"Monosyllable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Piper. His power of articulation was slowly returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... answered her only in monosyllable, making small distinction between yes and no. He simply sat watching her with eyes in which there were two little ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Dalstan, who had suddenly clutched his hand. There was something in her face which puzzled as well as startled him. She had been looking at her opposite neighbour but she turned back towards the narrator of this thrilling story as the monosyllable broke ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had been lost. Mr. Wyvern received notice of the proposed marriage less than two hours after Adela had spoken her world-changing monosyllable. She put in no plea for delay, and her mother, though affecting a little consternation at Mutimer's haste, could not seriously object. Wanley, discussing the matter at its Sunday tea-tables, declared with unanimity that ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... monosyllable alone, and then he walked away from her as though that one little word settled the question for him, now and for ever. He walked away from her, perhaps a distance of two hundred yards, as though the interview was over, and he were leaving her. She, as she saw him go, wished that he ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... hardly spoke. If she said nothing to Leeds, neither would she address the man on her other side, only giving such monosyllable answers as were necessary. The evening dragged slowly. Leeds did not approach her. Once or twice she looked toward him, but he did not appear to notice her. Indeed, he only came late from the smoking room and returned after a brief appearance in the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the story of the brandy-flask, in which Calvert saw much less of honor either to John Cross or his neophyte. But the old man did not express his doubts to his young friend, and they sat together, watching, in a silence only occasionalry broken by a monosyllable, the progress of the unconscious ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... not make up her mind to use the word 'Go.' Mounsey, from long practice, has got over this difficulty, and uses it incessantly. It is no matter what adjunct follows in the train of this despised monosyllable,—whatever liquid comes after this prefix is welcome. Mounsey, without being the most communicative, is the most conversible man I know. The social principle is inseparable from his person. If he has nothing to say, he drinks your health; and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... course, Snobs; they existed for years and years, and were no more known than America. But presently,—INGENS PATEBAT TELLUS,—the people became darkly aware that there was such a race. Not above five-and-twenty years since, a name, an expressive monosyllable, arose to designate that race. That name has spread over England like railroads subsequently; Snobs are known and recognized throughout an Empire on which I am given to understand the Sun never sets. PUNCH appears at the ripe season, to chronicle ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Romarin—instantly noting that the monosyllable, which matched the other's in curtness, was not at all the reply he had intended. "Thank you—yours," he amended; and a short pause followed, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... flexibility and feeling. The effect which he produces is irresistible and universal. Throughout the house the most profound silence is rigidly, but sympathetically enforced; so great is the apprehension of losing a single monosyllable in these interesting moments, which always appear too short. To this silence succeed shouts of acclamation and bursts of applause. I never knew any performer command the like but Mademoiselle SAINVAL ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... his monosyllable; "it's quite as important as all that. I don't wish to be overheard. Besides," she added with nonchalant irrelevance, "I do want ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Orientalism, we can hardly expect to get out again without some slight entanglement in philology. Lily-pads. Whence pads? No other leaf is identified with that singular monosyllable. Has our floating Lotus-leaf any connection with padding, or with a footpad? with the ambling pad of an abbot, or a paddle, or a paddock, or a padlock? with many-domed Padua proud, or with St. Patrick? Is the name derived from the Anglo-Saxon paad or petthian, or the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... be well to state, signified the prairie; its melancholy personality having penetrated the very marrow of their train existence, they had come to refer to it by the monosyllable, as in certain nether circles the head of the house receives his ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... telegram she had not noticed the little monosyllable 'us,' which was now affecting her so powerfully. Of course it meant a wife and possibly children, and her day was surely over at Tracy Park. It was in vain that her husband tried to comfort her, saying ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... call up the picture of a return to Christian Communism whenever we mention Wimbledon Common. This truth descends to such trifles as the titles which we write on letters and postcards. The puzzling and truncated monosyllable "Esq." is a pathetic relic of a remote evolution from chivalry to snobbery. No two historic things could well be more different than an esquire and a squire. The first was above all things an incomplete and probationary position—the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... 590; type &c (printing) 591; capitals; digraph, trigraph; ideogram, ideograph; majuscule, minuscule; majuscule, minuscule; alphabet, ABC^, abecedary^, christcross-row. consonant, vowel; diphthong, triphthong [Gramm.]; mute, liquid, labial, dental, guttural. syllable; monosyllable, dissyllable^, polysyllable; affix, suffix. spelling, orthograph^; phonography^, phonetic spelling; anagrammatism^, metagrammatism^. cipher, monogram, anagram; doubleacrostic^. V. spell. Adj. literal; alphabetical, abecedarian; syllabic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Not that this indulgence was devoid of accompanying grief. Perdita's name was for ever joined with his; their conjugal felicity was celebrated even by the authentic testimony of facts. They were continually together, nor could the unfortunate Evadne read the monosyllable that designated his name, without, at the same time, being presented with the image of her who was the faithful companion of all his labours and pleasures. They, their Excellencies, met her eyes in each line, mingling an evil potion that ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... monosyllable was strangely expressive, but Dug McFarlane had no understanding of the thought that prompted it. It would have been difficult indeed, even with understanding, to have probed the depths of feeling prompting ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... the majority is the supreme law, how comes it that a settlement can be maintained where the rights of the majority can be ignored and suppressed at the point of the bayonet? For an answer to this question, comes the monosyllable—Trusts! ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... so ample as a monosyllable is sometimes. If it had been Harry's object to escape from a tragic or sensational situation he had achieved it triumphantly. The question was no longer who should have Blent, but where they should have dinner. Nothing in his manner ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... also, and a man of great courage. Stout and hardy and of great courage at home, that is; in his own mind and heart, soul and body, that is. Young Captain Self-denial was a perfect hero at saying No! and at saying No! to himself. It is a proverb that there is nothing so difficult as to say that monosyllable. And the proverb is Scripture truth if you try to say No! to yourself. It takes the very stoutest of hearts, the most noble, the most manly, the most soldierly, and the most saintly of hearts to say No! to itself, and to keep on saying No! to itself to the bitter end of ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... the other daughter; her mother had fancied that name; but the single monosyllable it had been shortened into somehow suited the proud-looking girl better than the whole name, with its suggestion ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... that monosyllable the faces of the exquisites became visibly elongated; but without taking the smallest notice of them or their confusion, the nobleman politely wished me good morning, and, descending from the coach, caused the footman to place his cloak and despised portmanteau in the carriage. He then ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... in consonants? There is scarcely a more harshly-sounding word in the Welsh language—admitted by a clever and satirical author to have "the softness and harmony of the Italian, with the majesty and expression of the Greek"—than the term crack, adopted from the Dutch. There is no Welsh monosyllable that contains, like the Saxon strength, seven consonants with only one vowel. There is no Welsh proper name, like Rentzsch, the watchmaker of Regent Street, that contains six consonants in succession in one syllable; and yet the Welsh have ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... you can say? Other people have said very complimentary things!" said Leonore, pretending to be grieved over the monosyllable, yet in reality delighting in its expressiveness as Peter ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... exquisite, falling melody of that simple monosyllable expressed so perfectly, through such a trained larynx, all the sudden lack of interest!) "It never happened, then? So of course it does not matter. But why do you call it ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... grumbled out his commands to the two sailors who managed the craft, in such a dogged, sulky tone, that it attracted the attention of the elder Hawke, and being naturally fond of fun, he endeavoured to draw him out. An abrupt monosyllable was the sole reply he could obtain to any one of ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... monocle, monarchy, monogram, monomania; (2) monosyllable, monochrome, monogamy, monorail, monograph, monolith, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... polite monosyllable was not very encouraging, to be sure; but Billy, secure in her conviction that her cause was a righteous ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... and wheelbarrows." The native word for the country was something like Keugu, which the Chinese (as they still do with foreign words, as, for instance, Ying for "England") promptly turned into a convenient monosyllable Ngu, or Wu. The semi-barbarous King was delighted at the opening thus given him to associate with orthodox Chinese princes on an equal footing, and to throw off his former tyrannical suzerain. He annexed a number ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... showed no signs of reverence. Soon in all the coffeehouses was handed about a brutal lampoon on the courtly prelates whose pens the King had employed. Mother East had also her full share of abuse. Into that homely monosyllable our ancestors had degraded the name of the great house of Este ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... This freezing monosyllable notwithstanding, Sir Terence pursued his course fluently. "The golden Venus!—sure, Miss Nugent, you that are so quick, can't but know I would apostrophize Miss Broadhurst that is—but that won't be ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... he uttered this monosyllable, he made a feeble effort to rise from his seat, but sunk back, and again fixed his eye upon the floor ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... secret, without being heard by any one. It is formed of three letters, of which the first, a, signifies the principal of all, the creator, Brama; the second, u, the conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the destroyer, who puts an end to all, Chiven. It is pronounced like the monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three Gods. The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega mentioned in ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Mr. Samuel Weller burst at once into the following wild and beautiful legend, which, under the impression that it is not generally known, we take the liberty of quoting. We would beg to call particular attention to the monosyllable at the end of the second and fourth lines, which not only enables the singer to take breath at those points, but ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... out for me. It may be some unfortunate love affair—who knows? I think I would like to put any fellow out of the way that might be seeking her hand. I believe I would kill him, if necessary. Perhaps, dear Journal, I should not have written that terrible monosyllable, but as you tell no ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... set to cool, and the detective resumes his seat; and, quite ignoring that long neglected monosyllable of inquiry, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... he would hear the monosyllable "me." But the word was not spoken. In its place the phrase "us poor exiles," with which somewhat commonplace remark the young ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... form of practical force, compounded of strong will, strong sense, and strong egotism, which long waited for a strong monosyllable to announce its nature. Facts of character, indeed, are never at rest until they have become terms of language; and that peculiar thing which is not exactly courage or heroism, but which unmistakably is "Grit," has coined its own word to blurt out its own quality. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... His monosyllable was sharp and incisive. His face was grey and anxious. She herself remained lifeless. All that there was of emotion between them seemed to have become ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bank! It is a curious sight. The little shop-girl there, what is she but a roll of pink ribbon?—nay, she is but half-a-yard. And the poor infinitesimal porters and guards, how pathetically small seems their share in the great monosyllable Man, animalcules in that great social system which, again, is but an animalcule in the blood of Time. Still more infinitesimal seems the man who is a subdivision, not of a form of work even, but merely of a form of taste; the man who collects foreign stamps, say, or book-plates, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... into the house, which is none too large: for which reason it might not be done there, unless we were minded to make ourselves, as it were, dumb and blind, uttering never a word, not so much as a monosyllable, and abiding in the dark: in such sort indeed it might be, because they do not intrude upon my chamber; but theirs is so near to mine that the very least whisper could not but be heard." "Nay but, Madam," returned the rector, "let not this stand in our way for a night or two, until I ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the heart and brain and tongue of Morris Monk so that he could not speak the thing he wished. He meant to answer a monosyllable "Yes," but in its place he replied ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... for an appreciable fraction of a minute ere she answered, and when she did, it was in the monosyllable - 'Yes.' ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was furtive; the hand which laid his hat upon the table was shaking; there was a gleam almost of terror in his eyes. The woman remained impassive, inscrutable, simply watching him. After a moment or two, however, she spoke—a single monosyllable. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fixed his heart on that Supreme and Ancient Being, viz., Vishnu. Bending his face slightly down, and heaving his breast forward, and closing his eyes, and resting on the quality of goodness, and disposing his heart to contemplation, and thinking on the monosyllable Om, representing Brahma, and remembering the puissant, supreme, and indestructible God of gods, the radiant Drona of high ascetic merit, the preceptor (of the Kurus and the Pandavas) repaired to heaven that is so difficult of being attained even by the pious. Indeed, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... be kind and affectionate, but the antagonism in that one monosyllable dispersed all his good resolutions. He was sick of scenes, tired of being held at arms' length; reluctantly he had grown to see that this marriage had been the greatest mistake of his life, that he had been a fool to ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... monosyllable), "I was used most scurvily: faith I was. I bear 'em a grudge for it still, I can tell 'em that; for I have hardly been able to hold up my head like a man since—but am forced to go and come, and to do as they bid me. By my troth, I never was so ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Tom could not help noticing—the silence of these red children of the plains. They seemed to make no conversation with each other, except on necessary matters, and then their words were few in number, replies being often made in a monosyllable. ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... Enid, throwing such a depth of expression into the brief monosyllable, that it seemed to convey a whole volume of ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... too visible in Harry's countenance; and yet it was difficult, even for her, to keep up the ball of small-talk, for Solomon was always slow and scant of speech, and the new-comer rarely opened his mouth, and then only to utter a monosyllable. His manner, too, was embarrassing; he turned his white and stony face from one woman to the other, like an automaton, but with a weird and ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... uptilt of question had been on George's tongue. It was a monosyllable that demanded an answer. Penny had got ahead of him, forced him, as it were, into the witness ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... in search of the insects which there congregate. We shall frequently hear its voice, especially before rain, for it is a noisy creature. It has a liquid note, sounding like "el" frequently repeated, and then ending with a sharp, short monosyllable. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... her lips to reply with suitable indignation, but the words were cut short by a gasp of astonishment, and lost themselves in one wondering, long-drawn monosyllable—"My—!" ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... The monosyllable had served Mark well in its time; but even as he fell back upon this stale resource he knew ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... a stamp came Darrell's foot upon the floor that the holy and conjugal monosyllable dropping from Fairthorn's lips was as much cut in two as if a shark had snapped it. Unspeakably frightened, the poor man sidled away, thrust himself behind a tall reading-desk, and, peering aslant from that covert, whimpered out, "Don't, don't now, don't be so awful; I did not mean ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tang- have no real existence in English comparable to that of good- in goodness). A word like intangible, once it is acclimated, is nearly as simple a psychological entity as any radical monosyllable (say vague, thin, grasp). In German, however, polysyllabic words strive to analyze themselves into significant elements. Hence vast numbers of French and Latin words, borrowed at the height of certain cultural influences, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... contagious that savages became saints beneath his magnetic influence. He had heard, at Inverary, the Spirit and the Bride say, Come! And he esteemed it a privilege beyond all price to be permitted to make the abodes of barbarism and the habitations of cruelty re-echo the matchless music of that mighty monosyllable. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... or rather made that pretty speech about esteem and respect, which well-bred young ladies substitute for the obnoxious monosyllable, Sir Harry Towers felt that the whole fabric of the future he had built so complacently was shivered into a heap of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... reason of my giving up my curacy (for I have given it up), and only giving the outward, but equally true reason, that I found it on the whole an ineligible and distressing post. . . . I know you will apply to such an act that disgusting monosyllable of which Protestants are so fond. He felt with me and for me—for my horror of giving pain to my father, and for my wearied and excited state of mind; and strangely enough—to show how differently, according to the difference of the organs, the same object may appear to two ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Job. But Rome and its vulgate vulgarized this hallowed name, and Britain followed Rome. His name in Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic, is Jobab. There is more poetry in this. There is no metre, no poetry in a monotone or monosyllable. Born among rocks and mountains, the proper theatre of a heaven-inspired Muse—not in Arabia the Happy, but in Arabia the Rocky—he was a heart-touching, a soul-stirring, emotional Bard. In such a case the clouds that overshadow the era of the man only enhance the genius ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sewed she sung in a low undervoice, not looking up. Beyond her in the shade Daddy John mended a piece of harness. Daddy John was not a garrulous person and when she paused in her sewing to speak to him, he answered with a monosyllable. It was one of the old man's self-appointed duties to watch over her when the others were absent. If he did not talk much to his "Missy" he kept a vigilant eye upon her, and to-day he squatted in the shade beside her because the doctor and David had gone after antelope and Leff was off somewhere ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... to believe that he pronounces "poem" as a monosyllable, "pome". "My Favorite Amateur" is a good ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... windows I saw the green folk squatting upon their sleeping silks and furs, grunting an occasional monosyllable, which, in connection with their wondrous telepathic powers, is ample for their conversational requirements. As I drew closer to listen to their words a warrior entered the room from the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Ellis's lips seemed about to form the reproachful monosyllable "young." Without further greeting the visitor took off his hat and overcoat and hung them on a peg. "You make ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... had a daughter—Margaret. She was the most beautiful woman in the world...." I suspect my voice broke a little just there, for there was a shade of respectful sympathy in the monosyllable with which he filled the pause. "He swore she should never marry a Northerner, but she did; I guess, being a Bohun, she had to, after hearing she must not. There were two of us that loved her, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... 'if one is free to become a Jesuit?' But I did not believe he was in earnest. Alas, he was. For on the morning of the following day, I went up to his tent on the roof and found nothing of Khalid's belongings but a pamphlet on the subject, 'Is Suicide a Sin?' and right under the title the monosyllable LA (no) and his signature. The frightfulness of his intention stood like a spectre before me. I clapped one hand upon the other and wept. I made inquiries in the city and in the neighbouring places, but to no purpose. Oh, that dreadful, dismal day, when everywhither I went something seemed ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... plural. The ripe product of tendency, the infant heir of the eloquent ages, to whose birth the law of Aryan evolution groaned and travailed until but now, the most useful, if not the "mightiest," monosyllable "ever moulded by the lips of man," the "the," one and indeclinable, was born in the Anglo-Saxon mouth, and sublimed to its unique ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... dock whilst your JURY consult on your fate, is a sensation very peculiar in its kind. To be or not to be; that is the actual matter-of-fact question. Three letters making up the most important monosyllable in the language, which if pronounced is life, if omitted is death: an awkward position for an ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... "twins!" He repeated the monosyllable, converting it into a clarion-call that made me think ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... standing amongst them now, very drawn and pale in the dim halo of light thrown down from the hanging lamp. His answering monosyllable was cold ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Katie, prolonging that monosyllable in a sliding scale, ranging from low to high and back to low again, which was peculiarly suggestive; "I beg your pardon, I quite misunderstood you; well, you may tell Mr Welton that I will befriend Billy to the utmost of ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... nothing—to be laughed at and postponed to his Methodist sister Scott? The impudence of deliberately telling him he "didn't want it, and was rich enough!" as if "enough" could ever be good grammar after such a monosyllable as "rich;" and "want it" indeed! of course he wanted it; if not, why had he slaved so many years? want it, indeed! if to hope by day, and to dream by night—if to leave no means untried of delicately showing how he longed ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... she came down to one hundred ducats, receiving always the same melancholy monosyllable ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... eyes wonderingly up to her. The corner of his mouth trembled, widened, his eyelids crinkled, and then he smiled delightfully, straight into the eyes of the nurse, stretched up a wavering pink hand, and patted her cheek. A soft, gurgling monosyllable, difficult of classification but easy ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... arrow, the earth for his chariot with the sun and moon for its wheels and the Vedas for its horses, the starry canopy for his banner with the tree of Paradise for its staff, Brahma for his charioteer, and the mysterious monosyllable Om for his whip ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the old man and his ways. The talkative fit was evidently over, and he might sit and talk, if he would, from then till evening, and get no more than a monosyllable here and there in return for ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... represented by those present as six hundred and eleven, Garnet explained that besides his own subscription he represented one of fifteen shares and another of ten for two ladies, and Champion unintentionally uttered a lurid monosyllable as Shotwell stuck him under the leg with a pin. They were the shares, Garnet added, that General Halliday ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... on mutton; hence they are familiarly and vulgarly termed "mutton-tugs," abbreviated to "tugs," which homely monosyllable they themselves derive from togati, on account of their wearing the toga—had they not better trace their origin at once from that mysterious and secret society of the Thugs of India? But their internal economy should be treated ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... direction: and now it is the fashion to curtail the direction as much as possible. Formerly, a direction was an academy of compliments: "To the most noble and my singularly respected friend," &c., &c.—and then, "Haste! haste, for your life, haste!" Now, we have banished even the monosyllable To! Henry Conway,[1] Lord Hertford's son, who is very indolent, and has much humour, introduced that abridgment. Writing to a Mr. Tighe at the Temple, he directed his letter only thus: "T. Ti., Temple"[2]—and it was delivered! Dr. Bentley was mightily flattered on receiving a letter superscribed ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... it ran through shadowy woodlands. With these were to be seen at intervals some of maturer years, full-blown flowers among the opening buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear during the period when they never meet a single man without having his monosyllable ready for him,—tied as they are, poor things! on the rock of expectation, each of them an Andromeda waiting for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... word, the author in another place remarks as follows: "As long back as my memory will carry me, down to the present day, there has been scarcely a monosyllable in our language which seemed to convey so stinging a reproach, or to let a man down in the general estimation half as much, as ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... words, though they are all of one syllable. It is true, I have been sometimes forced upon it in other places of this work, but I never did it out of choice: I was either in haste, or Virgil gave me no occasion for the ornament of words; for it seldom happens but a monosyllable line turns verse to prose, and even that prose is rugged and unharmonious. Philarchus, I remember, taxes Balzac for placing twenty monosyllables in file without ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... the mouth and expires through the nostrils, the oxygen of the inspired air does not enter the lungs where the pulmonary changes of the blood take place. The monosyllable Om thus acts as a substitute for the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... knee as he uttered this meditative monosyllable, and continued to regard his niece with keener scrutiny, if that were possible, than before. 'It is John's temper—a very firebrand. My dear, you are very young, and you should not be above taking advice. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... and took the pack from her. As he lifted it there was a clanging of pots and pans. Dick, pouring out a mug of whiskey, paused long enough to pass the wink across her body. Tommy winked back. His lips pursed the monosyllable, "clothes," but Dick shook his head reprovingly. "Here, little woman," he said, after she had drunk the whiskey and straightened ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... picture he will lay before you. He lives in another world—has, as Sir Anthony Absolute says, a sun and moon of his own—a realm of fairies, with attending sprites to perform his every compassable wish. To him life is a most musical monosyllable; making his heart dance, and thrilling every nerve with its so-potent harmony. Life—but especially his life—is, indeed, a sacred thing to him; and loud and deep are his praises of its miracles. Like the departed ROTHSCHILD, "he does ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... Annoyed at being talked of, and hurt at his brusque way of mentioning it, she was just going to give a sharp answer, when he added: 'Shall we make it true?' With characteristic straightforwardness she replied by the monosyllable, 'Yes,' and so they were engaged. Before her marriage she translated Niebuhr's 'Greek Legends,' which were ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... jests that Oliver parried and heard his merry laugh, he would slip his hand under the table and pat his boy's knee with loving taps of admiration, prouder of him than ever. His own pleasures so absorbed him that he continued to sit almost silent, except for a word now and then to Nathan or a monosyllable to Fred. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... reluctant monosyllable, the girl had really no conception of the degree of hostility expressed in her manner. Instead she was hating herself for her ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?—that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?—that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel from which a sharp fragment ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have been, the short glances of her lustrous eyes gave no clue to them, and her tongue was silent, save when she replied by some brief monosyllable to a remark or query put in the Indian language occasionally by Pedro. Sometimes a gleam of the firelight threw her fine brown features into bold relief, but on these occasions, when Lawrence Armstrong chanced to observe them, they conveyed no ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... symptoms of shock. The gilded and stalwart youth on her left, following her glance, stared at the amateur servitor with protruding eyes, ceased to eat or drink, and fell into a state of semi-coma, muttering at intervals an expressive monosyllable. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The monosyllable was drawn out rather faintly. For the first time since they had met on the pass she felt she was mistress of the situation. This time she had not to plead with him in fear for his life. She could regard him without any sense of obligation, this invader of her ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... proceedings of the Revision Court, at Ashton-under-Lyne. A man named James Booth, of 3, Dog Dungeon, Hurst polling district, was objected to by the Conservatives, and Mr. Booth, their solicitor, announced that the man was deaf and dumb, but just able to utter a monosyllable now and then. Mr. Chorlton, the Liberal solicitor: What can I do (laughter)? Mr. Booth first by writing asked what the man's name was, and then began to talk to him with his fingers, but being an indifferent chirologist he made ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... a lady of importance, whose friendship means perdition, yet without whom nothing can be done, and who plays an immense part in the world. The monosyllable which designates her has a vague and extended signification; it means both reward and bribery. Disinterestedness, the virtue of noble minds, being rare in this world, scarcely anything is undertaken without hope of recompense, and what man, toiling solely with a view to recompense, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... expectation. The arguments and shows of truth are few that love requires. The poorest logic is the soundest reasoning—if it conclude for him. The visits to the parsonage were, meanwhile, continued. Upon my return, I gained no news. I asked if all were well there, and the simple, monosyllable, "Yes," answered with unusual quickness and decision, was all that escaped the doctor's lips. He did not wish to be interrogated further, and was displeased. I perceived this and was silent. For some days, no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... back, compelled to the answer, subservient to his touch, to his words, and, to the full, conscious of her subservience. She felt the big breath he drew in answering her monosyllable. He held her unresisting, passive in his arms, watching her cheeks fire. She realised, in a kind of detached way, that he was holding her so that the tips of her toes only touched the floor, and somehow that seemed of a piece with the rest. Then he set her down, and stood apart, ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... This monosyllable was expressive. It proved to me that Bonaparte was conscious how ill he had treated me; and, suspecting that I was actuated by the desire of vengeance, he was afraid of my going to England, lest I should there take advantage of that liberty of the press which he had so effectually put down ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... The monosyllable, as she uttered it, was big with meaning. Uninvited, she seated herself in an arm-chair, a huge old thing, of shagreen leather, which would have held half a dozen of her. Demure in it she looked, like an agreeable reminiscence, alive, and a little up-to-date, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... effort the monosyllable cost her. In bitter disappointment he dropped her hand. As Nancy turned abruptly away she tripped over the root of a tree. Instantly Goddard caught and steadied her. Her soft hair brushed his cheek ... one breathless ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... monosyllable—from Sara Van Decht—was the only speech which broke the amazed silence. She was leaning forward in her chair, gazing eagerly at the three men, her beautiful eyes eloquent with excitement—a crown of fire gleaming in her brown-gold hair. ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... position that what should be objected to in the interests of society, is not egoism, a man's being interested in himself, but the lack of egoism, a man's having a self that does not include others. The trouble would seem to be—not that people use their own private special monosyllable overmuch, but that there is not enough of it, that nine times out of ten, when they write "I" it should ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... daughter, on whom her mother attends with a loving, vigilant, and ceaseless devotion of a most pathetic kind. The circle is completed by a handsome black monkey tied to a post, and an ape which they call an ouf, from the solitary monosyllable which it utters, but which I believe to be the "agile gibbon," a creature so delicate that it has never yet survived a voyage ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... this hall, and up and down, some, squatted Upon their hams, were occupied at chess; Others in monosyllable talk chatted, And some seemed much in love with their own dress; And divers smoked superb pipes decorated With amber mouths of greater price or less; And several strutted, others slept, and some Prepared for supper ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in that monosyllable. He knew it, for a little faint colour came up, as he, shyly, laughed and hesitated, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what I knew to Mr. Mason. Boswell hummed and hawed, and then dropped, "I suppose you know Dr. Johnson does not admire Mr. Gray." Putting as much contempt as I could Into my look and tone, I said, "Dr. Johnson don't—humph!"—and with that monosyllable ended our interview. After the Doctor's death, Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Boswell sent an ambling circular-letter to me, begging subscriptions for a monument for him—the two last, I think, impertinently; as they could not ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Patsy. That was all, but that eloquent monosyllable consigned all other colleges than ours to ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... children, and lead them into captivity. The warriors shall fall by our war-clubs—we will give them no quarter. Our tomahawks we will dip in their brains! with our scalping knives we will scalp them." At each period comes on the chorus, which consists of one monosyllable only, that is sounded a number of times, and articulated like a faint, stifled groan. This word is "eh," and signifies "we will," or "we will go," or "we will do." While singing, they perform the ceremony of killing and scalping, with a great degree ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... states, which, as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the Roman grandeur?—With my conjecture, the sense would be;—'let higher, or the more northern part of Italy—(unless 'higher' be a corruption for 'hir'd,'—the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see, &c.' The following 'woo' and 'wed' are so far confirmative as they indicate Shakspeare's manner of connexion by unmarked influences of association from some preceding metaphor. This it is ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... ordinary mortals by means of contemptuous mono-syllables uttered in a deep bass voice. She married, some twelve years ago, an Englishman, a member of the diplomatic corps, Lord A——, a personage equally handsome and impassive as herself. He addresses at intervals to his wife an English monosyllable, to which the latter replies imperturbably with a French monosyllable. Nevertheless, three little lords, worthy the pencil of Lawrence, who strut majestically around this Olympian couple, attest between the two nations a secret intelligence ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... in the private room at Halfpenny and Farthing's office, Mr. Halfpenny, who had seemed somewhat mystified by the happenings at the bank, looked inquiringly at Professor Cox-Raythwaite and snapped out one suggestive monosyllable: ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... with an uncontrollable desire to ascend the giddy pinnacle, and then survey the immense extent of the city. The door of the cathedral stood invitingly open. My destiny prevailed. I entered the ominous archway. Where then was my guardian angel?—if indeed such angels there be. If! Distressing monosyllable! what world of mystery, and meaning, and doubt, and uncertainty is there involved in thy two letters! I entered the ominous archway! I entered; and, without injury to my orange-colored auriculas, I passed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... reputations and rewards to which it is not entitled. Being a gardener, I like to call a spade as spelt; and if any one terms it an horticultural implement, or a mattock, I do not expect him to dig much. I have used the monosyllable "shop," and I will not recall it, though a thousand pairs of gleaming scissors were pointed at my breast, and I was told by an angry army of apprentices to talk shop no more—the word was vulgar, or rather obsolete, superseded by the more graceful ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... handwriting of the blue-penciled monosyllable. It was not Marrineal's blunt, backhand script. Whose was it? Haring's? Trailing the proof in his hand he went to the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams |
