"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was that in which the use of the word 'buffoon' had occurred. Everybody who has a gift of humour and (very naturally) enjoys exercising it, hates to be called a buffoon. It was Charteris's one weak spot. Every other abusive epithet in the language slid off him without penetrating or causing him the least discomfort. The word 'buffoon' went home, right up to the hilt. And, to borrow from Mr Jabberjee for positively the very last time, he had observed (mentally): 'Henceforward I will perpetrate heaps ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... all this appease Marian; but when the immediate spell of Selina's grace and caressing ways was removed, she valued it rightly, and thought, though with pain, of the expressive epithet, "fudge!" Could not Selina have gone to her aunt's old friends if she would? Had not Marian known her to take five times the trouble for her own gratification? Marian gained a first glimpse of the selfishness ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... quality. The Queen had forbidden her to say "damn" or "bloody" but about "mucky" she had received no instructions. It still seemed to her a proper epithet for any ship. In this case it was unsuitable. The ship, a small steamer, which lay at anchor in the harbour, looked more like a yacht than a cargo boat. Her paint was fresh. Her hull had fine lines. Her two ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... with his shirt sleeves neatly rolled up. "Smoky" waited, in an attitude of ease, expecting the affair to be conducted according to Fishampton's rules of war. These allowed combat to be prefaced by stigma, recrimination, epithet, abuse and insult gradually increasing in emphasis and degree. After a round of these "you're anothers" would come the chip knocked from the shoulder, or the advance across the "dare" line drawn with a toe on the ground. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... of this passage, it is impossible not to consider some as particularly conspicuous. How strong and nervous the second and fourth lines! How happily expressive the two Alexandrines! What a luminous idea does the epithet "murky" present to us! How original and picturesque that of the "clotted tear!" If the same expression be found in the Ode to Howard, let it however be considered, that the exact propriety of that image ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... to-night. I begin to feel like some of those United States Senators who, after they have reached Washington, look around and wonder how they got there. The nearest approach to being decorated with a sufficiently aristocratic epithet to make me worthy of admission to this Society was when I used to visit outside of my native State and be called a "Pennsylvania Dutchman." But history tells us that at the beginning of the Revolution there was a battle fought ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... hope this epithet will not be considered ungallant—for, to say the truth, the ladies have contributed the best poetical portion of the feast. This display of female talent has increased in brilliancy year after year: and the Lords should look ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... such, but only in the past. He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heretical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which serves as a refrain when his song is full, or with which as with a knitting-needle he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced now and then to let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... artistic treasures, which were numbered among the fairest in this world, are destroyed for ever. She is nothing more than a desert whence stand out, more or less intact, four great towns alone, four towns which the Rhenish hordes, for whom the epithet of barbarians is in point of fact too honourable, appear to have spared only so that they may keep back one last and monstrous revenge for the day of the inevitable rout. It is certain that Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and Brussels are doomed beyond recall. In particular, the admirable ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and gold sunset. After dinner to-day Mr. Hawthorne went to the village, and brought back "The Salem Gazette." Some one had the impudence to speak of him in it as "gentle Nat Hawthorne." I cannot conceive who could be so bold and so familiar. Gentle he surely is, but such an epithet does not comprehend him, and gives a false idea. As usual after sunset, he went out to find exercise till quite dark. Then he read aloud part of "The Tempest," while I sewed. In the evening he told me about ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... retired into his own apartment, after he had taken a formal leave of the King for the night, than he gave way to the explosion of passion which he had so long suppressed; and many an oath and abusive epithet, as his jester, Le Glorieux said, "fell that night upon heads which they were never coined for," his domestics reaping the benefit of that hoard of injurious language which he could not in decency bestow on his royal guest, even in his absence, and which was yet become too great to be ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... never mentioned but with this endearing epithet of "crathur" annexed. "Barney, go an' call home the pig, the crathur, to his dinner, before it gets cowld an him." "Barney, go an' see if you can see the pig, the crathur, his buckwhist will soon be ready." "Barney, run an' dhrive the pig, the crathur, out of Larry Neil's phatie-field: ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... long before, to be the sole source of beauty and of art, and we warmed ourselves at each other's hearts in our devotion to it, amidst a misunderstanding environment which we did not characterize by so mild an epithet. Boyesen, indeed, out-realisted me, in the polemics of our aesthetics, and sometimes when an unbeliever was by, I willingly left to my friend the affirmation of our faith, not without some quaking at his unsparing strenuousness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... some places the squealing sapsucker; and I hailed with joy his presence in a certain protected bit of woods, a little paradise for birds and bird lovers, where, if anywhere, he could be studied. There is some propriety in applying to him the strange epithet "squealing," I must allow, for the bird has a peculiar voice, nasal enough for the conventional Brother Jonathan; but "sapsucker" is, in the opinion of many who have studied his ways, undeserved. Dr. Merriam, even while admitting ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... muffled tones, " You know." Thereafter came a long silence full of sharpened pain. It was Marjory who spoke first. "I have saved my pride, daddy, but-I have-lost-everything —else." Even her sudden resumption of the old epithet of her childhood was an additional misery to the old man. He still said no word. He knelt, gripping her fingers and ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... 1511, immediately before his attack upon Malacca. Debarros also enumerates the names of twenty of the principal places of the island with considerable precision, and observes that the peninsula or chersonesus had the epithet of aurea given to it on account of the abundance of gold carried thither from Monancabo and Barros, countries in the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of wit and language, Mrs. Francis Armour must have been at a disadvantage. For Lady Haldwell had a good gift of speech, a pretty talent for epithet, and no unnecessary tenderness. She bore Lali no malice. She was too decorous and high for that. In her mind the wife of the man she had discarded was a mere commonplace catastrophe, to be viewed without ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... principal. When the results of the polling were announced, the agent relieved his feelings by denouncing the delinquent half-breeds in true Hudson's Bay style, and at every opprobrious and profane epithet Smith was heard to murmur with sympathetic approval, 'Are they not, Mr ——? are ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... "That's a tame epithet, my friend. Commonly used in debate. I'm afraid you're running out of ammunition. Haven't you anything really important to say, now that I'm ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... an extinguished cigar, and already on good terms with the conductor, to whom, during his journey, he had related the passage of the Porte de Fer; full of indulgence, moreover, for the distractions of his auditor, who often interrupted the recital by some oath or epithet addressed to the off mare. When the diligence stopped he threw on the sidewalk his old valise, covered with railway placards as numerous as the changes of garrison that its proprietor had made, and the idlers of the neighborhood were astonished ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... Co. of Paris. Donald A. Smith's name was not there. It was only two years since he and Sir John, on the floor of the House of Commons, had called each other 'liar' and 'coward' and any other sufficiently strong epithet they {142} could put their tongues to, and it was to be a few years more before the two Highlanders could cover their private feud with a coating of elaborate cordiality. So, to preserve appearances, Smith's interest was kept a secret—but a ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... The epithet was so fervent, and so entirely without humorous intent, that Miss Northrop laughed again as they walked out into the dull, hot September afternoon sun. The board sidewalk was uneven and full of projecting ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... intellectual power; or like the path of sound through the air, at every step he pauses and half recedes, and from the retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him onward. Praecipitandus est liber spiritus, says Petronius Arbiter most happily. The epithet, liber, here balances the preceding verb, and it is not easy to conceive more ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of that word 'precious.' In both his letters he uses it as an epithet for diverse things. According to one translation, he speaks of Christ as 'precious to you which believe.' He certainly speaks of 'the precious blood of Christ,' and of 'exceeding great and precious promises,' and here in my text, as well as in the Second Epistle, he speaks about 'precious ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... was inexplicable, except on the ground that the engagement was a family affair in which sentimental passion had no place; for it was known that they were related in some way. Mrs. Henchard was so pale that the boys called her "The Ghost." Sometimes Henchard overheard this epithet when they passed together along the Walks—as the avenues on the walls were named—at which his face would darken with an expression of destructiveness towards the speakers ominous to see; but he ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... unpremeditated course of conquest which was destined ultimately to reach from Tuticorin to the Himalayas. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the Madras Presidency has been in the fortunate position of having no history. Its northern rivals call it despitefully the "benighted" Presidency. No epithet, however, could be more undeserved, for if its annals for the last hundred years have been unsensational, its record in respect of education, intelligent administration, material prosperity, and all that goes with peaceful continuous progress would entitle ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... generally asserted, that the Yankees are the greatest rogues under the sun. If smartness in trading, or barter, be roguery, they richly deserve the epithet; but I deny that their intentions are one whit more dishonest than those of the persons with whom they trade. That their natural shrewdness and general knowledge give them an advantage, I am quite ready to admit; and perhaps they are not over- ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... The party would not hear his explanation, that it was left in the country, and scarcely could this assurance reach the ears of the more indifferent spectators. An express was sent for it, who could not return without some delay. In the interval, Mr. Hunt was assailed with every opprobrious epithet of liar, scoundrel, base slanderer, and exclamations, 'He cannot produce it, it is all a fabrication,' &c. &c. At last, the letter came, and an attempt was made to read it, without effect. Mr. Hunt was obliged to say, 'Well, you shall ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... white teeth in an amused smile, and began "Once upon a time our Lord was going through a town with his disciples. A dead dog lay by the wayside, and every one that passed along flung some offensive epithet at him. Eastern dogs are not like our dogs, and seemingly there was nothing good about this loathsome creature, but as our Saviour went by, he said, gently, 'Pearls cannot equal the whiteness ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... squire's propagating, and that of ordinary breed. But I heard it so often repeated, and saw it proved in such a variety of instances, that I too was the grandson of a great man, ay so great as openly to declare war against, or at least bid defiance to, the giant power of Magog Mowbray (it was an epithet of my grandfather's giving) I say, I was so fully convinced that I myself was the son of somebody (pshaw! I mean the grandson) that no sooner did young Hector begin to exercise his ingenuity upon me, than I found myself exceedingly ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... attar of roses differs from ordinary rose-water, the close-packed essence from the thin, diluted mixture. They are, indeed, not so much poems as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... a greater vehemence than perhaps he had meant to show. But he was carried along by his own words, and sought always a stronger epithet than that which he had used. He was sore and indignant, and he vented his anger on the first object which served him as an opportunity. Safdar Khan bowed his head in the darkness. Safe though he might be in Lahore, he was ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... thatch in one line, and gold in another, consistent? I scruple not (repugnantibas omnibus manuscriptis) to correct it auritis. Horace uses the same epithet in the same sense.—P. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... however, seen a young lady in the shop-windows, or entertained her in their own nurseries, who professes to be this hitherto impossible walking automaton, and who calls herself by the Homeric-sounding epithet Autoperipatetikos. The golden-booted legs of this young lady remind us of Miss Kilmansegg, while their size assures us that she is not in any way related to Cinderella. On being wound up, as if she were a piece of machinery, and placed on a level surface, she proceeds to toddle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... these words, "I shall be glad, very glad to see you." Surely you have no reason to complain of my publishing a single paragraph of one of your letters; the temptation to it was so strong. An irrevocable grant of your friendship, and your dignifying my desire of visiting Corsica with the epithet of "a wise and noble curiosity," are to me more valuable than many of the grants ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... crowded with arrogant, boasting, posturing military and naval officers, with a small sprinkling of civilians who were made to clearly understand that they were there only on sufferance. Jack could not help noticing the scowls with which the soldiery regarded him, and many an insulting epithet and remark reached his ears; but he was not such a fool as to permit himself to be provoked into a quarrel, single- handed, with thousands, and he therefore went calmly and steadily on his way, taking no more notice of the offensive words than if they had not been spoken, and following ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... innate. What, then, if it be ignorant of all things, can it know? Besides things, there are relations. The new-born child, so far as intelligent, knows neither definite objects nor a definite property of any object; but when, a little later on, he will hear an epithet being applied to a substantive, he will immediately understand what it means. The relation of attribute to subject is therefore seized by him naturally, and the same might be said of the general relation expressed by the verb, a relation so immediately ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... term audacious in speaking of Delacroix, and circumstances forced him to justify the epithet. Yet to a student of his work, and still more of his character as revealed in his writings (his recently published letters and the few articles published during his life in the "Revue des Deux-Mondes"), he would appear to have been by nature prepared to receive ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... buffoon, Poinsinet;" "that conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;" and he would spend hours before the glass, abusing his own face as he saw it reflected there, and vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh epithet ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which had excited them to arms; and they had a superior right to see those blessings, which they had purchased with their blood, insured to future generations. By the same title that the Presbyterians, in contradistinction to the royalists, had appropriated to themselves the epithet of godly, or the well affected,[***] the Independents did now, in contradistinction to the Presbyterians, assume this magnificent appellation, and arrogate all the ascendant which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... the document as it stands mainly for the sake of clearness and because it justifies in every particular and almost in every epithet the shadows of the portrait which I have endeavoured to paint in this book. Curiously enough Oscar Wilde depicts himself unconsciously in this part of "De Profundis" in a more unfavourable light than that accorded him in ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... proper tone, and gives entireness to the effect. There is a great deal more than is commonly supposed in this choice of words. Men's thoughts and opinions are in a great degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or reapplies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated becomes his at last who utters it best. This power of language is veiled in the old legends which make the invisible powers the servants of some word. As soon as we have discovered the word for our joy or sorrow we are no longer ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... drawing-room after the First Empire style, hung and furnished in yellow satin, whose high white panels were decorated with trophies of antique weapons carved in wood and gilded. A dauber from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts would have branded with the epithet "sham" the armchairs and sofas ornamented with sphinx heads in bronze, as well as the massive green marble clock upon which stood, all in gold, a favorite court personage, clothed in a cap, sword, and fig-leaf, who seemed ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... a beastly day," said I, forgetting her objection to the epithet until it was out. But Catherine did not wince. Her fixed eyes were ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... prison is a vastly different place to the old jail from which it got its melancholy cognomen. To-day there is not the slightest justification for the lugubrious epithet applied to it, but in the old days, when man's inhumanity to man was less a form of speech than a cold, merciless fact, the term "Tombs" described an intolerable and disgraceful condition fairly accurately. Formerly the cells in which the unfortunate prisoners ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... respect, [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], the divine swine-herd; he could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon. And Theocritus (a very ancient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he wrote nothing but pastorals) gave the same epithet to a husbandman [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. The divine husbandman replied to Hercules, who was but [Greek text] himself. These were civil Greeks, and who understood the dignity of our calling. Among the Romans, we ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... blended with the force of all his faculties of intellect and imagination, and the refinement of all his sentiments, we have still to account for the peculiarities of his genius, and to answer the question, why do we instinctively apply the epithet 'Emersonian' to every characteristic passage in his writings? We are told that he was the last in a long line of clergymen, his ancestors, and that the modern doctrine of heredity accounts for the impressive emphasis he laid on the moral sentiment; but that ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of the men showed that the epithet rankled, as Colwyn intended that it should. There was a brief pause, and then another fisherman stepped forward ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... saying that at Snooks's last night!" your friend exclaims, when you meet him next morning. You were quite aware, by this time, that what you said was foolish; but there is something grating in hearing your name connected with the unpleasant epithet. I would strongly advise any man, who does not wish to be set down as disagreeable, entirely to break off the habit (if he has such a habit) of addressing to even his best friends any sentence beginning with "What a fool ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... neighbors, and doubtless even the expression "human race" would have been unintelligible to him. Nor is there any pathos in the Veda. There is no deep sense of the sorrows of life. Max Mueller has affixed the epithet "transcendent" to the Hindu mind. Its bent was much more toward the metaphysical, the mystical, the incomprehensible than toward the moral and the practical. Hence endless subtleties, more meaningless and unprofitable than ever occupied the mind ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... upon the United States—drawing an impressive lesson from the experience of countries having a depreciated silver currency— deals with the subject of bimetallism in his usual lucid way. He has been called a 'gold bug,' and is no doubt willing to accept the epithet if it signifies a belief in the gold standard under present conditions. But he declares himself to be a bimetallist in the true sense ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... The epithet was like a knout cutting through the decayed fibre of the man and raising a livid welt on his diseased soul. Galled beyond endurance, his countenance convulsed with fury, he struck wickedly; and the vicious blow of his ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... way or other, but that the impropriety upon which (I must say frankly) the appeal of the book seems to depend is given without stint, in a measure that certainly may, for some readers, justify the publishers' epithet. You will understand therefore that I experience a little natural hesitation about suggesting the intrigue. It is certainly of the simplest—a mere question as to whether Edward and Vivian, casual acquaintances of a restaurant, shall or shall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... colour is no objection, for "purple" in Shakespeare's time had a very wide signification, meaning almost any bright colour, just as purpureus had in Latin,[16:1] which had so wide a range that it was used on the one hand as the epithet of the blood and the poppy, and on the other as the epithet of the swan ("purpureis ales oloribus," Horace) and of a woman's white arms ("brachia purpurea candidiora nive," Albinovanus). Nor was "chequered" confined to square divisions, as it usually is ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Navarre had already found her the only lady present possessed of the peculiar aroma of high-breeding which belonged to the society in which both he and she had been most at home, and his attentions were more than she liked from one whose epithet of Eurydice she had never quite forgiven; at least, that was the only reason she could assign for her distaste, but the Duchess understood her better than did Berenger, nay, better than she did herself, and kept her under the maternal ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in my boyhood I was shocked and a little dazed to see references in Socialist sheets such as "Justice" to papers like the "Daily Telegraph," or the "Times," with the epithet "Capitalist" put after them in brackets. I thought, then, it was the giving of an abnormal epithet to a normal thing; but I now know that these small Socialist free papers were talking the plainest common sense when they specifically emphasized as Capitalist the falsehoods and suppressions of their ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... epithet and stands for a moment swearing and raging foully to himself. But he knows that his cue is to be sympathetic. He ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... poet. It would probably be impossible to find a passage in which he speaks harshly or censoriously of the conduct of any fair and noble lady. The sordid treachery of Eriphyle, who sold her lord for gold, wins for her the epithet "hateful;" and Achilles, in a moment of strong grief, applies a term of abhorrence to Helen. But Homer is too chivalrous to judge the life of any lady, and only shows the other side of the chivalrous character—its cruelty ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... Mary" "had been harshly judged by the verdict of popular tradition." So have most characters to whom popular dislike affixes the popular epithet—"Bloody Claverse," "Bloody Mackenzie," "Bloody Balfour." Mary had the courage of the Tudors. She "edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, and her resignation to the will of Providence," ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... efflorescence of Jewish poetry brings forth exotic romances, satires, verbose hymns, and humorous narrative poems. Such productions certainly do not justify the application of the epithet "theological" to Jewish literature. Solomon ben Sakbel composes a satiric romance in the Makamat[12] form, describing the varied adventures of Asher ben Yehuda, another Don Quixote; Berachya Hanakdan puts into Hebrew the fables ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... actually called Lady Rochester, but "La Triste Heritiere." A similar falsification had been practised in Edwards's edition of 1793, but a different portrait had been copied. It is needless, almost, to remark how ill applied is Hamilton's epithet.—B.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness. For if it be allowed that women were destined by Providence to acquire human virtues, and by the exercise of their understandings, that stability of character ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... chapel have been built on that spot. He knew it now, and he knew that he must apologise. Noblesse oblige. The old lord was very stupid, very wrong-headed, and sometimes very arrogant; but he would not do a wrong if he knew it, and nothing on earth would make him tell a wilful lie. The epithet indeed might have been omitted; for a lie is not a lie unless it ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... any rules of evidence; and he availed himself of the license to the fullest extent. There was hardly an angry word that had been spoken by a disappointed or malicious litigant against whom we had ever decided, that Hastings did not rake up and reproduce; and there was hardly an epithet or a term of villification which he did not in some manner or other manage to lug into his wholesale charges. As a specimen of his incoherent and wild ravings, he charged that "the affairs of the federal courts for the District ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... Perhaps, thought I, a firm tone may suit my purpose better; and, in my reply, I adopted it. Before I could answer his question, however, he had repeated it in a still more peevish and impatient manner—with an additional epithet of insult. "Wal, Mister Jaybird," said he, "be quick 'bout it! ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... resume her rapid gait. A young man was coming toward her so quickly indeed that she had not time to avoid him, and a collision ensued, whereupon the young man gave vent to an oath, and hurling an opprobrious epithet ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... remarkable originally, but cheaply copied, and covered with a quaint and dismal cretonne or poorly worked pattern, of which the design is neither new nor artistic, is introduced by the upholsterer as belonging to "High Art furniture." The epithet has succeeded to what was once "fashionable" and "elegant." To get rid of carpets, and put down rugs, to hang up rows of plates instead of family portraits—this also is "high art." Likewise gowns lumped upon the shoulders, with all the folds drawn across, instead of hanging draperies. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Russians, and startled all Europe into an acknowledgment of the fact that the armies of Prussia had at their head one of the greatest commanders of the world. His name became a household word, and everybody coupled with it the admiring epithet of "Great." ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... respectable persons who were pressing forward to pay their homage to her; that she liked none but the young; that she was deficient in decorum; and that not one of them would attend her Court again. The epithet 'moqueuse' was applied to her; and there is no epithet less ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... reserve question, the high church party resisted every measure by which the Methodist Church might obtain a farthing's aid to the Upper Canada Academy. And, to add insult to injury, the high church people denounce Methodists as republicans, rebels, traitors, and use every possible epithet and insinuation of contumely because they complain, reason, and remonstrate against such barefaced oppression and injustice—notwithstanding that not a single member of that church has been convicted of complicity with the late unhappy ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Almost before the vile epithet that followed had reached her ears, Nan caught up the whip. Before he could escape she cut Gale sharply across the face. "You coward," she cried, trembling so she could not control her voice. "If you ever dare use that word before me again, I'll ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Victorians were alive by this laughter, can be found in the fact they could manage and master for a moment even the cosmopolitan modern theatre. They could contrive to put "The Bab Ballads" on the stage. To turn a private name into a public epithet is a thing given to few: but the word "Gilbertian" will probably last longer than ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... This writer says, p. 14, "I know that men used to suspect Dr. Newman—I have been inclined to do so myself—of writing a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or of the matter, but for the sake of one simple passing hint—one phrase, one epithet." Can there be a plainer testimony borne to the practical character of my sermons at St. Mary's than this gratuitous insinuation? Many a preacher of Tractarian doctrine has been accused of not letting his parishioners alone, and of teasing them with his private theological notions. You would gather ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... experience will in all probability not happen to me, but it might happen to a writer younger than me. At any rate it is a fine thought. The average critic always calls me, both in praise and dispraise, "photographic"; and I always rebut the epithet with disdain, because in the sense meant by the average critic I am not photographic. But supposing that in a deeper sense I were? Supposing a young writer turned up and forced me, and some of my contemporaries—us who fancy ourselves a bit—to ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... into prominence, a writer destined to display the finest sense of poetic form and the nicest delicacy of poetic sentiment to be found among his contemporaries in America, and who, through his opposition to Hamilton and the Federalists, should win from Washington the epithet of "that ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... a push as to send him staggering back into his chair, but he never got over the blow: his mind had been too much upset. In all the country round, moreover, he was called nothing but, "that pig of a Morin," and that epithet went through him like a sword thrust every time he heard it. When a street boy called after him: "Pig!" he turned his head instinctively. His friends also overwhelmed him with horrible jokes, and used to ask him, whenever they were eating ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... history," means that civilised nations do not make history, which none is so brazen as openly to assert. Or, again, "Alcibiades is dead, but X is still with us"; the whole meaning of this 'exponible' is that X would be the lesser loss to society. Even an epithet or a suffix may imply a proposition: This personage may mean ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the epithet Sublimis (which is almost unknown to the Theodosian Code), when it occurs in the 'Variae' is used as ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the thing. The prairie had been his bed, the sky his roof, himself his own policeman, judge, and executioner since boyhood. When responsibility is so centralized wide latitudes must be allowed. But the uttermost borders of that latitude were fixed with iron rigidity, and when he had thrown a vile epithet at a decent woman he knew he had broken the law of honor. He was a cur—a cur who should be shot in his tracks for the ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... face the contemptuous accusation of his antagonists, but, by the stolidity of subsequent ages, received as an actual fact instead of a sarcasm. As to his habit of so constantly deriding the knowledge and follies of men that he universally acquired the epithet of the laughing philosopher, we may receive the opinion of the great physician Hippocrates, who being requested by the people of Abdera to cure him of his madness, after long discoursing with him, expressed himself penetrated with ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... attachment of this eccentric lady to his Lordship was well known; insane is the only epithet that can be applied to the actions of a married woman, who, in the disguise of her page, flung herself to a man, who, as she told a friend of mine, was ashamed to be in love with her because she was not beautiful—an expression at once curious ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... predominant—I do not mean to insinuate an excessive—interest. I feel that if I were to suggest any arguments bearing directly upon home rule or disestablishment, I should at once come under that damnatory epithet "academical," which so neatly cuts the ground from under the feet of the political amateur. Moreover, I recognise a good deal of justice in the implied criticism. An active politician who wishes to impress his doctrines upon his countrymen, should have a kind of ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... be quite absurd to write about. Already a double row of aloe, planted at intervals, marks what is to be your course afar off, and is a faithful guide till it lands you in a Sicilian plain. This is the highest epithet with which any plain can be qualified. This is indeed the month for Sicily. The goddess of flowers now wears a morning dress of the newest spring fashion; beautifully made up is that dress, nor has she worn it long enough for it to be sullied ever so little, or to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... alarmed at length, strove to rouse her from this stupor of grief. In vain did her dear old nurse, who ran in affrighted at the loud ejaculations of the terrified but unfeeling creature who had dealt the blow, use every epithet of endearment, and strive to win one look from the poor sufferer, into whose inmost soul the iron had entered, upon whose heart a weight had fallen, that could never, never be uplifted again on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the interest was not paid on the national debt, and Brienne resigned. The States-General met in May of the next year; in June they declared themselves a national assembly, and commenced work upon a constitution under the direction of Siyes, who well merited the epithet, "indefatigable constitution-grinder," applied to Paine by Cobbett. Not long after, the attempted coup d'tat of Louis XVI. failed, the Bastille was demolished, and the political Saturnalia of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... should not be very far apart, and this circumstance led to the frequent use of rows of columns. The architecture of this period is accordingly sometimes called columnar, but it has no exclusive claim to the epithet; the column survived long after the exclusive use of the beam had been superseded, and the term columnar must accordingly be shared with buildings forming part ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... that same element of self-sacrifice, I will not grudge the epithet "heroic" which my revered friend Darwin justly applies to the poor little monkey who once in his life did that which was above his duty; who lived in continual terror of the great baboon, and yet, when the brute had sprung upon his friend the keeper, and was tearing out his throat, conquered ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... context can weigh a feather against the full and flawless evidence of the whole speech. And of all this there is nothing in the Contention; the scene there opens in bald and flat nakedness of prose, striking at once into the immediate matter of stage business without the decoration of a passing epithet or ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... thought this over until its full meaning sank into him. "I don't know how you could say anything finer of a man," he remarked presently, "than that applying a disgraceful epithet to him left him entirely untouched, but changed the whole meaning of the epithet. By George, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... handsomest philosopher I have ever known (handsome philosopher is seldom used, but his figure, shape, manner, conversation and other traits have made him worthy of the epithet), M. Bernier, I say, in speaking of the senses, said to ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... Syr, was born in the year A.D. 1015, and left Norway A.D. 1030. He was called Hardrade, that is, the severe counsellor, the tyrant, though the Icelanders never applied this epithet to him. Harald helped the Icelanders in the famine of A.D. 1056, and sent them timber for a church at Thingvol. It was the Norwegians who gave him the name tyrant in contrast to the "debonairete" of Magnus. He came to Norway in A.D. 1046, and became ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of word and epithet, is at least as great a work of art as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in England's Gallery; greater indeed, one is apt to think at times, not merely because its equal beauty is more enduring, but on account of the fuller variety of its ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... tut," said Larry, with affected modesty: "it's not what I say, but I can tell you a thing that Docthor Growlin' put out on him more nor a year ago, which was mighty 'cute. Scholars calls it an 'epithet of dissipation,' which means getting a man's tombstone ready for him before he dies; and divil a more cutting thing was ever cut on a tombstone than the doctor's rhyme; this ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... as much enjoyment as possible without exposing herself to awkward consequences; common scandal told him that he was not the first callow youth that she had entangled with her provoking glances and her witty tongue. The epithet by which his brother officers qualified her was expressive, though impolite. James repeated these things a hundred times: he said that Mrs. Wallace was not fit to wipe Mary's boots; he paraded before himself, like a set of unread school-books, all Mary's excellent ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... and strong-handed! Intriguing in Trondhjem, where he gets the under-king, Greyfell's brother, fallen upon and murdered; intriguing with Gold Harald, a distinguished cousin or nephew of King Blue-tooth's, who had done fine viking work, and gained, such wealth that he got the epithet of "Gold," and who now was infinitely desirous of a share in Blue-tooth's kingdom as the proper finish to these sea-rovings. He even ventured one day to make publicly a distinct proposal that way to King Harald Blue-tooth himself; who flew into thunder and lightning at the mere ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... And he often urged them with the oracle which bade them "trust to walls of wood," showing them that walls of wood could signify nothing else but ships; and that the island of Salamis was termed in it not miserable or unhappy, but had the epithet of divine, for that it should one day be associated with a great good fortune of the Greeks. At length his opinion prevailed, and he obtained a decree that the city should be committed to the protection of Athena, "queen of Athens"; that they who were of age to bear arms should embark, and that ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... effects of frontier cookery, and her lips were stained with the yellow juice of a brier-wood pipe she held in her mouth. The ostler had explained their intrusion, and veiled their character under the vague epithet of a "hunting party," and was now evidently describing them personally. In his new-found philosophy the fact that the interest of his hostess seemed to be excited only by the names of his companions, that he himself was carelessly, and even ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... some need that the epithet 'painful' should be explained, as it is here applied to this good man, but everybody knows without any explanation what it is for any man to be 'single-hearted.' This was the fine character our Lord gave to Nathanael when He saluted him as an Israelite indeed ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... stout cords, for the present," cried the lieutenant, returning no answer to the banter of Nosey, who fired with indignation at the epithet. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the Saviour[52] without, of course, knowing anything whatever about architecture. Strange to say, that solitary friend of Aratoff's, Kupfer by name, a German who was Russified to the extent of not knowing a single word of German, and even used the epithet "German"[53] as a term of opprobrium,—that friend had, to all appearance, nothing in common with him. He was a jolly, rosy-cheeked young fellow with black, curly hair, loquacious, and very fond of that feminine society which Aratoff so shunned. Truth to tell, Kupfer ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of the objects which the word previously, though vaguely, pointed at, to be overlooked and forgotten. It is better, in such a case, to give a fixed connotation to the term by restricting, than by extending its use; rather excluding from the epithet Beautiful some things to which it is commonly considered applicable, than leaving out of its connotation any of the qualities by which, though occasionally lost sight of, the general mind may have been habitually guided in the commonest and most interesting applications of the term. For there ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... oath and applying a vile epithet, "is too all-fired smart to notice anybody, and Jack's another, so they'd be likely ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... The epithet of rust-coloured comes from her. It was really tawny. Once or twice in my hearing she had referred to "my rust-coloured hair" with laughing vexation. Even then it was unruly, abhorring the restraints of civilization, and often in the heat of a dispute getting into the eyes of Madame de Lastaola, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... longer softened by the absence of strict party lines, throbbed feverishly with passion and ugly epithet. The strategical advantage lay with Seymour, who made two speeches. Dean Richmond, alarmed at the growing strength of the war spirit, urged him to put more "powder" into his Brooklyn address than he used at the ratification meeting, held in New York City on October 13; but he declined to cater ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... her figure and dress, which to Miss Powle's eyes was peculiar. She wore her hair in a crop; and that seemed to Eleanor a characteristic of the whole make up. Her dress was not otherwise than neat, and yet that epithet would never have occurred to one in describing it; all graces of style or attire were so ignored. Her gown sat without any; so did her collar; both were rather uncivilized, without partaking of the picturesqueness ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... opened his mouth to speak; he was about to ejaculate Woman! but his sense of propriety prevented this. He would not apply such an epithet to any one in the house of a friend. Wretch rose to his lips, but he would not use even that word; and he contented himself with: "You! You know just as well as you know you are standing there that ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... was on the character of David, and there was a note in it, a note of historical imagination, a power of sketching in a background of circumstance, and of biting into the mind of the listener, as it were, by a detail or an epithet, which struck Langham as something new in his experience of Elsmere. He followed it at first as one might watch a game of skill, enjoying the intellectual form of it, and counting the good points, but by the end he was not a little carried away. The peroration ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... boy of modest dimensions, not otherwise especially entitled to the epithet, who ought be six or seven years old, to judge by the gap left by his front milk teeth, these having resigned in favor of their successors, who have not yet presented their credentials. He is rather old for an enfant terrible, and quite too young to have grown into ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not absolutely the same—I put something instead of "angel"; and in the sequel my epithet seemed the more apt, for when eventually we heard from our traveller it was merely, it was thoroughly to be tantalised. He was magnificent in his triumph, he described his discovery as stupendous; ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... name of Courtenay, Courtney, of French local origin, is derived in an Old French epic from court nez, short nose, an epithet conferred on the famous Guillaume d'Orange, who, when the sword of a Saracen giant removed this important feature, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... not known to the natives. It was given by the Spaniards, and originated, it is said, in a misapprehension of the Indian name of "river."1 However this may be, it is certain that the natives had no other epithet by which to designate the large collection of tribes and nations who were assembled under the sceptre of the Incas, than that of Tavantinsuyu, or "four quarters of the world."2 This will not surprise a citizen of the United States, who has no other name by which to class himself among nations ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... girl who prophesied "Evelina," and the Davidson sisters. In the midst of these commonplace exercises which Miss Darley read over so carefully were two or three that had something of individual flavor about them, and here and there there was an image or an epithet which showed the footprint of a passionate nature, as a fallen scarlet feather marks the path the wild flamingo ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... is to the town, not the man (though from the portraits of him he was very handsome), that the epithet applies. My version of the song differs from that given in Cromek's Burns, and also from Allan Cuningham's; and I am disposed to think my memory at fault from the so near recurrence of the word "bonnie" in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... Farland had his hands untied and was given some food. Then his wrists were lashed again and his ankles loosened, and he was allowed to walk around the room for an hour or so, two of the men watching him closely. The one to whom the masked man had applied the epithet, "dog," appeared surly. ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... epithet aringreypr is applied both to benches and helmets (see Strophes 3 and 16). Its meaning is doubtful: it has been rendered iron-bound, brass-bound, hearth-encircling, curved like an eagle's beak, etc. Benches and helmets of ceremony are evidently intended, ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... rhyme—rhyme often intricate and complex beyond hope of imitation in our language. Elision came to be disregarded; and even the accentual values, which may at first have formed a substitute for quantity, yielded to musical notation. The epithet of popular belongs to these songs in a very real sense, since they were intended for the people's use, and sprang from popular emotion. Poems of this class were technically known as moduli—a name which points significantly to the importance of music in their structure. Imitations ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... preponderance of butterflies in the upper regions of the air affect the colour and brilliancy of the flowers? Simply thus. Bees, as we are all aware on the authority of the great Dr. Watts, are industrious creatures which employ each shining hour (well-chosen epithet, 'shining') for the good of the community, and to the best purpose. The bee, in fact, is the bon bourgeois of the insect world: he attends strictly to business, loses no time in wild or reckless excursions, and flies by the straightest path from flower to flower of the same species with mathematical ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... many women among them, who seemed more eager and resolute than their male companions. They pressed round their leader, as if to shield him, while they loudly bestowed on him every sacred denomination and epithet of worship. Adrian met them half way; they halted: "What," he said, "do you seek? Do you require any thing of us that we refuse to give, and that you are forced to ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... physical nature, Bacon was a master in the knowledge of human nature. Pope only chose the epithet which all the world had applied, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... cradle by the contiguous powers. Provided she had the lion's share of Poland, Catherine was indifferent to the success of Jacobinism. But she soon saw the danger of a general conflagration and, applying Voltaire's epithet for ecclesiasticism to the republic, cried all abroad: Crush the Infamous! Conscious of her old age, distrusting all the possible successors to her throne: Paul the paranoiac, Constantine the coarse libertine, and the super-elegant ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... him: contradicteth his will, debaseth his authority, despiseth his sovereignty, upendeth his truth. There is a kind of infiniteness in it, nothing can express it but itself no name worse than itself to set it out, the apostle can get no other epithet to it, Rom. vii. 13, than "sinful" sin, so that it cometh in most direct opposition unto God. All that is in God, is God himself, and there is no name can express him sufficiently. If you say God, you say more than can be expressed by many thousand other words. So it is here—sin ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... (for both, though perhaps not equally, deserved that epithet) had met, as usual, at the close of a sweet summer day, and were standing by the side of the stream, just where it swept into a deep pool. The current, undermining the bank, had formed a recess, which, according to Edward Walcott, afforded ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... kings and subjects: whoever in either case violates that compact, justly forfeits all advantages arising from it. For my own part, I really think that next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing: and the epithet which I should covet the most, next to that of Aristides, would ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... coming up in hoists. Barrels are rolling out of wagons. Crates are being lifted in. Is the exchange never to stop? Is no warehouse satisfied with what it has? English, which until now you judged a soft concordant language, shows here its range and mastery of epithet. And all about, moving and jostling the boxes, are men with hooks. One might think that in a former day Captain Cuttle had settled here to live and that his numerous progeny had ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... who passes through the streets decked out extravagantly in all that the milliner and dress-maker can furnish, realize the unfavorable impression she makes upon sensible young men—could she but see the curl of the lip, and hear the contemptuous epithet which her appearance excites, and know how utterly worthless they esteem her—she would hasten to her home, throw off her foolish attire, and weep tears of bitterness ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... epic was called by him a comedy because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible to English readers in the metrical translations of Carey, Longfellow, Norton, and others, and in the excellent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... it was 300 years ago. The remains of the old cottage, with its blackened walls (haunted of course by a thousand evil spirits,) and the extensive moor, on which a more modern inn (if it can be dignified with such an epithet) resembles its predecessor in every thing but the character of its inhabitants; the landlord is deformed, but possesses extraordinary genius; he has himself manufactured a violin, on which he plays with untaught skill,—and if any discord ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... The epithet describes the simple, practical side of his character. His later love of solitude was the natural outcome of that closer contact with nature which made to him a living daily reality the command, "Thou shalt have no other gods ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... midst of wolves; be ye, therefore, wise (phronimoi) as serpents, and harmless as doves." Yet, as we know, the serpent is not endowed in any special manner with sagacity or reason. The fact is, the epithet "subtil" is applied to the serpent with reference to its form and movements, which convey the abstract idea of subtlety on the same principle that the words "tortuous" and "twisting" have an abstract meaning when we speak of "tortuous policy," {12} or "twisting the meaning of a sentence." ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... seed. Nature has formed an exception in the Pigeon tribe; but has compensated them by providing that the parent bird shall soften the food in her own crop before it is given to the tender young. From the peculiar manner in which the young are fed comes the epithet, "sucking doves." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... epithet was less applicable to the affair than that of "Athenian Vespers," with which the Parisian press christened it. Admiral Dartige protests indignantly against the grotesque exaggerations of his imaginative compatriots. Apart from the tragic features natural to a pacific demonstration, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott |
