"Infinitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... given to the fact that it is to the root of a word that the prefixes and suffixes are added. When it is stated that the final letter "i" indicates the infinitive, the letter "o" the noun, the letter "a" the adjective, the letter "e" the adverb, the letter "j" added to form the plural, etc., the pronouns "mi", "li", "vi", etc., do not interfere with the statement, for they are complete words; ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... A newspaper has a hundred different ones about a hundred different things. Here in this office we're dead against the split infinitive and the Honest Laboring Man. We don't believe he's honest and we've got our grave doubts as to his laboring. Yet one of our editorial writers is an out-and-out Socialist and makes fiery speeches advising the proletariat to rise and grab the reins of government. But ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that in all his book there was no mention of a dog of that description, or, indeed, of any dog at all. The book was wrapped in an outer cover that bore a recommendation of its contents, starting with a hideous split infinitive and describing it as an exquisite social comedy written from within. On the whole it seemed to the author that his book was flying false and undesirable colours, and since art lies outside the domesticities, he was hardly relieved when his wife told him that she thought ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Australian has a fine contempt for the English word to begin, which he never uses where he can find any substitute. He says commence or start, and he always uses commence followed by the infinitive instead of by the verbal noun, as "The dog ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... embalmed in a book the simple and touching song, "Let me kiss him for his mother," our first inclination is to take all its merit for granted and hurry by, capping the matter as we pass with the inevitable quotation which also begins with a let me, and refers to making the songs of a people, with infinitive contempt for the adjustment of their laws. The people for whom Mr. MacKellar's ballad was made, being young women in ringlets who press the suburban piano, have, we may reasonably hope, small need of the law any how, and we may be pretty sure that the verses which have touched the great popular ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the best split infinitive has been awarded to the framer of the new administrative code of the state of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... root, cannot strictly speaking be pronounced, for the introduction of any vowel-sound would make it cease to be a root and change it into an individual word. The above fa'l, for instance, where the initial Fa is moved by Fathah (a), is the Infinitive or verbal noun, "to do," "doing." If the 'Ayn also is moved by Fathah, we obtain fa'al, meaning in colloquial Arabic "he did" (the classical or literary form would be fa'ala). Pronouncing the first letter with Zammah (u), the second with Kasrah (i), i.e., fu'il, we say "it was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... stage. It is hard to see why these correspondences spring up; one only knows that they do spring up, suddenly, like street crowds. There comes, it would seem, a moment when the whole English-speaking race is unconsciously bursting to have its say about some one thing—the split infinitive, or the habits of migratory birds, or faith and reason, or what-not. Whatever weekly review happens at such a moment to contain a reference, however remote, to the theme in question reaps the storm. Gusts of letters come in from all corners of the British ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... is not used, but naqum, which also means, I wish, and with the preterite particle, in the manner that is stated in the fourth form of the imperative, the infinitive mood in this voice is expressed, as, Nee no hisguarico naqum, ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... before your notice. As old Villotte {343} says—from whose work I first contrived to pick up the rudiments of Armenian—'Est verborum transitivorum, quorum infinitivus . . .' but I forgot, you don't understand Latin. He says there are certain transitive verbs, whose infinitive is in outsaniel; the preterite in outsi; the imperative in oue; for example—parghat-soutsaniem, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... devoted a whole page to the coming event. Adjective was piled on adjective, split infinitive on split infinitive. The dinner was to be given in the ballroom of the hotel.... The bank accounts of the assembled guests would total $400,000,000.... The terrapin had been specially imported from Baltimore.... The decorations ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... Scripture, out of which, directly or by consequence can be gathered, that Adam was taught the names of all Figures, Numbers, Measures, Colours, Sounds, Fancies, Relations; much less the names of Words and Speech, as Generall, Speciall, Affirmative, Negative, Interrogative, Optative, Infinitive, all which are usefull; and least of all, of Entity, Intentionality, Quiddity, and other ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... parts of speech aside from nouns may be subjects of verbs and so other parts of speech as subjects of the principal verb of the lead may be placed at the beginning of the lead. An infinitive with its object and modifier may occupy the first line as subject ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... definitions" sometimes given at this age are usually of slightly better quality than those given in year V. Younger children more often use the infinitive form, "to play with" (doll), "to drive" (horse), "to eat on" (table), etc. Use definitions of this year more often begin with "they," or "what"; as, "they go up in it" (balloon), "they ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... (the radical ute, or, because of the preceding vowel, te) also (chere, or ere, or ire). In utechire we find the Tamanac verb to go, uteri, of which ute is also the radical, and ri the termination of the Infinitive. In order to show that in Chayma chere or ere indicates the adverb also, I shall cite from the fragment of a vocabulary in my possession, u-chere, I also; nacaramayre, he said so also; guarzazere, I carried also; charechere, to carry also. In the Tamanac, as in the Chayma, chareri ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... the Hebrew in which he wrote, speaking of the creation of all things, he gives us this idea, "Which God created to make." See marginal reading, Gen. 2: 3. Hebrew scholars tell me this is the correct reading. The word, rendered, "and made," is in the infinitive mood, and hence should read, "to make;" also, that the word rendered, "created" is the proper term by which to indicate the producing cause. This, then, is the thought presented by both of our witnesses, i.e., by Moses and science. Moses says God ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... in nouns. But in verbs there is a change in moods, as when the infinitive is used for the imperative, as ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... evidently related forms as sang and sung at once shows that it cannot refer to past time, but that, for at least an important part of its range of usage, it is limited to the present. On the other hand, the use of sing as an "infinitive" (in such locutions as to sing and he will sing) does indicate that there is a fairly strong tendency for the word sing to represent the full, untrammeled amplitude of a specific concept. Yet if sing were, in any adequate sense, the fixed ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... given in some French-Latin grammars to the Latin form which expresses by the infinitive verb and the accusative noun what in French is expressed by ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... referred to above, to eliminate French forms. In La Reino Jano, Act III, Scene IV, we find Ie vai de nostis os,—Il y va de nos os. Vejan, voyons, is used as a sort of interjection, as in French. The partitive article is used precisely as in French. We meet the narrative infinitive with de. In short, the French reader feels at home in the Provencal sentence; it is the same syntax and, to a great degree, the same rhetoric. Only in the vocabulary does he feel himself ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... infinitive (Ibid, 89. 1 Consul, uti statuerat, oppida castellaque munita adire, partim vi, alia metu aut praemia ostentando avortere ab hostibus), but the reduction of some of these ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... must speak the schoolmaster's language, I will confess that character comes of this infinitive mood, [Greek: charassen], which signifies to engrave, or make a deep impression. And for that cause a letter (as A, B) is called a character: those elements which we learn first, leaving a strong ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the same word repeated in the same paragraph, though this lays a heavy tax on so-called synonymes. Assonances jar me, even two terminations "tion" near together. I will not knowingly use "that" for "which," except to avoid two "whiches" between the same two periods. The split infinitive I abhor, more as a matter of taste than argument. I recognize that it is at times very tempting to snuggle the adverb so close to the verb; but I hold fast my integrity. Once, indeed, I took it into my head ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... they existed in our language, and that our more polished mode of expressing them is a new and perhaps a corrupt enunciation. Another peculiarity is that of joining the letter y at the end of some verbs in the infinitive mood, as well as to parts of different conjugations, thus, "I can't sewy, nursy, reapy, to sawy, to sewy, to nursy, &c. A further peculiarity is the love of vowel sound, and opening out monosyllables of our polished dialect into two ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings |
