"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wonderfully lovely?" cried Jessie, getting more excited with each adjective, and when the others laughed merrily at the extravagance of her description, she added, defiantly, "I don't care; it is! I'll leave ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... At that unhappy adjective, Sampson jumped up, cast away his patient's hand, forgot her existence—she was but a charming individual—and galloped into ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... them, representing as they do all sections and callings of America, there had returned the ancient spirit of knighthood. I measure my words. I am not exaggerating. If I had to find one single word with which to characterize our boys, I should select the adjective "knightly." ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with a dreadful adjective appended to the fools, and an emphasis in his voice which showed he meant what ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... blond is as inevitable as any epithet marshalled to attend its noun in a last-century poet's dictionary. One would not have it away; one can hear the caress with which the master pronounces it, "making his mouth," as Swift did for his "little language." Nor does the customary adjective fail in later literature. It was dear to the Realist, and it is dear to the Symbolist. The only difference is that in the French of the ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... in a tree and eat nuts?" she asked, hoping that the use of the adjective "large" might ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... word is used in the singular, both by Mir Amman and the original author, Amir Khusru according to a well-known rule in Persian syntax, viz., "a substantive accompanied by a numerical adjective dispenses with the plural termination," as "haft roz," "seven days," not "haft rozha. The Persian term darwesh, in a general sense, denotes a person who has adopted what by extreme courtesy is called a religious life, closely akin ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... Every epithet or adjective beyond what is needed to give the image, is a five-barred gate in the path of the eager ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... impressionistic art is doomed; only symbolism will endure; for symbolism only is there a future. Signor Marinetti, who coined the hideous word, "Futurism," goes still further. Literature, too, must throw off the yoke of syntax. The adjective must be abolished, the verb of the infinite should be always employed; the adverb must follow the adjective; every substantive should have its double; away with punctuation; you must "orchestrate" your language (this ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... looked upon as an adjective; and the passage has been rendered Talis Tirynthius indefessus, which is scarce sense. Callimachus was very knowing in mythology, and is here speaking of the Cyclopian God Acmon, whom he makes the [Greek: theos ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... endeavor to be good," she said, and then flushed with annoyance at the adjective. Half-dazed by the cold as she was, she could not think of a more suitable one. ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... condition of our natural resources and what is being done with them to-day. As a people, we have been in the habit of declaring certain of our resources to be inexhaustible. To no other resource more frequently than coal has this stupidly false adjective been applied. Yet our coal supplies are so far from being inexhaustible that if the increasing rate of consumption shown by the figures of the last seventy-five years continues to prevail, our supplies of ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... late, and, being a good Philadelphian, I am not sure if the nights that succeeded have yet lost for me their novelty. As a consequence, if, in looking back, my days appear to be wholly monopolized by work, my nights seem consecrated as wholly to amusement. The poet's "hideous" is the last adjective I could apply to the night my busy day ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... would scarcely have been otherwise than agreeable to any young man. Dear old Miss Wodehouse was the gentlest of chaperones. Old Miss Wodehouse people called her, not knowing why—perhaps because that adjective was sweeter than the harsh one of middle age which belonged to her; and then there was such a difference between her and Lucy. Lucy was twenty, and in her sweetest bloom. Many people thought with Mr Wentworth that there were not other ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have either ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... is a classic adjective, but a barbarous substantive, (Ludewig, p. 245.) Justinian never collected them himself; the nine collations, the legal standard of modern tribunals, consist of ninety-eight Novels; but the number was increased by the diligence of Julian, Haloander, and Contius, (Ludewig, p. 249, 258 Aleman. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... euphemism. The adjective Hawkins actually used was, as a matter of fact, closely associated with the exercise of the reproductive functions, and ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... earlier part, a series of incidents that is, we believe, the most ingenious yet planned by its author.... The adventure develops and grows, the tension increases with each page, to such an extent that the hackneyed adjective, 'breathless,' finds an appropriate place."—NEW YORK ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... in the model an adverbial phrase, an adverb, a noun used adverbially, a noun in apposition, a clause modifying a verb, a participle modifying the subject of a verb, a non-restrictive clause, and a clause used as an adjective. ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... mind! Grammar teaches us the laws of the verb and nominative case, as well as of the adjective ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... but of the practice of swearing they cannot. I have made many inquiries into the state of their vocabulary, and do not, as yet, find any word which is more bitter or reproachful than matchi annemoash, which indicates simply, bad-dog. Many of their nouns have, however, adjective inflections, by which they are rendered derogative. They have terms to indicate cheat, liar, thief, murderer, coward, fool, lazy man, drunkard, babbler. But I have never heard of an imprecation or oath. The genius of the language does not seem to favor the formation of terms to be ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... rod, but the united efforts of the six of us proved unavailing. We hailed a passing cart and tied the reins around the motor-cycle, but immediately the horse commenced to pull the leather of the reins snapped. Behind the cart walked a peasant. Only one adjective can possibly describe him: he was decidedly "beer-y." He made no attempt to help but passed from one Tommy to the other, patting them on their backs, assuring them "that with a little good-will all would be well." There was a dangerous glint in the youngest Tommy's eye, but in the presence of ladies ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... unquestionably at that time cared little for her. In showing me her picture, some two or three days after the affair, and laughing at the absurdity of it, he bestowed on her the endearing diminutive of vixen, with a hard- hearted adjective that ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... and can lake [play] with childre a deal better than I: and Hal went (said he) to seek Father, with whom I found him an hour later in the great chamber, and both right deep in public matter, whereof I do love to hear them talk at times, but Milly and Edith be no wise compatient [the lost adjective of compassion] therewith. Anstace came with me to our chamber, and said she had ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... First—If a numeral adjective were joined to Sestertii, and agreed with it in case, it signified just so many Sesterces; as decem Sestertii, 10 Sesterces—thirty-five cents ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... yards—and pursuing a winding route, I at length stopped at the door of the principal hotel—au Grand Coq! I laughed heartily when I heard its name; for with the strictest adherence to truth the adjective ought to have ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... adj., adjective. adv., adverb. art., article. def., definite. demons., demonstrative. excl., exclusive (of personal pronouns, excluding the person addressed). exclam., exclamation. genit., genitive. gu, marks a noun as taking the suffixed pronouns gu, mu, na. ...
— Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language • Walter G. Ivens
... effulgent as a seed catalogue, with rhetorical pictures about as florid and unconvincing. To him the town was a veritable Troy—full of heroes and demigods, and honourables and persons of nobility and quality. He used no adjective of praise milder than superb, and on the other hand, Lige Bemis once complained that the least offensive epithet he saw in the Banner tacked after his name for two years was miscreant. As for John ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... pencil and paper. The first thing to write on the paper is an adjective which applies to a man. The paper is then folded over and passed to the right. This time each one writes the name of a man (either present or absent), folds the paper so the next one can't see what is written, and passes it on to the right. This is done each time ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... look like huge hay-cocks,—those, for instance, which rise in the rear of Cap Haytien. The aspect of the higher hills in the interior might mislead an etymologist to derive the word morne from the French adjective which means gloomy, they are so marked by the ravages of the hurricane and earthquake, so ploughed up into decrepit features by the rains, the pitiless vertical heat, the fires, and the landslides. The soft rock cannot preserve its outlines beneath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... shrilled. "Look! GOOD!" And to emphasize the adjective she indelicately patted the region of her body in which she believed her stomach to be located. "There's a slice for you on the dining-room table," she informed ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... should go straight from him to his people, to the nation who struggled at his back towards a goal. At least each syllable he said should be chiselled from the rock of his sincerity. So he cut here and there an adjective, here and there a phrase, baring the heart of his thought, leaving no ribbon or flower of rhetoric to flutter in the eyes of those with whom he would be utterly honest. And when he had done he read the speech and dropped it from his hand to the floor and stared again from ...
— The Perfect Tribute • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... who in their nasty moments are apt to draw abusive comparisons between the relative dangers of shell-fire and riding on a waggon. By the way, there is always a healthy antagonism between gunners and drivers. When one class speaks of the other there is generally an adjective prefixed. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... memorizing complicated rules and labored forms of analysis. To compel a pupil to wade through a page or two of such bewildering terms as "complex adverbial element of the second class" and "compound prepositional adjective phrase," in order to comprehend a few simple functions, is grossly unjust; it is a substitution of form for ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... study. In the lulls of his outcry could be heard the querulous monotone of Mrs. Hoopington and the sharp staccato barking of the fox-terrier. Vladimir, who did not understand a tithe of what was being said, sat fondling a cigarette and repeating under his breath from time to time a vigorous English adjective which he had long ago taken affectionately into his vocabulary. His mind strayed back to the youth in the old Russian folk-tale who shot an enchanted bird with dramatic results. Meanwhile, the Major, roaming round the hall like an imprisoned cyclone, had caught sight of and joyfully ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... is an adjective meaning calm, and little glaring, and is specially attributed to the moon in spring. The line ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... away in all directions behind. Here lived Policeman T—— and B——. "First-class policemen" perhaps I should take care to specify, for in Zone parlance the unqualified noun implies African ancestry. But it seems easier to use an adjective of color when necessary. Among their regular duties was that of weighing down the rocking-chairs on the airy front veranda, whence each nook and cranny of Corozal was in sight, and of strolling across to greet the train-guard ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... book published the present season which will more delight the wide-awake, adventure-loving boy. It is, to borrow the adjective from the title, ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... seen, it was more continuous. I must, however, warn my readers against a possible illusion of perspective. To Fitzjames himself the legal career always represented the substantive, and the literary career the adjective. Circumstances made journalism highly convenient, but his literary ambition was always to be auxiliary to his legal ambition. It would, of course, have been injurious to his prospects at the bar had it been supposed that the case was inverted; and as a matter of fact his ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... who is chic is always a little different. Not different in being behind fashion, but always slightly apart from it. "Chic" is a borrowed adjective, but there is no English word to take the place of "elegant" which was destroyed utterly by the reporter or practical joker who said "elegant dresses," and yet there is no synonym that will express the individuality ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... was a bitter pill to him. "Who could have foreseen this?" said he. "It's devilish." We did not ourselves intend our readers to feel it so, or we would not have spent so much time over it. But as regards that one adjective, Mr. Monckton is a better authority than we are. He had a document with him that, skillfully used, might make mischief for a time between these lovers. But he foresaw there could be no permanent result without the personal ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the wave of a new movement and it was only now, when the tide was just on the turn, that the limpets there got a sprinkling. Mr. Tryan was the first Evangelical clergyman who had risen above the Milby horizon: hitherto that obnoxious adjective had been unknown to the townspeople of any gentility; and there were even many Dissenters who considered 'evangelical' simply a sort of baptismal name to the magazine which circulated among the congregation of Salem Chapel. But now, at length, the disease had been imported, when the parishioners ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... non-commissioned officer in the Devil's Own—told me this story, which I mention to you, my dear Smith, in strict confidence, in case the heroine of the anecdote should find that her confession is made known. An old lady—properly so called, both as respects the adjective and the noun, for she was past eighty, and was refined and pure—astonished my friend, by asking him one day to try and get a volume or two for her of the works of Assa Behn. He did so—no little wondering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... cardinals' beds and the rest." Before long Browning amused himself in picking up for a few pauls this or that picture, on seeing which an accomplished connoisseur, like Kirkup, would even hazard the name of Cimabue or Ghirlandaio, or if not that of Giotto, then the safer adjective Giottesque. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... the principal noblemen of the Netherlands was a German, William of Nassau, prince of Orange.[Footnote: William (1533-1584), now commonly called "the Silent." There appears to be no contemporaneous justification of the adjective as applied to him, but the misnomer, once adopted by later writers, has insistently clung to him.] He had been governing the provinces of Holland and Zeeland when Alva arrived, but as he was already at the point of accepting Protestantism he had prudently retired ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... five minutes, without hearing of something which occurred when "I was in Blanktown, on the Grand Jury." It is doubtful whether Napoleon ever contemplated a victory with the complacent satisfaction that filled my old friend when he alluded to his connection with "the grand jury," and emphasized the adjective which magnified the ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... a very gentlemanly book. Whatever excellence of commendation belongs to the adjective we have Italicized must be awarded to Mr. Dicey. And it is ill-adapted to the manufactures of most British tourists who have preceded him. For, to make no mention of the vulgar buffooneries of Bunn or Grattan, we hold that neither the exalted and irrepressible prosiness of Dr. Charles Mackay, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Kosovac (Serbian) adjective: Kosovar (Albanian), Kosovski (Serbian) note: Kosovan, a neutral term, is sometimes also used ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... he's quite swell," said Mrs. Bowen, depriving the adjective of slanginess by the refinement of ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... from dar, oak (Sanskrit, daru, a tree), and da, good. It is worth remarking that this idea survives in the personal name, Holyoak; for who ever heard of "Holyelm," or "Holyash," or a similar form compounded of the adjective and the name of any other tree than the oak. If there is an exception it is in the name of the holly. The Cornish Celtic word for holly was Celyn, from Celli (or Kelli), a grove; literally a grove-one; so that the holly was probably planted as a ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Fire," "Eternal Fire," "Unquenchable Fire."—All these expressions are used in describing the fiery judgment upon sin and sinners. The effect of the fire is everlasting and eternal, and by a common usage in language the adjective that describes the effect is applied to the agent by which the effect ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... Pelian is an adjective formed from Peleus, the name of the father of Achilles.] *[Footnote: Fore-right means straight forward.] *[Footnote: The Scamander was a famous river that flowed near the city of Troy. According to the Iliad, its source ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... satiric description of the Court before which his Amelia stood her trial, he describes himself as an 'old gentleman.' The adjective seems hardly applicable to a man of forty five; but, to quote again from Mr Austin Dobson, "however it may have chanced, whether from failing health or otherwise, the Fielding of Amelia is suddenly a far older man than the Fielding of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... ten louis. Owen thought that if he had made an interval between each adjective he might ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... pressing than one of cricket or hunting. He was therefore troubled by an unwonted confusion of feelings. For he felt that his ordinary vocabulary—made up of such substantives as lark, cheek, and bounder, and the comprehensive adjective "rum"—fell short of coping with this extraordinary speech. He even felt that he might possibly have answered in a different way, but for that unspeakable offer of money. And the rumble of Magin's bass in the dark stone room somehow threw a light on the melancholy land ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... clean and homelike," said the girl quickly. At any other time he would have winced at the last adjective. It struck him now ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... connecting sentences? That is undoubtedly its use, but what is its origin?" Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this question satisfactorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians, "familiar as his garter," when he said, "It is the common pronoun, adjective, or participle, that, with the noun, thing or proposition, implied, and the particular example following it." So he thought, and so every reader has thought since, with the exception of teachers and writers upon grammar. Mr. Windham, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... seat on the lap of Judge Preston in the corner, when Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of admonitory fingers. Then, taking his head between her two hands, she again looked into his brimming eyes, and said, simply, "GOOD dog," with the gentlest of emphasis on the adjective, and popped ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... she was very satisfactory. It is true that he had once, in a burst of confidence, confided to one of his friends that she was "Awful skinny," but it is wonderful how far forty guineas will go towards modifying that defect. In short, she was—well, satisfactory. When one has secured the right adjective, why change it? ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... home now, dear," sighed his guardian angel. "Look at the pretty—" She hesitated, groping vaguely for some object to which she might conscientiously apply the adjective. ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... well-bred persons, lacking in some of those niceties of feeling and conduct which seemed to them important—"parvenus" as a French officer characterized his feeling about the race, and added the descriptive adjective "sale"—dirty. Since the war there has been ground into the French the more awful inhumanities of which these parvenus are capable. Therefore, when they think of the German, there comes instinctively to their lips the ancient term ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... from the late premier, I suppose. He merely forgot an adjective—it is cheap bread that the people are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... are fond of speaking of him as "virtuous." The adjective is singularly ill-chosen. His faults were of the will more than of the understanding. To have a vague notion of what is right, to desire it in a general way, and to lack the moral force to do it,—surely this is ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... that in the absence of an instinctive reaction we can still apply these epithets by an appeal to usage. We may agree that an action is bad, or a building good, because we recognize in them a character which we have learned to designate by that adjective; but unless there is in us some trace of passionate reprobation or of sensible delight, there is no moral or aesthetic judgment. It is all a question of propriety of speech, and of the empty titles of things. ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... the public car, has been strangely varied. I think there is no manner of steed or vehicle which has not been used by us, at one time or another, even to the arch donkey and the low-backed car with its truss of hay, like that of the immortal Peggy. I thought at first that 'arch' was an unusual adjective to apply to a donkey, but I find after all that it is abundantly expressive. Benella, who disapproves entirely of this casual sort of travelling, far from 'answerable roads' and in 'backwards places' (Irish for 'behind the times'), is yet wonderfully successful in discovering ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the adjective "lively" as applied to a child; her belief being that though children might be seen, if absolutely necessary, they certainly should never be heard if she could help it. "We're not much used to noise, Jane and me," ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... salvaticus, that which pertains to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized by the epithet sylvaticus in Varro, De re rustica, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent silvestris, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... man can not talk and eat at once. It was true that he was hungry, that hunger is a piquant sauce, and that artist was an adjective too mild to apply to the cook. But the other reason was his chief one. Yasmini ate daintily, as if ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... world in which we live. When ordinary persons and even professional philosophers speak of reason as if it were a jewel that can be placed in a drawer or in a human skull, they are simply myth-makers. It is precisely in this ever recurring elevation of an adjective or a verb to a noun, of a predicate to a subject, that this disease of language, as I have called mythology, has its deepest roots. Here lies the genesis of the majority of gods, not by any means, as ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... making every Thing as easy as I can to the Learner, I have taken the Liberty of distinguishing such Pronouns into Prefix and Subsequent, and entirely laid aside Cases as useless and unnecessary. The Latin has Genders, the Adjective in that Language always varying to correspond with the Substantive; but ourAdjectives never vary, and therefore the Distinction of Genders has nothing to do with English GRAMMAR, ...
— A Short System of English Grammar - For the Use of the Boarding School in Worcester (1759) • Henry Bate
... the river in a steamer to which the eminently English adjective nasty can fitly apply,—a wheezy, sputtering, black, crazy old craft, muddy enough throughout to have been at the bottom of the river and sucked up again half a dozen times. With care of the luggage, shawls, hackmen, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... root form, the adverbial form, the indefinite form, the attributive form, and the conclusive form, the two last being conjugated through all the various voices, moods, and tenses, to say nothing of all the potential forms. As one change is superposed on another, the adjective ends by becoming three or four times its original length. The fact is, the adjective is either adjective, adverb, or verb, according to occasion. In the root form it also helps to make nouns; so that it is even more generally useful than as a journalistic ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... a champion worth while! He did nothing by halves. He was of the breed of men who grow more intense, more convinced, more thorough, as they talk. One adjective begets another, one warm allusion gives birth to a warmer, one flashing impulse evokes a brighter confidence, till the atmosphere is flaming with conviction. If Jean Jacques started with faint doubt regarding anything, and allowed himself betimes the flush of a declaration of belief, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... unerring: and I thought when he appeared at the door, I'd never seen him look so beautiful. He is beautiful you know! Now that his physical eyesight is gone, and he's developing that mysterious "inner sight" of which he talks, there's no other adjective which truly expresses him. He stood there for a minute with his hand on the door-knob, with all the light in the room (there wasn't much) shining straight into his face. It couldn't help doing that, as the one window is nearly opposite the door; but really it does seem ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... be 'accosting?' 'Accost her, knight, accost!' in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakspearian in the phrase—'give a coasting welcome,' ('coasting' being taken as the epithet and adjective of 'welcome,') that had the following words been, 'ere they land,' instead of 'ere it comes,' I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome to ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... midst of my castle-building, I suffered a sense of revulsion. I had been brought up to believe that the only adjective that could be coupled with the noun "journalism" was "precarious." Was I not, as Gresham would have said, solving an addition sum in infantile poultry before their mother, the feathered denizen of the farmyard, had lured them ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... word furu in the third line is made to do double duty,—as the adjective, furu[i], "ancient"; and as the verb furu, "to shake." The old term nama-kuhi (lit., "raw head") means a human head, freshly-severed, from which the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... of the famous adjective "netusxebla," applied by Dr. Zamenhof to his language, and so much resented in certain quarters. Surely not only is this degree of dogmatism amply justified by practical considerations, but it would amount to positive imprudence on the part of Esperantists ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... meaning. It denotes (1) the quality, (2) the form or essence, (3) the end or design (in the sense of intention) of the act being performed, that is to say, at bottom, the design (in the sense of drawing) of the act supposed accomplished. These three aspects are those of the adjective, substantive and verb, and correspond to the three essential categories of language. After the explanations we have given above, we might, and perhaps we ought to, translate [Greek: eidos] by "view" or rather by "moment." For [Greek: eidos] is the ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... Hindustani not only survives, but survives in a variety of significations. The word is an adjective, pertaining to Hindustan, and in English it has become the name either of the people of Hindustan or of their language. It is in the latter sense that the name is particularly confusing. The way out of the difficulty lies in first associating ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... Each of the players must describe the minister's cat, going right through the alphabet to do so. "The minister's cat is an angry cat," says one; "an anxious cat," says another; and so on until everyone has used an adjective beginning with "A." Then they take the "B's." "The minister's cat is a big cat," ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... don't—of course. Used as a noun—you know what a noun is, don't you? It means the name of anything. Wight means a person—any creature. Originally it meant a fairy, a supernatural being. As an adjective it means brave, valiant, strong or powerful. Or, it used ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... began as what would now be called a romantic poet. With no mastery of verse, for even the English heroic (a balancing-pole which has enabled so many feebler men to walk the ticklish rope of momentary success) was uneasy to him, he essayed the Cowleian Pindarique, as the adjective was then rightly spelled with a hint of Parisian rather than Theban origin. If the master was but a fresh example of the disasters that wait upon every new trial of the flying-machine, what could be expected of the disciple who had not even the secret of the mechanic wings, and who stuck solidly ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... that he will walk three miles for it. Surely every one will admit that this is lamentable. It is not even a good mixture, for I used to try it occasionally; and if there is one man in London who knows tobaccoes it is myself. There is only one mixture in London deserving the adjective superb. I will not say where it is to be got, for the result would certainly be that many foolish men would smoke more than ever; but I never knew anything to compare to it. It is deliciously mild yet full of fragrance, and it never burns the tongue. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... digging a trench with his spurs. He wished the schoolma'am would not limit herself so rigidly to that one adjective. It became unmeaning with much use, so that it left a fellow completely in ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... directly upon individuals, it obviously became necessary to abandon the articles of confederation, and work out a new constitution in all its details. The plan, as now reported, omitted the obnoxious adjective "national," and spoke of the federal legislature and federal courts. But to the men who were still blindly wedded to the old confederation this soothing change of phraseology did not conceal their defeat. On the very day that the compromise was favourably reported ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Prince sent to us. Now Prince had proved himself an excellent wheeler, yet he had to go into the lead and let the Outlaw retain his old place. There is an axiom that a good wheeler is a poor leader. I object to the last adjective. A good wheeler makes an infinitely worse kind of a leader than that. I know . . . now. I ought to know. Since that day I have driven Prince a few hundred miles in the lead. He is neither any better nor ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as to come into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective 'blanche' and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out, "Blanche? Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... body.—Ver. 7. The adjective 'commune' is here used substantively, and signifies ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... they, as a rule, differ on every subject; but as a race they hold religiously together—indeed, in their eyes there is no other family which is "amusing," the favourite adjective of ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... from de Bohun. While, if he holds that kind hearts are more than coronets, he has an alternative descent from some medieval le bon. This adjective, used as a personal name, gave also Bunn and Bunce; for the spelling of the latter name cf. Dance for Dans, and Pearce for Piers, the nominative of Pierre (Alternative Origins, Chapter I), which also survives in Pears and Pearson. Swain may go back to the father of Canute, or ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... appeased. It was an offence against national pride and justice! He forthwith called the attention of his chief officer to the indignity that had been thrust upon them. "Look," said he, in wrathful humiliation, "there's God Almighty given that adjective Dutchman a leading wind and allowed His own countryman to be jammed on a lee shore!" It was said that Barley never really forgave this unpatriotic act, though he still adhered to the belief that the God of British seamen was stedfastly on the ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... towards Mary Ann. Contrasted with these two vulgar females, whom he came to conceive as her oppressors, sitting in gauds and finery, and taking lessons which had better befitted their Cinderella—the figure of Mary Ann definitely reassumed some of its antediluvian poetry, if we may apply the adjective to that catastrophic washing of the steps. And Mary Ann herself had grown gloomier—once or twice he thought she had been crying, though he was too numbed and apathetic to ask, and was incapable of suspecting that Rosie had anything to do with her tears. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... is certainly that, and more. Indeed, the English language does not supply us with an adjective that adequately describes ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... mislead our readers in their conceptions of any of our characters, and we therefore feel it necessary to add that the adjective, in the preceding agnomen of Mr. Van der School, was used in direct reference to its substantive. Our orthodox friends need not be told that all the merit in this world is comparative; and, once for all, we ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... invited to call her "Patty," or "Pat," both of which names were in use at the French convent school she has lately left. But I think she will have to be "Patsey" for me, as to my mind it's more endearing. And "endearing" is a particularly suitable adjective for her. Constantly, when looking at the creature, I find myself wanting to hum, "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms," etc. There are simply crowds of them—charms, I mean. Big blue eyes under those eyelashes, and above them, too, for the under ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... failings, for pomposity, for the florid, for sentences like processions of intoxicated torch-bearers, for pedantic display of cheap erudition, for misplaced flippancy, for nice derangement of epitaphs wherein no adjective is used which is appropriate. With a library of cultivated American novelists and uncultivated English romancers at hand, with our own voluminous essays, and the essays and histories and "art criticisms" of our neighbours to draw from, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... place at the end instead of at the head of the line that waited there. In his turn he came again to the window, and departed from it after a conversation with the clerk that left the latter in accord with Aunt Fanny Atwater's commiserating adjective, though the clerk's own pity was expressed in argot. "The poor nut!" he explained to his next client. "Wants to buy a ticket on a train that don't pull out until ten thirty-five to-night; and me fillin' it all out, stampin' it and everything, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... then adieu to all that in our declensions distinguishes the gender, and the number of things we would speak: adieu, in the verbs, to all which might explain the active person, how and in what time it acts, if it acts alone or with others: in a word, with the Chinese, the same word is substantive, adjective, verb, singular, plural, masculine, feminine, &c. It is the person who hears who must arrange the circumstances, and guess them. Add to all this, that all the words of this language are reduced to three hundred and a few more; that they are pronounced in so many different ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... I know, Aunt Hannah, everything you would say if you could. But please skip the hysterics. We've all had them, and Kate has already used every possible adjective that you could think up. Now it's just this." And he hurriedly gave Mrs. Stetson a full account of the case, and told her plainly what he hoped and expected that she would do ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... the second half of the second line. The Burdwan translator, as usual, blunders in rendering it. The fact is, krosatah is not an adjective of vrikat, but stands for the roaring Vadava fire. The commentator distinctly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... name takes two slightly different forms for the city and for the district. Thus we have Bourges and Berry, Angers and Anjou, Perigueux and Perigord, Le Mans and Maine.[26] So Constantia has become Coutances; but the adjective Constantinus has become Cotentin. City and district then bear the same Imperial name as that other Constantia on the Rhine with which Coutances is doomed to get so often confounded. How often has one seen Geoffrey ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... the adjective applied to her a hint which the wily lady would not have dared to make direct to the high-spirited old soldier, namely, that the continuance of his livelihood might depend on his consent. Betty knew likewise enough ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... follows the nouns as in the above examples, although exceptions will be found, e.g., when the adjective recalls to our mind a quality which is already known to belong to it, it generally ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... Mrs. Strong in the back seat. Ten days afterward Marian's head of beautiful dark hair was muslin white. Now it framed a face of youth and beauty with peculiar pathos. "Striking" was perhaps the one adjective which ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... name of a great quarter in London, Mary-le-bone, as ludicrously ungrammatical. The writers had learned (or were learning) French; and they had thus become aware, that neither the article nor the adjective was right. True, not right for the current age, but perfectly right for the age in which the name arose; but, for want of elder French, they did not know that in our Chaucer's time both were right. Le was then the article feminine as well as masculine, and bone ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... drunk—and secretly completed the bargain on the stairs, as we went down together. At the pawnbroker's shop, too, I began to be very well known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar relish in these meals which ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... and field artillery—furnished special occasions for organized—or disorganized—upheavals of animal spirits. For these exercises we then had scant respect. They were "soldiering;" and from time immemorial soldier had been an adjective to express uselessness, or that which was so easy as to pass no man's ability. A soldier's wind, for example, was a wind fair both ways—to go and to return; no demands on brains there, much less on seamanship. The curious ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... brought-up public ought to know by heart. You will do well therefore to reproduce them often. There is no criticism admissible on this subject; and, if you absolutely exact it that I should make one at all, it would only be on the adjective "celebrated," appended to the Schumann Quintet, which would do without it without disadvantage. Pardon me ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... apart from the general tenor of its context. Thus, taken singly, the character [Ch] conveys only the general idea "above" as opposed to "below." According to its place in the sentence and the requirements of common sense, it may be a noun meaning "upper person" (that is, a ruler); an adjective meaning "upper," "topmost" or "best"; an adverb meaning "above"; a preposition meaning "upon"; and finally a verb meaning "to mount upon," or "to go to." [Ch] is a character that may usually be translated "to enter" as in [Ch][Ch] "to enter a door"; yet in the locution [Ch][Ch] "enter wood," the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Latin, the substantive deliciae, delight, pleasure, enjoyment; and the adjective (derived from the same root, and guiding us to the original meaning of the substantive) delicatus, which amongst other meanings, has that of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... is an instrument of production," they say. That is true. But when, changing the noun into an adjective, they alter the phrase, thus, "The land is a productive instrument," they make ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... adjective is redundant and "proleptic," as the bird must be "enthralled" before it ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... has a great deal more to say than one has any right to say, and when at the same time one is expected to say particularly little, it is very hard to write a good note. All sorts of ideas creep in and express themselves automatically. A misplaced plural for a singular, a superlative adjective where the vaguer comparative belongs; the vast and immeasurable waste of weary years that may lie between "dear" and "dearest," the gulf placed between "sincerely yours, John Smith," and "yours, J.S.," and "your J.," until the blessed state is reached wherein the signature ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... adjective appears to be an afterthought," grumbled the bachelor; then, when she merely laughed teasingly after the manner of women, ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... terminal "e" played an important part in grammar; in many cases it was the sign of the infinitive — the "n" being dropped from the end; at other times it pointed the distinction between singular and plural, between adjective and adverb. The pages that follow, however, being prepared from the modern English point of view, necessarily no account is taken of those distinctions; and the now silent "e" has been retained in the text of Chaucer only when required by the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... like snakes into Bruce Carmyle's mind. What, he asked himself, did he really know of this girl on whom he had bestowed the priceless boon of his society for life? How did he know what she was—he could not find the exact adjective to express his meaning, but he knew what he meant. Was she worthy of the boon? That was what it amounted to. All his life he had had a prim shrinking from the section of the feminine world which is connected with the light-life of large cities. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Why, if he had exhausted every laudatory adjective in the dictionary, it wouldn't have been praise enough. When and where was there ever such a plump, roguish, comely, bright-eyed, enticing, bewitching, captivating, maddening little puss in all this world, as Dolly! What was the Dolly of five years ago, to the Dolly of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... The adjective "pure" must be understood in the figurative sense of the mantram. Generally speaking, the rivers of India, beginning with the thrice sacred Ganges, are dreadfully dirty, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... always a favorite game when a party has reached its frivolous mood. The method of playing is this: Sheets of paper and pencils are handed round, and every one writes at the head (1) an adjective suitable to be applied to a man, such as "Handsome." This word is then folded over so that it cannot be read, and each paper is passed on to the next person. The name of a man (2) is then written, either some ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... England are often named after animals with an adjective descriptive of the color of the sign; as, The Golden Lion, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... Some morning the floating opinion suddenly crystallized in the kirkyard, and there is only one historical instance in which judgment was reversed. It was a strong proof of Lachlan Campbell's individuality that he impressed himself twice on the parish, and each time with a marked adjective. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... sounds, as a ship out of soundings, Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings, Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle, Deaf to even the definite article— No verbal message was worth a pin, Though you hired an earwig to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... word wap is plain enough; the word wan we cannot satisfy ourselves about. Had it been used with regard to the water, it might have been worth remarking that wan, meaning dark, gloomy, turbid, is a common adjective to a river in the old Scotch ballad. And it might be an adjective here; but that is not likely, seeing it is conjoined with the verb wap. The Anglo-Saxon wanian, to decrease, might be the root-word, perhaps, (in the sense of to ebb,) if this water had been the sea and not a lake. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... Wallisian(s), Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, or Wallis ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... adjective in [Greek: tos] is almost universally used in a passive sense; [Greek: hypoptos], however, in this place is an exception to the rule, as are also, [Greek: kalyptes], Soph. Antig. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... and reflected that while the term "slate" might be perfectly correct, the adjective seemed a bit over-enthusiastic. She was decidely soiled, this quintessence of a quintette of advertisements. I said nothing, anxious not ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Scarup's, her own garden of neatness was not being turned into a howling wilderness; and she observed, as is often done so astutely, that "when you do find a neat, capable, colored help, it's as good help as you can have." Which you may notice is just as true without the third adjective ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... translated here, quite correctly, 'transgression,' and intensified by that strong adjective attached, 'a great transgression,' literally means rebellion, revolt, or some such idea; and expresses, as the ultimate issue of conscious transgression prolonged and perpetuated into habit, an ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Melanesians", pages 118, 119, 192, Oxford, 1891.) is somewhat more specialised—all men do not possess mana—but substantially it is the same idea. Mana is not only a force, it is also an action, a quality, a state, at once a substantive, an adjective, and a verb. It is very closely neighboured by the idea of sanctity. Things that have mana are tabu. Like orenda it manifests itself in noises, but specially mysterious ones, it is mana that is rustling in the trees. Mana is highly contagious, it ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... commonplace mind of the present day acquainted with his works but has fallen back on "the castled crag" to describe Drachenfels or Marksburg or Rheinfels, because, forsooth, its own English is too limited to supply a better adjective. So it is that conventional and inadequate English is perpetuated and individual force and expression are lost because people accept the ideas of others and will not seek language to convey ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson |
