"Vowel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... topper, domuitio, redhostire, and wonder that they could have only preceded by a few years the Latin of Cicero, and were contemporary with that of Gracchus. Accius, like so many Romans, was a grammarian; he introduced certain changes into the received spelling, e.g. he wrote aa, ee, etc. when the vowel was long, reserving the single a, e, etc. for the short quantity. It was in acknowledgment of the interest taken by him in these studies that Varro dedicated to him one of his many philological treatises. The date of his death ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the Japanese vowels and consonants follows closely the Italian; in diphthongs and triphthongs each vowel is given ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... irregular verbs are given in parenthesis in the following order: Present, Future, Past Absolute, Past Participle. All radical-changing verbs have the vowel change indicated in parenthesis. Any other forms are specially marked. Adjectives, adverbs, prepositions are indicated only in cases of possible confusion of ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... bubbling cry and sink. The compromise at which I have arrived is indefensible, and I have no thought of trying to defend it. As I have stuck for the most part to the proper spelling, I append a table of some common vowel sounds which no one need consult; and just to prove that I belong to my age and have in me the stuff of a reformer, I have used modification marks throughout. Thus I can tell myself, not without pride, that I have added a fresh ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the aspirate, Fuddy-Duddy, the incapable terrapin, came to a dead halt, and before the vowel had died away up the ravine had folded up all his eight legs and lain down in the dusty road, regardless of the effect upon his derned skin. The queer little man slid off his seat to the ground and started up the dell without deigning to look back to see ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... vowel A is formed by opening the mouth widely: A. Its vowels are to be given the ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... should prove a matter of fact, as capable of exact scientific demonstration as any other, that the Consonant and Vowel Elements of Oral Language are, in a radical and important sense, repetitory of, or correspondential with, Musical Tones or the Elements of Music, as well as with Chemical Elements, and these again with the Elements of Numerical Calculation, of Form, or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that are not emphatic, but usually the metrical accent of any given word corresponds to its logical accent. The accentuation of a syllable tends to lengthen the time used in the pronunciation of that syllable, and so we call it long, although the sound of its vowel may be short. Short syllables are those which are unaccented, even though the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... all that in the Y.M.C.A. huts where the padre toils and the layman sweats day and night for the well-being of the soldier men. In some of the huts it is actually possible to get a bath. It is always possible to get dry. 'Twas Black Jack Vowel, good friend Jack, who wrote over to tell us that there was no hut at ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... roke, etc., for foot, etc. And above rhymes in Chaucer to remove. Suspecting that the broader sounds are the older, we may surmise that remove and food have retained their old sounds, and that cook, once coke, would have rhymed to our Luke, the vowel being brought a little nearer, perhaps, to the o in our present coke, the fuel, probably so called as used by cooks. If this be so, the Chief Justice Cook[614] of our lawyers, and the Coke (pronounced like the fuel) of the greater part of the world, are equally wrong. The lawyer ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... be no doubt that the Arabic name, Usdum, is identical with Sodom, by a well-known custom of the language to invert the consonant and vowel of the first syllable. But even this is brought back to the original state in the adjective form. Thus I heard our guides speak of the Jebel Sid'mi, meaning the Khash'm or Jebel ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the sentence was to be marked not by a printer's sign, but by the falling cadence of the rhythm itself. Furthermore, great care should be taken to avoid hiatus between words, as when the first word ends and the word following begins with a vowel. But the glory of style to the classical rhetorician lay in its use of figures. Here rhetoric vindicated its practicality by a preoccupation with the impractical; and here, as in analysis, rhetoric bore the seeds of its own decay. Although Aristotle ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... were taking part in a very completely arranged nightmare, but Gerald was in it too Gerald, who had asked if she was an idiot. Well, she wasn't. But she soon would be, she felt. Yet she went on answering the courteous vowel-talk of these impossible people. She had often heard her aunt speak of impossible people. Well, now she knew ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... language, are likely to be in poetical form. The commonest type is in two well-balanced, rhyming lines. Filipino versification is less exacting in its demand in rhyme than our own; it is sufficient if the final syllables contain the same vowel; thus Rizal says—ayup and pagud, aval and alam, rhyme. The commonest riddle verse contains five or seven, or ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... name of the symbol which we can reach is the Hebrew beth, to which the Phoenician must have been closely akin, as is shown by the Greek [Greek: beta], which is borrowed from it with a vowel affixed. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... made this winter (1831-32) with his Shelleyan "Sonnet to a Cloud" and his imitations of Byron's "Hebrew Melodies," from which he learnt how to concentrate expression, and to use rich vowel-sounds and liquid consonants with rolling effect. A deeper and more serious turn of thought, that gradually usurped the place of the first boyish effervescence, has been traced by him to the influence of Byron, in whom, while others saw nothing more than wit and ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... from Duncan, into the midst of which rushed another from Mrs Catanach, similar, but coarse in vowel and harsh ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the difficulty of drawing them, which takes time and patience, I would almost say that they are more suitable than the Latin alphabet. The ancient Egyptian had our vowels; our o, which is only final and is not like that of the Spanish, which is a vowel between o and u. Like us, the Egyptians lacked the true sound of e, and in their language are found our ha and kha, which we do not have in the Latin alphabet such as is used in Spanish. For example, in this word ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... George Muller's family name is Germanic in origin. Everywhere that his name appears in the printed text, the letter "u" is marked with two dots above it (called an 'umlaut') to show that it is pronounced differently from the way the unmarked vowel is normally pronounced. So his name is usually pronounced in English as Myew-ler, not as ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... forms above them, but which are transcribed differently to reflect morphological considerations; e.g., the form ague from the stem ague. The phonetic values of /au/, /uu/, and /ou/ are [[IPA: Open-mid back rounded vowel]:], [u:], and [o:]. ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... have been the Ashguzai or Ishkuzai of the cuneiform documents. The original name must have been Skuza, Shkuza, with a sound in the second syllable that the Greeks have rendered by th, and the Assyrians by z: the initial vowel has been added, according to a well-known rule, to facilitate the pronunciation of the combination sk, sine. An oracle of the time of Esarhaddon shows that they occupied one of the districts really belonging to the Mannai: and it is probably they who ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... easily provoked; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish; but charity never faileth. And when all our "dialects" on both sides of the water shall vanish, and we shall speak no more Yorkshire or Cape Cod, or London cockney or "Pike" or "Cracker" vowel flatness, nor write them any more, but all use the noble simplicity of the ideal English, and not indulge in such odd-sounding phrases as this of our critic that "the combatants on both sides were by way of detesting ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... vowel i by bringing the jaws still closer to one another, and stretching the two corners of the mouth towards the ears; a, ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... difficult for Colonel House to say no. He might go so far as to utter the first letter of that indispensable monosyllable; but before he accomplished the vowel, his mind would turn to some happy "formula" passing midway between no and yes. He was fertile in these expedients. Daily he would talk of some new "formula," for Fiume, for Dantzig, for the Saar Valley, for the occupation ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... reader, let me add that the name Phillida should be accented on the first syllable, and pronounced with the second vowel short. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... larynx. The distinct sounds, or words, are usually complex in nature, being made up of two or more elementary sounds. These are classed either as vowels or consonants and are represented by the different letters of the alphabet. The vowel sounds are made with the mouth open and are more nearly the pure vibrations of the vocal cords. The consonants are modifications of the vocal cord vibrations produced by the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... of identical or closely similar sounds. According to the circumstances of the identical or similar sounds, four varieties are distinguishable: (1) alliteration, or initial rime, when the sounds at the beginning of accented syllables agree, as tale, attune; (2) consonance, when the vowel sounds differ and the final consonantal sounds agree, as tale, pull; (3) assonance, when the vowel sounds agree and the consonants differ, as tale, pain; and (4) rime proper, when both the vowels and the final consonants ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... are known. But this new hypothesis when tested by the letters of the alphabet is found to break down. The first syllable of Socrates' name is SO. But what is SO? Two letters, S and O, a sibilant and a vowel, of which no further explanation can be given. And how can any one be ignorant of either of them, and yet know both of them? There is, however, another alternative:—We may suppose that the syllable has a separate form or idea distinct from the letters or parts. The all of the parts may ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... roof when it was not preoccupied by woodpeckers, and a printer's devil had once seen a nest-building blue jay enter the composing window, flutter before one of the slanting type-cases with an air of deliberate selection, and then fly off with a vowel in its bill. ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Latin has asked for pointers to aid in pronouncing the scientific names of ferns. Following Gray, Wood, and others we have marked each accented syllable with either the grave (') or acute () accent, the former showing that the vowel over which it stands has its long sound, while the latter indicates the short or modified sound. Let it be remembered that any syllable with either of these marks over it is the accented syllable, whose sound will be long ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... how, a hill (Chapter XII), or the genitive of How, one of the numerous medieval forms of Hugh (Chapter VI). Hind may be for Hine, a farm servant (Chapter III), or for Mid. Eng. hende, courteous (cf. for the vowel change Ind, Chapter XIII), and is perhaps sometimes also an animal nickname (Beasts, Chapter XXIII). Rouse is generally Fr. roux, i.e. the red, but it may also be the nominative form of Rou, i.e. of Rolf, or Rollo, the sea-king ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Tilly Slowboy's constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and installed in such a comfortable home. For the maternal and paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had been bred by public charity, a foundling; which word, though only differing from fondling by one vowel's length, is very different in meaning, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... consonants, which are almost always sacrificed to euphony. And where the language hesitates to make this sacrifice, the vocalists come to the rescue and facilitate matters by arbitrarily changing the difficult vowel or consonant into an easy one. In this they are encouraged by the teachers, who habitually neglect the less sonorous vowels and make their pupils sing all their exercises on the easy vowel A. No wonder, then, that the tones of an Italian singer ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... catch the just pronunciation of a word. For my own part, no language seemed easier to acquire than this; every harsh and sibilant consonant being banished from it, and almost every word ending in a vowel. The only requisite, was a nice ear to distinguish the numerous modifications of the vowels which must naturally occur in a language confined to few consonants, and which, once rightly understood, give a great degree of delicacy to conversation. Amongst ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... words or phrases are capitalized. A few obvious errors have been corrected. Many German names with umlauts have had the umlaut replaced with an 'e' following the vowel (according to standard form) due to the limitations of ASCII. These names are noted in ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... is a free and uninterrupted sound of the voice. The vowel sounds are formed by the voice modified, but not interrupted, by the various positions of ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... vomi. Vomiting vomado. Vomitory vomilo. Voracious englutema. Voracity engluteco. Vortex turnakvo, turnigxado. Vote vocxdoni, baloti. Vouch garantii, atesti. Voucher garantio, garantianto, atesto. Vow dedicxi, promesi. Vow (religious) religia promeso. Vowel vokala. Voyage vojagxo, vojiro. Vulgar vulgara. Vulgarise vulgarigi. Vulgarity vulgareco. Vulgate Latina Biblio. Vulnerable ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the fifteen letters cannot be formed within the conditions. Theoretically, there cannot possibly be more than twenty-three words formed, because only this number of combinations is possible with a vowel or vowels in each. And as no English word can be formed from three of the given vowels (A, E, I, and O), we must reduce the number of possible words to twenty-two. This is correct theoretically, but practically ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... language. The language, which is derived chiefly from Latin, is thence in such a way derived as to have lost the regularity and stateliness of its ancient original, without having compensated itself with any richness and sweetness of sound peculiarly its own; like, for instance, that canorous vowel quality of its sister derivative, the Italian. The French language, in short, is far from being an ideal language ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Castilian. Sometimes they were broken into stanzas of four lines each, thence called redondillas, or roundelays, but their prominent peculiarity is that of the asonante, an imperfect rhyme that echoes the same vowel, but not the same final consonant in the terminating syllables. This metrical form was at a later period adopted by the dramatists, and is now used in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... complicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his native language. This stanza, with alternate and repeatedly recurring rhymes, is borrowed from the Italians. It is peculiarly fitted to their language, which abounds in similar vowel terminations, and is as little adapted to ours, from the stubborn, unaccommodating resistance which the consonant endings of the northern languages make to this sort of endless sing-song.—Not that I would, on that account, part with the stanza ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... The reason of this is that elision marks the period of living growth; as soon as the language had become crystallised, each letter had its fixed force, the caprices of common pronunciation no longer influencing it; and although no correct writer places the unelided m before a vowel, yet the great rarity of elision not only of m but of long and even short vowels (except que) shows that the main object was to avoid it, if possible. The great frequency of elision in Virgil must be regarded as an archaism. (b) In a much lesser variety of rhythm. This ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to M. Ghil and his organ Les Ecrits pour l'Art, it would appear that the syllables of the French language evoke in us the sensations of different colours; consequently the timbre of the different instruments. The vowel u corresponds to the colour yellow, and therefore to the sound of flutes. Arthur Rimbaud was, it is true, first in the field with these pleasant and genial theories; but M. Ghil informs us that Rimbaud was mistaken in many things, particularly in coupling the sound ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Dr. Inman translates as the house "of the hot one" ("Ancient Faiths," vol. i., p. 358; ed. 1868); Bethlehem is generally translated "house of bread," and the doubt arises from the Hebrew letters being originally unpointed, and the points—equivalent to vowel sounds—being inserted in later times; this naturally gives rise to great latitude of interpretation, the vowels being inserted whenever the writer or translator thinks they ought to come in, or where the traditionary reading requires them (see Part 1., ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... symbol [] followed by a vowel represents a macron. The symbol [)] followed by a vowel represents ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... diversities of permutation and combination, furnish grounds for such eternal successions of new speculations as make the facts themselves virtually new. The same Hebrew words are read by different sets of vowel points, and the same hieroglyphics are deciphered by keys ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... seat themselves and are questioned by the leader of the game and must answer without bringing in a word containing a forbidden vowel. Say the vowel "a" is forbidden, the leader asks—"Are you fond of playing the piano?" The answer "Yes, very much," would be correct as the words do not contain the letter "a." But if the answer were—"Yes, and ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... is what enervates the last Line. But 'twould be still better enervated if Mr. Philips had used only such Words as have very few Consonants in them. For by Consonants, joyn'd with the Vowel O, a Writer may render his Language, in Epick Poetry, just as Sonorous as he will; and by the want of Consonants and by delighting in the other soft Vowels he may render it weak. I cannot see that Mr. PHILIPS has any Line where the Language is wholly enervated. But see how Spencer ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... two forms, Latin-1 and ASCII-7. The only differences are in the way fractions are displayed (as a single character, or as "number/number") and the first vowel in "Caesar" (one letter ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... dome resounded Y! In sullen vengeance, I, disdain'd reply: The pedant swung his felon cudgel round, And knock'd the groaning vowel ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... languages it has a sixth vowel, viz. "r"—hence such words as "Srb" (Serb), "trg" (place or square), and "Trst" (Triest). It is only necessary to roll the "r" to overcome this seeming anomaly of a collection of consonants. The language is spoken exactly as it is written, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... her mouth, as one opens it to pronounce the vowel a, and motioned to the child to open her mouth in the same manner. Then the mistress made her a sign to emit her voice. She did so; but instead of a, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... she—like many children, however,—learned writing before reading. Not she herself, meek and yielding by nature, but some peculiar quality of her mind, obstinately refused in reading to harness a vowel alongside of a consonant, or vice versa; in writing, however, she would manage this. For penmanship along slanted rulings she, despite the general wont of beginners, felt a great inclination; she wrote bending low over the paper; blew on the paper ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... twelve, or fourteen. Southey cannot believe that the prudent and practical Chaucer would have placed his verse, intended for general reception, in the jeopardy of a reader's discretion for determining when the verse required the sounding, and when the silence, of a vowel, by its nature free to be sounded or left silent, as exigency might require. But he misapprehends the proposed remedy; and the discretion which he supposes is not given. In the two languages from which ours is immediately derived, the Anglo-Saxon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... six without the language. But the national linguistic gift inherent in the Dutch race came to the boy's rescue, and as the roots of the Anglo-Saxon lie in the Frisian tongue, and thus in the language of his native country, Edward soon found that with a change of vowel here and there the English language was not so difficult of conquest. At all events, he set out to ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... the belief in the existence of an almighty God who was One, the inscriptions show us that this Being was called by a name which was something like Neter, [Footnote: There is no e in Egyptian, and this vowel is added merely to make the word pronounceable.] the picture sign for which was an axe-head, made probably of stone, let into a long wooden handle. The coloured picture character shews that the axe-head was fastened into the handle ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... the central spot of the Forest in the Druid time, would account for these trees being now so much more numerous round the Speech House than they are in any other part of the woods. The Saxon name is merely the word holy with the vowel shortened, as in holiday; and that the tree really was regarded as holy is shown by the custom in the Forest Mine Court of taking the oath on a stick of holly held in the hand. This custom survived down to our own times; for Kedgwin ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... retired to a house he had built at "Pater Noster Valley," and after a few months left the country. His great services in reducing the Maori language to written form have hardly been sufficiently recognised. Marsden, like the other settlers, could never adapt himself to the Italian vowel sounds, and at his request Kendall wrote out a new vocabulary on a different system; but he soon found it unsatisfactory, and returned to the principles which he had worked out with Professor Lee. For the rest of his life—in South America ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... the asperity and discordance of our speech, and in general, this reproach is just, for there are many persons who do scanty justice to the vowel-elements of our language. Although these elements constitute its music they are continually mistreated. We flirt with and pirouette around them constantly. If it were not so, English would be found full of beauty and harmony of sound. Familiar with the maxim, "Take care of the vowels and the consonants ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... as vowels with a line over them, were used in the original to indicate a vowel followed by an 'm' or 'n'. They have been expanded as follows (the contraction is marked by [] ...
— A Declaration of the Causes, which mooved the chiefe Commanders of the Nauie of her most excellent Maiestie the Queene of England, in their voyage and expedition for Portingal, to take and arrest in t • Anonymous
... these lists proceed upon a regular gradation of pronunciation, while in Dilworth they follow such confusing and arbitrary order as is indicated by the heading, "Words of five, six, etc., letters, viz.: two vowels and the rest consonants; the latter vowel serving only to lengthen the sound of the former, except where it is otherwise marked," which is nearly as luminous as a direction in knitting. Each offers illustrated fables as reading lessons, and shorter sentences are provided for first ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... to' dhe anallogists ov oddher diccions, dhat hiddherto', in Inglish exhibiscion, evvery vowel and evvery consonant ar almoast az often falsifiers az immages ov dhe truith. Hetteroggraphy indeed, or false litterary picture, can arize onely from won, or a combinacion, ov foar cauzes: redundance, defiscience; mischoice, ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston
... Edmonde seems to be smiling in his sleeve as he writes this sentence. He instinctively saw the absurdity of attempting to subdue English to misunderstood laws of Latin quantities, which would, for example, make the vowel in "debt" long, in the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... if he had been wielding sword and buckler in an opera, and his narrow chest swelled under the tight buttons of his ragged old frock-coat. Every English word he spoke was supplemented by an Italian vowel, so that his language, though it was perfectly fluent and correct, sounded quite foreign. His extraordinary height and leanness made him grotesque to look at, but neither the comicality of his figure nor his theatrical voice and gesture could kill the fact that he was in earnest, and I ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... second of the lines above quoted elision is impossible, in the first elision is demanded. The reason why elision is sometimes demanded is that in certain lines, as in the one which opens ‘Orpheus in Hades,’ the hiatus which occurs when a word ending with a vowel is followed by a vowel beginning the next word may be so great as to become intolerable. The reason why elision is sometimes a merely allowable beauty is that when a word ends with w, r, or l, to elide the liquids is to secure a kind of ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the Hebrew language is aware that we have in the conjugation of our verbs a mode known as the 'intensive voice,' which, by means of an almost imperceptible modification of vowel-points, intensifies the meaning of the primitive root. A similar significance seems to attach to the Jews themselves in connection with the people among whom they dwell. They are the 'intensive form' of any nationality whose language and customs they ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... jackanapes see that he was mistaken. Yes! he would let him see how much he was mistaken, the puppy! He, Touch-and-go Bullet-head, of Frogpondium, would let Mr. John Smith perceive that he, Bullet-head, could indite, if it so pleased him, a whole paragraph—aye! a whole article—in which that contemptible vowel should not once—not even once—make its appearance. But no;—that would be yielding a point to the said John Smith. He, Bullet-head, would make no alteration in his style, to suit the caprices of any Mr. Smith in Christendom. Perish so vile a thought! The O forever; He would ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... must be instructive as well as interesting, and that no artificial system of vowel classification ought to interfere with the free ...
— New National First Reader • Charles J. Barnes, et al.
... of mankind, and in throwing a "bloody spittle of contempt" at life. A "bloody spittle," as is known from Arthur Rimbaud's sonnets on consonants, stands before the eyes of everyone who pronounces the vowel i, just as the vowel a brings up the picture of "black, shaggy flies, which buzz around terribly ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... points of the leading sled. At the rear the "pusher off" half reclined, graceful and nonchalant. With the exception of the steersman, who was too busy, each had his mouth wide open and was expirating in one long-drawn continuous vowel-sound. This vowel-sound was originally the first part of the word "out." It had long since become conventionalized, but still served its purpose ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... other allied Semitic races began to use the alphabet. Each letter was named from a word beginning with it. The Greeks learned the alphabet from the Phoenicians, and the Greeks, in turn, passed it to the Romans. The alphabet continually changed from time to time. The old Phoenician was weak in vowel sounds, but the defect was remedied in the Greek and Roman alphabets and in the alphabets of the Teutonic nations. Fully equipped with written and spoken speech, the nations of the world were prepared for the interchange of thought ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... working up my Handbook of Arabic. I also design a skeleton dictionary of Arabic-English. I have got a valuable book from Algiers (if it had but vowel points!). But I cannot publish until I have money to spare. Meanwhile I work hard ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... under which Gerard and Vowel were executed in 1654, Slingsby and Hewit in 1658, are the most flagrant instances of Cromwell's perversion of justice, and contempt for the old liberties of England. But they ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... × [Yod, Vav, He, or Aleph] terminates a word, and has no vowel either immediately preceding or following it, it is often rejected; as in × ×™ [GI], ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... 'Rama,' 'fire,' or 'quality,' there being considered to be three Ramas, three kinds of fire, three qualities (guna); for 4 were used 'veda,' 'age,' or 'ocean,' there being four of each recognized; 'season' for 6, because they reckoned six seasons; 'sage' or 'vowel,' for 7, from the seven sages and the seven vowels; and so on with higher numbers, 'sun' for 12, because of his twelve annual denominations, or 'zodiac' from his twelve signs, and 'nail' for 20, a word incidentally bringing in finger ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... to illustrate a complete dissertation on the methods of expression in serious poetry from the fifty-one lines of the Dies Irae. Rhyme, alliteration, cadence, and adjustment of vowel and consonant values,—all these things receive perfect expression in it, or, at least, in the first thirteen stanzas, for the last four are a little inferior. It is quite astonishing to reflect upon the careful art or the felicitous accident ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... where a new word to express a new idea is made by combining two or more old words, or by changing the vowel of one word, or by changing the ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... Roman used -q, as -pis- for -quis-; just as languages otherwise closely related are found to differ; for instance, -p is peculiar to the Celtic in Brittany and Wales, -k to the Gaelic and Erse. Among the vowel sounds the diphthongs in Latin, and in the northern dialects generally, appear very much destroyed, whereas in the southern Italian dialects they have suffered little; and connected with this is the fact, that in composition the Roman weakens the radical vowel otherwise ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the point of the tale depends on the difference between an i with a macron (long vowel) and an i with a breve (short vowel) These have been represented as [i] ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... a number of grammatical peculiarities, the distinctive forms for the subjunctive mood for example and most of its irregular plurals were abolished; its spelling was systematised and adapted to the vowel sounds in use upon the continent of Europe, and a process of incorporating foreign nouns and verbs commenced that speedily reached enormous proportions. Within ten years from the establishment of the World ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... is the natural an' conjayneal ripriseentitive of the ancient Oioneean. It's vowel-sounds, its diphthongs, its shuperabundince of leginds, all show this most pleenly. So, too, if we apploy this modern Oineean to a thransleetion of Homer, we see it has schtoopindous advantages. The Homeric neems, the ipithets, and the woild alterneetion of dacthyls an' spondees, may all ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... the crowd of faces in a ballroom, my eye was caught by the pose of a province that stood out in graphic mystery from the western coast. It made a striking figure there, with its deep-bosomed bays and its bold headlands. Its name, it appeared, was Noto; and the name too pleased me. I liked its vowel color; I liked its consonant form, the liquid n and the decisive t. Whimsically, if you please, it suggested both womanliness and will. The more I looked the more I longed, until the desire carried me not simply off my feet, but ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... of syllables. If circuitous phrases and needless expletives distract the attention and diminish the strength of the impression produced, then do surplus articulations do so. A certain effort, though commonly an inappreciable one, must be required to recognize every vowel and consonant. If, as all know, it is tiresome to listen to an indistinct speaker, or read a badly-written manuscript; and if, as we cannot doubt, the fatigue is a cumulative result of the attention needed to catch ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the course of generations. The methods of versification change, and, after line 2647, "there are traces of change in the language. The word co, followed by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never again reappears. The vowel i, of li, nominative masculine of the article" (li Reis, "the king"), "never occurs in the text after line 2647. Up to that point it is elided or not at pleasure.... There is a progressive tendency towards hiatus. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... Americans, bearing colored leis, or wreaths of flowers, which they waved at friends on board, and with which they bedecked them as soon as they came off the gangplank. It was a Babel of tongues in which the strange, vowel-choked language of the ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... then, of these two causes—universal reading and climatic influences—we must ascribe our habit of dwelling upon vowel and diphthongal sounds, or of drawling, if that term is insisted upon.... But it is often noticed by foreigners as both making us more readily understood by them when speaking our own tongue, and as connected ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... prefixes ending in a vowel (except bi and tri) when using them before a vowel: co-exist. When using such a prefix before a consonant do not use the hyphen except to distinguish the word from a word of the same letters but of different meaning: correspondent, but co-respondent (one called to answer a summons); recreation, ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... would explain why so many persons formerly bore two names, as "Hooker alias Vowel." Illegitimacy may have sometimes caused it: but this will not explain those cases where the bearers ostentatiously set forth both names. Perhaps they were the names of both parents, used even by lawfully born persons to distinguish themselves ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... It always gave President Boomer a chance to speak of the final letter "m" in Latin poetry, and to say that in his opinion the so-called elision of the final "m" was more properly a dropping of the vowel with a repercussion of the two last consonants. He supported this by quoting Ammianus, at which Dr. Boyster exclaimed, "Pooh! Ammianus: more dog Latin!" and appealed to Mr. Tomlinson as to whether any rational man nowadays cared what ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... the woman in their parlance replaced the letter 'r' by vowel sounds almost too obscure to be represented, except where it came last in a word before a word beginning with a vowel; there it was annexed to the vowel by a strong liaison, according to the custom universal in rural ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is chosen by Homer, picturing himself as Demodocus, to sing at the games in the court of Alcinous. Phaeacia is the Homeric island of Atlantis; an image of noble and wise government, concealed, (how slightly!) merely by the change of a short vowel for a long one in the name of its queen; yet misunderstood by all later writers, (even by Horace, in his "pinguis, Phaeaxque"). That fable expresses the perpetual error of men in thinking that grace and dignity can only be reached ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... represent the sound of words. It was in its origin a hieroglyphic system, each word having its own graphic representative. Nor would it have been possible to write Chinese in any other way. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. No word is allowed more than one consonant and one vowel,—the vowels including diphthongs and nasal vowels. Hence the possible number of words is extremely small, and the number of significative sounds in the Chinese language is said to be no more than 450. No language, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... thing in vision, or thought as well as sound. So he has everlasting variation; manages his storms and billows; and so I think his music is greater in effect than Homer's—would still be greater, could we be sure of Homer's tones and vowel- values; as I think his vision goes deeper into the realm of the Soul and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... expressions and Indian roots than that of the Porto Rican "jibaro" and is more easily understood by the outsider. Slight differences of pronunciation are noticeable in different parts of the country: the people of Seibo are inclined to use the vowel "i" instead of the consonant "r" and say "poique" instead of "porque," somewhat as the New York street urchin says "boid" for "bird"; the people of Santiago sometimes drop the "r" entirely and say "poque," ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... move his arms slightly, he was still so tangled that he could do nothing except await whatever fate was in store for him. Two persons came into the room; he heard them speak sharply and knew then that they were Chinese; there was no mistaking the outlandish inflection of vowel and consonant. In a second rough hands were laid upon him and he was dragged away from the wall. He gave a few last futile wrenches and then lay still, face ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... is writing a curve the conditions are changed, and it sways forward to nearly its original position. This elongates the initial part of the sound curve. This fact is of little importance in the study of a single vowel, for the earlier part of the curve may be disregarded, but if the entire record is to be measured it is a source of error. Hensen[16] first turned the phonautograph to account for the study of speech. He used a diaphragm of goldbeater's skin, of conical shape, with ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... case of 'leap,' which has two preterite-forms, both employed by Shelley (See for an example of the longer form, the "Hymn to Mercury", 18 5, where 'leaped' rhymes with 'heaped' (line 1). The shorter form, rhyming to 'wept,' 'adapt,' etc., occurs more frequently.)—one with the long vowel of the present-form, the other with a vowel-change (Of course, wherever this vowel-shortening takes place, whether indicated by a corresponding change in the spelling or not, "t", not "ed" is properly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... philologist to say. The days of the Kates, and Dollys, and Pattys, and Bettys, have passed away, and in their stead we hear of Lowinys, and Orchistrys, Philenys, Alminys, Cytherys, Sarahlettys, Amindys, Marindys, &c. &c. &c. All these last appellations terminate properly with an a, but this unfortunate vowel, when a final letter, being popularly pronounced like y, we have adapted our spelling to the sound, which produces a complete bathos to all ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... fail to make their words intelligible to the listener, and in the majority of cases this is due to insufficient stressing of the consonants. Vowel tones carry, while consonants do not. If we want to shout to anyone we call out "Hi" or "Hey": never by any chance do we try to reach them with a "P-p-p-p-p" or a "T-t-t-t-t," and for precisely this reason. If, therefore, a singer wishes his words to carry to the ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... and Chapter of St. Paul's. The first stage in the corruption took place in France, and the name must have been introduced into this country as Vast. This loss of the middle consonant is in accordance with the constant practice in early French of dropping out the consonant preceding an accented vowel, as reine from regina. The change of Augustine to Austin is an analogous instance. Vast would here be pronounced Vaust, in the same way as the word vase is still sometimes pronounced vause. The interchange of v and f, as in the cases of Vane and Fane ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... in expressing lively description, haste, fear, command, etc., and consists of an abrupt and forcible utterance, usually more or less explosive, and falls on the first part of a sound or upon the opening of a vowel, and its use contributes much to distinct pronounciation. It is not common to give a strong, full and clear radical stress, yet this abrupt function is highly important in elocution, and when properly used in public reading or ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... brackets indicate that the original text has a music note symbol over the succeeding word, e.g., [1/4] a quarter note. A vowel with an umlaut indicates that the word or syllable has two dots over it in the original text, presumably to indicate that it should be prolonged when sung. See the ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... locative case, the final vowel indicating to the locative having been dropped for sandhi. Niravishan is an adverb, equivalent to samyak-abhinivesam kurvan. Tattadeva means "those and those" i.e., possessions, such as putradaradikam. Kusalan is sarasaravivekanipunan. Ubhayam is explained as karma-mukhin and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... modern form, with the following exception:—Where the spelling indicates a different pronunciation, necessary for the rhyme or the measure, I retain such part of the older form, marking with an acute accent any vowel now silent which must ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... but necessary in his situation, was, at the very same time, exercised by the protector, in the capital punishment of Gerard and Vowel, two royalists, who were accused of conspiring against his life. He had erected a high court of justice for their trial; an infringement of the ancient laws which at this time was become familiar, but one to which no custom or precedent could reconcile the nation. Juries were found ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... this instrument every sound struck on the keys represents a certain vowel-consonant sound. Thus the listener hears the sounds more distinctly than we hear ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... Flanders, With his finest of armies and proudest of navies, To wreak his old grudge against Jefferson Davis. Then "forward the column," he said to McDowell; And the Zouaves, with a shout, Most fiercely cried out, "To Richmond or h—ll" (I omit here the vowel), And Winfield, he ordered his carriage and four, A dashing turn-out, to be brought to the door, For a pleasant excursion to Richmond. Major-General Scott Had there on the spot A splendid array To plunder and slay; In the camp he might boast ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... feelings and the interest of the situation, without interrupting the action. I have therefore refrained from interrupting the actor in the fervor of his dialogue by introducing the accustomed tedious ritournelle; nor have I broken his phrase at an opportune vowel that the flexibility of his voice might be exhibited in a lengthy flourish; nor have I written phrases for the orchestra to afford the singer opportunity to take a long breath preparatory to the accepted flourish; nor have I dared to hurry over the second part of an aria, when such contained the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... a vowel indicates the long sound of that vowel shortened, or without the vanish. It is used in unaccented syllables, as in s[)e]n[a]te, [e]-v[)e]nt, ...
— A Manual of Pronunciation - For Practical Use in Schools and Families • Otis Ashmore
... regret, and longing; and it has the soft musical sound that pervades the whole composition. It is exceedingly interesting to note, as has already been mentioned, how Goldsmith altered and altered these lines until he had got them full of gentle vowel sounds. Where, indeed, in the English language could one find more graceful melody ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... highest degree of respect. 2. Bitter hatred. 3. A common and useful covering for the floor. 4. A model of excellence. 5. A woman's name. 6. A sharp instrument. 7. A curved structure. 8. Congealed water. 9. An adverb. 10. A vowel. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... slightly on the last word, its second vowel making quite a musical note, of wonderful expressiveness. The clear decision of his cousin's ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... from 'copies' and are therefore full of errors, which are due for the most part, doubtless, to the copyist and not to the sculptor. It is not difficult, however, in most cases under consideration here, to restore the correct reading. Usually only vowel signs are omitted or misread and, here, and there, consonants closely resembling one another as va and cha, va, and dha, ga and ['s]a, la ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... the first and best of all things. In the tenth chapter he names with great particularity sixty-six classes of things in which he is always the first: the first of elephants, horses, trees, kings, heroes, etc. "Among letters I am the vowel A." "Among seasons I am spring." "Of the deceitful I am ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... lady? What, the Rhodian? Form and face, Victory's self upsoaring to receive The poet? Right they named you . . . some rich name, Vowel-buds thorned about with consonants, Fragrant, felicitous, rose-glow enriched By the Isle's unguent: some diminished end In ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... was of course a corollary, the refrain forming the close to each stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt, and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel in connection with r as the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the syntax. The roots are, as a rule, bilateral or trilateral, composed (that is) of two or three letters, all of which are consonants. The consonants determine the general sense of the words, and are alone expressed in the primitive writing; the vowel sounds do but modify more or less the general sense, and are unexpressed until the languages begin to fall into decay. The roots are, almost all of them, more or less physical and sensuous. They are derived in general ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... S'iring are said to appear in the likeness of some near relative of the wanderer in the forest (s-, prefix widely used by mountain Bagobo before an initial vowel of a proper name; iring, ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... 'that is where you clever people make a mistake. You think that because a donkey has only two vowel-sounds wherewith to express his emotions, he has no emotions to express. But let me ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... please also to observe that there is not, to the best of my remembrance, one vowel gaping on another for want of a caesura in this whole poem. But where a vowel ends a word the next begins either with a consonant or what is its equivalent; for our w and h aspirate, and our diphthongs, are plainly such. The greatest latitude I take is in the letter y when it concludes ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... After losing something of this force, an was still used before vowels and consonants alike; as, an eagle, an ball, an hair, an use. Still later, and for the sake of ease in speaking, the word came to have the two forms mentioned above; and an was retained before letters having vowel sounds, but it dropped its n and became a before letters having consonant sounds. This ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... tone emission is, first of all, the cultivation of the breath prop, then attacking the vowel sound o o in the medium voice, which requires a low position of the larynx, and exercises on the ascending scale until the higher notes have been brought down, as it were, and gain some of the body and support of the lower notes without losing ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... which appears frequently in the native names, is used to indicate a sound between the obscure vowel e, as in sun, and ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... a delicate little poem in which we regret the presence of one inexcusably bad rhyme. To rhyme the words "rose" and "unclosed" is to exceed the utmost limits of poetic license. It is true that considerable variations in vowel sounds have been permitted; "come" makes, or at least used to make, an allowable rhyme with "home", "clock" with "look", or "grass" with "place"; but a final consonant attached to one of two otherwise rhyming syllables positively ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... on Abraham, or more correctly "Abraha," for the genius of the Eskimo language always requires a name to end with a vowel. He is also an excellent and intelligent native assistant. He and his Pauline were very pleased to see us, and expressed themselves in the same strain as the former couple. As his harmonium and violin show, he is very musical; indeed, ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... theories about spelling, but also that he found means, though his sight was gone, to ascertain whether his rules had been carried out by his printer; and in itself this fact justifies a facsimile reprint. What the principle in the use of the double vowel exactly was (and it is found to affect the other monosyllabic pronouns) it is not so easy to discover, though roughly it is clear the reduplication was intended to mark emphasis. For example, in the speech of the Divine Son after the battle ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... vowels; these typically occur as the first vowel in a Malay word (mostly e, but sometimes a, i, u). Letters with breve accents have been replaced with just the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... vowel-peals throughout the passage, now shut and anon opened by the scheme of consonants; now continuous, anon modulated by delicate pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something remarkably like ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and overcome leant back awhile, etc. (line 511.) The form leant is retained here, as the stem-vowel, though unaltered in spelling, is shortened in pronunciation. Thus leant (pronounced 'lent') from lean comes under the same category as crept from creep, lept from leap, cleft from cleave, etc.—perfectly normal forms, all of them. In ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... be represented in the latin-1 character set are shown as: [oe] oe ligature [e,] "e caudata": equivalent to ae or ae [u] [e] vowel with circumflex (also a and o) ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... marked difference from both is the substitution of s or z, with a tendency, intensified in later Cornish, to the sound of j or ch, for d or t of Welsh and Breton. Cornish agrees with Breton in not prefixing a vowel (y in Welsh) to words beginning with s followed by a consonant, and its vowel sounds are generally simpler and less diphthongalised than those of Welsh. It agrees with Welsh in changing what one may call the French u sound into ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... ridiculed in Ben Jonson's Comedies:—he is not without rivals even in the present day! Covarruvias, after others of his school, discovers that when male children are born they cry out with an A, being the first vowel of the word Adam, while the female infants prefer the letter E, in allusion to Eve; and we may add that, by the pinch of a negligent nurse, they may probably learn all their vowels. Of the pedantic triflings of commentators, a controversy ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... text, some place and personal names were printed with a macron over a vowel or vowels. These are shown in this text as follows. For example [a] means a macron appeared over the letter "a" in the text, as in K[a]-ye-fah. S[aa]-hanh-que-ah indicates a single macron appeared over two consecutive "a" characters in ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... comprehend this then. And so I fashioned my apt phrases, and weighed my synonyms, and echoed this or that vowel very skilfully, I thought, and alliterated my consonants with discretion. In fine, I did not overlook the most meticulous device of the stylist; and I enjoyed it. It was a sort of game; and they taught ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... accent falls on a vowel, that vowel should have a long sound, as in vo'cal; but when it falls on or after a consonant, the preceding vowel has a short sound, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... team to halt; and so acted the dogs that Pouchskin was driving—all five suddenly coming to a dead stop! Pouchskin endeavoured to urge them forward—crying out the usual signal, Ha; but, in his anxious eagerness, Pouchskin placed the accent after the vowel, instead of before it; and instead of Ha! his exclamation sounded Ah! The latter being the command for the dogs to halt, of course only kept them steady in their places; and they stood without offering to move ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... a word ends with a vowel, and the next syllable begins with the same vowel, the hyphen is placed between the syllables to indicate that the two vowels do not form a diphthong, that is, that they should not be ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... has to slur over the pronunciation of "Paradise," making the last vowel short, so as to explain the misunderstanding about "Paris." I have retained the Paris motif as all through the Middle Ages, wayfarers from and to Paris (wandering scholars or clerics) would be familiar sights to the ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... idiosyncratic in the original. They have not been changed. In the original some letter combinations such as 'em' or 'an' are occasionally represented by the vowel with a line over the top (macron). Such abbreviations have ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... is simply a modified form of singing: the principal difference being in the fact that in singing the vowel sounds are prolonged and the intervals are short, whereas in speech the words are uttered in what may be called "staccato" tones, the vowels not being specially prolonged and the intervals between the words being more distinct. The fact that in singing ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... a famous sneeze by delegating to each of a group some vowel in the word "h—sh!" It shall be "hash" for this one, "hish" for that one, "hush" for still another, and so on. Then the professor counts three, at which all yell together, and the consolidated ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... had devoted years to the subject, having the body of Susanna Crum before my eyes every minute of the time for inspiration, Susanna Crum is what I should have named that maid. Not a vowel could be added, not a consonant omitted. I said so when first I saw her, and weeks of intimate acquaintance only deepened my reverence for the parental genius that had so described ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... fluctuating and evanescent that they go for comparatively little in questions of Etymology. Tan is equivalent to T—n; the place of the dash being filled by any vowel. T is readily replaced by th or d, and n by ng; as is known to every Philological student. The object, which in English we call tin, and its name, are peculiar and important in this connection, as combining ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... your own satisfaction a method for assigning sound values; how will you reach the differences in vowel sounds that prevail in the United States? The New Englander's mouthing of a differs from that of the Northern New Yorker, and both differ greatly from that of the Southerner—indeed, in the different Southern States there is variation.... ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... Anglica" the original title-page and initial letters have been artistically reproduced by the publishers; the text has not been modernized except in the case of the old vowel forms I and U for the consonants J and V. Otherwise, the original spelling and the use of capitals and italics have been retained. The long S has not been retained. With these slight changes one cannot but admire the forceful English in which it is written, and the clearness ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... the string of a great violin, something sinister droned and hummed and subtly threatened. For the hundredth time he made a systematic list of recurrent symbols, noting again the puzzling similarity of the twisted signs, but no sign appeared frequently enough to do vowel work. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... /Lucillius/ is a mere barbarism, the /l/ being doubled to indicate the long vowel: so we ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... sense in his crotchets. He seems to have been annoyed by mispronunciation of his own and other work: and accordingly he adopts (with full warning and explanation) the plan of invariably doubling the consonant after every short vowel without exception. This gives a most grotesque air to his pages, which are studded with words like "nemmnedd" (named), "forrwerrpenn" (to despise), "tunderrstanndenn" (to understand), and so forth. But, in the first place, it fixes for all time, in a most invaluable ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Vowel Philip Marsteller Joseph Greenway William H. Powell Cleon Moore John Rumney ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... Chaldeans and the causes of their ruin Other legends of a confusion of tongues Influence upon Christendom of the Hebrew legends Lucretius's theory of the origin of language The teachings of the Church fathers on this subject The controversy as to the divine origin of the Hebrew vowel points Attitude of the reformers toward this question Of Catholic scholars.—Marini Capellus and his adversaries The treatise ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Mr. Thorpe prints both higdifatu and calidilia. Higdifatu is manifestly vessels of hides, such as skin and leather bottles and buckets. The ig is either a clerical error of the monkish scribe for y, or the g is a silent letter producing the quantity of the vowel. "I buy hides and fells," says the workman, "and with my craft I make of them shoes of different kinds; leathern hose, flasks, and higdifatu." The Latin word in this MS. is casidilia, written with the long ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... so as to indicate the pronunciation. The vowel of the accented syllable is marked by the grave accent (') if long, and by ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar |
