"Noun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expressive the simple word can become in the hands of a master. Dante's verb and noun are now proverbial. As for Mr. Davidson, Gray's clear-cut lines in the Elegy can supply no more instances of perfect aptness than those which I quoted some time ago of the lark. Notice the ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... be given to the fact that it is to the root of a word that the prefixes and suffixes are added. When it is stated that the final letter "i" indicates the infinitive, the letter "o" the noun, the letter "a" the adjective, the letter "e" the adverb, the letter "j" added to form the plural, etc., the pronouns "mi", "li", "vi", etc., do not interfere with the statement, for they are complete words; the letters "m", "l", and "v" are not roots. The word "do" ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Give Rule 18. The words father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, etc., when followed by a proper noun, should always ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... broad river, which guarded peaceful settlers both against the inroads of hostile tribes and the attacks of wild animals. A common name for the ancient settlements of the Aryans in India was "the Seven Rivers," "Sapta Sindhavah." But though sindhu was used as an appellative noun for river in general (cf. Rig-Veda VI. 19, 5, samudre na sindhavah yadamanah, "like rivers longing for the sea"), it remained throughout the whole history of India the name of its powerful guardian river, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... sounds 'un pen fort,' does it not? No, not at all. A cat may look at a king; and upon this or that out-of-the-way point a writer may presume to be more knowing than his reader—the serf may undertake to convert his lord. The reader is a great being—a great noun-substantive; but still, like a mere adjective, he is liable to the three degrees of comparison. He may rise above himself—he may transcend the ordinary level of readers, however exalted that level be. Being great, he may become ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... leaders of its arts and productive labour; that its head 'podesta' or 'power' should be the standard-bearer of justice; and its council or parliament composed of charitable men, or good men: "boni viri," in the sense from which the French formed their noun 'bonte.' ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... Indeed, it has but one conjugation, but with seven or eight variations, having the effect of as many different conjugations, and giving great variety of expression. The predominance of these modifications over the noun, the idea of time contained in the roots of almost all its verbs, so expressive and so picturesque, and even the scarcity of its prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs, make this language in its organic structure breathe life, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... a copy, by permission of the authoress—with regard, I say, to the 'liberty of transcript,' I by no means oppose an occasional copy to the benevolent few, provided it does not degenerate into such licentiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to 'disparage my parts of speech' by ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... to the derivation of the word Heygre in the Etymologists. The Keltic verb, Eigh, signifying, to cry, shout, sound, proclaim; or the noun Eigin, signifying difficulty, distress, force, violence—may, perhaps, be the root from whence came this name for the tide—so dissimilar to any other English word of kindred meaning. It is scarcely probable ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... Preposition's placed before a noun, and serves to show Relation to some other word; ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... race fast decaying,—specimen of the true fine gentleman, ere the word "dandy" was known, and before "exquisite" became a noun substantive,—let me here pause to describe thee! Sir Sedley Beaudesert was the contemporary of Trevanion and my father; but without affecting to be young, he still seemed so. Dress, tone, look, manner,—all were young; yet all had a certain dignity which does not belong to youth. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... observance of the requirements of grammatical construction. Still, it has some authority for being considered idiomatic, for does not "Pilgrim's Progress" tell us of the "Palace Beautiful?" And doubtless many other instances might be cited of the substitution of an adjective for a noun. At all events, the worthy owner, who built his house in the most approved style of former New England architecture, spacious, square, and with projecting windows in the roof, made some pretensions to classical allusion; for cultivating ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... a veritable and inimitable clown, and his name has figured in French literature both as a proper and a common noun almost from the day that he and his partner, Mondor, set up their booth on the Pont Neuf. They began their sale of ointments and liniments in Paris about the year 1618, attracting custom by their absurd dialogues in the vein of the circus-clown and ring-master ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the characteristic expressions of the Fourth Gospel—we might almost have said the characteristic expression—respecting Jesus, is that He is "sent." To use the noun instead of the verb, He is God's special messenger, His [Greek: angelos], sent by Him to declare and to do His will: but this does not imply that He has, or has assumed, the nature of an angel; just as the application of the same word ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... they have to say in plain terms, how much more eloquent they would be! Another rule is to avoid converting mere abstractions into persons. I believe you will very rarely find in any great writer before the Revolution the possessive case of an inanimate noun used in prose instead of the dependent case, as 'the watch's hand,' for 'the hand of the watch.' The possessive or Saxon genitive was confined to persons, or at least to animated subjects. And I cannot conclude this Lecture without insisting ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Bororo language three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. The masculine was formed by adding the words chireu, curi, or curireu, to the noun; the feminine by the suffixes chireuda and curireuda. There were many words which were used unaltered for either gender. In the case of animals, the additional words medo, male, or aredo, female, clearly defined the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... felt its way—literally. The school of the majority, of course—I admit it amply. I, on the other hand, am with the benighted minority who believe that the world, so far as it has lived to any purpose, has lived by the head,' and he flung the noun at Robert scornfully. 'But I am quite aware that in a world of claptrap the philosopher gets all the kicks, and the philanthropists, to give them their own label, all ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... language of this sentence is remarkable:—"Jeo ou nul autre en moun noun purchace absolucion ou de Apostoile ou de autre souerein." (Rot. Pat., ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... obvious meaning, it might have been prevented by an easy periphrasis—such as, "We, the people of the States hereby united," or something to the same effect. The word "people" in 1787, as in 1880, was, as it is, a collective noun, employed indiscriminately, either as a unit in such expressions as "this people," "a free people," etc., or in a distributive sense, as applied to the citizens or inhabitants of one state or country or a number of states or countries. When the Convention of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... as antique. The association between what is old or old-fashioned and what is odd, fantastic, or grotesque is obvious enough. Cf. Milton, Il Pens. 158: "With antick pillars massy-proof." In S. A. 1325 he uses the word as a noun: "Jugglers and dancers, anticks, mummers, mimicks." Shakes. makes it a verb in A. and C. ii. 7: "the wild disguise hath almost Antick'd ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... nobody to button-hole, and felt the strong necessity of boring some one!' There was a tone of gayety in this reply, which told me how changeable and mercurial my companion could be; and I read an evident understanding of the character and mission of the noun-substantive 'bore,' which assured me that he was the last person in the world likely to play such a part. 'However,' he concluded, 'wait a bit. When we have concluded the raspberries, and wet our lips with green-seal, I will tell you all that I myself know of a very singular ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is arma?" "A noun." "Of what sort?" "Common." "Of what class?" "Abstract." "Of what gender?" "Neuter." "Why neuter?" "Because all nouns whose plurals end in a are neuter." "Why is not the singular used?" "Because this noun expresses many different ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... nador]) translated to vow, in its literal acceptation means to beat out grain from the sheaf on the thrashing-floor: hence, as the corn is thus scattered, it came to signify to scatter, or to be liberal; and thence, finally, to offer willingly and freely. The noun ([Hebrew: neder]) accordingly is put to denote the act of offering, or of making a promise, to God, and also what in this is spontaneously offered or promised. Moreover, in a passage formerly quoted, it is described as a free-will-offering. ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... a bit I declare to God I dont feel a day older than then I wonder could I get my tongue round any of the Spanish como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all I thought I had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any person place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera with the questions in it all upside down the two ways I always knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish and he tell me the Italian then hell ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... be amiss to observe that the original term is gwyddfa but gwyddfa; being a feminine noun or compound commencing with g, which is a mutable consonant, loses the initial letter before y the definite article—you say Gwyddfa a tumulus, but ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... deal of confusion in the application of the word "stoping." It is used not only specifically to mean the actual ore-breaking, but also in a general sense to indicate all the operations of ore-breaking, support of excavations, and transportation between levels. It is used further as a noun to designate the hole left when the ore is taken out. Worse still, it is impossible to adhere to miners' terms without employing it in every sense, trusting to luck and the context to make ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... unaccountable caprice presided over the fortunes of words, and determined which should live and which die. Thus in instances out of number a word lives on as a verb, but has ceased to be employed as a noun; we say 'to embarrass', but no longer an 'embarrass'; 'to revile', but not, with Chapman and Milton, a 'revile'; 'to dispose', but not a 'dispose'{150}; 'to retire' but not a 'retire'; 'to wed', but ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... it will be observed that the gender of the Brazilian German noun is, where there has been a change from that of the original Brazilian Portuguese, as a rule, the same as that of the High German ...
— The German Element in Brazil - Colonies and Dialect • Benjamin Franklin Schappelle
... were left both hyphenated and separate depending on their part of speech, for example: science-fiction science fiction (adjective) (noun) ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... a spreading tree and a little well-tended flower plot before it, and the broad world stretching away in all directions behind. Here lived Policeman T—— and B——. "First-class policemen" perhaps I should take care to specify, for in Zone parlance the unqualified noun implies African ancestry. But it seems easier to use an adjective of color when necessary. Among their regular duties was that of weighing down the rocking-chairs on the airy front veranda, whence each nook ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... conceive of malice aforethought. We are forbidden, for example, to use the word "phenomenal" in the sense of "extraordinary." But, with Mr. Crummles's Infant Phenomenon in everybody's mind, can we expect the adjective to shake off the old associations of its parent noun? ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Alhambra: in the language of the old ballads el, not la, is used before a feminine noun with initial-a or e-, whether the accent be on the first syllable ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... spasm throbbing through the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent, Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. The lightning has run masterless too long; He must to school and learn his verb and noun And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, Spelling with guided tongue man's messages Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea. And yet I marked, even in the manly joy Of our great-hearted Doctor ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Collective noun used to refer to potato chips, pretzels, saltines, or any other form of snack food designed primarily as a carrier for sodium chloride. From the technical term 'chip substrate', used to refer to the silicon on the top of which the active parts of ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... so as to read pretty well, so my tooter says. I've been studyin' geography and grammar also. I've made such astonishin' progress that I can tell a noun from a conjunction as far away as I can see 'em. Tell Mr. Munroe that if he wants an accomplished teacher in his school, he can send for me, and I'll come on by the very next train. Or, if he wants to sell out for a hundred dollars, I'll ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... because those in the ancient religions who were not initiated in the sacred rites or Mysteries of any deity were not permitted to enter the temple, but were compelled to remain outside, or in front of it. They were kept on the outside. The expression a profane is not recognized as a noun substantive in the general usage of the language; but it has been adopted as a technical term in the dialect of Freemasonry, in the same relative sense in which the word layman is used in the professions of law ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... distinguish two ideas which are comprehended in it, that of affirmation and that of quality. He thought he perceived also that defect in the expression of the qualities, always presented, in all languages, out of the subjects, and never in the noun which they modify; and, by the help of a process no less simple than ingenious and profound, he has made the deaf and dumb comprehend the most arduous difficulty, the nature of abstraction; he has initiated them in the art of generalizing ideas by presenting ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... a deal of pulling through, Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, shaking his head, 'a deal of pulling through. I stick at everything beyond a noun-substantive—and I stick at him, if he's at ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... strain is taken up in the second paper. We have short dissertations on the deadly 'hiatus in the harness which should connect the pre-revolutionary with the post-revolutionary commonwealths of England;' on the adjective old, and the aged noun civilation; then comes a general belaboring of athletes and gymnasts, at which point Sir William fairly emerges into view; suddenly our author seems to recollect that his space is fast diminishing, and concludes to 'take a rise out of something or other' at once; ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... furnished the wreath of Bacchus, the wood of his cup, emblematic of the human body containing his life-blood, and the material for the chest of the great mysteries—meaning also the body and the world. I think, however, that its philological root may also be possibly found in the Greek noun kissa, and the verb kissao, implying strange and excessive passionate longing. Such yearning would well become the Bacchantae, the wild children of desire and of Nature. It is longing or desire which leads to renewing life, which constitutes love, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... do with words; we put them in classes which we call Parts of Speech. Now, there is one class of words which is made up of name-words or nouns; that is, of words that are used as names of persons or things. In the sentence, 'Birds fly,' birds is a noun, and fly is ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... make good this last position, two things I must do first, cite the whole passage, without change of letter or tittle, as it stands in the Folios '23 and '32; next, show the trivial and vulgar use of "contents" as a singular noun. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... that no man has less fortune or is made more of. He plays, it is true, but only occasionally; though as a player at games of skill—piquet, billiards, whist,—he has no equal, unless it be Saville. But then Saville, entre noun, is suspected of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mansfield's case, the court not only held that she could be admitted, notwithstanding the fact that she was a married woman, under the clause of the statute giving a construction to the masculine noun "male," and pronoun "he"; but that the affirmative declaration, that male persons may be admitted, is not an implied denial of the right to females. We know of no instance in the United States, where a woman, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a sentence; a child can easily learn this after he has learnt what is meant by a sentence; but it would be extremely difficult to make him comprehend it before he could distinguish a verb from a noun, and before he had any idea of the structure of a common sentence. From easy, we should proceed to more complicated, sentences. The grammatical construction of the following lines, for example, may not be immediately apparent ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... this day as a monument of their former existence; for the Ottawas and Chippewas named this little island "Mi-shi-ne-macki-nong" for memorial sake of those their former confederates, which word is the locative case of the Indian noun "Michinemackinawgo." Therefore, we contend, this is properly where the name ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... take this word to be, as above, a noun of multitude, and so to be used ambo-dexter, as occasion presents, singular or plural; then the Devil signifies Satan by himself, or Satan with all his Legions at his heels, as you please, more or less; and this ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... in our dictionary for a long while. This familiar adjective has been made by certain scientific people into a noun, and for brevity and convenience employed to denote something that almost all of us harbor in some form or other. These complexes, these lumps of ideas or impressions that match each other, that are of the same pattern, and that are also invariably ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... day, he used capitals and omitted them with an apparent carelessness. In the above note, for example, the following words occur, "Great charter." Here he furnishes the adjective with a capital, and reduces his noun to the ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... Hebrew tongue, And said there was analogy between 'em; She proved it somehow out of sacred song, But I must leave the proofs to those who've seen 'em; But this I heard her say, and can't be wrong, And all may think which way their judgments lean 'em, "'T is strange—the Hebrew noun which means 'I am,' The English always use ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... himself to pronounce the word, "has no ideas, and my father is not agriculturist, nor working class; he is of the Kayeth caste; but he had not the advantage of a collegiate education, and he does not know much of the Congress. It is a movement for the educated young-man" -connecting adjective and noun in ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... harmony and kinship of words. Where lived another man who could blend the beautiful and the horrible, the gorgeous and the grotesque in such intricate and inexplicable fashion? Who could delight you with his noun and disgust you with his verb, thrill you with his adjective and chill you with his adverb, make you run the whole gamut of human emotions in a single sentence? Sitting in that miserable cottage at Fordham he wrote of the splendor of dream palaces beyond the dreams of ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... the grinding of the gray dog's teeth, the bumping and hissing of the gale outside, the boom of the cascades at the precipices, made up most of the sounds for that evening. Of chat there was a paucity. My knowledge of Norsk extends to few parts of speech beyond the common noun; and Ulus, ignorant person that he is, has no Sassenach: pantomime makes our usual phrase-book. Talk under these circumstances is a strain, and we were too tired for unnecessary athletics. So we smoked, and pondered over the slaying ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... I haven't any more ideas of grammar than a broomstick. You know I called 'cat' a conjunction the other day. Now, you shall help me in grammar, for I'm blessed if I know whether I'm a noun or an adjective, and I'll pay ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the word 'Astynomos' occurs in Aeschylus does not justify the writer of an article in Pauly-Wissowa (Real-Encycl. ii. 1870) in stating that magistrates of this title were already at work in the earlier part of the fifth century; the poet uses the noun in a general sense from which it was afterwards specialized. Some of the regulations ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... curious fact, which I never noticed till afterwards, that though there had been some lapse of time before I hazarded this remark, we both intuitively supplied the noun ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... party is given two slips of paper and a pencil. On one slip he writes a question. This may be serious or absurd, as he wishes. On another paper he writes a word, this being a noun—either proper or common. The questions being mixed are distributed—the words likewise. The players write verses answering the questions and containing ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... the word "cedrinae," which occurs in the verses on Trinity College Chapel, he has, we believe, erroneously made the penultimate long. Dr. Mant has observed another mistake in his use of the word "Tempe" as a feminine noun, in the lines translated from Akenside. When in his sports with his brother's scholars at Winchester he made their exercises for them, he used to ask the boy how many faults he would have:—one such would have been sufficient for a lad near the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... IOTA}." According to Gaussen's argument, Paul must have believed in the inspiration of the letters. But Gaussen is careful not to adduce this instance, which seems at first so much in his favor. For, in fact, both in Hebrew and Greek, as in English, "seed" is a collective noun, and does mean many in the singular. The argument of Paul, therefore, falls through; and it is evident that he is no example to be imitated here, in laying stress on one or two letters. Most modern interpreters admit that he made a mistake; ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... it their strange power to suggest a certain vastness in his intellect and sensibility, which the quaint, idiomatic, homely prose of his friend, Mason, would have been utterly incompetent to convey. Still, he preferred a plain, plump, simple verb or noun to any learned phrase, whenever he could employ it without limiting his opulent nature to a meagre vocabulary, incompetent fully to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... is used in such different Acceptations, is now a Verb, then a Noun, sometimes taken for the Reward of Virtue, sometimes for a Principle that leads to Virtue, and, at others again, signifies Virtue it self; that it would be a very hard Task to take in every Thing that belongs to it, and at the same Time ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... class. The words that may justly be called describing words are adjectives and nouns; and of these the adjective is the first descriptive word. The rule that a writer should never use two adjectives where one will do, and that he should not use one if a noun can be found that completely expresses the thought, is a good one to follow. One certain stroke of the crayon is worth a hundred lines, each approaching the right one. One word, the only one, will tell the truth more vividly than ten that approach its expression. For it must be remembered that ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... substitutes to propose, but as all the interpretations seem to me extremely lumbering I have turned the MS. [Greek] chelidoysthai (taken as a passive) in a way that may be not quite beyond the bounds of possibility. The noun [Greek] chelhist like the English "stain," often passes from its original sense of "blemish" to that of the consequent "disgrace."] of ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it. For though life is great, and fascinates, and absorbs; and though all men are intelligent of the symbols through which it is named; yet they cannot originally use them. We are symbols and inhabit ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... word used as the name of anything that can be thought of, John, boy, paper, cold, fear, crowd. There are three things about a noun which indicate its relation to other words, its number, its gender, and its case. There are two numbers, singular meaning one, and plural meaning more ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... belief that Spirit is finite as well as infinite has darkened all history. In Christian Science, Spirit, as a proper noun, is the name of the Supreme Being. 93:24 It means quantity and quality, and applies ex- clusively to God. The modifying derivatives of the word spirit refer only to quality, not to God. Man is spiritual. 93:27 He is not ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... we would humbly suggest to her that one does not hear anything bend, unless it be of a creaking nature, like an old tree, and that is rather opposed to one's idea of "silences," vague as our notions of that plural noun are. Why one "silence" could not serve her turn is one of those Dundrearyan conundrums that no fellow can find out. And, while we are about it, we should like to know whether it is the silences or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... the midst of my castle-building, I suffered a sense of revulsion. I had been brought up to believe that the only adjective that could be coupled with the noun "journalism" was "precarious." Was I not, as Gresham would have said, solving an addition sum in infantile poultry before their mother, the feathered denizen of the farmyard, had lured them from their shell? Was I not mistaking a flash in the pan ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... instrument of production," they say. That is true. But when, changing the noun into an adjective, they alter the phrase, thus, "The land is a productive instrument," they ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... together simultaneously, in the other there would remain from first to last before the audience but one solitary performer. He, however, as a mere matter of course, by the very necessity of his position, would have to be regarded throughout as though he were a noun of multitude signifying many. Slashed doublets and trunk hose, might just possibly be deemed by some more picturesque, if not in outline, at least in colour and material, than the evening costume of now-a-days. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... pleasance and bounty[FN76] at once dust unite. Full-moonlike of aspect, O thou whose fair face O'er all the creation sheds glory and light, Thou'rt peerless midst mortals, the sovran of grace, And many a witness to this I can cite. Thy brows are a Noun[FN77] and shine eyes are a Sad,[FN78] That the hand of the loving Creator did write; Thy shape is the soft, tender sapling, that gives Of its bounties to all that its favours invite. Yea, indeed, thou ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... phrase always accurate, however unacademic. His vocabulary is enormous, and it is deficient only in the dead words; his language is alive always, and actually tingling with vitality. He rejoices in the daring noun and in the audacious adjective. His instinct for the exact word is not always assured, and now and again he has failed to exercise it; but we do not find in his prose the flatting and sharping he censured in Fenimore Cooper's. His style has ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... the 'Westminster Review,' promises an early paper with passing words of high praise. What vexed me a little in one or two of the journals was an attempt made to fix me in a school, and the calling me a follower of Tennyson for my habit of using compound words, noun-substantives, which I used to do before I knew a page of Tennyson, and adopted from a study of our old English writers, and Greeks and even Germans. The custom is so far from being peculiar to Tennyson, that Shelley and Keats and Leigh Hunt ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... of this genus is often written Productus, just as Spirifera is often given in the masculine gender as Spirifer (the name originally given to it). The masculine termination to these names is, however, grammatically incorrect, as the feminine noun cochlea (shell) is in ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... kind it is as nearly as possible perfect. You think of Horace as you read; and you think of those among our own eighteenth century poets to whom Horace was an inspiration and an example. The epithet is usually so just that it seems to have come into being with the noun it qualifies; the metaphor is mostly so appropriate that it leaves you in doubt as to whether it suggested the poem or the poem suggested it; the verb is never in excess of the idea it would convey; the effect of it all is that 'something ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... specific parts of them, as the Law, the Prophets, or the Psalms. Our word Bible comes from a word which began to be applied to the sacred writings as a whole about four hundred years after Christ. It is a Greek plural noun, meaning the books, or the little books. These writings were called by this plural name for about eight hundred years; it was not till the thirteenth century that they began to be familiarly spoken of as a single book. This fact, of itself, is instructive. For ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... occurrence of "a purely Odyssean word" (677), an Attic form of an epic word, and a "forbidden trochaic caesura in the fourth foot"; an Odyssean word for carving meat, applied in a non-Odyssean sense (688), a verb for "insulting," not elsewhere found in the Iliad (though the noun is in the Iliad) (695), an Odyssean epithet of the sun, "four times in the Odyssey" (735). It is also possible that there is an allusion to ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... (Epist. lviii.) complains that even the of the Platonists (the ens of the bolder schoolmen) could not be expressed by a Latin noun.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Aba Sabir." There are five vocative particles in Arabic; "Ya," common to the near and far; "Aya" (ho!) and "Haya" (holla!) addressed to the far, and "Ay" and "A" (A-'Abda-llahi, O Abdullah), to those near. All govern the accusative of a noun in construction in the literary language only; and the vulgar use none but the first named. The English-speaking races neglect the vocative particle, and I never heard it except in the Southern States of the AngloAmerican UnionOh, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... attributed by the psalm to the Priest-King of this nation of soldier-priests. The misunderstanding, I suppose, has led to the common phrase, 'The dew of one's youth.' But the reference of the expression is to the army, not to its leader. 'Youth' here is a collective noun, equivalent to 'young men.' The host of His soldier-subjects is described as a band of young warriors whom He leads, in their fresh strength and countless numbers and gleaming beauty, like the dew of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... their wanderings from the East. It has two genders, masculine and feminine; o represents the masculine and i the feminine: for example, boro rye, a great gentleman; bori rani, a great lady. There is properly no indefinite article: gajo or gorgio, a man or gentile; o gajo, the man. The noun has two numbers, the singular and the plural. It has various cases formed by postpositions, but has, strictly speaking, no genitive. It has prepositions as well as postpositions; sometimes the preposition is used with the noun and sometimes the ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... even more wanting in connection. Conjunctions would not join, nor any therefores and wherefores tie the sentences. It was merely chance that I landed a verb in the right place, and did not altogether lose the noun. I seemed to know what I wanted to say but it would not form itself on the pen, and what I wrote one day I had an infinite disrelish for the next. I have heard something in my time about rising upon our dead selves. I know of nothing so dead and so precipitating as ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... anything relating to them, it will perhaps be advisable to explain the meaning of this word. In the vocabulary appended to former editions I have translated Busno by such words as Gentile, savage, person who is not a Gypsy, and have stated that it is probably connected with a certain Sanscrit noun signifying an impure person. It is, however, derived immediately from a Hungarian term, exceedingly common amongst the lower orders of the Magyars, to their disgrace be it spoken. The Hungarian Gypsies themselves not unfrequently style the Hungarians ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... desire to use this word as if it were a noun for the time being, for it will bring to us the same truth. This leads me to say that every one is making a record, either good or bad. Deep down through the surface of the earth you will find the evidence of storms centuries ago; the record ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... time, of the reason of the bird's name. For it is very interesting, as a piece of language study, to consider the different power on our minds,—nay, the different sweetness to the ear,—which, from association, these same two syllables receive, when we read them as a noun, or as a verb. Also, the word is a curious instance of the traps which are continually open for rash etymologists. At first, nothing would appear more natural than that the name should have been given to the bird from its reckless function of devouring. But if ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... conceals: it is a fraud, and speaketh not the truth. I am not even certain whether it is a noun or a preposition, but the point is immaterial. Along with other canons of military matters, its virtue lies in its application rather than in its etymology. What the eye doth not see the trench mortars do not trouble is as true to-day as when Noah ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... evidently intensely delighted. "I am so glad. I come avays to see 'er. Tell me," he continued, becoming suddenly serious, "'ave she 'ad 'er bart?" [The Signor almost sings his sentences. He went up the scale to the verb "'ad," and took a turn down again three notes to the noun "bart," which, by the way, was his way ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... Micmac word Quoddy, Kady, or Cadie means simply a place or region and is properly used in conjunction with some other noun; as, for example, Pestum-oquoddy (Passamaquoddy), the place of pollocks." (Dawson and Hand, in Canadian Antiquarian and ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich
... in a philosophical language. Suppose the word is brabo. The final o shows it to be a noun. The monosyllabic root shows it to be concrete. The initial b shows it to be in the animal category. The subsequent letters give subdivisions of the animal kingdom, till the word is narrowed down by its form ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... or 'free from passion', i.e. not liable to be carried away by ambition or cupidity as the Thebans were. This is different from mere 'good sense' ([Greek: syphronein, noun echea]). For Theban 'stupidity', see Speech on Peace, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... all," replied the Master. He had already noted, with a thrill of admiration, the wondrous purity of the old man's Arabic. His use of final vowels after the noun, and his rejection of the pronoun, which apocope in the Arabic verb renders necessary in the everyday speech of the people, told the Master he was listening to some archaic, uncorrupted form of the language. Here indeed was nobility of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... primitive conceptions and ideas. Some traces of the earliest form of language can still be discerned. Thus of Santali Sir G. Grierson states: "Every word can perform the function of a verb, and every verbal form can, according to circumstances, be considered as a noun, an adjective or a verb. It is often simply a matter of convenience which word is considered as a noun and which as an adjective ... Strictly speaking, in Santali there is no real verb as distinct from the other classes of words. Every independent word can perform ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Noun signifies name; nouns are the names of persons and things, as well as of things not material and palpable, but of which we have a conception and knowledge, such as courage, firmness, goodness, strength; and verbs express actions, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... example 'tchelo' ([Russian]) is the Russian for forehead, 'tal' is Welsh for the same; 'iasnhy' (neuter 'iasnoe') is the Russian for clear or radiant, 'iesin' the Welsh, so that if it were grammatical in Russian to place the adjective after the noun as is the custom in Welsh, the Welsh compound 'Taliesin' (Radiant forehead) might be rendered in Russian by 'Tchel[o]iasnoe,' which would be wondrously like the Welsh name; unfortunately, however, Russian grammar would compel any one wishing to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... and has his full share of faults, and, though the owner of a style, is capable of excruciating offences. His habitual use of the odious word 'individual' as a noun-substantive (seven times in three pages of The Romany Rye) elicits the frequent groan, and he is certainly once guilty of calling fish the 'finny tribe.' He believed himself to be animated by an intense hatred of the Church of Rome, and disfigures many of his pages by Lawrence-Boythorn-like tirades ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... literature has laboriously mastered the adjective, wherever it may be in relation to the noun," ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... noun Algonkin, meaning an Indian, is also spelled Algonquin. But the adjective from this noun is spelled Algonquian when applied to Indians, and Algonkian when applied to a ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... one must avoid slipping from the logical into the physical point of view. It would be easy, in taking a concrete example to fix one's ideas by, to choose one in which the letter M should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which noun, being related to L by one of its parts and to N by another, would inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both relations. Thus, one might say: 'David Hume, who weighed so many stone by his body, influences ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... denying that language passed, on the ground that the symbols covenanted upon and assented to by both were uttered and received by eyes and not by mouth and ears? When the lady drank to the gentleman only with her eyes, and he pledged with his, was there no conversation because there was neither noun nor verb? Eyes are verbs, and glasses of wine are good nouns enough as between those who understand one another. Whether the ideas underlying them are expressed and conveyed by eyeage or by tonguage is a detail that ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... composition and the original meaning of words have been indicated wherever these seemed likely to prove helpful. Principal parts and genitives have been given in such a way as to prevent misunderstanding, and at the same time emphasize the composition of the verb or the suffix of the noun: for example, abscido, ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... In that one unassisted noun, scorning the aid of verb, adjective, or adverb, the gooseherd, by a masterpiece of profound and subtle emphasis, contrived to express the fact that he existed in a world of dead illusions, that he had become a convert to Schopenhauer, and that Mr. Curtenty's ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... everything he did. To adopt the old division of the Hebrew Doctors, as given by Nathanael Culverwel, in his "Light of Nature:" In man we have—1st, {pneuma zoopoioun}, the sensitive soul, that which lies nearest the body—the very blossom and flower of life; 2d, {ton noun}, animam rationis, sparkling and glittering with intellectuals, crowned with light; and 3d, {ton thymon}, impetum animi, motum mentis, the vigor and energy of the soul—its temper—the mover of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... has his endurance, his strength, his faith, best described by being spoken of as "a man." I am rather weary of this word "gentlemanly," which seems to me to be often inappropriately used, and often, too, with such exaggerated distortion of meaning, while the full simplicity of the noun "man," and the adjective "manly" are unacknowledged—that I am induced to class it with ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... no cheek that is not white and pink as milk and roses. Victor Hugo, who discovered the child of modern poetry, never omits the touch of description; the word blond is as inevitable as any epithet marshalled to attend its noun in a last-century poet's dictionary. One would not have it away; one can hear the caress with which the master pronounces it, "making his mouth," as Swift did for his "little language." Nor does the ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... the noun "assassin" and the feminine pronoun "she," both Arnold and I started violently, and I cried out ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... incorporates them in the person that their names are forgotten, their general characteristics effaced, and we no longer think of them at all, but rather of the person in whom they are assimilated; hence, the title of a drama can seldom be anything else than a proper noun. On the other hand, many comedies have a common noun as their title: l'Avare, le Joueur, etc. Were you asked to think of a play capable of being called le Jaloux, for instance, you would find that Sganarelle or George Dandin would ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... among gentlemen, that he smiled at the scraps of Latin which Aramis sported and which Porthos pretended to understand. Two or three times, even, to the great astonishment of his friends, he had, when Aramis allowed some rudimental error to escape him, replaced a verb in its right tense and a noun in its case. Besides, his probity was irreproachable, in an age in which soldiers compromised so easily with their religion and their consciences, lovers with the rigorous delicacy of our era, and the poor with God's ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by Bentley; Mr. Johnson, the Hampshire and Winchester Editions give 'reflections.' But in Jane Austen's novels the expression 'a series of' is continually followed by a noun in the singular, when nowadays we should probably use the plural—e.g. Emma, chapter xxxvi, 'a series of dissipation'; Sense and Sensibility, chapter xxvii, 'a series of rain'; chapter xlvi, 'a ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... furnish one quite as good and surer of coming home to the ordinary reader. We could grow as near surly with him as would be possible for us with a writer who so generally endears himself to our taste, when he foists upon us a disagreeable alien like abandon (used as a noun), as if it could show an honest baptismal certificate in the registers of Johnson or Webster. Perhaps Mr. James finds, or fancies, in such words a significance that escapes our obtuser sense, a sweetness, it may be, of early association, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... form as the simple verb. The verb, by altering its function, is used as a noun; as in the expressions, "a long run" "a bold ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... and are denoted by prefixes. The declension of the noun lum (hill) is given below by way ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... one ever is passing along a path. Again you cannot logically say that the passer is passing, for the sentence is redundant: the verb adds nothing to the noun and vice versa: but on the other hand you clearly cannot say that the non-passer is passing. Again if you say that the passer and the passing are identical, you overlook the distinction between the agent and the act and both become unreal. But you cannot ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... mother occupying a high and honourable place, if not indeed the highest place of all. What the etymological meaning was, of the primitive Aryan word from which our mother is descended, is uncertain. It seems, however, to be a noun derived, with the agent-suffix -t-r, from the root ma, "to measure." Skeat thinks the word meant originally "manager, regulator [of the household]," rejecting, as unsupported by sufficient evidence, a suggested ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Horning.—What is the meaning of "letters of horning," a term occasionally, though rarely, met with in documents drawn up by notaries? And, a propos, why should "notaries public," with regard to the noun and adjective, continue to place the cart before ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... the pen of a young author. However, we must remark some rather awkward examples of grammatical construction. The correct plural of "eucalyptus" is "eucalypti", without any final "s", the name being treated as a Latin noun of the second declension. "Slowly and dignified—it pursues its way" is hardly a permissible clause; the adjective "dignified" must be exchanged for an adverb. Perhaps Mr. Held sought to employ poetical enallage, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Latin language there are five cases besides the nominative, or original word, and in the Greek four. Whence the original noun substantive by change of its termination suggests a secondary idea either corresponding with the genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, or ablative cases, besides the secondary ideas of number and gender above mentioned. The ideas suggested by these ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... have been so successful in sticking the epithet "wanton" to Ganymede, that even Mr. Dyce, with his clear sight, did not see that the very word he wanted was the next word before him. It puts one in mind of a man looking for his spectacles who has them already across his nose. "Wanton" is a noun as well as an adjective; and, to prevent it from being mistaken for an epithet applied to Ganymede, it will in future be necessary to place after it a comma, when the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... 'Then you won't close?' said the man. 'By no means,' I replied; 'your proposal does not suit me.' 'You may be principal in time,' said the man. 'That makes no difference,' said I; and, sitting with my legs over the pit, I forthwith began to decline an Armenian noun. 'That ain't cant,' said the man; 'no, nor gypsy either. Well, if you won't close, another will, I can't lose any more time,' and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Ohio, at a private school. I was not studious in habit, and probably did not make progress enough to compensate for the outlay for board and tuition. At all events both winters were spent in going over the same old arithmetic which I knew every word of before, and repeating: "A noun is the name of a thing," which I had also heard my Georgetown teachers repeat, until I had come to believe it—but I cast no reflections upon my old teacher, Richardson. He turned out bright scholars from his school, many of whom have filled conspicuous places ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... Chashaph and Pharmakeia. Biblical critics are inclined, however, to accept in its strict sense the translation of the Jacobian divines. 'Since in the LXX.,' says Parkhurst, the lexicographer of the N.T., 'this noun [pharmakeia] and its relatives always answer to some Hebrew word that denotes some kind of their magical or conjuring tricks; and since it is too notorious to be insisted upon, that such infernal practices have always prevailed, and do still prevail ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... ancestors was a pilot ("ship-steerer"). The word has descended to our own times in the surname of the family Shipster. As a common noun it was not obsolete in the days of Wynkyn de Worde, who printed that curious production "Cock Lorelle's Bote," one ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... sent me to school, but I looked at the master, and saw that he was a smooth, round ferule—or an improper noun—or a vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars. He gave me all my schooling. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... one night in the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him, carefully making those bold and full characters which are supposed to combine the extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and had got as far as "Riches are deceitful," and was elaborating the noun with an insincerity of flourish that was quite in the spirit of his text, when he heard a gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had been busy about the roof, during the day, and the noise did not disturb his work. But the opening ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... too bright to make such a remark as that! If the Bible is for our help as well as for Paul's, we have surely the right to substitute the noun that fits our present needs. We have no idols nowadays; at least they are not made out of wood and stone; and the logic of the question is as clear as sunlight. We have only to understand that the matter of playing cards is a snare and a danger to some people, and we ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... she often used the adjective "humble" before the noun "friend," glossing it with a somewhat exaggerated account of Denas and their relationship, but with Denas herself she never thought of such qualification. Denas had all the native independence of her class—the ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Nationality: noun: Wallisian(s), Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, or Wallis ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... written as one word and capitalized may be a late development and signify no more than the modern treatment by some writers of "gylden hilt" (i.e., writing it "Gyldenhilt") in Beowulf. Even if we assume that the original author of the word intended "Gullinhjalti" as a proper noun and the name of the king's sword, it does not necessarily conflict with the idea that the name of the king's sword is Skofnung. "Gullinhjalti" would then be a by-name, a pet-name, for Skofnung, derived ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... he says, 1st October 1883, "is literally translating each noun (in the long lists which so often occur) in its turn, so that the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... errors of ignorance, were perhaps conformity to good usage at the time. Their use of verbs is different from ours, particularly in the subjunctive mood, and in conjugation generally. They did not follow our rule in reference to number. When the nominative was a plural noun, or several nouns, they often employ the connected verb in the singular number, and vice versa. They were inclined to make construction conform to the sense, rather than to the letter. It is not certain that their usage, in this particular, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... The noun brosier, as Mr. Wilbraham indicates, seems to be derived from the old word brose, or, as we now say, bruise. A brosier would therefore mean a broken-down man, and therefore a bankrupt. The verb to brosier, as used at Eton, would easily ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... to accept any statement unaccompanied by proof. The agreement of an adjective with its noun displeased him, because an arbitrary rule merely ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... manner from that practised by some ignorant persons, who interlard their conversation with Latin apophthegms, giving those who do not understand them to believe that they are great Latinists, whereas they can hardly decline a noun or conjugate ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Deveraux or Devereux, now converted into "Debro" or "Devroo." The only very noticeable change that has taken place in the orthography of our French names is that the article has been joined to the noun in many cases where they were originally separate. In this way La Ramie, La Rabie, La Reintree, etc. are now usually spelled Laramie, Larabie (or, in some instances, Larrabee), Lareintree, etc.; the pronunciation of the newer form being Americanized in the usual way. But this change ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... religious development do they belong: do they prove a primitive or an advanced stage of religious thought? It has been observed that these names of gods are all epithets, or adjectives; and it has been supposed that there was originally a noun belonging to them, that they were all epithets of one great deity, or, as some are masculine and some feminine, of a great male and a great female deity. The noun fell out of use, it is supposed, but was still ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... island of Great Britain, or that he had reached a heaven on earth where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal,—or if they do, never think of denying that they have done it. But this was a generation ago, when the noun "shoddy," and the verb "to scamp," had not grown such familiar terms to English ears as they are to-day. Emerson saw the country on its best side. Each traveller makes his own England. A Quaker sees chiefly broad brims, and the island looks to him ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
