"Slang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ibrahim had picked up his knowledge of English at Alexandria, and his conversation abounded with slang phrases which ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... like other professions, is in some sort to be considered as a distinct nation, possessing manners, customs, a code, and, above all, a language of its own. This, by the outside world, is designated "slang;" just as in one country the tongue of another is vulgarly described as gibberish. Now and then, however, a word escapes from the peculiar vocabulary of the players, and secures the recognition and acceptance of the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... commercial operations that produce the drug for medical use. Qat (kat, khat) is a stimulant from the buds or leaves of Catha edulis that is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), ephedrine, ecstasy (clarity, essence, doctor, Adam), phenmetrazine (Preludin), methylphenidate ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... New York in the spring I meant going on farther whether I could or not. Australia and home again was in my mind, and in New York slang I swore there should be "blood on the face of the moon" if I did not get through inside of four months. Now this is not record time by any means, and it is not difficult to do it in much less, provided one spends enough money; but I was at that time in ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... it vex'd his soul to see So grand a cause, so proud a realm, With Goose and Goody at the helm; Who long ago had fall'n asunder 65 But for their rivals' baser blunder, The coward whine and Frenchified Slaver and slang of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... explained it. Mr. Blackwood has a pair of tailor's-shears, and three apprentices who stand by him for orders. One hands him the "Times," another the "Examiner" and a third a "Culley's New Compendium of Slang-Whang." Mr. B. merely cuts out and intersperses. It is soon done—nothing but "Examiner," "Slang-Whang," and "Times"—then "Times," "Slang-Whang," and "Examiner"—and then ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in. For the sake of the uninitiated, I must explain that, in digger's slang, a "canary" ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... off more quietly than the procession on Monday. There were about 25,000 men, mostly well dressed, no noise or tumult, a vast crowd. It was a failure altogether; Melbourne's answer was good. They say 250,000 men are enrolled in the Unions, and the slang name for those who won't belong to them is 'dungs;' the intimidation used is great. There was quite as great a crowd assembled yesterday to see old Lady Hertford's funeral go by. The King sent all the royal ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... demi-savans (I don't mean Napoleon's in Egypt, but the provinvial editors—in some cases it amounts to the same thing) having proved the word to be Greek, I suppose it is slang no longer), the Tenth Illinois regiment (Dick Wolcott, you know) camped a few miles to the northward, near the woods; and hasty but shady structures were soon reared in front of the officers' tents; but one morning there arose a great wind, and the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pronunciation or spelling, or the introduction of some words borrowed from a foreign language to express ideas of which no native term precisely conveyed the import. He may also remember hearing for the first time some cant terms or slang phrases, which have since forced their way into common use, in spite of the efforts of the purist. But he may still contend that "within the range of his experience," his language has continued unchanged, and he may believe in its immutability ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... River. Her old school companions called her a darling. Tom Whyte said "he never seed nothink like her nowhere." The clerks spoke of her in terms too glowing to remember; and the last arrival among them, the youngest, with the slang of the "old country" fresh on his lips, called her a stunner! Even Mrs. Grant got up one of her half-expressed remarks about her, which everybody would have supposed to be quizzical in its nature, were it not for the frequent occurrence of the terms "good girl," "innocent creature," ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... circumspect and very ceremonious affair must that lovers' row have been. No swearing, no slang or loud talking, but everything deliberate and in the best of form. Lady Betty telling Morelove to go about his business, and that quickly, but doing so with a stately elegance worthy of the great Mrs. Barry; the suitor bowing ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... to these beggars pretending that they were patients discharged from the Abraham ward at Bedlam. The genuine Bedlamite was allowed to roam the country on his discharge, soliciting alms, provided he wore a badge. This humane privilege was grossly abused, and thus gave rise to the slang phrase ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Kathleen, in her easy slang, "is that he never pulls any knighthood-in-flower stuff, yet you somehow feel it's there. Know what I mean? There's a scrapper behind that ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... stooped, exceedingly neat, black-haired, and of medium height. He was like Beth only in a "family" manner. His nose was a trifle large for his face, but something in his modest, good-natured way, coupled to his earnest delivery of slang in all his conversation, lent him a certain charm ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... and the dean of the group. He was in a business house that imported linens, and lived in a "glorious room with two outside windows, and ample seating capacity," so the friends often met there and learned something of Gothic architecture and of the abominations of slang, in spite of themselves. With Burns, and of his firm, was Brydon Lamb, "also of Scotch descent, but born in America, a delightful combination of strength, sweetness and light. The simple grace of his manner, his unhurried speech, his urbanity, captivated us all. We loved him for what ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... in water-soaked mud or the beds of running streams, while leaves and flowers rise far above into the light. Other pools should become "beds" for the water-flowers that float upon the surface. In the slang of the rock garden the plants living and flourishing on upright rocks are called "verticals." If we must have a slang for the flora of the brook garden we will term them "horizontals"— the plants that lie flat on the water surface, and only use their stems as cables to ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... at the dinner said that the Americans by the introduction of slang were ruining the English language. Mr. James Russell Lowell had come evidently prepared for this controversy. He said that American slang was the common language of that part of England from which the Pilgrims sailed, and that it had ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... vagabonds who wandered over the country dressed in grotesque fashion, pretending to be mad and working upon the fears or the charity of people for alms. They were common in the time of Shakespeare, and were found even as late as the Restoration. The slang phrase "to sham Abraham," is a survival of the practice. There was a ward in Bethlehem (or Bedlam) Hospital, called the Abraham Ward, and hence probably arose the name of these beggars. Harmless lunatics who had been discharged were often to be seen roaming about the ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... possessor a fine thing, for it cannot put up with indifferent fare and lodging: it can only prove its existence by the manner in which it annexes all that is richest, most beautiful, and, to use a byegone slang word, most Precious. For it is reserved the luxurious Chesterfield or Divan, heaped with rainbow-like cushions, and placed in the most becoming light, until the quick, unhappy day dawns when another "artistic ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... society, manners, types, characters, possibilities and prodigies and mysteries of fifty sorts; and all in the light of being splendidly "on my own," as I supposed it, though we hadn't then that perfection of slang, and of (in especial) going and coming along that interminable and incomparable Seine-side front of the Palace against which young sensibility felt itself almost rub, for endearment and consecration, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... vocabulary available and in common use, and we possess slang not only of the different nations constituting the United Kingdom, but also slang from the United States, and from our Colonies, whilst we have a lawlessness in the use of our language not permitted to the French. There are disadvantages as well as advantages ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... "go on" a good deal about our slang. They used to be fond of quoting in superior derision in their papers our, to them, utterly unintelligible baseball news. Mr. Crosland, to drag him in again, to illustrate our abuse of "the language," ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... right. That's one time Prudence was away off." She smiled as she recognized a bit of Carol's slang upon her lips. "Don't worry about her. You needn't keep an eye on her any more. She's ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... episode in his martial career, which, as it happened, had taken place in full view of his retainers, among whom it remained the greatest of jokes. Indeed, he wanted to kill a man, the wag of the party, who gave him a slang name which, being ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... the Duffer. "Only you mustn't slang Harrow. And you'd better get it into your silly head that it's the best school in this or any other ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the chambers—at Lind's table, in fact. He was a man of about twenty-eight or thirty, slim and dark, with a perfectly pallid face, a small black mustache carefully waxed, and an affectedly courteous smile. He wore a pince-nez; was fond of slang, to show his familiarity with English; and aimed at an English manner, too. He seemed bored. He regarded this man whom Brand introduced to him ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the poor. His charity, business honor, and public spirit were highly spoken of by those who knew him best. That a journal does not always reflect the editor is as much the fault of society as of the man. So long as the public will pay for gross personalities, obscenity, and slang, decent journals will be outbidden in the market. The fact that the La Crosse Democrat found a ready sale in all parts of the country showed that Mr. Pomeroy fairly reflected the popular taste. While multitudes turned up the whites of their eyes and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... was a bit of slang, and I like to use bits of English slang when I can; they'll be so useful to know by-and-by when I am scolding ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... Cannes, when both the combatants perished after drinking an extraordinary quantity, may be strictly denominated a duel with deadly weapons. In the south of France, it is said, one person sometimes invites another to partake of absinthe by the slang phrase, "Take a shovelful of earth;" as if an American bar-room lounger, recognizing with grim humor the deadly quality of his liquor, should say, "Come and get measured for your coffin." The French expression has certainly, in view of Dr. Magnan's disclosures, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... heads were moved by one muscle, all the faces were turned toward him with wide, derisive grins. He seemed to hear some one make a humorous remark in a low tone. At it the others all crowed and cackled. He was a slang phrase. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... retorted, frowning severely at the culprit, "that this low-brow means to intimate that I am a Spanish athlete. I should be deeply pained to know that any one who has been under the refining influence of Rally Hall should indulge in the practice of slang. What would our dear Doctor Rally say if he heard one of ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... most effectual and sudden words in spite of usage and fashionable taste; and that, therefore, when he can get a brighter tint, a more expressive form, by means of some strange—we must call it—Carlylism; English, Scotch, German, Greek, Latin, French, Technical, Slang, American, or Lunar, or altogether superlunar, transcendental, and drawn from the eternal nowhere—he uses it with a courage which might blast an academy of lexicographers into a Hades, void ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Rascal, his pony, pulled up the lariat pin which held him out upon the prairie and scampered for home, and Billy and Davie Dunn, his chum, were forced to "hoof it," as the western slang goes, home. ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... he listened to Davy's enthusiasm and slang. He drummed his fingers on the table as he considered his proposals. "I hadn't thought of involving any of our home-folks in my troubles," said he thoughtfully, "but maybe your assistance and plan will be the thing that's needed. I want information. People ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... not familiar with the slang of the Rue de Jerusalem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied this word for the first time to this thing, allow us to explain to them what ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... find out where to go to with letters, and they are such illiterate men too! But what can one expect in a world of inconsistencies, where things are all topsy-turvy, so to speak, though I don't like slang, and never use it except when there is a want of a proper what-d'ye-call-it to express one's thingumy-jigs. Don't you think ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Granny" (the fifteen-inch howitzer) in orders "mother" is the name given to the twelve-inch howitzer. The trench language is changing so quickly that I think the staff in the rear are unable to keep up to date, because they have recently issued an order to the effect that slang must not be used in official correspondence. Now instead of reporting that a "dud Minnie" arrived over back of "mud lane," it is necessary to put, "I have the honor to report that a projectile from a German Minnenwerfer landed in rear of Trench F ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... a young, and as Fong had said, "awful smart boy." Smuggled into the country in his childhood, he spoke excellent English, interspersed with slang. He repeated his story with a Chinaman's unimaginative exactness, not a detail changed, omitted or overemphasized. The young men were impressed by him, intelligent, imperturbable and self-reliant, a man admirably fitted to put in execution the move they had decided on. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... so perhaps they won't try it on too hard," said Sam, and there the students' slang came to an end for the ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... back I'll talk nothing but Greek and Latin. I'm getting French now from Ford, and Hindoo from Frank Harley. Then I know English and slang and Long Islandish. Think of one ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... Salisbury, your memory is admirable. Yes, I was hard up. But the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I became harder up. My financial state was described by a friend as 'stone broke.' I don't approve of slang, mind you, but such was my condition. But suppose we go in; there might be other people who would like to dine—it's a ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... scrutiny, but a face that was becoming a kind of hold on life, even a kind of refuge, an ally. It was a face that might have come out of a rather flashy book; or such as is revered on the stage. 'A rotten bad face,' he whispered at it in his own familiar slang, after some such abrupt encounter; a fearless, packed, daring, fascinating face, with even—what?—a spice of genius in it. Whose the devil's face was it? What on earth was the matter?... 'Brazen it out,' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Billina; and you're talking slang, which is very undig'n'fied," said Dorothy, reprovingly. "Come here, Billina, and I'll let you out; for Ozma of Oz is here, and ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... lookin' consid'ble like rain, lately, hereabouts," continued the captain, coolly, in a kind of amphibious slang, characteristic of the man, "but in these yer latitudes no man kin set up to be ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... which the words were uttered was so venomous, that Bob realized the speaker meant mischief, though he was ignorant of the fact that in the slang of tramps who beat their way on railroads, "con" betokened conductor, and "blind baggage" the platform of the coach in a passenger train nearest ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... the many private academies, or the Realschule, where thorough instruction is given, but with less special, though no slight attention to Latin and Greek, and more to mathematics and practical branches, even then he must acquire from one of the gymnasia the exemption-and-maturity-right. In the slang of student-life, the gymnasiast is styled a Frog, the school itself a Pond; between the time of his declaration of maturity and his reception as student, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... determined that my silence shall voice itself. I have no doubt that they would like to have me write it, so that they could boast of it afterward to their fellow officers. Now, as Jimmie would say in his frightful slang, 'I'm going to give them a run for their money.' Von Engel will probably beseech you to arrange to keep Jimmie at your side, so that he can have a few words with Mrs. Jimmie. Von Furzmann will plead with you to permit him a word with me. I need hardly tell you that your role to-night ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... affair turned out. She had put him in the way of something absolutely special—an old house untouched, untouchable, indescribable, an old corner such as one didn't believe existed, and the holy calm of which made the chatter of studios, the smell of paint, the slang of critics, the whole sense and sound of Paris, come back as so many signs of a huge monkey-cage. He moved about, restless, while he wrote; he lighted cigarettes and, nervous and suddenly scrupulous, put them out again; the night was mild and one of the windows of ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... characteristic of his talking and his writing than that tragic poem in which, with his heart crying for the child he had adored and lost, he could compare himself to 'an old black rotter of a boat' past service, and could see, when criticised for it, nothing discordant in that slang rotter dropped into such verse!" A good deal of Henley is in both answers. This curious blend must have especially struck everybody who saw him and listened to him in his own home. I can recall summer Sunday afternoons at Addiscombe, with Henley ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... from the other world. Geographically the most favoured stations for wireless heavenly connections seem to be Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles, California. The adherents of this underworld philosophy have a slang of their own, and the result is that their letters, while they spring from the deepest emotions, sound as if they were copied from the same sample book. The better style begins about like this: "Knowing that you are intensely interested in things psychological, I ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... really, in the only other example (which immediately occurs) of Papa's attempt to bias the filial intellect, we recognise nothing but what is mystical; and involuntarily we think of him in the modern slang character of 'governor,' rather than as a 'guide, philosopher, and friend.' It seems that one Saturday, about the time when the Rev. Walker in Furness must have been sitting down to his exegesis of hard sayings in the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... associated in his great work. The one possessed the reverse qualities of the other: BUFFON, whose style in his composition is elaborate and declamatory, was in conversation coarse and careless. Pleading that conversation with him was only a relaxation, he rather sought than avoided the idiom and slang of the mob, when these seemed expressive and facetious; while MONTBELLIARD threw every charm of animation over his delightful talk: but when he took his seat at the rival desk of Buffon, an immense interval separated them; he whose tongue dropped the honey and the music of the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... off, but ere they had gone two April knew the painter as well as if they had been twin sisters. Clive Connal hadn't a secret or a shilling she would not share with the whole world. She used the vocabulary of a horse-dealer and the slang of a schoolboy, but her mind was as fragrant as a field that the Lord hath blessed, and her heart was the heart of a child. It was shameful to deceive such a creature, and April's nature revolted from the act. Before they reached the farm ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... section of the country from which he came was against him. The bishop was not without his prejudices, and was disposed to father all the materialistic spirit of the age upon his guest, whether or no. He had noted that lapse into slang, and his attitude had become like that of the loiterers in the hall of Caiaphas, the high priest. Had his thought become vocal, it would have run like a garbled version of their triumphant charge against St. Peter: "Thou art a Westerner, and thy ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... what the Abbaye de Cinq-Pierres is, or rather what it was? Mind, not Saint-Pierre, but Cinq-Pierres (Five Stones). Gavroche,[55] who loves puns and is very fond of slang, gave this nickname to a set of huge stones which stood before the prison of La Roquette, and on which the guillotine used to be erected on the mornings when a capital punishment was to take place. The executioner was the Abbe de Cinq-Pierres, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... with pleasure, madame," replied Patty, dimpling with fun as she heard the old lady's unsuccessful attempts in American slang. "My name is Patty Fairfield; and though I seldom use the slang of my country, I'm more or less familiar with its terms, and can enlighten you concerning them, at least to a degree. To me your language is difficult; ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... nice. You'll find a bunch of clippings in my second drawer there. Be sure and show them to your father, and don't fail to keep him in touch with your work: he can help you once he's aroused to what you can do. By the way, you must boil the slang out of your system. It's charming, but it won't do. First thing you know it will be slipping in to your ink-pot and corrupting your manuscripts. You know better; I don't! As you go on Nan Bartlett can probably save you a good ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... may be led astray by some fascinating "divorcee"; that he may be caught in her "selfish snare" and left with a smashed heart and lost youthful ideals, while the fair lady laughs and leaves; but if you will pardon a bit of slang, I should say that the Western youth is a "pretty wise guy," and that mother need not worry because he can look out for himself! However, "mother's advice" may not always have held good after a mint julep, or a stroll in the moonlight..... Hence ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... trifle better than such roughness of the heart as that passage with the Chinese waiter. This new attitude was loose in the back, tight across the shoulders, short in the seams—it was not made to fit Bertram Chester. When he launched out into rudimentary art criticism, stringing together the stock slang which he had picked up in the studios, when he tried to impress her with his refined acquaintance, his progress toward "society" of the conventional kind, her amusement took another turn in the circle ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... then had Coxeter—to use a phrase which he himself would not have used, for he avoided the use of slang—"given himself away." Over his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been looking round him. And, as he had ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... or thoughtlessness, or from yielding to the bad bit in them, join in silly school talk, silly mysteries, giggling, criticizing other people, boasting about home, loud, rough ways of talking, slang, cliques and exclusive friendships (every one of which is underbred, as well as silly or unkind), and are yet, three-quarters of them, fit for something better,—at home they would be better, and at ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... in The Manchester Guardian.—'Bell's talk is full of salt and vivacity, a brilliant stream in which city slang reinforces rustic idiom, and both are re-manipulated by inexhaustible native wit. She is the most remarkable creation in a gallery where not a single figure is indistinct or conventional.... Mr. Gibson's essay—for there is confessedly something experimental ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... the Castle exhausted their adulation, and had received their last reward for upholding the appointment. The Tory press, hungry for the spoil which it maddened the others to lose, paid back the compliments by intense vituperation. The slang of party warfare was bandied in the usual fashion, without thought or a care beyond the interest of party. The Register, to everybody's astonishment, took up the one cause not represented, namely, that of the country. Davis denounced the appointment as an insult to that country, and with ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... button hole"—a slang term for the mouth, has been well "threshed out"—as it is called. Of "My Prooshian Blue," as his son affectedly styled his parent, Mr. Lang correctly suggests the solution, that the term came of George IV's intention of changing ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... to go out to Belgium and get some good 'stuff.' [Stuff, let me say, is the technical or slang term for film pictures.] How would you like ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Miss Cristel. Excitement, Mr. Roylake. For more than a year past, I have not luxuriated in the pleasures of society. I feel the social glow; I love the human family; I never, never, never was such a good man as I am now. Let vile slang express my emotions: ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... provocative angle, and she knew just when to let Bud catch a slow, sidelong glance—of the kind that is supposed to set a man's heart to syncopatic behavior. She did not do it too often. She did not powder too much, and she had the latest slang at her pink tongue's tip and was yet moderate in her ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... no chances of gettin' 'made,' see?" Murphy answered. "Made," John remembered, was the slang of detectives for identification. When a person was ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... more often than you write. Your habits of speech are likely to become permanent and your errors of speech will creep into your written work. It is important therefore that you watch your spoken language. Occasions will arise when the slang expressions that you so freely use will seem inappropriate, and it will be unfortunate indeed if you find that you have used the slang so long that you have no other words to take their place. An abbreviated form of gymnasium or of mathematics may not attract ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... things as discreetly as possible, frightened by the very words he spoke, the horrors he had to relate in that sphere of superlative luxury and enjoyment, before those happy ones who possessed all the gifts of this world; for—to use a slang expression—he fully realised that he sang out of tune, and in most uncourteous fashion. What a strange idea of his to have called at the hour when one has just finished dejeuner, when the aroma of hot ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... good looks, the kind that led you to expect the person enjoying them would dispose of disputations, speculations, aspirations, in a few very neatly and brightly uttered words, so simplified in sense, however, that they sounded, even when guiltless, like rather aggravated slang. It wasn't that Kate hadn't pretended too that she should like to go to America; it was only that with this young woman Milly had constantly proceeded, and more than ever of late, on the theory of intimate confessions, private ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... knowledge how and when to make a compromise, and when to hold fast to a principle. The tendency of the thoughtless is to denounce all compromise as wicked, and to stick to a form of words without bothering about the real meaning. Belief in "fads"—I cannot avoid the bit of slang—and singular malleability of real convictions are sometimes generated just by want of serious thought; and, at any rate, both phenomena ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... solitudes held no enemies for him. He felt that the world belonged to him at night. The moon was his lantern and the stars were his friends. Circumstance and environment had wrought for him a coat of cheerful effrontery which passed for hardihood; a coat patched with slang and gaping with inconsistencies, which he put on or off at will. Out on the starlit mesas he had metaphorically shed his coat. He was at home. Here there were no men to joke about his awkwardness and his ungainly height. A wanderer ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... furnished the Carthaginians with the most expert slingers in the world, who did them great service in battles and sieges.(582) They slang large stones of above a pound weight; and sometimes threw leaden bullets,(583) with so much violence, that they would pierce even the strongest helmets, shields, and cuirasses; and were so dexterous in their aim, that they scarce ever ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... there were others not so good-natured as Lizzie, who, though often vastly entertained by Becky, were quite ready to believe that the spirit of mimicry she possessed had something lawless about it, especially when she broke forth into the slang of the street,—"gutter-slang," the other parcel-girls called it,—the lawlessness seemed to gather a sort of proof. And so it was that, in spite of the entertainment she afforded, and a certain kind of respect ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... stoutly defensive. G.J. grew self-conscious. Moreover, her slang disturbed him. It was the first slang he had heard her use, and in using it her voice had roughened. But he remembered that Concepcion also ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... at him coldly. She was not accustomed to this style of expression. Her friends perhaps occasionally used a slang word or term, but it was done in a spirit of gaiety or as a jest, whereas this man used his expressions ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... the detection of the swaggering boatswain; and all that the Baronet had for it was to sneak off, saying, "D—n the old quiz, who the devil thought to have heard so much slang ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... class. His father, John Chaucer, was a London wine merchant. The family very likely came at first from France, and the name may mean shoemaker, from an old Norman word chaucier or chaussier, a shoemaker. And although the French word for shoemaker is different now, there is still a slang word ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... not—to use a little modern slang—going to "give myself away" on canoeing, or talk of startling adventure. But, for the possible advantage of some future canoeist, I will briefly relate what happened to me on a certain windy morning one summer. It was on one of the larger lakes—no matter which—between ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... faults of his kind, not inveterately, for he spoke good English to women; but as he indulged in his dear island slang to men, he felt bound to use it to himself. "This poor little woman is thorough game," he said to himself. "I can see that she is as tender as a little bird, yet she has shown as much pluck as a six-foot grenadier? She has not flinched at all. I can ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... of wool, however, did in those days bring with it much profit, so that our ancient friend, when dying, was declared, in whatever slang then prevailed, to cut up exceeding well. For sons and daughters there was ample sustenance with assistance of due industry; for friends and relatives some relief for grief at this great loss; for aged dependents comfort in declining years. This was much for one old man to get done in that ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... own fault," replied Lester, as he followed his companion to another part of the stand where they could give free vent to their mirth. "You can't blame her for not understanding baseball slang. I'll bet after this that ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... for crime; his vessels were usually secreted in the land-locked bay of Barataria, to the westward of the mouth of the river. They were, however, soon extirpated by the American government. The language of the adjacent States is still adulterated with the slang of those scoundrels, proving how short a period it is since they disappeared, and how they must have mixed up with the reckless population, whose head-quarters were then at ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... typical of Sophie that she had selected from among all the dashing wooers; at her heels, Walter Trumwell, simple and sedate, who was horrified by her pranks and shocked by her use of slang, but who adored her with the devotion of a frightened puppy. Their engagement had been long announced. It was only in its high-handed abruptness that ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... In the slang of the newspaper shop a "story" means non-fiction. It may be an interview. It may be an account of a fire. It may be a page of descriptive writing for the Sunday magazine section. It may be merely ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... current slang for shrewd. To smoke a plot or a trick was to detect it; in modern ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... saddle. Then, in a flash and thunder of flying horses, we swept like tawny lightning down the Pincian. The last words I heard from the club window, through the heliotrope-scented air, were "Thirty to one on Atys, half only if declared." They were wagering on our lives; the slang of the paddock was ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... cricket matches, at both of which more attention is paid to fashion than to the field, follow one another in a dizzy succession. She has naturally no time for thought, but in order to avoid the least suspicion of it, she learns to chatter the slang of the youthful Guardsmen and others who are her companions. A certain flashing style of beauty ensures to her the devotion of numerous admirers, to whom she babbles of "chappies" and "Johnnies," and "real jam" and "stony broke," and "two to one bar one," as if her life depended ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... snake-charmer and the boneless wonder. David was profoundly polite, almost old- fashioned in his acknowledgment of the introduction. The women were suddenly conscious of a new-found glory in themselves. The "boneless wonder" talked of his elegance for weeks, and always without resorting to slang. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... atrocious slang! Won't eat his oatmeal! And he's such a queer child—queer! So pale, never laughs, doesn't like any one. Why should you take up for him? He doesn't even like you. Hates ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the young ruffian, now using that half-whining, half-sneering form of discourse peculiar alike to the vicious chevalier of Paris and his confrere of the provincial centres. Accent and slang alone distinguish between them; the argot, however, is practically ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... my finish," said Launcelot, moved to slang, by the intensity of his feelings. "I thought it was bad enough to be cut out of going to college, but if you and Anne go away, I ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... In the days when link-boys and sedan chairs helped home a jag they had the time to speak good English. But now! Good Lord! With typewriters cutting your phrases into angular fragments, with the very soil at your heels saturated with slang, what hope in an age of hurry has a fellow to think of the cadence? I honestly believe Stevenson was having fun when he wrote that essay of his on the technical elements of style. It's a puzzle picture and no more to be deciphered ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... a good deal of slang from the nature of his associates, and she set to work to improve his language, ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... Tucca. "His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang." ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... Yarrow. "I was only a boy. You remember that I was only a boy,—just out of the shop. The more uneducated a man was in our church-pulpit then, the better. I knew nothing, John," appealingly. "When I preached about foreordination and hell-fire, it was in coarse slang: I knew that. I used to think there might be a different God and books and another life farther out in the world, if I could only get at it. I never was strong, and they had forced me into it; and when you came to me to help you with your plan, I wanted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Revolution: they trusted reason and have had their reward; no such leap forward has ever been made as France made in that one decade, and the effects are still potent. In the last hundred years the language of Moliere has grown fourfold; the slang of the studios and the gutter and the laboratory, of the engineering school and the dissecting table, has been ransacked for special terms to enrich and strengthen the language in order that it may deal ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... a river, is now, by the unusual droughts of the summer, shrunken to a mere rill, but even now, and at all seasons, it must be worth the drive to see it. Worth the drive! a drive any where in these hills 'pays'—to borrow the slang of this bank-note world—for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly saw young partridges in our path, nearly as tame as the chickens of the Casse-cour. The whir-r-ing of their wings struck a spark even from our sportsman's eye, and—a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the novel of "Paul Clifford" (and hence the introduction of a semi-burlesque or travesty in the earlier chapters) was to show that there is nothing essentially different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice, and that the slang of the one circle is but an easy paraphrase of the cant ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... respect to me. And then, 'who can say?' as the Portuguese says when he hasn't anything else to say. They'll keep a strict watch over you, my friend, because you've played the lion too much. Just before I left the States, as you call them, a new slang phrase was going the rounds;—'it is better to play the fox some of the time than to roar all of the time.' Ergo, be foxy. Take it cool. So long as you haven't got that mint packed about your person, the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... amusement. Many are the ministers to this taste in our time. There is almost a mania for frivolity and excitement, which exhibits itself in many forms in our popular literature. To meet the public taste, our books and periodicals must now be highly spiced, amusing, and comic, not disdaining slang, and illustrative of breaches of all laws, human and divine. Douglas Jerrold once observed of this tendency, "I am convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw about all things. After all, life has ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... of office boy to that of secretary for the Corrugated Iron Company. The story is full of humor and infectious American slang. ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... I presume that means. The Consolidated Pacific is wise to the situation. 'Wise' is slang, isn't it? It used ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Spain, even in Suchet's corps, which was one of the best disciplined: and the Italians, anxious not to be outdone in any respect by their allies, were the most accomplished of depredators. They had come in fact to hold theft meritorious, and designated it by the elegant name of poetry. This slang term had become so general, that it was used even by the officers; and the adjutant of Pepe's regiment, in reporting a marauder to him, calls the man a poet. The prosaic application of a couple of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and Caesar. Thus we saw traffic policemen with their Stop and Go signals in the middle of the Sahara; telephones, check books, motorcycles and automobiles in use, and so on. In addition, the leaders were filled with modern business and other slang; and the spectacle of a huge negro wrapping Cleopatsy in a modern Axminster rug and carrying her in to show her to Antony (instead of, as according to history, Caesar) kept the spectators in a roar of laughter. For an originally-worked-out idea such ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... at this, and then proceeded to explain the meaning of the slang phraseology he had used. "Green, you must know, ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... was visible and clear; At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial, And clad in uniform, were loitering near A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal Took their impatience somewhat patiently, Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"— (A certain slang of the Academy, I beg the reader ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... doesn't know where Bella picks up her slang words. I think it is Mr. Ned who teaches her, for when he comes home in the summer he often says, with a sly twinkle in his eye, "Come out into the garden, Bella," and he lies in a hammock under the trees, and Bella perches on a branch near him, and he talks to her by the ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... the facts to Uncle John; and then he turned to the chauffeur, who was fumbling with the tyre—it was something complicated, not only just the bursting—and in a minute or two he was down in the mud giving such practical advice. And you never heard such slang! But I believe men like that sort of thing, as the chauffeur was not a bit ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... having been expended upon persons of infinitely small merit, what was to be done when those of real superiority entered upon the scene? It was impossible to apply to them the forms of laudation adapted to their inferiors. Well, then, a species of slang was invented, by which it was thought practicable to make the genuine great men conceive they had passed into the condition of demigods. A language was devised that was to express the fervor of the adorers who were suddenly allowed to penetrate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Skirmish bataleto. Skirt jupo. Skittles kegloj. Skulk kasxigxi. [Error in book: kasigxi] Skull kranio. Sky cxielo. Skylight fenestreto. Slack malstrecxa. Slacken (speed) malakceli. Slacken (loose) malstrecxi. Slag metala sxauxmo. Slake sensoifigi. Slander kalumnii. Slang vulgaresprimo. Slanting oblikva. Slap in the face survango. Slash trancxadi, trancxegi. Slate ardezo. Slater tegmentisto. Slates (roofing) tegmentajxo. Slaughter (animals) bucxadi. Slaughter mortigi. Slaughter-house ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... clever about Lucretia Borgia, and Mary Manning, and Mary Newell! One would think English mothers were all going to boil their children. This is just what has happened about everything else. In certain English circles slang is talked: therefore women have become coarse and vulgar. The Divorce Court has been a busy one of late; and scandals have been 'going round' as the American ladies in this hotel say; therefore there are to be no more virtuous mothers and sisters presently. Upon my word, the audacity of this makes ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... The boys in your family know of it—if you could get them to tell you. My two sons studied at a State university, and they would bring me home what they heard—the gossip, the slang, the horrible obscenity. Fourteen fellows in one dormitory using the same bathroom—and on the wall you saw a row of fourteen syringes! And they told that on themselves, it was the joke of the campus. They call the disease a 'dose'; and a man's not supposed to ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... and myself were left alone, neither the first nor the second nor'-wester of brandy-and-water could arouse him from his sullen mood. He told me frankly, and in his own sea-slang, that he could not disintegrate the idea of a lawyer from that of the devil, and that he was assured that neither I nor my cause would prosper if I permitted the interference of a land-shark. I was even obliged ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... my brother, do not fear it; I'm no disembodied spirit— I am Lampton, the Slang Poet, with a price upon my head. I am watching by this portal for some late lamented mortal To arise in his disquietude and leave his ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... date" (as the slang goes) of Our Village, may interest the supporters of the Statesman Mr. ACLAND, without annoying the admirers of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various |
