"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him no response to his expressed surprise and he laughed and said, "D'you know, Rosalie, I don't believe I've ever before heard you use slang." ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... waiting near the door, and held out his hand with a dramatically significant gesture when the little Scotchman entered. "Put her there!" he exclaimed heartily, with an exuberant reversion to the slang ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... take up his wanderings and his discoveries. Some day, I will tell you how he broke his promise to help a friend. That was long since, and he has, by this time, been nearly spoilt for what he would call shikar. He is forgetting the slang, and the beggar's cant, and the marks, and the signs, and the drift of the undercurrents, which, if a man would master, he must always continue ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sudden words in spite of usage and fashionable taste; and that, therefore, when he can get a brighter tint, a more expressive form, by means of some strange—we must call it—Carlylism; English, Scotch, German, Greek, Latin, French, Technical, Slang, American, or Lunar, or altogether superlunar, transcendental, and drawn from the eternal nowhere—he uses it with a courage which might blast an academy of lexicographers into a Hades, void ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and told the facts to Uncle John; and then he turned to the chauffeur, who was fumbling with the tyre—it was something complicated, not only just the bursting—and in a minute or two he was down in the mud giving such practical advice. And you never heard such slang! But I believe men like that sort of thing, as the chauffeur was not a bit ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... men. Frequenters of the now fashionable prize-ring—thanks to two brutes who have brought that degraded pastime into prominent notice—will hear a great deal about a man 'fancying himself.' It is common slang and heeds little explanation. Hook 'fancied himself' from an early period, and continued to 'fancy himself,' in spite of repeated disgraces, till a very mature age. At Harrow, he was the contemporary, but scarcely the friend, of Lord Byron. No two characters could have ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... "Slang!" said Massachusetts, looking up again. "One cent for the missionary fund. You will clothe the heathen at this rate, Maine. That is ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... was done with a view to sending up the shares two hundred francs during the first six months by the payment of a sham dividend. Twenty per cent, on ten millions! Du Tillet's interest in the concern amounted to five hundred thousand francs. In the stock-exchange slang of the day, this share of the spoils was a 'sop in the pan.' Nucingen, with his millions made by the aid of a lithographer's stone and a handful of pink paper, proposed to himself to operate certain nice little shares carefully hoarded in his private office till the time came for putting ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... piled up anguish and apprehension, the peon cries exultantly 'Wah wah! khodawund, lug, gea,' that bullet has told; oh your highness! and while the boat rocks violently to and fro, I abuse the boatmen, slang the syce, and rush to grasp a pole, while the peon seizes another; for we are drifting rapidly down stream, and may at any moment strike on a bank and topple over. We can hear by the growling and commotion on the bank, that my ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... union. It is a thing that must be. But it is remarkable that while the French mind is agog to apprehend every fact and detail it can about the British, to make the wisest and fullest use of our binding necessities, that strange English "incuria"—to use the new slang—attains to its most monumental in ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... chiffon that swept about her neck and heaving shoulders fluttered against his face. Her high-heeled boots trod on his. He seemed one with her. Then she had vanished, and instantly he was in the arms of a huge racing-man, who wore gigantic pink pearls in his shirt front, and bellowed the latest slang to a thin and dissipated companion. It seemed to Julian that he was kicked like a football from one life to another, and that from each life he drew away something as he bounded from it, the fragment of a thought, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... fewer physical signs of excessive debauchery. Here, the number of broken-down young men, and blear-eyed, hoary sinners, is astonishing. I have never been in any place where licentiousness was so open and avowed—and yet, where the slang of a sham morality was so prevalent. There are no houses of prostitution in Stockholm, and the city would be scandalised at the idea of allowing such a thing. A few years ago two were established and the fact was no sooner known than a virtuous ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... you tell Aunt Ann. And now," said Portia, "the first time he does a real nice jolly piece of mischief you come down on him like—like a thousand of bricks." Her slang was reserved for the Squire, as ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... are drawn alike from Paris and Westminster; and the public vehicles partake of the fashions of Lisbon and Long Acre. You hear "Place aux dames" on one side of the street, and "g'lang" on the other; and the United States have contributed their hotel system and their slang. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... young gentleman from Chicago in surprise, and then in pity. He could not understand how any one, and more especially a boy, could be so ignorant of the meaning of one of the most common words of slang. At first he looked as if he was about to reprove such ignorance; but he evidently thought better of it, for ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... months he was thumbing page ten of the grammar, but he had seized upon a good many slang phrases, supercharged ejaculations. Though the undercurrent of his discouragement about his progress was considerable, it interfered little with his acquainting him proficiently with the restaurant world of Dresden. He saw and heard what ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... can; and when it comes to painting them, aerial perspective and anatomical detail must come right. This is the first and the great endowment. And the second is like unto it in—Shall I use the fashionable artistic slang and say preciousness? It is the gift of a dexterous hand, winged with lightness and steady as steel, sensitive as a blind man's finger-tips, yet unerring in its stroke as the piston of a steamship. This is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... cradle since I left you! 'That is no fellow tramp of mine,' you will say, 'That woman being victimized by children in knee-high dresses! Theodosia Baxter nothing!'"—for Cornelia Dunlap in moments of surprise resorted sometimes to slang, which she claimed was a sturdy vehicle of speech. "You will set down your teacup hard," wrote on Miss Theodosia,—"I know you are drinking tea!—when I tell you the little story of the Whitewashing of Theodosia Baxter. But shall I ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... himself, from the day that I was seized with dread of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of Providence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse snorting in her sleep "like a whale," to use a slang expression, I have added a petition to the special litany which I address to Saint-Honore, my patron saint, to the effect that he would save me from indulging in ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... we must drop the old slang since we've given up the old business. These good folks are making a gentleman of you, and I wont be the one to spoil their work. Hold on, my dears, and I'll show you how they say good-morning in California," he added, beckoning ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... her mother was going to be what in the family slang was called "grand." The grandeur consisted in a polite inattention; it went with a soft voice and immobile expression. In this mood Adelaide answered you about three seconds later than you expected, and though she answered you accurately, it was as if she had ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... a confession of jealous fear that I had been, in slang phrasing, "put wise." And sooth to say, I saw ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... into tears. "You've recently," she observed, "got into a new way. Whatever slang you happen to hear outside you come and tell me. And whenever you read any improper book, you poke your fun at me. What! have I ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... unfavorable winds having risen, blowing off at a sad rate the smoke of that abstruse Institution.—"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles the Feldzeugmeister to himself. But "SI DEUS EST NOBISCUM," as Grumkow exclaims once to his beautiful Reichenbach, or NOSTI as he calls him in their slang or cipher language, "If God is with us, who can prevail against us?" For the Grumkow can quote Scripture; nay solaces himself with it, which is a feat beyond what the Devil ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... the Castle exhausted their adulation, and had received their last reward for upholding the appointment. The Tory press, hungry for the spoil which it maddened the others to lose, paid back the compliments by intense vituperation. The slang of party warfare was bandied in the usual fashion, without thought or a care beyond the interest of party. The Register, to everybody's astonishment, took up the one cause not represented, namely, that of the country. Davis denounced the appointment as an insult to that country, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... man should say in their company, that Chaucer was a great poet, one will immediately enquire, "how much?" while another wishes to know if Chaucer is entered for the "Derby?" "How much?" is the invariable slang, whenever a man gets the bit out of his mouth, or, in other words, talks of any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... personages in Jonson's comedy is Captain Tucca. "His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... see Rebecca Mary. I'm going to say it over again. Tomorrow morning, to see Rebecca Mary!" setting apart the syllables with the pointing finger. "You can play in my back yard," said Aunt Olivia, sublimely unconscious of slang. ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... stereotyped in modern slang, and yet the idea could not but have existed under other words in the days of those flush individuals, Midas and Croesus. The first of these moneyed gentlemen found gold too plenty for comfort, while the latter, by his unfortunate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... no means a purist; his pages bristle with neologisms and foreign—or, rather, outlandish—words; nor has he any hesitancy in adapting and Russianizing such words. He coins words; he is, at times, actually Borrowesque, and not only does he resort to colloquialisms and slang, but to dialect, cant, and even actual argot. Therein is his glory—and, perhaps, his weakness. Therefore, an attempt has been made, wherever corruptions, slang, and so forth, appear in the original, to render them through the nearest English equivalents. While ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... time. There is almost a mania for frivolity and excitement, which exhibits itself in many forms in our popular literature. To meet the public taste, our books and periodicals must now be highly spiced, amusing, and comic, not disdaining slang, and illustrative of breaches of all laws, human and divine. Douglas Jerrold once observed of this tendency, "I am convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw about all things. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... more reason to fear Aristophanes than any fool living. Oh, that he could but hear you trying to imitate the slang of Straton (See Aristophanes; Equites, 1375.) and the lisp of Alcibiades! (See Aristophanes; Vespae, 44.) You would be an inexhaustible subject. You would console him ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of thing you need not squander fifteen cents on your favorite magazine. The modest sum of one cent will make you the possessor of a Pink 'Un. There you will find the season's games handled in masterly fashion by a six-best-seller artist, an expert mathematician, and an original-slang humorist. No mere short story dub may hope ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of milk teeth, like white shells. The blue eyes and the baby smile went up, confidingly, to the young ragamuffin's face. There had been kindness here. The boy had taken to Jo, it seemed; and was benevolently evincing it, in the best way he could, by teaching her good-natured slang. ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... ball-room talk will not fail to notice what may be called the exclusive slang of society. He will find people "in society" habitually using a few pet words which they love, not because they are a bit better than the synonyms used by other people, but just because other people don't use them, whereby they serve as a sort of passwords or Masonic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... of office boy to that of secretary for the Corrugated Iron Company. The story is full of humor and infectious American slang. ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... know," answered Grace doubtfully. "She is an enigma. She speaks the most precise English, with absolutely no trace of slang. But she looks as though the whole world were her natural enemy. Elfreda named her the Anarchist. I am rather ashamed to say we call her that ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... with dogged indifference to what any one else was doing. Miss Rutherford sat in the stern of the Tortoise and shouted encouraging remarks from time to time. She had, apparently, boated on the Thames at some time in her life, for she was mistress of a good deal of rowing slang which she used with vigour and effect. It cheered Frank greatly to hear the more or less familiar words, for he realised almost at once that neither Priscilla nor Jimmy Kinsella understood them. He felt a warm affection for Miss Rutherford rise in his heart when she told Jimmy, ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... perfect sincerity. There are plenty of men, especially among those who desire the office of a pedagogue, whose field of vision is constricted to a slit. If they were painters their work would be in the slang of the day, "tight." One small group of facts they see hard and sharp, without atmosphere or value. Their own knowledge having no capacity for extension, no width or relationship to the world at large, they cannot imagine that breadth in itself may be a merit. Adepts in a petty erudition ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... them is sharply drawn. We all live in similar dug-outs, but we bring a new atmosphere into them. In one, full of the odour of Turkish cigarettes, the spoken English is above suspicion; in another, stinking of regimental shag, slang plays skittles with our language. Only in No. 3 is there two worlds blent in one; our platoon officer says that we are a most remarkable section, consisting of literary men ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... twice he actually asked me to dine with him at his club, and I actually did; and actually he with me, at mine! And we spoke French all through dinner, and I taught him a lot of French school-boy slang, with which he was delighted. Then he came to see me in Barge Yard, and I even introduced him to my mother and sister, who couldn't help being charmed with him. He was fond of the best music only (he had no ear whatever, and didn't know a note), and only cared for ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... "propaganda" paper. It had a manner all its own—it was full of ginger and spice, of Western slang and hustle: It collected news of the doings of the "plutes," and served it up for the benefit of the "American working-mule." It would have columns of the deadly parallel—the million dollars' worth of diamonds, or the fancy pet-poodle establishment of a society dame, beside the fate of Mrs. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... cold, as of a charged force: it was like a real person standing motionless in the middle of a picture. (Mr. Parham-Carter did not, of course, use such beautiful similes as these; he employed the kind of language customary to men who have received a public school and university education, half slang and half childishness; but he waved his hands at me and distorted his features, and conveyed, on the whole, the kind of impression I have just ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... There is a slang expression current among the irreverent youth of the present day, when referring to a man wise in his own conceit, to the effect that "what that fellow does not know is torn out." So I, quoting my juniors, begin my talk with the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Warwickshire, and fancy that from merely being born and wandering in those sweet sunny plains and fresh woodlands Shakspeare must have drunk in a portion of that frank artless sense of beauty which lies about his works like a bloom or dew; but a Coventry ribbon-maker, or a slang Leamington squire, are looking on those very same landscapes too, and what do they profit? You theorise about the influence which the climate and appearance of Attica must have had in ennobling those who were born there: yonder dirty, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a liberal man: liberal in the true classical sense, not in the slang sense of modern politicians and education-mongers. Being so, I am sure that you will sympathize with my case. I am an ill-used man, Dr. North—particularly ill used; and, with your permission, I will briefly explain how. ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... language, and when employed impart to it much dignity and beauty; but there is no standard of orthography, nor any grammar, and but few rules of universal application. Every Siamese writer spells to please himself, and the purism of one is the slang or ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... speech over the years, with some checking in the dictionaries. Not all of these are peculiar to Australian slang, but are important in Lawson's ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... parting the population into two camps more or less hostile may be drawn variously; for example, one may be run between the law-abiding and the criminal class. But the elements to which reference is here made are those immemorable and implacable foes which the slang of modern economics roughly and loosely distinguishes as "Capital" and "Labor." A more accurate classification—as accurate a one as it is possible to make—would designate them as those who do muscular labor and those who do ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... expressive slang, so fresh and in such variety. So different from your heavy British slang, in which everything approaching the superlative must be one of three things, 'ripping,' with very distinct articulation on the double p, or 'top hole,' or 'awfully jolly.' More recently, I ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... version "up to date" (as the slang goes) of Our Village, may interest the supporters of the Statesman Mr. ACLAND, without annoying the admirers of the poet ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... fossilized, was for decades notoriously feebleminded, and was yet permitted to continue in his responsible office. A trait, after the manner of the find in the Lido, forces itself upon me here. It was to this man that some youthful colleagues in the hospital adapted the then popular slang of that day: "No Goethe has written that," "No Schiller composed ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... twig"—— This was his sheet-anchor; and, as this also came home, of course the poor man was totally wrecked. It turned out that the dictionary he had used (Arnold's, we think,)—a work of a hundred years back, and, from mere ignorance, giving slang translations from Tom Brown, L'Estrange, and other jocular writers—had put down the verb sterben (to die) with the following worshipful series of equivalents—1. To kick the bucket; 2. To cut one's stick; 3. To go to kingdom come; 4. To ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... and the goose hangs high!" cried the Captain, who on grand occasions was not above a little slang. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... aw can't tell, It's plain to understand; An sure aw am it saands as weel, Tho' happen net soa grand. Tell fowk they're courtin, they're enraged, They call that vulgar slang; But if aw tell 'em they're engaged, That's net mi ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... had not been so good. The old Earl called me to him when he had finished, and talked so beautifully to me; he paid me some such grand old-fashioned compliments, and his voice sounds as if he had learnt elocution in his youth. There is not a word of slang or anything modern; one quite understands how he was able to wake up the House of Lords before his legs gave way. It seems sad that such a ninny as Charlie should succeed him. I feel proud of being related to him, ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... cosmopolitan in that ancient world which he so vividly portrays; he was a barbarian by birth, a Greek by education, and wrote his book in the Romans' language. In his use of luminous slang for literary purposes he was Rudyard ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... had ever met with the phrase—which is doubtful—had certainly never heard it addressed to himself; conceivably he might have once come across it in turning over the pages of a slang dictionary. A tragic expression traversed his bewildered features—and then he ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... on a swagger dress this time!' cried Mr. Tom, who, though he had never been to Oxford, was a genuine free-trader in slang, and was ready to import ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... BUCKETSHOP, a slang financial term for the office or business of an inferior class of stockbroker, who is not a member of an official exchange and conducts speculative operations for his clients, who deposit a margin or cover. The operations consist, as a rule, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Calhoun spoke frequently, and with greater effect. Wisely he never spoke. In his best efforts we see that something which we know not what to name, unless we call it Southernism. If it were allowable to use a slang expression, we should style the passages to which we refer effective bosh. The most telling passage in the most telling speech which he delivered at this session may serve to illustrate our meaning. Imagine these short, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... forget it with your melodious Klaxon working overtime?" queried Tom. "Great Fishes isn't slang, ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... His hearty, humorous greeting seemed to do the sick man good. Herman approached the bed. "Know where you are?" Wallace slowly put out a hand, and Herman took it. "You're coming on all right. Want some breakfast? Make it bucks?" he said, in Chicago restaurant slang. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... to bring along. Of these, O. Henry was the most popular. The little shilling editions were read until they fell to pieces, and in this he held the same position as in the British army. I had been puzzled at this popularity among the English, for much of his slang must have been worse than Greek to them. I also had Charles O'Malley and Harry Lorrequer, Dumas' Dame de Monsereau and Monte Cristo, Flaubert's Education Sentimentale, Gibbon's Rise and Fall, and Borrow's Zincali. ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... smiled, and glanced at her husband's indorsement—"All right. Wade in." "It's nothing but Jim's slang," she said, with a laugh and a slightly heightened color. "He ought not to have sent you by that short cut; it's a bother, and even dangerous for a stranger. If you had come directly to US by the road, without making your first call at the mill," she added, with a touch of coquetry, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... answer with delight at his sympathy in my narration of the sport. I liked very well the American slang that my father's friends were always glad to teach to me, and that gave to him both amusement and delight when I used ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of the animal under consideration. Suffice it to say, that for my own part, diligence hath not been wanting in the research. Johnson's Dictionary and old Bailey, have been ransacked; but neither the learned Johnson, nor the recondite Bailey, throw much light upon this matter. The Slang Dictionary, to which I should in the first place have directed my attention, was unfortunately not within my reach. The result of all my inquiries amounts to this—that bore, boor, and boar, are all three spelt indifferently, and consequently are ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... memory or imagination, just as readily as you would were you observing their occurrence in the mind of a friend. You will find them all stored away in some parts of your mental make-up, and you may (to use a modern American slang phrase) "make them trot before you, and show their paces." Don't you see that they are not "You"—that they are merely something that you carry around with you in a mental bag. You can imagine yourself as living without them, and still ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... meaning, in the slang of the day, "good-for-nothing." "You would take my house by storm! Do you think it is a Boche dugout you charge when ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... for the Sunday-school. I don't want any one to think I am laying claim to the record of having always been a good little boy; nor that everything I did was wise. No; I confess I did my share of deviltry, that some of my deeds were foolish, and (to use the slang of that time) I often got it in the neck. Once I bantered a big fat boy to a fight. He chased me and I ran and crawled into a place so narrow that I knew he couldn't follow me. I crawled under the floor of a shed that was only about six inches above the ground. Fatty was at least ten ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... inventing an arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose of disguising references to functions and parts of the body regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common. Such private slang, growing up independently in families, and especially among women, as well as between lovers, is now almost universal. It is not confined to any European country, and has been studied in Italy by Niceforo (Il Gergo, 1897, cap. 1 and 2), who regards it as a weapon of social defence ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... I get you; but that's only slang. You have been here long enough, I should guess from your talk, to get on to our American guff. Well, we're glad to know ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... is styled 'plew' on board, in the slang of the training-ship; possibly, through some association with the 'sky blue' known in the boarding-schools ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... rattled off slang as if thoroughly familiar with it. But this dampened Thornton's ardor for no ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... always so attractive. The cherubs' wings with which imagination has endowed them drop off, and they subside into cheeky, and sometimes scrubby, little boys, with a tendency towards peppermints, and a strong bias in favour of slang and tricks. The choir-boys of Chenecote, however, had been well-trained under Mr. Smith's ascetic eye; and though he had not drained the humanity entirely out of them, he had persuaded them to perfect cleanliness, if not to perfect godliness. They ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... is deservedly renowned for courage and for crime; his vessels were usually secreted in the land-locked bay of Barataria, to the westward of the mouth of the river. They were, however, soon extirpated by the American government. The language of the adjacent States is still adulterated with the slang of those scoundrels, proving how short a period it is since they disappeared, and how they must have mixed up with the reckless population, whose head-quarters were then at the mouth of ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... hour we took turns listening at the detectaphone. We gathered a choice collection of slang and epithets, but very little real news. However, it was evident that they had a wholesome respect for both the Chief and the Boss. It seemed that the real head of the gang, if it was a gang, had disappeared, as one of the men ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... Murray laughed. "I know that you wanted to use that particular expressive bit of our particularly expressive slang. What I mean is this: People study religion nowadays—that is, English-speaking people—with the Catholic Church left out. Yet she claims the allegiance of over three hundred million people. Without her, Christianity would be merely pitiful. She alone stands firm on her foundation. She alone has ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... for drawing a long bow. His yarns frequently stretched through a watch, and kept all hands awake. They were always amusing from their improbability, and, indeed, he never expected to be believed, but spun them merely for amusement; and as he had some humor and a good supply of man-of-war slang and sailor's salt phrases, he always made fun. Next to him in age and experience, and, of course, in standing in the watch, was an Englishman, named Harris, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. Then, came two or three Americans, who had been the common run of European and South American ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... for the natural and semisynthetic narcotics. Poppy straw concentrate is the alkaloid derived from the mature, dried opium poppy. Qat (kat, khat) is a stimulant from the buds or leaves of Catha edulis that is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... piano and is considered intellectual and artistic. She spent a year at the Conservatoire in Brussels, and often uses French words in conversation. Effie, the youngest, is an adept at games, and rather alarms her mother by her habit of using slang expressions and the ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... C. H. Herford in The Manchester Guardian.—'Bell's talk is full of salt and vivacity, a brilliant stream in which city slang reinforces rustic idiom, and both are re-manipulated by inexhaustible native wit. She is the most remarkable creation in a gallery where not a single figure is indistinct or conventional.... Mr. Gibson's essay—for there is confessedly ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... yourself, Scotch!" advised Jenks, dropping into the slang he had overheard some boy use. "This ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... absolutely special—an old house untouched, untouchable, indescribable, an old corner such as one didn't believe existed, and the holy calm of which made the chatter of studios, the smell of paint, the slang of critics, the whole sense and sound of Paris, come back as so many signs of a huge monkey-cage. He moved about, restless, while he wrote; he lighted cigarettes and, nervous and suddenly scrupulous, put them out again; the night was mild and one of the windows ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... innocence or when intended for uncontaminated ears attains a blank intensity of virtue that our own literature cannot hope to rival. The French "juvenile" still guards that beauteous ignorance of slang or of other small vice which the American schoolboy regards as poverty of resource or incapacity, and which he has put off with his frocks and his Parent's Assistant and his Sanford and Merton. But Marie Derville, when its accent of Berquin is allowed for, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... or Johnson. Language has undergone such changes, even within the last sixty or seventy years, that many words, at that time considered pure, are now obsolete; while others—of which the word "mob" is a specimen—formerly slang, are now used by our best writers, and received, like pardoned outlaws, into the body of respectable citizens.' The standard, accordingly, to which the author refers in the work before us, is the sense in which a word ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... having taken part in their expeditions. Perhaps he told the truth, but his antecedents were accepted in lieu of proof, and he was sent for three years to Poissy. There he made coarse playthings for children, was tattooed on the chest, learned thieves' slang and the penal-code. A new liberation, and a new plunge into the sink of Paris; but very short this time, for at the end of six months at the most he was again compromised in a night robbery, aggravated by climbing and breaking—a serious affair, in which he played ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... when they discovered that the "gentlewoman who had never appear'd on any stage before" could more than hold her own in repartee and give the fops of fashion as good as or better than they gave. How could they tell that the sprightly young budding actress had graduated in the wit and slang of the streets? ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... with them. Quite naturally, as a matter of course, he swung in along-side the dark- eyed one and walked with her. There was no awkwardness on his part, no numb tongue. He was at home here, and he held his own royally in the badinage, bristling with slang and sharpness, that was always the preliminary to getting acquainted in these swift-moving affairs. At the corner where the main stream of people flowed onward, he started to edge out into the cross street. But the girl with the black eyes caught his arm, following him and dragging ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... street slang during his visits to Cottonton, and considered its acquisition a benefit and its use ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... There was the lost and hardened female, uttering the wild screams of intoxication, or pouring forth from her dark, filthy place of confinement torrents of polluted mirth; the juvenile pickpocket, ripe in all the ribald wit and traditional slang of his profession; the ruffian burglar, with strong animal frame, dark eyebrows, low forehead, and face full of coarseness and brutality; the open robber, reckless and jocular, indifferent to consequences, and holding his life only in trust for the hangman, or ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... call it fair to persecute, in this way, at the instigation of a proud aristocrat (he had already learned this slang sophistry), a young man, who is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... activity, rose high. Everywhere was violent advertisement, until his brain swam at the tumult of light and colour. And Babble Machines of a peculiarly rancid tone were abundant and filled the air with strenuous squealing and an idiotic slang. "Skin your eyes and slide," "Gewhoop, Bonanza," ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... ideas they express. Many words become so hackneyed as to be no longer impressive. As late as in 1820, Keats could say, in stanza 6 of his poem of Isabella, that "His heart beat awfully against his side"; but at the present day the word awfully is suggestive of schoolboys' slang. It is here that we may well have the benefit of the principle of "dialectic regeneration." We shall often do well to borrow from our dialects many terms that are still fresh and racy, and instinct with a full significance. ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... ruined by his vanity is very good: but I wish you would not let him plunge into a "vortex of dissipation." I do not object to the thing, but I cannot bear the expression: it is such thorough novel slang; and so old that I dare say Adam met with it in the ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. Real fairies never preach or talk slang. At the end, the little boy or girl wakes up and finds ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... 22d of February, the President greatly damaged his cause by denouncing a Senator and a Representative, and using the slang of the stump against the Secretary of the Senate in the midst of an uproarious Washington mob. The people were mortified that the Executive of the nation should have committed ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... might have thought she was impertinent, for "garn" on cockney lips means "go on, now," in the slang of the United States, and "beller" is not elegant, but Anna knew that she did not intend ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... red, like a bashful woman's. He thought Blecker had divined his secret, would haul it out roughly in another moment. If this slang-talking Yankee should take little Lizzy's name into his mouth! But the Doctor was silent, even looked away until the heat on the poor old bachelor's face had died out. He knew McKinstry's thought of that little girl well enough, but he held the child-hearted man's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... persons of infinitely small merit, what was to be done when those of real superiority entered upon the scene? It was impossible to apply to them the forms of laudation adapted to their inferiors. Well, then, a species of slang was invented, by which it was thought practicable to make the genuine great men conceive they had passed into the condition of demigods. A language was devised that was to express the fervor of the adorers who were suddenly allowed to penetrate into Olympus, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... inane misunderstanding, and sprang from my unfamiliarity with the language. For although two nations use the same words and read the same books, intercourse is not conducted by the dictionary. The business of life is not carried on by words, but in set phrases, each with a special and almost a slang signification. Some international obscurity prevailed between me and the coloured gentleman at Council Bluffs; so that what I was asking, which seemed very natural to me, appeared to him a monstrous exigency. He refused, and that ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... accursed portrait began to intermit its visits under its influence. What of that? Was this singular apparition—as full of character as of terror—therefore the creature of my fancy, or the invention of my poor stomach? Was it, in short, subjective (to borrow the technical slang of the day) and not the palpable aggression and intrusion of an external agent? That, good friend, as we will both admit, by no means follows. The evil spirit, who enthralled my senses in the shape of ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... her? What kind of language do you call that, Margaret Pratt Stillman?" reproved Marjorie, with her best grandmother air. "If you are not careful, the habit of using slang will ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... The slang of art-talk has reached the 'young men' in the furniture warehouses. A friend of mine was recommended a sideboard the other day as not being a Chippendale, but as 'having a Chippendale feeling ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Bailey. "And you'll come near beating, too. We shall have to work harder than ever, but I'll beat Jack Allingham—or bust! Excuse the slang, Gertie, but I've got to relieve ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... conversation. When an occasion arose which seemed to demand a special effort, the talk around the "chuck-wagon" was so riddled with slang from all corners of the earth, so full of startling imagery, that a stranger might stare, bewildered, unable to extract a particle of meaning. And through it blazed such a continual shower of oaths, that were themselves sparks of satanic poetry, that, in the phrase ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Tom would, but that is a boy's word, and it is slang besides. Miss Pomeroy says a lady doesn't use slang. I will use 'great'. No, that isn't much better. ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Skelton "a virulent pamphleteer, who jumbles together French, English, Latin phrases, with slang and fashionable words, invented words, intermingled with short rhymes. Style, metre, rhyme, language, art of every kind, at an end; beneath the vain parade of official style there is only a heap of ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... have the goodness to tell me why I was a jolly fool, and so green, as you call it. Pity people can't teach you foreigners something better than slang. Now then—answer." ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... Her eyes were sparkling, for Wallie's tone implied that the expression was slang ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... was nineteen when I went on the New England rural circuit—to give it a better name. Oh, I've been through all the steps! As soon as I felt a little secure about mother, I ventured to New York in answer to advertisements in The Reflector, and went out 'on the road' at 'fifteen per.'" These slang phrases seemed humorous as they came from her smiling lips, but Douglass knew some little part of the toil ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... slang as one kind of bait and he used to say: "It beats all how it draws." I saw this verified at Ottawa, Kansas, Chautauqua. Giving a Saturday evening lecture he baited the platform with slang, satire and ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... now accompany the student through a day's history. Morning chapel begins at seven; and the gyp calls him at half-past six. In chapel, he commences picking up some knowledge of the powers that be, or the dons, as they are styled in the slang of the university. In general terms, they are the master ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... author, his most eminent acts are written in the pages of the universally read historian above quoted. But he was in reality more of a Tory than it suited Macaulay to represent him, though he gloried in the name of Trimmer, and certainly showed what is called in modern political slang a 'crossbench mind' not only during the madness of the Popish plot, during the greater madness of James's assaults on the Church, the Constitution, and private rights, but also (after the Revolution) towards William of Orange. Born about 1630 he died in April 1695, leaving the ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang line," when I used all the flash words myself ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... social regime which is every day more strongly asserting itself. All the gradations are fast disappearing; the palisades of good manners, dignity, and respect, are vanishing with the hedges; the country is positively inundated with slang and vulgarity—all from the ill-breeding, presumption, and ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... reading of Latin. When, for instance, the slave in a play of Plautus says: "Do you catch on" (tenes?), "I'll touch the old man for a loan" (tangam senem, etc.), or "I put it over him" (ei os sublevi) we recognize specimens of Latin slang, because all of the metaphors involved are in current use to-day. When one of the freedmen in Petronius remarks: "You ought not to do a good turn to nobody" (neminem nihil boni facere oportet) ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... many miles. The California mining system a gambling or lottery transaction. Miner who works his own claim the more successful. Dr. C. a loser in his mining ventures. Another sleep-killer. Bowling-alleys. Bizarre cant phrases and slang used by the miners. "Honest Indian?" "Talk enough when horses fight". "Talk enough between gentlemen". "I've got the dead-wood on him". "I'm going nary cent" (on person mistrusted). All carry the freshness of originality to the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... literature as found its way into Briar Farm filled her with amazement, repulsion and disgust. There was nothing in any modern magazine that at all resembled the delicate, pointed and picturesque phraseology of the Sieur Amadis! Strange, coarse slang-words were used,—and the news of the day was slung together in loose ungrammatical sentences and chopped-up paragraphs of clumsy construction, lacking all pith and eloquence. So, repelled by the horror of twentieth-century "style," she had hidden her manuscripts deeper than ever in the old bureau, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... time of its compilation, that our young men of fashion would at no very distant period be as distinguished for the vulgarity of their jargon as the inhabitants of Newgate; and he therefore conceived it superfluous to incorporate with his work the few examples of fashionable slang that ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... said Louise. She liked to use a bit of slang when it was perfectly safe—as in very good company, or among those she loved; at other ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... in your family know of it—if you could get them to tell you. My two sons studied at a State university, and they would bring me home what they heard—the gossip, the slang, the horrible obscenity. Fourteen fellows in one dormitory using the same bathroom—and on the wall you saw a row of fourteen syringes! And they told that on themselves, it was the joke of the campus. They call the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... do not themselves use slang understand and even appreciate it. The American brand is generally pithy, compact, and expressive, and not always vulgar. Slang is at its worst in contemptuous epithets, and of those the one that is lowest and most offensive seems likely to become a permanent, recognized ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... the guests at the dinner said that the Americans by the introduction of slang were ruining the English language. Mr. James Russell Lowell had come evidently prepared for this controversy. He said that American slang was the common language of that part of England from which the Pilgrims sailed, and that it had been preserved ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... go away? There is no such thing as society now. Assemblies of well-dressed mobs meet at each other's houses, tear each other's clothes, tread on each other's toes. If you are particularly lucky, you sit on the staircase, you get a tepid ice, and you hear vapid talk in slang phrases all round you. There is modern society. If we had a good opera, it would be something to stay in London for. Look at the programme for the season on that table—promising as much as possible on paper, and performing as little as possible on the stage. ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... pipe all hands etcetera is in that comic opera I'm illustrating and doing the costumes for, and I've got it on the brain. Have you noticed," he went on, "that Carville seems to have no professional slang?" ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... for the purpose of preying upon the patriots, and then retreating behind the shelter of the royal fortifications, were composed of the vilest miscreants that could be gathered from the dregs of any community, and were generally known by the slang ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... crusading hero of the song, and put the slang for "sergeant" in his stead, Jacqueline leaned back on the gunwale quite contented. She fell to gazing on the transparent emerald of the inshore, and plunged in her hand. The soft, plump wrist turned baby pink under the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... parted in the middle, and his moustache bristled with a martial ardour. He had lately bought a fine set of artificial teeth, which, with pardonable pride, he constantly exhibited to the admiration of all and sundry. Major Forsyth's consuming desire was to appear juvenile; he affected slang, and carried himself with a youthful jauntiness. He vowed he felt a mere boy, and flattered himself that on his good days, with the light behind him, he might ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... her out in the snow to cool her hot blood. What right has she to attract Ware and make him neglect that dear angel over there? See, yonder is Daisy. There's a face, there's charm, there's hair!" finished Mrs. Parry, quite unconscious that she was using the latest London slang. "I ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... of wool, however, did in those days bring with it much profit, so that our ancient friend, when dying, was declared, in whatever slang then prevailed, to cut up exceeding well. For sons and daughters there was ample sustenance with assistance of due industry; for friends and relatives some relief for grief at this great loss; for aged dependents comfort in declining years. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... supporting them, stood for the new politics instead of the old,—the replacement of the war issues and their sequels by the matters of clean administration, sound currency, and interests common alike to the whole nation. But the Republican leaders found their best campaign material in what the slang of the time called "waving the bloody shirt,"—reviving the cry of abuse of the freedmen, suppression of the negro vote, and the need of national protection for the nation's wards. It was out of keeping with Hayes's record, and with his ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... recount things as discreetly as possible, frightened by the very words he spoke, the horrors he had to relate in that sphere of superlative luxury and enjoyment, before those happy ones who possessed all the gifts of this world; for—to use a slang expression—he fully realised that he sang out of tune, and in most uncourteous fashion. What a strange idea of his to have called at the hour when one has just finished dejeuner, when the aroma of hot coffee flatters happy digestion. Nevertheless he went on, and even ended by ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... he exclaimed, a weak smile on his lips. "I'm no boob!" Obviously, he meant this lapse into the slang of the Tenderloin to convey his intimate knowledge of police methods. "You can't soft-soap me! You don't want explanations! You want me to get myself in bad. But you won't get anything out of me. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin |
