"Monosyllable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... replying to Roscoe's monosyllable. "And also because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times ahead for both of us if we don't ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... personage to whom we allude. Bending over a large gridiron, daintily bespread with steaks of the fatted rump, the INDIVIDUAL stood, with his right arm bared above the elbow, and his right hand grasping that mimic trident known unto gastronomers by the monosyllable "fork." His wigless head was adorned with a cotton nightcap. His upper vestment was discarded, and a whitish apron flowed gracefully down his middle man. His stockings were ungartered, and permitted between the knee and the calf interesting glances of the rude carnal. One list ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... friend, insurance broker and general shipping agent, was a very polite man, and extremely soft-spoken; but he was of an extremely inquisitive disposition, I thought, for he asked my father numberless questions about himself and me, to all of which he returned the short monosyllable "H'm," which did not inform us whether he was satisfied or not. I found all the time that he was merely trying to discover what amount of premium my father was likely to be able to pay, that he might ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... The monosyllable came very dryly and unimportantly, as if to a perfectly commonplace inquiry. Then Lady Nottingham, in her turn, got up. Jeannie's restlessness and disquiet seemed to ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... answer that question, I should like to know what meaning Mrs. Felix Lorraine attaches to that important monosyllable, friend." ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... to him, on the right, was a vivacious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play, spoke "an infinite deal of nothing." He made persistent and pathetic attempts to lure his silent neighbor (we had christened him "William the Silent") into conversation, but a monosyllable was always the poor result—until one day. It was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped at the entrance to Queenstown harbor to deliver the mails, and some fish had been brought aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a high state ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... capitals; digraph, trigraph; ideogram, ideograph; majuscule, minuscule; majuscule, minuscule; alphabet, ABC[obs3], abecedary[obs3], christcross-row. consonant, vowel; diphthong, triphthong[Gram]; mute, liquid, labial, dental, guttural. syllable; monosyllable, dissyllable[obs3], polysyllable; affix, suffix. spelling, orthograph[obs3]; phonography[obs3], phonetic spelling; anagrammatism[obs3], metagrammatism[obs3]. cipher, monogram, anagram; doubleacrostic[obs3]. V. spell. Adj. literal; alphabetical, abecedarian; syllabic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... growing stout; he was too short, as he said, to afford a belly. He rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with unremitting zeal, and if you greeted him with a "How well you are looking" he started and turned pale. In your WELL he read a grosser monosyllable. He had a round head, high above the ears, a crop of hair at once dense and silky, a broad, low forehead, a short nose, of the ironical and inquiring rather than of the dogmatic or sensitive cast, and ...
— The American • Henry James
... passionately, the thing he called pleasure, the thing he called love, and the thing he called his imagination. His notion of pleasure was getting drunk and making love to Miss Poppy Grace; the love he made was better described by a stronger and coarser monosyllable, and he had used his imagination to glorify it. Oh yes, because he had imagination, because he was a poet, he had not gone down into the clay-pits and wallowed in the clay; neither had he been content to dabble in it; he had taken it up in his hands and moulded ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... not a monosyllable, but it is accented on the last syllable; it ends in a single consonant r, preceded by a single vowel e; therefore, on adding the suffix ed, beginning with the vowel e, the final consonant r is doubled, and the ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... treated as they should think fit; he must go on in the same indifference, and allow the TOWN their usual liberty with his name, which I find they think they have much more room to sport with than formerly, as it is lengthened with the monosyllable SIR." ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... again. Her face was calm as a cabbage, still as a mushroom in a storm. She claimed the entire discussion somehow as her own. Yet she had merely exercised her prerogative of being herself. Having gone into the root of the matter with a monosyllable, she retired again into her eternal centre. She had nothing ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... giddy pinnacle, and then survey the immense extent of the city. The door of the cathedral stood invitingly open. My destiny prevailed. I entered the ominous archway. Where then was my guardian angel?—if indeed such angels there be. If! Distressing monosyllable! what world of mystery, and meaning, and doubt, and uncertainty is there involved in thy two letters! I entered the ominous archway! I entered; and, without injury to my orange-colored auriculas, I passed beneath ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... malformation, before described, shocked the propriety of the breakfast-table by a loud utterance of three words, of which the two last were "Webster's Unabridged," and the first was an emphatic monosyllable.—Beg pardon,—he added,—forgot myself. But let us have an English dictionary, if we are to have any. I don't believe in clipping the coin of the realm, Sir! If I put a weathercock on my house, Sir, I want it to tell which ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... lady of importance, whose friendship means perdition, yet without whom nothing can be done, and who plays an immense part in the world. The monosyllable which designates her has a vague and extended signification; it means both reward and bribery. Disinterestedness, the virtue of noble minds, being rare in this world, scarcely anything is undertaken without hope of recompense, and what man, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... quoted, it will be observed that all the lines end with two syllables, in both of which the rhyme is engaged; and an English version of the above verses, however faithful in other respects, which should omit to use the same species of double termination, and content itself with the monosyllable rhyme, would indubitably lose some of the harmony of the original. These double rhymes are far from abundant in our monosyllabic language; but we venture to affirm, that their conscientious employment would be found ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... is some malformation or defect of the vocal organs, which either prevents our uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in expectation thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory monosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public Opinion is the Pope, the Anti-Christ, for us to protest against e corde cordium. And by what College of Cardinals is this our God's-vicar, our binder and looser, elected? Very like, by the sacred conclave ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... do, Ratcliffe," said the procurator; "you must speak out—out—out," tapping the table emphatically, as he repeated that impressive monosyllable. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... subscribed shares represented by those present as six hundred and eleven, Garnet explained that besides his own subscription he represented one of fifteen shares and another of ten for two ladies, and Champion unintentionally uttered a lurid monosyllable as Shotwell stuck him under the leg with a pin. They were the shares, Garnet added, that General Halliday had ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... question which I put severely to Mrs. Walters: Had she told Georgiana of my foolish talk? She shook her head violently, and pressed her lips closely together, suggesting how impossible it would be for the smallest monosyllable in the language to escape by that channel; but she kept her eyes wide open, and the truth issued from them, as smoke in a hollow tree, if stopped in at a lower hole, simply rises and comes out at a higher one. "You should have shut your ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... some of maturer years, full-blown flowers among the opening buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear during the period when they never meet a single man without having his monosyllable ready for him,—tied as they are, poor things! on the rock of expectation, each of them an ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the clerk of the course attend them to the starting-post. There they are now assembled. Guy Flouncey takes up his stirrup-leathers a hole; Mr. Melton looks at his girths. In a few moments, the irrevocable monosyllable will be uttered. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... spiritual reason of my giving up my curacy (for I have given it up), and only giving the outward, but equally true reason, that I found it on the whole an ineligible and distressing post. . . . I know you will apply to such an act that disgusting monosyllable of which Protestants are so fond. He felt with me and for me—for my horror of giving pain to my father, and for my wearied and excited state of mind; and strangely enough—to show how differently, according to the difference of the organs, the same object may appear ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... all; they gorged themselves like vultures; they danced or played ball naked among the snow-drifts from morning till night. At a medical feast, some strange or unusual act was commonly enjoined as vital to the patient's cure: as, for example, the departing guest, in place of the customary monosyllable of thanks, was required to greet his host with an ugly grimace. Sometimes, by prescription, half the village would throng into the house where the patient lay, led by old women disguised with the heads and skins of bears, and beating with sticks on sheets of dry bark. Here the assembly danced ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... said; and there was such calm finality, such forcible emphasis in the monosyllable I used, that she drew still farther away from me, shuddering again as she did so, and I saw her face grow colder in its expression, although I did not believe that it was caused by any change in her ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... a great lack of expression in Garton's monosyllable, but as he swung about upon his stool, bending over the box of cigarettes which he swept up, Conniston thought that he saw a little twitch as of pain about the sensitive lips. Not understanding, feeling at once that he would like to say something and not knowing what to say, he went ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... rudimentary fiddle will repeat this fragment of melody by the hour, while a company of his unlaundered brethren dance, until exhausted, in dust to their ankles, with the temperature near the boiling point. This musical monosyllable is ample to satisfy his artistic craving. In other words it is the complete musical ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... morning she saw her father's anxiety for the reply mounting to a pitch of fever. She consulted with Cornelia, who said, "No; never do such a thing!" and subsequently, with a fainter firmness, repeated the negative monosyllable. Arabella, in her wretchedness, became endued with remorseless discernment. "It means that Cornelia would never do it herself," she thought; and, comforted haply by reflecting that for their common good ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was the only answer. In fact, it was seldom that he uttered more than a monosyllable as we talked over the various aspects of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... finish is best expressed by just that abrupt and insignificant monosyllable!" he cried, his solemnity swept away by a mood of extravagant banter. "Now, you know, since we have elected a professional baseball player to the mayor's office, I foresee great possibilities unfolding in municipal affairs. I rather anticipate that ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... for his bow, Vasuke for the string, Vishnu for his arrow, the earth for his chariot with the sun and moon for its wheels and the Vedas for its horses, the starry canopy for his banner with the tree of Paradise for its staff, Brahma for his charioteer, and the mysterious monosyllable Om for his whip reduced them all ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... amongst them now, very drawn and pale in the dim halo of light thrown down from the hanging lamp. His answering monosyllable ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... For heretofore, Henry Phipps had been an humble worshipper. She permitted several of his condescending remarks to pass without notice, but finally when he answered a question put by another groom with a bored monosyllable, the girl flew to ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... struggling to recall his energies, while the peculiar tone of the single monosyllable caused every heart ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... case of the Latin mea domina, i.e. my mistress, which became in French ma dame, and in English madam; and the last of these has been further shortened to mam, and even to 'm, as in the phrase "Yes, 'm." This shows how nine letters may be reduced to one. Similarly, our monosyllable alms is all that is left of the Greek ele{-e}mosyn{-e}. Ten letters have here been ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... Romarin—instantly noting that the monosyllable, which matched the other's in curtness, was not at all the reply he had intended. "Thank you—yours," he amended; and a short pause followed, in which fish ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... bass voice. She married, some twelve years ago, an Englishman, a member of the diplomatic corps, Lord A——, a personage equally handsome and impassive as herself. He addresses at intervals to his wife an English monosyllable, to which the latter replies imperturbably with a French monosyllable. Nevertheless, three little lords, worthy the pencil of Lawrence, who strut majestically around this Olympian couple, attest ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... relationship to Siamese and Shan that Latin does to Italian. It is more nearly related to modern Siamese than to modern ahan, but possesses many groups of consonants which have become simplified in both. It is a language of the isolating class, in which every word is a monosyllable, and may be employed either as a noun or as a verb according to its context and its position in a sentence. In the order of words, the genitive follows the norm it governs, and, as usual in such cases, the relations of time and place are indicated by prefixes, not by suffixes. The meanings ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... full, true, and particular account of our royal visit, unmatched even by that of King Charles at the Castle of Tillietudlem. That we did not speak of it for more than a week after it happened, and that that emphatic monosyllable, The Prince, is not heard amongst us more than ten times a-day, is, on the whole, to the credit of my family's understanding. The piper is the only one whose brain he seems to have endangered; for, as the Prince said ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... be. There are peculiarities in the vocal organization of every person, tending to produce peculiarities of pronunciation; for example, it has been stated that each child in a family of six gave the monosyllable, fly, in a different manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c.) until, when the organs were more advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation of this and similar words. Such departures from orthoepy are only to be checked by the power of such example; but this is a power not always present, or not ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... of the triumvirate was broken in upon by Tom, who, with his usual suavity of manners, politely addressed himself to the unknown, on the common topic of weather, et cetera, without eliciting in reply more than an assenting or dissenting monosyllable, "You have seen ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... children, and lead them into captivity. The warriors shall fall by our war-clubs—we will give them no quarter. Our tomahawks we will dip in their brains! with our scalping knives we will scalp them." At each period comes on the chorus, which consists of one monosyllable only, that is sounded a number of times, and articulated like a faint, stifled groan. This word is "eh," and signifies "we will," or "we will go," or "we will do." While singing, they perform the ceremony of killing and scalping, with ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... The root of every primitive verb is a monosyllable, consisting of a short vowel (α, ε, ι, ο, or υ) between two (usually simple) consonants. Sometimes one or the other of the latter has been dropped far back in the etymology. This root is most readily found in the 1st ...
— Greek in a Nutshell • James Strong
... has made the men silent, for scarcely a word is spoken; if it were, in the stillness it must be heard, though they are at some distance. The wheels, well greased for the heavy harvest work, do not creak. Save an occasional monosyllable, as the horses are ordered on, or to stop, and a faint rustling of straw, there is no sound. It may be the flood of brilliant light, or the mirage of the heat, but in some way the waggon and its rising load, the men and the horses, have ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... what effect the monosyllable had upon him. The mask which he carried always with him fell suddenly away. He turned upon her with an abruptness almost disconcerting. His eyes were lit with fire, and there was a strange flush ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... do that, neither," Y.D. answered. "Think I need a body-guard for a little chore like that? Huh!" There was immeasurable contempt in that monosyllable. ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... effort the monosyllable cost her. In bitter disappointment he dropped her hand. As Nancy turned abruptly away she tripped over the root of a tree. Instantly Goddard caught and steadied her. Her soft hair brushed his cheek ... one breathless moment ... he clasped ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... most common words—those that chiefly make up the language of childhood and of every-day life—are Saxon; and very many of them are words of one syllable. In the inscription above, every monosyllable is Saxon, with Boston, grateful, and coming; the rest are French or Latin. In the case of pairs of words having the same meaning, one is likely to be Saxon, the other Classical. Thus happiness is Saxon, felicity is French; begin is Saxon, commence is French; freedom is Saxon, liberty ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... this recommendation with such an extraordinarily abrupt, short, and loud utterance of the monosyllable 'Oh!' that even the unwieldy Patriarch moved his blue eyes in something of a hurry, to look at him. Mr Pancks, with a sniff of corresponding intensity, then added, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... trollop? If she had been a gentlewoman, like myself, it had been some excuse; but a beggarly, saucy, dirty servant-maid. Get you out of my house, you whore." To which she added another name, which we do not care to stain our paper with. It was a monosyllable beginning with a b—, and indeed was the same as if she had pronounced the words, she-dog. Which term we shall, to avoid offence, use on this occasion, though indeed both the mistress and maid uttered the above-mentioned b—, a word extremely ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... monosyllable that Mr. Razumov got into the habit of referring mentally to the stranger with grey silky side-whiskers. From that time too, when walking in the more fashionable quarters, he noted with interest the magnificent horses ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... and expressive I have ever seen. The rank of Lord Orville was his least recommendation. When he discovered I was totally ignorant of public places and public performers, he ingeniously turned the discourse to the amusements and occupations of the country; but I was unable to go further than a monosyllable in reply, and not even so far as that when I could ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... The monosyllable dropped from her lips like a stone, yet even as it fell the banner of Maccabaeus unfurled and flaunted in her face; the voice of Esther murmured, and a vision of Judith saving a nation visited her, and, continuing, made ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... the only name, nor is Aylmer. The adaptrix, however, must be careful that the Christian name is a monosyllable and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... clothespin, and turned his blue eyes wonderingly up to her. The corners of his mouth trembled, widened, his eyelids crinkled, and then he smiled delightfully, straight into the eyes of the nurse, stretched up a wavering pink hand, and patted her cheek. A soft, gurgling monosyllable, difficult of classification but easy to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?—that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?—that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... man leaned again heavily on the rail. The monosyllable was eloquent. Impulsively she bent toward him, then caught herself. For a moment she looked out at the water undulating under the moon like mother-of-pearl on a waving fan. "But it was all right to say I loved you then," she went on reflectively, ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... narrating this incident he was asked what reply the lady had made to so uncourteous a speech. 'I don't remember,' said the Bibliotaph, 'it was long ago; but my opinion is that she would have been justified in denominating me by a monosyllable beginning with the initial letter of the alphabet and followed ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... He repeated the monosyllable, converting it into a clarion-call that made me think of a ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... dinner she hardly spoke. If she said nothing to Leeds, neither would she address the man on her other side, only giving such monosyllable answers as were necessary. The evening dragged slowly. Leeds did not approach her. Once or twice she looked toward him, but he did not appear to notice her. Indeed, he only came late from the smoking room and returned after a brief ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... monosyllables to three of greater length, or rather to the same dissyllable thrice repeated; and that too in common parlance proncounced as a monosyllable. The passage in the Book of Ezekiel, which Coleride is said to have considered the most ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... him. As his voice died away, Lylda rose to her feet and facing the judge bowed low, with hands to her forehead. Then she spoke a few words, evidently addressing the women before her. Each of them raised her hands and answered in a monosyllable, as though affirming an oath. This performance was ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... This monosyllable was expressive. It proved to me that Bonaparte was conscious how ill he had treated me; and, suspecting that I was actuated by the desire of vengeance, he was afraid of my going to England, lest I should ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... pronoun, it might be well to state, signified the prairie; its melancholy personality having penetrated the very marrow of their train existence, they had come to refer to it by the monosyllable, as in certain nether circles the head of the house receives ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... low voice said plainly that he knew, and Raffles faced him with the monosyllable of confession and assent. I did not count the seconds until the next word, but it was Captain Bellingham who uttered it ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... of practical force, compounded of strong will, strong sense, and strong egotism, which long waited for a strong monosyllable to announce its nature. Facts of character, indeed, are never at rest until they have become terms of language; and that peculiar thing which is not exactly courage or heroism, but which unmistakably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... will not repeat what I uttered When this was reported to me; The mere monosyllable muttered Begins with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... nothing—less than nothing—to be laughed at and postponed to his Methodist sister Scott? The impudence of deliberately telling him he "didn't want it, and was rich enough!" as if "enough" could ever be good grammar after such a monosyllable as "rich;" and "want it" indeed! of course he wanted it; if not, why had he slaved so many years? want it, indeed! if to hope by day, and to dream by night—if to leave no means untried of delicately showing how he longed for it—if ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... vituperation. The resources of his Latinised vocabulary enable him to rise by successive gyrations to a point of vantage above his prey, and then the downward rush that strikes the quarry is a Saxon monosyllable. In this cardinal point of art for those who have to do with the English speech he became the teacher of Burke, who, with a lesser wealth of Saxon at his command, employed it with a more ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... confounded by the situation. Had he made a mistake, after all, in insisting upon this interview? In his own mind he was asking for wisdom, but aloud he spoke of the weather. His host gave no conversational assistance except an occasional monosyllable, and his senior warden was absolutely dumb. As for the subject which brought them together, no further reference was made ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the monosyllable, but a thoughtful expression in the hard gray eyes indicated that Varr had found food for reflection in Nelson's story. What direction his thoughts were taking he did not choose to reveal at the moment, but shot another ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... out to the club she sat between them, miserably indifferent to the glory of the spring day and refusing to contribute more than an occasional monosyllable to the conversation, which needed all the encouragement it could get ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... melody of that simple monosyllable expressed so perfectly, through such a trained larynx, all the sudden lack of interest!) "It never happened, then? So of course it does not matter. But why do you call ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... meaning to say—"But what on earth are they doing?" and trusting that Uncle Andy would appreciate the self-restraint of the monosyllable. ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... vouchsafe even a monosyllable in reply, and the tactless Kirk assumed the double burden of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... at once, and the tones in which the monosyllable was uttered and the glances accompanying it held volumes of hidden meaning. 'I haven't seen you since the Governor arrived,' Joan went on. 'Where have you been all ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... monoplane, monopoly, monocle, monarchy, monogram, monomania; (2) monosyllable, monochrome, monogamy, monorail, monograph, monolith, monody, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... The final monosyllable was charged with sinister import, but the man's assurance of her present safety was, somehow, convincing, and she accepted it with the emotional gratitude of one sentenced to death who receives a reprieve. She sank down on the stone bench near the crevice, and watched her ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... towards me. When within half a dozen yards he stopped and took good stock of me, with brown eyes overhung by thick grizzled eyebrows. Then he offered a short, interrogative, authoritative bark, a mere monosyllable ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"? He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that tendency to take even jokes gravely which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... spirited to look upon, so radiant with youth, animation, and innocence, that the eyes of the poor young officer were dazzled and sought the floor; completely intoxicated and bewildered, he could not join in the conversation, uttering here and there only a trembling monosyllable. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... have already suggested one example. We hardly call up the picture of a return to Christian Communism whenever we mention Wimbledon Common. This truth descends to such trifles as the titles which we write on letters and postcards. The puzzling and truncated monosyllable "Esq." is a pathetic relic of a remote evolution from chivalry to snobbery. No two historic things could well be more different than an esquire and a squire. The first was above all things an incomplete and probationary position—the tadpole of knighthood; ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... conversation was mostly by signs after we entered his room. Without a word he took finished work from various drawers and put it on the table for my inspection. I praised it, asked questions to draw him out, but failed to get more than a lift of the eyebrows, or an occasional monosyllable. It was not exhilarating, and as soon as I could ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... had not noticed the little monosyllable 'us,' which was now affecting her so powerfully. Of course it meant a wife and possibly children, and her day was surely over at Tracy Park. It was in vain that her husband tried to comfort her, saying that they knew nothing positively, except that Arthur was coming ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... four letters to describe the salute which you perform on your grandmother's forehead, and that which you bestow on the sacred cheek of your mistress; but the same four letters, and not one of them a labial. Do we mean to hint that Mr. Arthur Pendennis made any use of the monosyllable in question? Not so. In the first place it was dark: the fire-works were over, and nobody could see him; secondly, he was not a man to have this kind of secret, and tell it; thirdly and lastly, let the honest fellow who has kissed a pretty girl, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for them; gossipy individuals seek, by the use of them, to exhibit a certain power of speech. Nor is it indifferent to expression when people in an apparently nowise comfortable fashion give approximate circumlocutive figures, e. g., half-a-dozen, four syllables, instead of the monosyllable six; or "the bell in the dome at St. Stephen's has as many nicks as the year has days,'' etc. It must be assumed that these circumlocutive expressions are chosen, either because of the desire to make an assertion ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Boyars, Spanish Grandees of the Order of the Fleece, Counts of France, and Princes Polish and Italian innumerable, who perfume the gilded halls with their tobacco-smoke, and swear in all languages against the black and the red. The famous English monosyllable by which things, persons, luck, even eyes, are devoted to the infernal gods, we may be sure is not wanting in that Babel. Where does one not hear it? "D—— the luck," says Lord Kew, as the croupier sweeps off his lordship's rouleaux. "D—— the luck," says Brown the bagman, who has ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... took the pack from her. As he lifted it there was a clanging of pots and pans. Dick, pouring out a mug of whiskey, paused long enough to pass the wink across her body. Tommy winked back. His lips pursed the monosyllable, "clothes," but Dick shook his head reprovingly. "Here, little woman," he said, after she had drunk the whiskey and straightened ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... dame was neither lively nor fascinating, the young lord naturally addressed himself next to the old horologer's very pretty daughter, who sat upon his left hand. From her, however, there was no extracting any reply beyond the measure of a monosyllable; and when the young gallant had said the best and most complaisant things which his courtesy supplied, the smile that mantled upon her pretty mouth was so slight and evanescent, as scarce to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... and got short answers and long answers, pleasant ones and some that were not so pleasant; but all could be summed up in the single monosyllable: ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... they are all of one syllable. It is true, I have been sometimes forced upon it in other places of this work, but I never did it out of choice: I was either in haste, or Virgil gave me no occasion for the ornament of words; for it seldom happens but a monosyllable line turns verse to prose, and even that prose is rugged and unharmonious. Philarchus, I remember, taxes Balzac for placing twenty monosyllables in file without one dissyllable ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... simultaneously every voice in the room except Hilary's, and she was too utterly dumbfounded even to utter that monosyllable. ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... boulder. I was carrying a pea rifle more for company than for anything else; for "Paddy," though of a most cheerful disposition, never made remarks. His conversation for the most part was compounded of eloquent looks and expressive gestures. A monosyllable to him was a laborious sentence; four or five words a speech. Once upon a time, it is said, a youthful German inadvertently blundered into a railway carriage reserved for Moltke. The glare of the great man brought three words of respectful apology for the intrusion. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... wildly, hoping he would hear the monosyllable "me." But the word was not spoken. In its place the phrase "us poor exiles," with which somewhat commonplace remark the young Mexican ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... the mouth and expires through the nostrils, the oxygen of the inspired air does not enter the lungs where the pulmonary changes of the blood take place. The monosyllable Om thus acts as a substitute for the suspension of ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... to him the sole course open; any other would only have led to an increase of precautions. The King avoided all discourse with him upon this matter; M. du Maine the same. M. d'Orleans was contented with a simple approving monosyllable to both, like a courtier who ought not to meddle with anything; and he avoided conversation upon this subject, even with Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, and with anybody else. I was the sole person to whom he dared to unbosom himself; with the rest of the world he had an open, an ordinary manner, was ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... gone on at this side of the Atlantic also. Linda was amazed at the apathy with which the discarded lover received the intelligence. He scratched his red head, and looked somewhat bewildered; indulged in a few monosyllable ejaculations, and half an hour afterwards came back to the parlour to ask her 'if she was in airnest, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... answered her only in monosyllable, making small distinction between yes and no. He simply sat watching her with eyes in which there were two little covetous ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... France rejoices in a two-gender, one-case article with a distinct form for the plural. The ripe product of tendency, the infant heir of the eloquent ages, to whose birth the law of Aryan evolution groaned and travailed until but now, the most useful, if not the "mightiest," monosyllable "ever moulded by the lips of man," the "the," one and indeclinable, was born in the Anglo-Saxon mouth, and sublimed to its ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... and Harry and George, among these young people, then; and I dare say the reason why General Lambert chose to apply the monosyllable "Bo" to the mother of his daughters, was as a rebuke to that good woman for the inveterate love of sentiment and propensity to match-making which belonged to her (and every other woman in the world whose heart is worth a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old seaman, grumbled out his commands to the two sailors who managed the craft, in such a dogged, sulky tone, that it attracted the attention of the elder Hawke, and being naturally fond of fun, he endeavoured to draw him out. An abrupt monosyllable was the sole reply he could obtain to any one of his ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... the first time. Fanny Brandeis would have given everything she had, everything she hoped to be, to be able to take back that monosyllable. She was gripped with horror at what she had done. She had spoken almost mechanically. And yet that monosyllable must have been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and thought. "Now I begin to understand you," Fenger went on. "You've ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... She made frequent use of that monosyllable. It generally gave the Babe the same sort of feeling as he had been accustomed to experience in the happy days of his childhood when he had been ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... at the sound of my voice, and glanced from one to the other with a puzzled, inquiring look. Turning to his father, he uttered some strange monosyllable in a deep voice. Then he took my hand and walked back and forth across the room with me, smiling in great delight. I was fascinated by one of the pictures which showed a great gleaming eye with a suggestion of lightning in its fiery depths, as if taken at the ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... monosyllable exceeded her fondest expectations. There was a sharp exclamation of surprise, followed by a cry that might have meant dismay or wrath or both, as something metallic tinkled and slid, presently coming to ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he is talked of by the familiar abbreviation, Scup. But to the excursionists and fishermen of New York he is known only as Porgy, or Paugie, a form as obviously derived from the last syllable of his Indian name as the emphatic "siree" of our greatest orators is from the modest monosyllable "sir." Porgy seems to be the accepted form of the word; but letters of the old, unphonetic kind are poor guides to pronunciation. And a beautiful, clean-scaled fish is Porgy,—whose g, by-the-by, as I learned from a funny man in the heterogeneous crowd, is pronounced ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... repeated, after a moment's pause, lengthening out the monosyllable, taking a slow pinch, and looking up at Maynard with ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... musical expression, and merely lent their ears to the plain import of the word, imagined that Phutatorius, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of Didius's hands, in order to bemaul Yorick to some purpose—and that the desperate monosyllable Z...ds was the exordium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough kind of handling of him; so that my uncle Toby's good-nature felt a pang for what Yorick was about to undergo. But seeing Phutatorius stop short, without any attempt or desire ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... for, maddened by the continual recurrence of that odious monosyllable, I shouted to her to 'hold tight by my waist,' and, giving Daisy the spur, in a minute sprang with Nora over the parapet into the deep water below. I don't know why, now—whether it was I wanted to drown ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... took up his monosyllable; "it's quite as important as all that. I don't wish to be overheard. Besides," she added with nonchalant irrelevance, "I ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... you at, with your ya and nein?" said I. "Has your confounded tongue nothing better than a monosyllable to reply with." ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... His power of articulation was slowly returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... his knee as he uttered this meditative monosyllable, and continued to regard his niece with keener scrutiny, if that were possible, than before. 'It is John's temper—a very firebrand. My dear, you are very young, and you should not be above taking advice. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... native, was the best in the whole groupe, and the most populous, except that of Chu-san; the number of its inhabitants being ten thousand souls. It was discovered, however, before we had been long in the country, that when a Chinese made use of the monosyllable van, which in his language signifies ten thousand, he was not to be understood as speaking of a determinate or precise number, but only as making use of a term that implied amplification. A state criminal, for example, is generally condemned to undergo ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... devoted to one head. As to the higher literary virtues, too, his sentences were all carefully balanced in a pair of logical and rhetorical scales of the most sensitive kind; and he never perpetrated the atrocity of ending a sentence with a monosyllable, or using the same word twice within the same five lines, choosing always some judicious method of circumlocution to obviate reiteration. Poor man! in the pride of his unspotted purity, he little knew what a humiliation fate had prepared ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... moment's silence. Anna's face was half turned from him, but her expression, and the tone of her monosyllable puzzled him. He stepped quickly towards her. Her eyes seemed to be looking backwards. She distinctly shivered as he forced her to look at him. He ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... newspapers, quite at my ease, and delighted to see that everybody was puzzled. A bold individual, in the hope of getting me into conversation, came to me and addressed me; I answered him with a monosyllable, and I observed that everyone was at a loss what to make of me. When I had sufficiently enjoyed public admiration in the coffee-room, I promenaded in the busiest thoroughfares of the city, and returned to the inn, where I had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... stupidity of that remarkable young person—dense and impenetrable as a London fog—until her first introduction in these Readings, with "Please, Mister Sawyer, Missis Raddle wants to speak to you!"—the dull, dead-level of her voice ending in the last monosyllable with a series of inflections almost amounting to a chromatic passage. Mr. Justice Stareleigh, again!—nobody had ever conceived the world of humorous suggestiveness underlying all the words put into his mouth until the author's utterance of them came to the readers of Pickwick ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... new standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bash fulness. Tom, as you have observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address; but the difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr. or Mrs. Stelling was so great, that he even dreaded to be asked at table whether he would have more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he had almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart, that he would throw them into a neighboring pond; for not only was he the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the old man and his ways. The talkative fit was evidently over, and he might sit and talk, if he would, from then till evening, and get no more than a monosyllable here and there in ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... several comic voices, a few mean voices, and some so earnest and manly and alert that one says to himself, "Those are the men for me, when work is to be done!" I read the character of my comrades every morning in each fellow's monosyllable "Here!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... was told, and received the confidential communication of his partner with pathetic resignation. He only wished the signal to shout might soon arrive. As for Reginald, when he felt himself once more in the clutches of the captivating Jemima, and heard her whisper in his ear the mysterious monosyllable "love," his heart became as ice within him, and he sat like a statue in his chair, looking straight before him. Oh, how he hoped "Omega" would give him some occupation for his evenings that would save him ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... search of his heart, in order to draw from it greater flexibility and feeling. The effect which he produces is irresistible and universal. Throughout the house the most profound silence is rigidly, but sympathetically enforced; so great is the apprehension of losing a single monosyllable in these interesting moments, which always appear too short. To this silence succeed shouts of acclamation and bursts of applause. I never knew any performer command the like but Mademoiselle ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Still the champions were as fresh as they had been at nine. No one could foretell the victor, though any one could easily have pointed out the poor victim. After ten o'clock the conversation was conducted almost entirely by Williams and Dic, with a low monosyllable now and then from Rita when addressed. She, poor girl, was too sleepy to talk, even to Dic. Soon after twelve o'clock the knight from Blue, pitying her, showed signs of surrender; but she at once awoke and mutely gave him to understand ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... made no responses and showed no signs of reverence. Soon in all the coffeehouses was handed about a brutal lampoon on the courtly prelates whose pens the King had employed. Mother East had also her full share of abuse. Into that homely monosyllable our ancestors had degraded the name of the great house of Este ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... No more exasperating monosyllable can fall from a woman's lips than that one word "why," and Curtis felt its full force ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... version, I do not know. But one unaccountable error was forced on one's notice. Thebes, which, by Milton and by every scholar is made a monosyllable, is here made a dissyllable. But Thebez, the dissyllable, is a Syrian city. It is true that Causabon deduces from a Syriac word meaning a case or enclosure (a theca), the name of Thebes, whether Boeotian or Egyptian. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Sofia's consciousness, a French monosyllable into which the war had packed every shade and gradation of hatred and contempt, the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... you say if men answered you: No! Go yourself and spin in a factory, for you have shown clearly enough that your thinking and brooding are futile. All your fine phrases amount to nothing but the one dread monosyllable—Die! Are you so wicked as that, and know it? or so stupid, and ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... perhaps he saw in her answer, if not sympathy, for she was too impersonal for that, a candid understanding of the little scene and an appreciation of its dramatic quality. "Then," said he, after his monosyllable, "there is nothing left me but to go." When he had risen, he stood looking down at his wife's beautiful dusky head. Incredible to think it had ever lain on his breast, or that the fact of its cherishing there made no difference to her embryo heart! A tinge of ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... wayward carol of its earliest birds, the serene quietude of its limpid breezy air. Only when they came to fresh turnings in the road that led towards the town to which they were bound, Tom Bowles stepped before his companion, indicating the way by a monosyllable or a gesture. Thus they journeyed for hours, till the sun attained power, and a little wayside inn near a hamlet invited Kenelm to the thought ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the private room at Halfpenny and Farthing's office, Mr. Halfpenny, who had seemed somewhat mystified by the happenings at the bank, looked inquiringly at Professor Cox-Raythwaite and snapped out one suggestive monosyllable: ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... memory of Dorothy Jackson, born Dorothy Quincy, to whose choice of the right monosyllable we owe the presence of our honored guest and all that his life has achieved for the welfare of the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... found on old plum-trees, where it climbs in search of the insects which there congregate. We shall frequently hear its voice, especially before rain, for it is a noisy creature. It has a liquid note, sounding like "el" frequently repeated, and then ending with a sharp, short monosyllable. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... it definite. If we read "drink up wormwood," what does it imply? It may be the smallest possible quantity,—an ordinary dose of bitters; or a pailful, which would perhaps meet the "madness" of Hamlet's daring. Thus the little monosyllable "up" must be disposed of, or a quantity must be expressed to reconcile MR. SINGER'S proposition with Mr. HICKSON'S canon and the grammatical sense ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... shouted by every triumphant disputant, held up as paramount to all other considerations, stretched like an impenetrable shield to protect the weakest advocate of the great cause against the weapons of the adversary, was that omnipotent monosyllable which has been the patrimony of cheats and the currency of dupes from time immemorial,—Facts! Facts! Facts! First came the published cases of the American clergymen, brigadier-generals, almshouse governors, representatives, attorneys, and esquires. Then came the published ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The monosyllable was drawn out rather faintly. For the first time since they had met on the pass she felt she was mistress of the situation. This time she had not to plead with him in fear for his life. She could regard him without any sense of obligation, this invader of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... The monosyllable came out emphatically. Again the Inspector darted one of his quick, shrewd glances at the girl. She met his scrutiny with her habitual serene and candid gaze. The Inspector dropped his eyes and ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... long, sweet-sounding drawl of the last monosyllable, which seemed formed out of all the five vowels rolled into one. It was said in such a pleasant voice, with such a simple, child-like air of delighted astonishment, that Agatha, conquering her shyness at this first meeting with one of her husband's family, peeped behind Nathanael's shoulder ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... trigraph; ideogram, ideograph; majuscule, minuscule; majuscule, minuscule; alphabet, ABC^, abecedary^, christcross-row. consonant, vowel; diphthong, triphthong [Gramm.]; mute, liquid, labial, dental, guttural. syllable; monosyllable, dissyllable^, polysyllable; affix, suffix. spelling, orthograph^; phonography^, phonetic spelling; anagrammatism^, metagrammatism^. cipher, monogram, anagram; doubleacrostic^. V. spell. Adj. literal; alphabetical, abecedarian; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is the lightest monosyllable, but fraught with much energy. She tilts the shoulder nearest to him, and peeps at him over it, with ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... horrified monosyllable broke in on the smug recital. She caught Lad protectingly by the ruff and stared in mute dread at the lanky and red-whiskered officer. Lad, reading her voice as always, divined this nasal-toned caller had said or done something to make her unhappy. His ruff bristled. One corner of his lip ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... nor compassion; no friendly hand will close his eyes, not a groan will be uttered, not a tear will be shed. Like Judas, he will be remembered by posterity; men will learn to express all that is base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous by the single monosyllable of Paine." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... my best to draw my fair companions into a little chat, but found my vis-a-vis—the daughter of my successor outside—most impracticable; a monosyllable was the extent of her exertion: whilst her companion, who was a lively, intelligent-looking girl, and very pretty withal, was necessarily chilled by the taciturnity of her senior. I note this as being an unusual case, since, when ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... of the second line this poem is noteworthy because it is cast in the classic form. All the best Limericks are about a young man, or else an old one, who said some short sharp monosyllable in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... prelude, Mr. Samuel Weller burst at once into the following wild and beautiful legend, which, under the impression that it is not generally known, we take the liberty of quoting. We would beg to call particular attention to the monosyllable at the end of the second and fourth lines, which not only enables the singer to take breath at those points, but greatly ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... and a man of great courage. Stout and hardy and of great courage at home, that is; in his own mind and heart, soul and body, that is. Young Captain Self-denial was a perfect hero at saying No! and at saying No! to himself. It is a proverb that there is nothing so difficult as to say that monosyllable. And the proverb is Scripture truth if you try to say No! to yourself. It takes the very stoutest of hearts, the most noble, the most manly, the most soldierly, and the most saintly of hearts to say ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... monosyllable shouted, almost shrieked, by him so menaced. "No!" he repeats; "never shall I consent to that. I am in your power, Gil Uraga. Put your pistol to my head, blow out my brains, as you say you can do with impunity. Kill me any way you wish, even torture. It could not ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... unconscious mind (cred-, cert-, and tang- have no real existence in English comparable to that of good- in goodness). A word like intangible, once it is acclimated, is nearly as simple a psychological entity as any radical monosyllable (say vague, thin, grasp). In German, however, polysyllabic words strive to analyze themselves into significant elements. Hence vast numbers of French and Latin words, borrowed at the height of certain cultural influences, could not maintain themselves in ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Saxham; and the monosyllable seemed to drop from his grim lips like a stone. Her bosom heaved with short, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... don't say no," said Pen, looking very gloomily at Blanche, and not offering by any means to repeat the attempt at consolation, which had elicited that sweet monosyllable "don't" from the young lady. "I don't think I have much of what people call heart; but I don't profess it. I made my venture when I was eighteen, and lighted my lamp and went in search of Cupid. And what was my discovery ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... matter of course, Snobs; they existed for years and years, and were no more known than America. But presently,—INGENS PATEBAT TELLUS,—the people became darkly aware that there was such a race. Not above five-and-twenty years since, a name, an expressive monosyllable, arose to designate that race. That name has spread over England like railroads subsequently; Snobs are known and recognized throughout an Empire on which I am given to understand the Sun never sets. PUNCH appears at the ripe season, to chronicle their history: and the individual comes forth ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a daughter—Margaret. She was the most beautiful woman in the world...." I suspect my voice broke a little just there, for there was a shade of respectful sympathy in the monosyllable with which he filled the pause. "He swore she should never marry a Northerner, but she did; I guess, being a Bohun, she had to, after hearing she must not. There were two of us that loved her, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... this phonetically. Lord Braybrooke, in quoting the entry of death from St. Olave's Registers, where the spelling is "Peyps," wrote, "This is decisive as to the proper pronunciation of the name." This spelling may show that the name was pronounced as a monosyllable, but it is scarcely conclusive as to anything else, and Lord Braybrooke does not say what he supposes the sound of the vowels to have been. At present there are three pronunciations in use—Peps, which is the most usual; ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... each side. Here we met many of the natives, who were travelling to the beach with loads of provisions, and courteously bowed their heads as they passed by us, in sign of friendship, generally pronouncing some monosyllable or other, which seemed to correspond to the Otaheitean tays. The inclosures, plantations, and houses, were exactly in the same style as at Ea-oonhe, and the people had never failed to plant odoriferous shrubs round their dwellings. The mulberry, of which the bark is manufactured into cloth, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... in Maya is huun, a monosyllable which reappears in the Kiche vuh and the Huasteca uuh. In Maya this initial h is almost silent and is occasionally dropped, as yuunil Dios, the book of God (syncopated form of u huunil Dios, the suffix il being the "determinative" ending). I am inclined to believe that ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... Money-order posxtmandato. Mongrel hibrida. Monitor avertulo, avertanto. Monk monahxo. Monkey simio. Monograph monografo. Monogram monogramo. Monologue monologo. Monomania monomanio. Monopolise monopoligi. Monopoly monopolo. Monosyllable unusilabo. Monotonous (of form) unuforma. Monotonous (of tone) unutona. Monster monstro. Monstrous monstra. Month monato. Monthly (adj.) cxiumonata. Monument monumento. Mood modo. Moody silentema. Moon luno. Moonlight lunbrilo. Moor stepo. Moor (a ship, etc.) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... monosyllable was strangely expressive, but Dug McFarlane had no understanding of the thought that prompted it. It would have been difficult indeed, even with understanding, to have probed the depths of feeling prompting it. But Whitstone was incapable ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum |
