language suitable to every genial feeling and impulse of the human heart. And in reciting or singing all these, how would his power of terse, idiomatic expression, his sense of poetic beauty and his ear for rhythm and music be developed! With what a treasure of examples of every virtue and vice, and with what a fund of epigrammatic expression would his memory be furnished! How familiar he would be with the character and ideals of his nation, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... unhallowed thirst for knowledge, discovered and drawn from my trunk, which, by some strange mischance, had been left unlocked! In vain I mumbled something touching my love of mineralogy, and that a lapidary had offered I knew not what for my collection. I was compelled to "bundle," as the idiomatic, but ignorant woman expressed herself. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... smooth. The little habit of kneading the palm which you felt when he shook hands, and the broad, humorous smile, had not changed as the years passed him on from success to success. Mrs. Hitchcock still slurred the present participle and indulged in other idiomatic freedoms that endeared her to Sommers. These two, plainly, were not of the generation that is tainted by ambition. Their story was too well known, from the boarding-house struggle to this sprawling stone house, to be worth the varnishing. Indeed, they would not tolerate any such ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Commenced actor, commenced author, commenced tinker, commenced tailor, commenced candlestick-maker:—Elegant phraseology, though we venture to think, hardly idiomatic or logical, which came into vogue in England in the early part of the last century, and which, as it is never uttered here by cultivated people, it may be proper to remark, is there used by the best writers. Akin to it is another mode of expression as commonly met with in English ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... L'Estrange among his rivals was esteemed as the most perfect model of political writing. He was a strong party-writer on the government side, for Charles the Second, and the compositions of the author seem to us coarse, yet they contain much idiomatic expression. His AEsop's Fables are a curious specimen of familiar style. Queen Mary showed a due contempt of him, after the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Plutarch is among the richest and freshest monuments of Elizabethan prose literature, and, apart altogether from the use made of it by Shakespeare, is in itself an invaluable repertory of honest, manly, idiomatic English. No abstract of the Plutarchian matter need be given here, as all the more important passages drawn upon for the play are quoted in the footnotes to the text. These will show that in most of the leading incidents the great Greek biographer ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... An idiomatic expression, equivalent to our vulgar English phrase, "He was struck ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... an thou wilt, burden thy mind (i.e. give thyself the trouble, kellifi khatiraki,) and with us [is] a China dish; rise and come to me with it." Kellifi (fem.) khatiraki is an idiomatic expression equivalent to the French, "donnez-vous (or prenez) la peine" and must be taken in connection with what follows, i.e. give yourself the trouble to rise and bring me, etc. (prenez la peine de vous lever ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... most important peculiarity of American English is a laxity, irregularity, and confusion in the use of particles. The same thing is, indeed, observable in England, but not to the same extent, though some gross departures from idiomatic propriety, such as different to for different from, are common in England, which none but very ignorant persons would be guilty of in America.... In the tenses of the verbs, I am inclined to think that well-educated Americans conform more closely to grammatical ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing: it is less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and is enriched and adorned with phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both ancient and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain license of expression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... when I met him, a few days later, he must have been struck by the sudden warmth of my friendship—the quick idiomatic cordiality of my French to him. This mutual friendship of ours lasted till his death in '88. And so ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... literature was very much neglected, and Greek nearly altogether. The more was the astonishment at finding a rare delicacy of critical instinct, as well as of critical sagacity, applied to the Greek idiomatic niceties by a Scottish lawyer, viz., that the same eccentric judge, first made known ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the street, with pleasant grounds in its front and rear, was appropriately named by its original proprietor "Mount Rural," though not, perhaps, with the most exact observance of the requirements of grammatical construction. Still, it has some authority for being considered idiomatic, for does not "Pilgrim's Progress" tell us of the "Palace Beautiful?" And doubtless many other instances might be cited of the substitution of an adjective for a noun. At all events, the worthy owner, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... be read either literally or in its idiomatic sense, i.e., "Folk convicted or suspected of murder or complicity ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... roused by the sound of voices on the beach below him. He looked down mechanically, but for a moment saw no one. Then, deep in the shadow of the wall, he descried two figures walking slowly side by side. One was a man and the other a woman. They were talking in a French so rapid and idiomatic that Rushford could distinguish no word of it, except that the man ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... the relations of national intercourse and of intellectual cultivation; even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... to add that the translation is, perhaps, not always idiomatic, though in this matter I have availed myself of some valuable assistance, for ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... ambiguous; inasmuch as him may mean either the person who strikes or some one else. In order to be clear we add the word self when the idea is reflective. He strikes himself is, at once idiomatic and unequivocal. ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... is more stilted and less terse and idiomatic than the colloquial dialect; and even where pure Malay is employed, the influence of Arabic compositions is very marked. Whole sentences, sometimes, though clothed in excellent Malay, are unacknowledged translations of Arabic phrases. This ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... talking French to him "Mais je ne vous attendais ce matin"—I've got an idea that this is something uncommonly grammatical—"a cause de votre lettre que je viens de recevoir"—this, I'll swear, is idiomatic—"ce matin. La voila!" I pride myself on "La," as representing my knowledge that "lettre," to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... its idiomatic structure definite articles and indefinite, as in Latin? Some think that it has, others that it has not. They ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Froissart, and extracted enough from him in rapid French spasms—his idiomatic staccato French is often beyond my understanding—to give me a general idea of what Dawson had done. Thereafter I pursued my inquiries, pumping Dawson himself—who, for some reason, did not greatly value the affair—tackling ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Southern or a New England atmosphere. Into this dialect, with which the work of my collaborators has been made to conform, I have sought to render as justly and as exactly as possible the intensely idiomatic speech that Hauptmann employs. In doing this I have had to take occasional liberties with my text, but I have tried to reduce these to a minimum, and always to make them serve a closer interpretation of the original shade of thought or turn of expression. The rendering of the plays written ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... used optatively (Abbott, Sec. 365). (Stage Direction) puts by: puts on one side, refuses. goes about to rise, i.e. endeavours to rise. This idiomatic use of go about still lingers in the phrase 'to go about one's business'; comp. 'to ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... human nature which Christianity takes infinite trouble to degrade and debase. The results of its ignoble teaching are only too evident in the East: the Christians of the so-called (and miscalled) "Holy Land" are a disgrace to the faith and the idiomatic Persian term for a Nazarene is "Tars" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... of invention, they rank, among their author's productions, next after Don Quixote; in correctness and grace of style they stand before it.... They are all fresh from the racy soil of the national character, as that character is found in Andalusia, and are written with an idiomatic richness, a spirit, and a grace, which, though they are the oldest tales of their class in Spain, have left them ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... English character must be classed not under the phlegmatic but under the melancholic temperament; and the French under the sanguine. The character of a nation may be judged of in this particular by examining its idiomatic language. The French, in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly bubbling up from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings, have appropriated all the phrases of passion to the service of trivial ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... quest for his sweetheart was a thing fixed and settled. That his father and his brother Laurence should accompany him was also to be expected. But the other and more richly attired was somewhat less easy to be certified. The Lord James of Douglas it was, who spoke French with the idiomatic use and easy accentuation of a native, albeit of those central provinces which had longest owned the sway of the King of France. The brothers MacKim also spoke the language of the country after a fashion. For many Frenchmen had come over to Galloway in the trains of the first two ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... in the world so deeply penetrated with the odour and savour of its author's philosophy. And this philosophy, this atmosphere of mind, is so entirely French that every least idiomatic peculiarity in his native tongue seems willing to lend itself, to the last generous drop of the wine of its essential soul, to the tone and manner of his speech. All the refinements of the most consummate civilisation in the world, all ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... verses, which were really composed by a boy, viz., a son of Dr. Prettyman, (afterwards Tomline,) Bishop of Winchester, and, in earlier times, private tutor to Mr. Pitt; they were published by Middleton, first Bishop of Calcutta, in the preface to his work on the Greek article; and for racy idiomatic Greek, self-originated, and not a mere mocking- bird's iteration of alien notes, are so much superior to all the attempts of these sexagenarian doctors, as distinctly to mark the growth of a new era and a new generation in this difficult accomplishment, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... It has a character of its own,—a character which has taken a tinge from the sentiments of the chivalrous ages, and which accords with the peculiarities of our manners, and of our insular situation. It has a language, too, of its own, and a language too singularly idiomatic, full of meaning to ourselves, scarcely intelligible ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... is not only correct, it is highly idiomatic. Mrs. Ascher bridled with pleasure. It pleased her to think that she was patting the bottom dog's head. I did not remind her that in the group which she had just modelled the Spirit of Irish Poetry, for whose benefit she ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where these laws govern. The translation of Plutarch gets its excellence by being translation on translation. There never was a time when there was none. All the truly idiomatic and national phrases are kept, and all others successively picked out, and thrown away. Something like the same process had gone on, long before, with the originals of these books. The world takes ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... into various languages, and few works ever had a more brilliant success. The great fault of the Celestina is its shameless libertinism of thought and language; and its chief merits are its life- like exhibition of the most unworthy forms of human character, and its singularly pure, rich, and idiomatic ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... eye of a vulture; but it had in it a calm, heavy, stealthy watchfulness, which inspired Morton with great distrust and aversion. Mr. Birnie not only spoke French like a native, but all his habits, his gestures, his tricks of manner, were, French; not the French of good society, but more idiomatic, as it were, and popular. He was not exactly a vulgar person, he was too silent for that, but he was evidently of low extraction and coarse breeding; his accomplishments were of a mechanical nature; he was an extraordinary arithmetician, he was a very skilful chemist, and kept ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... English "thou" is as erroneous as it is awkward. Tytler laid down his "Principles of Translation" in 1791—and a majority of translators are still unaware of their existence. Yet it ought to seem self-evident to every thinking mind that idiomatic equivalence, not verbal identity, must form the basis of a good and faithful translation. When an English mother uses "you" to her child, she establishes thereby the only rational equivalent for the "du" used under similar ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... me quitaba a m esa nia; there are two idiomatic uses in this phrase: 1. cualquiera in an ironic sense nadie (a frequent use); 2. quitaba quitara, a substitution of tense often found in the main clause of a contrary to fact, ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... both brothers give splendid testimony to their astonishing and epoch-making gift in transferring classical and Romance metrical forms into elegant, idiomatic German; they give affectionate attention to the insinuating beauty of elegiac verse, and secure charming effects in some of the most alien Greek forms, not to mention terza rima, ottava rima, the Spanish gloss, and not a few ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Percy, D.C.L.—An English-Arabic Lexicon. In which the equivalent for English Words and Idiomatic Sentences are rendered into literary and colloquial Arabic. ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... sorrow for nella miseria, or, three syllables for six; so that, by means of eight syllables, is given a full and complete translation of what in Italian takes up seventeen. English the most simple, direct, idiomatic, is needed in order that a translation of Dante be faithful to his simplicity and naturalness; and this is the first fidelity his translator should feel himself bound to. Owing to the fundamental difference between the syllabic structures ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... aright. A wind of caprice had carried him and her into Font Abbey; another such wind was carrying them out. No event had happened. Mr. and Miss Fountain had been seen more than once in the village of late. "They have dropped us, and thank Heaven!" said Eve, in her idiomatic way. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Mrs Jenkins was at Abertewey when Howel made his triumphant entry there, but the following morning he gave her to understand, as delicately as he could, that the idiomatic translations of the Welsh language which had been so refreshing in London, would be better in her native town than at ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... were only the recreation of an accomplished man in a learned age. The writings of the learned Ascham (1515-1565) have a value not to be measured by their inconsiderable bulk. Their language is pure, idiomatic, vigorous English; and they exhibit a great variety of knowledge, remarkable sagacity, and sound common sense. His most celebrated work, the "Schoolmaster," proposes improvements in education for which there is still both room and need. Thomas Wilson, who wrote a treatise on the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... very decided differences. I'm from Massachusetts myself. Perhaps the points of difference show more in the women,—the ones who stay at home, I mean, and become more local and idiomatic than the men. You are not one of the daughters of the ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... but in vain have I submitted these terms of a strange dialect to the strictest etymological research. In vain have I conversed upon this subject with the most intelligent dry-goods dealers. In learning the few idiomatic phrases they employ, I have experienced only the satisfaction which young students in Greek literature feel, when they have, with infinite labor, mastered the alphabet of that ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... language. If E. V. insist upon modern books, he cannot have better than Hendrik Conscience's novels, or Gerrits's Zoon des Volks. I would, however, advise him to get a volume of Jacob Cats' Poems, the language of which is not antiquated, and is idiomatic without being ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... surgeons, fast young clerks and commercialists, occasional dandies of the Guard regiments, and the rest. Old Lord Colchicum was there in attendance upon Mademoiselle Caracoline, who had been riding in the ring; and who talked her native French very loud, and used idiomatic expressions of exceeding strength as she walked about, leaning on the arm of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brodder!" he exclaimed, in fairly idiomatic English, but with a broken pronunciation that was a mixture of Dutch, American, and Malay. His language therefore, like himself, was nondescript. In fact he was an American-born Dutchman, who had been transported early in life to the Straits Settlements, had received most of his ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... sea-grein, and some in yallow." Archbishop Harsnet, in his admirable Declaration of Popish Impostures, under the pretence of casting out Devils, 1605, 4to, a work unsurpassed for rich humour and caustic wit, clothed in good old idiomatic English, has a chapter "on the strange names of these devils," in which he observes, (p. 46,) "It is not amiss that you be acquainted with these extravagant names of devils, least meeting them otherwise by chance you mistake them for the names of tapsters, or juglers." ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... "And you think me incapable of keeping your secret, ah, gimmick, I believe is the idiomatic term ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... "ten" and "four," in horary reckoning, were convertible terms. The old Roman method of naming the hours, wherein noon was the sixth, was long preserved, especially in conventual establishments: and I have no doubt that the English idiomatic phrase "o'clock" originated in the necessity for some distinguishing mark between hours "of the clock" reckoned from midnight, and hours of the day reckoned from sunrise, or more frequently from six A.M. With such an understanding, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... acquiring this language. In the first place, it is in every respect different from all others which I have studied, with perhaps the exception of the Turkish, to which it seems to bear some remote resemblance in syntax, though none in words. In the second place, it abounds with idiomatic phrases, which can only be learnt by habit, and to the understanding of which a Dictionary is of little or no use, the words separately having either no meaning or a meaning quite distinct from that which they possess when thus conjoined. And thirdly the helps afforded me in this undertaking ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... due to the revision and editing, and not to the translators, for every good translation must be fluent and idiomatic, to secure which is the most difficult task. Pastor Gohdes also rendered valuable help in the final revision of parts. The translation of the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... version, as could not but happen when a mind so original as that of the boy Jose was concentrated upon it. His first stumbling block was met in the prayer of Jesus in an attempt to render the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread," into idiomatic modern thought. The word translated "daily" was not to be found elsewhere in the Greek language. Evidently the Aramaic word which Jesus employed, and of which this Greek word was a translation, must have been an unusual one—a coined expression. And what did it mean? ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... pedal can secure an endless (almost orchestral) variety of tone-colors on the piano, thanks to the hundreds of overtones which can be made to accompany the tones played. Chopin spoke the language of the piano. His pieces are so idiomatic that they cannot be translated into orchestral language any more than Heine's lyrics can be translated into English. Chopin exhausted the possibilities of the pianoforte, and the piano exhausts the possibilities ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... paying out good credits for you to sit there like you was buying on your own!" The Salarkian who loomed above him spoke accentless, idiomatic Basic Space which came strangely from between his yellow lips. A furred hand thrust the handle of a mop-up stick at the young man, a taloned thumb jerked the direction in which to use that evil-smelling object. Vye Lansor levered ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... particular, individual, specific, proper, personal, original, private, respective, definite, determinate, especial, certain, esoteric, endemic, partial, party, peculiar, appropriate, several, characteristic, diagnostic, exclusive; singular &c. (exceptional) 83; idiomatic; idiotypical; typical. this, that; yon, yonder. Adv. specially, especially, particularly &c. adj.; in particular, in propria persona[Lat]; ad hominem[Lat]; for my part. each, apiece, one by one, one at a time; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... you the little French girl, Aurelie Deraismes. I should be pleased, Constance, if you would assume an oversight of her school career. She can help you to a more idiomatic knowledge of French—and you can do the same for ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... author has a right to regard his own blank verse as highly characteristic and original: but yet Milton has contributed to its formation, and occasionally there is a striking resemblance in turn and diction, while Mr. Tennyson is the more idiomatic of the two. The chastity and moral elevation of this volume, its essential and profound though not didactic Christianity, are such as perhaps cannot be matched throughout the circle of English literature in conjunction with an equal power: and such as ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a little singular when it is remembered how difficult it is to convey the broken Indian language to a French reader. This is one of the best features of Cooper's novels—the striking manner in which he portrays the language of the North American Indian and his idiomatic expressions. Yet such is the charm of his stories that they have found their way over Europe. The translations into the French language ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... of remarkable interest and ability.... Mr. Worsaae's book is in all ways a valuable addition to our literature.... Mr. Thoms has executed the translation in flowing an idiomatic English, and has appended many curious and interesting notes and ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... the spelling of a word it has been necessary to give the entire sentence in German. There are also some quaint remarks of which I have been loth to omit the original, these being sure to appeal to anyone acquainted with idiomatic German. ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... is this. Vernacular (from verna, a slave born in his master's house). 1. The homely idiomatic language in opposition to any mixed jargon, or lingua franca, spoken by an imported slave:—2. Hence, generally, the pure mother-tongue as opposed to the same tongue corrupted by false refinement. By vernacular English, therefore, in the primary sense, and I mean, such homely ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... with about thirty miscellaneous formulas obtained from various sources. The book thus prepared is modeled on the plan of an ordinary book, with headings, table of contents, and even with an illuminated title page devised by the aid of the interpreter according to the regular Cherokee idiomatic form, and is altogether a unique specimen of Indian literary art. It contains in all two hundred and fifty-eight formulas and songs, which of course are native aboriginal productions, although the mechanical arrangement was performed ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... second mediated by reflection, the third or highest returns into the first, and is both mediate and immediate. As Luther's Bible was written in the language of the common people, so Hegel seems to have thought that he gave his philosophy a truly German character by the use of idiomatic German words. But it may be doubted whether the attempt has been successful. First because such words as 'in sich seyn,' 'an sich seyn,' 'an und fur sich seyn,' though the simplest combinations of nouns and verbs, require a difficult and elaborate explanation. The simplicity ...
— Sophist • Plato
... mythological names and terms, as well as in idiomatic expressions, and the preparation of the explanatory notes has therefore been a perplexing task. A fairly complete statement under each mythological reference would in the aggregate reach the proportions of a treatise on Norse ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... after all," as Miss Cassandra says, "American French can always be spotted, no matter how good it may be." We were very much amused over the criticism of a little American boy who had been educated in Italy. He said of an English lady's correct and even idiomatic Italian, "Yes, it's all right; but she doesn't speak in the right tune." We have so many tunes in our own language that we are less particular than the French and Italians, who treat theirs with ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... mused, in silence, near a minute. During this interval, he was thinking of the improbability of any but a bona-fide Englishman's dreaming of giving a vessel an appellation so thoroughly idiomatic, and was fast mystifying himself, as so often happens by tyros in any particular branch of knowledge, by his own critical acumen. Then he half whispered a conjecture on the subject to Vito Viti, influenced quite as much by a desire to show his neighbor his own readiness in such ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Idiomatic Items Important to Publishers Indian, The Interesting to Bone Boilers Interior Illumination Indian Question, The Information Wanted Inspiration vs. Perspiration Items from ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... went fishing with him, for what they called white perch, probably the saibling; [Footnote: The American saibling, or golden trout, is only indigenous to Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, and to a small lake near Augusta.] and was greatly entertained with the peculiarities of an idiomatic Frenchman, an itinerant teacher of that language, whom Bridge, in the kindness of his heart, had taken into his own house. The last of July, Cilley also made his appearance, but did not bring the Madeira with him, and Hawthorne has ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... methods of reckoning time continued for a long time to exist contemporaneously. Hence it became necessary to distinguish one from the other by name, and thus the notation from midnight gave rise, as I have remarked in one of my papers on Chaucer, to the English idiomatic phrase "of the clock;" or the reckoning of the clock, commencing at midnight, as distinguished from Roman equinoctial hours, commencing at six o'clock A.M. This was what Ben Jonson was meaning by attainment of majority at six o'clock, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... to do so when the enemy, he arrive?" asked Colonel Marchand, to whom the idiomatic speech of the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... and her pupil were working at Helen's home in Tuscumbia, and to good purpose, for by spring Helen had learned to write idiomatic English. After May, 1889, I find almost no inaccuracies, except some evident slips of the pencil. She uses words precisely and makes ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... have retained the idiomatic expression of the original, raised himself, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to me to give the more grand and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... amatu was the "word," literally, but, applied to business, means the agreement as to their mutual transactions. The completion of that was reached when they took the profits and divided them. It might include the mutual reckoning of profit and loss. The phrase "from mouth to interest" is very idiomatic. The "mouth," or verbal relationships, included all they said, the terms they agreed upon. The word "interest" here replaces the more usual "gold;" both mean the "profit," or the balance due to each. Usually we ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... Pontresina. Though their native tongue was the patois of the Canton Ticino, they spoke all the civilised languages of the world, 'and also German,' with perfect fluency, and without the slightest attempt at either grammar or idiomatic accuracy. And they both profoundly believed in their hearts that the rank, wealth, youth, beauty and fashion of all other nations were wisely ordained by the inscrutable designs of Providence for a single purpose, to enrich and reward ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... 'Territorial Enterprise' I became introduced to a Californian celebrity, rich in eccentricities of thought, lively in fancy, quaint in remark, whose residence upon the fringe of civilization had allowed his humour to develop without restraint, and his speech to be rarely idiomatic." ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... continues to list this as a "translation" of Ovid's Metamorphoses, X. For a somewhat later example of an actual translation of this tale, considerably amplified, see James Gresham's (not Graham's, as in STC) The Picture of Incest, STC 18969 (1626), ed. Grosart (Manchester, 1876). In idiomatic English, occasionally ornamented with such triple epithets as "azure-veyned necke" and "Nectar-candied-words," Gresham expands Golding's Ovid by more than 300 lines. Although he invents a suitable brief description of Mirrha's nurse, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... as if seeking a key to relationship. Josef smiled. The latter's exultation was that of one enjoying a possible misconstruction which might attend a literal interpretation of what he knew was idiomatic. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... repeated her question with emphasis and a change of countenance which he knew too well. The poor fellow had not the tact to appear to understand, and, as he might easily have done, mystify her by some idiomatic remark. He stammered out his apologies and excuses, with the effect of making Mrs. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... crois bien: on l'entendait d'une lieue, 'I should rather think it was talking, you could hear it a mile off.' The sentence is elliptical, vous demandez being understood before s'il. Note the idiomatic use of bien, and cf. je le veux bien, 'I am perfectly willing'; voulez-vous bien vous en aller, 'won't you go away!' je donnerais bien un franc, 'I shouldn't mind giving ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... The idiomatic sentences of the bluff fisherman, as in their racy vernacular they were blithely given utterance to by the manly voice of the Reader, seemed to supply a fitting introduction to the drama, as though from the lips of a Yarmouth Chorus. Scarcely had the social carouse there in the old boat, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Tibbetti," Bosambo went on, as yet uncertain of his ruler's attitude, since Bones must need, at this critical moment, employ English and idiomatic English, "that since the last moon was young I have lain in my hut never moving, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, being like a dead man—all this ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... used as a pseudo-auxiliary; see l. 155, N,—L'emporter, idiomatic for "to win the day." The substantive, for which the fossilized pronoun le stands, is uncertain. Cf. l'chapper belle, idiomatic for ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... kind. But I may add that recently there have been some symptoms of change on their part. One of the most admirable speeches during the Peace Conference at The Hague was made by a young and very attractive Chinese attach. It was in idiomatic French; nothing could be more admirable either as regarded matter or manner; and many of the older members of the conference came afterward to congratulate him upon it. The ability shown by the Chinese Minister Wu at Washington ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... these may be acquired in a couple of months, and then the language lies open to the student. The knowledge of four words in five enables him to read with pleasure, and renders the acquisition of the few new words, as well as the idiomatic expressions, a matter of delight rather than of labour. Thus the Ooriya, though possessing a separate grammar and character, is so much like the Bengali in the very expression that a Bengali pundit is almost equal to the correction of an Orissa proof sheet; and the first time that I read a page ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... scarecrow in a coat too small or too large for him,—generally the latter. For it is a curious fact, that the more uneducated a man is,—in which condition his ordinary language must of necessity be proportionately idiomatic,—the greater pains he takes, when he has formed the resolution of composing, to be splendid and expansive in his style. He racks his brains until he rummages out imperfect memories of the turgid paragraphs of cheap newspapers and novels which he has some time or other read, and forthwith ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... interest and ability.... Mr. Worsaae's book is in all ways a valuable addition to our literature.... Mr. Thoms has executed the translation in flowing and idiomatic English, and has appended many curious and interesting notes and observations ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... Now Kitty was idiomatic in her speech at times, and she occasionally used slang of the best brand, but she avoided those colloquialisms which were of the vocabulary of the uneducated. Indeed, she had had no inclination to use them, for her father had set her a good example, and she liked to hear good English spoken. That ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Testament: with a critically-revised Text; a Digest of Various Readings; Marginal References to Verbal and Idiomatic Usage; Prolegomena; and a Critical and Exegetical Commentary. For the Use of Theological Students and Ministers. By Henry Alford, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Vol. I., containing the Four Gospels. 944 pages, 8vo, Cloth, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... It is evidenced in many ways—the sculptors' over-insistence on the "mold," the outer rather than the inner subject or content of his statue—over-enthusiasm for local color—over-interest in the multiplicity of techniques, in the idiomatic, in the effect as shown, by the appreciation of an audience rather than in the effect on the ideals of the inner conscience of the artist or the composer. This lack of perceiving is too often shown by an over-interest in the material value of the effect. The pose of self-absorption, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... a Frenchman the style of Richardson is not so objectionable when translated, as to ourselves. I think myself that it is very idiomatic and energetic; others have thought differently. The misfortune of Richardson was, that he was unskilful in the art of writing, and that he could never lay the pen down while ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the inestimable value of its having been made when it was, and being what it is. In his opinion it was made at the happy juncture when our language had attained adequate expansion and flexibility, and when at the same time its idiomatic strength was unimpaired by excess of technical distinctions and conventional refinements; and these circumstances, though of course infinitely subordinate to the spiritual influence of its subject-matter, he considered to be highly important in connection with a volume which naturally became ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... intelligent, and he interpreted my statements with a fluency and accuracy which were astonishing. Only now and again did he stumble and hesitate. This was when he was presented with an unfamiliar expression or idiomatic sentence. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... liked him, and wondered at myself; for I had now as entire a confidence in him as can by any means be placed in a man. He had thoroughly won my esteem, respect, admiration—in a measure, too, my affection. I liked the power of him; the strong hand with which he carried things in his own way; the idiomatic language, and quick, curt sentences in which he enunciated his opinions. I felt him like a strong, kind, and thoughtful elder brother, and have had abundant evidence in his deeds and in some brief unemotional words of his that he felt a great regard of the fraternal kind for me. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... was about Paris. The King spoke of pleasant adventures there, of the life he and Madame had lived, of the delight of having money to spend, really enough of it, in a city like Paris. He told his stories well, his vehemently idiomatic English emphasizing his points. He became lyrical in his appreciation of the joys of life. When dessert was on the table and port took the place of champagne he lapsed into a ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... exaggeration to say that the whole German people, barring the inevitable though small percentage of weaklings, is trying with terrific earnestness to live up to the homely Hindenburgian motto, "Durchhalten!" ("Hold out,") or, in more idiomatic ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... theory was that books should he written in the same colloquial and idiomatic language which is employed by cultivated persons in conversation, "Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;" and vulgar she certainly was not, although she sometimes indulged her fondness for familiarity too far. The period was unluckily chosen ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... was collecting. 'Vers de societe and vers d'occasion should' (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for however trivial the subject-matter may be—indeed, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... accent of Madame Grambeau was barely detectable, and her phraseology was that of a well-translated book—correct, but not idiomatic, and bearing about it the idiosyncrasy of the language from which it was derived. She was evidently a person of culture and native power of intellect combined, and her finely-moulded face, as well as every gesture and tone, indicated superiority ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... is excellent, went rapidly ahead, and spent her sixpence on a present to console Alec for the indignity of having been beaten. Then, too, they write letters in French to their mother, which are solemnly sent by post. It is not very idiomatic French, but it is amazingly flexible; and it is delicious to see the children at breakfast watching Maud as she opens the letters and smiles ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to the roadway we should say "Here is the beginning of the Pacific Railroad." In the great majority of cases begin and beginning are preferable to commence and commencement as the simple, idiomatic English words, always accurate and expressive. "In the beginning was the word," John i, 1. An origin is the point from which something starts or sets out, often involving, and always suggesting causal connection; as, the origin of evil; the origin of a nation, a government, or a family. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald |
