"King's English" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the far North, almost on the borders of Lapland, being addressed in our own tongue by a man in rags. We were astonished; yet all over Finland one meets with sailors who speak the King's English, and in Uleborg we were struck with the fact on two other occasions—the first being when the man at the helm of a small penny steamer addressed us, and the second when a blue-coated policeman ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... look," 'e sez, "like you could stay; Altho' yeh mauls King's English when yeh yaps, An' 'angs flash frills on ev'rythink yeh say. I ain't no grammarist meself, per'aps, But langwidge is a 'elp, I owns," sez Unk, "When things is goin' crook." ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... 'True,' rejoined another: 'he can drink his way through a democratic canvass, tell the most amiable lies, absorb any amount of chaffing, and stands less at swearing than any other man in the country: more than all, he can demolish the King's English at a stroke.' Such pulling, hauling, squeezing and yawning, 'cussin' and swearing—such cross-firing, crooked joking, and slang jibes, never before was seen in such perfect medley. In calmer moments, even the hard-fisted, iron-hearted, unterrified and never-washed democracy would have ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... affairs before I know them myself. I don't know when we are going to London yet. Perhaps not for a week or two, and at any rate not with those people, who may be very kind, but are not educated; he can't even speak the King's English. No, if we can't make friends in our own class ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... catacombs, my dear little girls; they are large caverns, not taverns: a mummy in a tavern would frighten all the idlers and ragamuffins out of it. I don't know but what it would be a good plan, but you two dear little twisters and turners of the king's English would frighten that cranky old fellow, Dr. Johnson, into a long sickness, if he was only alive and could hear you. I love to hear you talk; it does me good. Don't go out of the room, but take that ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... word, such as "I hasten with wilful pleasure to write in reply to your Lordship's well-wishing letter," etc. Whilst I was thus evolving from the depths of my inner consciousness a satisfactory solution to this conundrum in King's English, his Majesty's private secretary lolled in the sunniest corner of the room, stretching his dusky limbs and heavily nodding, in an ecstasy of ease-taking. Poor P'hra-Alack! I never knew him to be otherwise than sleepy, and his sleep was always stolen. For his Majesty was the most capricious of kings ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... in Brasbridge's time was Mr. Hawkins, a worthy but ill-educated spatterdash maker, of Chancery Lane, who daily murdered the king's English. He called an invalid an "individual," and said our troops in America had been "manured" to hardship. Another oddity was a Mr. Darwin, a Radical, who one night brought to the club-room a caricature of the head of George III. in a basket; and whom Brasbridge nearly ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sacred and precious to be used promiscuously. Its use should be led up to reverently for it expresses what the King's English could not." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Greek, and to Arabians in Arabik, and to Jewes in Ebrew, and to the Latin folk in Latin." Chaucer, then, will make use of plain English, "naked wordes in English"; he will employ the national language, the king's English—"the king that is lord of this langage."[549] And he will use it, as in truth he did, to express exactly his thoughts and not to embellish them; he hates travesty, he worships truth; he wants words and things to be in the closest ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand |
