"Vernacular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the settlement of tradition went another task, that of fixing the letters of the consonantal text of the Bible (by the Massora), its vowel pronunciation (by the punctuation), and its translation into the Aramaic vernacular (Targum). Here also the Babylonians came after the Palestinians, yet of this sort of erudition Palestine continued to be the headquarters even after ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... merry as possible. In the evening we had music in my rooms. Alwine Frommann, on her way through Biebrich, also came to the reading of the Meistersinger. All present seemed to be struck with surprise on hearing my latest libretto, and especially by the vernacular gaiety of the style, of which until now I had not availed myself. Frau Dustmann also, who had a special engagement for a performance at Wiesbaden, paid me a visit. Unfortunately I noticed in her a lively antipathy to her sister Friederike, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... three returning from field work, wearily toiling along the rocky road which runs through the estate of Major Lobdell. The party stopped and sat down to smoke with me. The senior took the lead, not with a brogue but with an accent, translating from the Irish vernacular as he went on. "Long ye may live! We're glad we met ye, thanks be to God. Yer honner's glory is the foinest, splindidist man I seen this twinty year. May God protect ye! 'Tis weary work we does. That foine, big boy ye see foreninst ye, has eighteenpence a day, nine shillin' a week. 'Tis not enough ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... singing is so different from the common vernacular that Bisyas and Christianized Manbos who speak and understand perfectly the ordinary dialect of conversation find the language of song unintelligible. I have had several songs dictated to me and found the song words to be plainly archaic. This observation ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... every reading lesson, without which there can be no serious teaching of the vernacular. By their means the teacher enters into communication with his pupils; he gets them to speak, he corrects their errors, trains their reason, and forms their taste. It has been said that a teacher able to explain selections in prose and poetry "holds ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... of these very choice Americanisms; still, he was sufficiently gifted with common sense to see pretty plainly that all the deck hand's "tall talking" of the previous evening had been, to use his own expressive vernacular, nothing but "bunkum," and that, if he wished to get any situation in the place, he must trust more to his own good fortune than to Mr Slater's kind offices ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... at work. Among these a prominent place should be given to an alteration in the intellectual interests of the Italians themselves. The original impulses of the Renaissance, in scholarship, painting, sculpture, architecture, and vernacular ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... cheeks and in concentric circles on the chest (done with loving care and a knife, in his infancy, by his papa) said only "Ptwack" as he chewed a mouthful of coffee-beans and hide. It may have been a pious ejaculation or a whole speech in his own peculiar vernacular. It was a tremendous smacking of tremendous lips, and the expression which overspread his speaking countenance was of gusto, appreciative, and such as accords ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... and swallowed dryly. Ewbert noticed how he had dropped more and more into the vernacular, in these reminiscences; in their controversies he had used the language of books and had spoken like a cultivated man, but now he was simply ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... young person whom he spoke of as "Pewter-jaw" (I suppose he had worn a dentist's tooth-straightening contrivance during his second dentition), which youth he had finished off, as he said, in good shape, but at the expense of a slight epistaxis, we will translate his vernacular expression. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tell you what is Latin for Constitution, will not make you a particle the wiser; I will, therefore, explain it in the vernacular tongue.—Constitution then, in its primary, abstract, and true signification, is a concatenation or coacervation of simple, distinct parts, of various qualities or properties, united, compounded, or constituted in such a manner, as to form ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... judgment rather than by her impulses. Her vanity, of which she had no little share, led her to accept his attentions to a certain point, but the keen man of the world soon saw that his "little game," as in his own vernacular he styled it, would not be successful, and he was the last one to sigh in vain or mope an hour in lovelorn melancholy. While ceasing to press his suit, he continued to be a frequent and familiar visitor at the house, and thus his attention ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... to a cottage near Pitlochry, whence he wrote that he was engaged in the composition of "crawlers." The first and best of these, "Thrawn Janet," was (with his "Tod Lapraik" in "Kidnapped") the only pendant to Scott's "Wandering Willie's Tale," in the northern vernacular. The tale has a limited circle; no Southern can appreciate all its merits, the thing is so absolutely and essentially Scots; especially the atmosphere. He said that it was "true for a hill parish in Scotland in old days, not true for mankind and the world." So it is fortunate to be a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these wild Indian ponies rearing alternately before and behind, or "bucking," as it is called in the vernacular, will appreciate his description. ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... are under a considerable debt of gratitude to the anonymous translator who has given them a version in the vernacular of Schimmel's "De Kaptein van de Lijfgarde." "The Lifeguardsman" is a historical novel of very unusual power and fidelity. In detail and habit the scenes and people of that troublous period are "reconstituted" here with remarkable skill.'—Belfast ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... work on the advantages and necessity of a knowledge of the Bohemian language. At that time so great was the neglect of the mother tongue, that even for a work of so patriotic a nature, he had to employ a foreign language in order to be understood! One year later appeared an apology for the vernacular tongue of the country, written a hundred years before by the Jesuit Balbin in Latin,[39] and edited by Pelzel. These two writings created a deep sensation; and even the government would seem to have taken notice of them. We find, at least, that in the same year ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... printing. A Vulgate from Dr. Faustus's own press, a mass book and breviary, Thomas a Kempis's Imitation and the Nuremburg Chronicle all in Latin, and the poetry of the gentle Minnesinger and bird lover, Walther von Vogelweide, in the vernacular: these were her stock, which Hausfrau Johanna had viewed as a foolish encumbrance, and Hugh Sorel would never have transported to the castle unless they had been so well concealed in Christina's kirtles that he had taken them for parts of ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him in the exercise of the nominal power of the Throne, a last secret Edict to behead Yuan Shih-kai, but that his faltering hand described circle after circle in the air until his followers understood the meaning. In the vernacular the name of the great viceroy and the word for circle have the same sound; the gesture signified that the dying monarch's last wish was revenge on the man who had ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... can roast you," Nan was saying, archly. She had switched back to her favorite baseball vernacular. "You pitched a swell game last Saturday in Rochester, didn't you? Not! You had no steam, no control, and you couldn't have curved ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... it are maintained by the elder authors, whom, in spite of an Age of Progress, men of superior education esteem. No one who has gone through that study; no one, indeed, who has studied the Ten Commandments in the vernacular,—commits the mistake of supposing that 'the old governor' is a synonymous expression for 'father.' In the second place, since you pretend to the superior enlightenment which results from a superior education, learn to ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could have sustained a policy of political reform, when, in the picturesque vernacular of the time and place, "the bottom had dropped out of the town." A rival newspaper, the LEDGER, in order to retrench, began a war on the Printers' Union, to break wages. Lane repudiated the effort made to "rat" his paper and to force the Union out. He sustained his men in ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Cleigh, falling into the old New England vernacular which was his birthright. "I brought you on board merely to lure him after you. I wanted you both on board so I could observe you. I intended to carry you both off on a cruise. I watched you from the door that night while you two ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... alliteration, whilst finding definition of time in reference to the position of the speaker, much more agreeable to their ears, from their being accustomed to native historians who wrote in the vernacular so defining time in all passages of the kind spontaneously, without art or affectation, and not, as the ancient Romans, stiffly adopting the harsh, unnatural fashion of defining it in reference to the position of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... break through into clear sunlight as a purpose no longer to be confused with the gratification of personal fancies, the impossible realization of boys' and girls' dreams of bliss, or the need of older people for companionship or money. The plain-spoken marriage services of the vernacular Churches will no longer be abbreviated and half suppressed as indelicate. The sober decency, earnestness and authority of their declaration of the real purpose of marriage will be honored and accepted, whilst their romantic vowings and pledgings and until-death-do-us-partings ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... himself, in eight small volumes (Boston, 1857-1858). Thenceforward the leisure of his life—much increased by his transfer, in 1876, to the new professorship of English—was devoted to the comparative study of British vernacular ballads. He accumulated, in the university library, one of the largest folklore collections in existence, studied manuscript rather than printed sources, and carried his investigations into the ballads of all other ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... and nose and mouth to show where Judy's features were marked with ink, and then Amy laughed, and as if the mention of Judy took her back to the vernacular of her childhood, she said, "Oh, yes, I done 'members Judy. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... doubtfully, in lieu of an unknown symbol. If correct, then we should read "24 piccoli each" for this was about the equivalent of a grosso. This is the first time Polo mentions cowries, which he calls porcellani. This might have been rendered by the corresponding vernacular name "Pig-shells," applied to certain shells of that genus (Cypraea) in some parts of England. It is worthy of note that as the name porcellana has been transferred from these shells to China-ware, so the word pig has been in Scotland ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... more marked in his earliest work, and from which at times he quite escapes, Irving's personality shines clearly. He has so employed a conventional medium as to make it serve his original purposes. He possessed, to be sure, a faculty of strong vernacular speech, which is little suggested in his to-be-published writing, or even in his private letters. The Oregon embroilment had led certain British journals into gross speech about America. Irving was much ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... of titles, the names of authors are given in their vernacular form. In English and French surnames beginning with a prefix (except the French de and d') the name is recorded under the prefix. In other languages and in French names beginning with de and d', the name is recorded under the word following the prefix. Compound surnames are entered ...
— A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library [Dewey Decimal Classification] • Melvil Dewey
... write that I am to pay my debt, to wit in coin of correspondence, and finally that I am to go to Tartarus: no but it is you have caught a Tartar (as the saying is), since after all these years employing my own vernacular tongue, and prettily enough for a hired penman, you have set about to drive me by means of your well composed and neatly turned epistles to gross and almost doggish barking in the Latin. Still, I will try: And ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... mediaeval literature. His other principal works were the "Konunga-bok," or chronicle of the kings of Norway, and the "Islendinga-bok," or description of Iceland.[247] Ari's books, written not in monkish Latin, but in a good vigorous vernacular, were a mine of information from which all subsequent Icelandic historians were accustomed to draw such treasures as they needed. To his diligence and acumen they were all, from Snorro Sturlason down, very much indebted. He may be said to ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... from Catholic and non-Catholic translators. The translations of Dr. Neale, Anglican—held to be superior in fidelity and in poetic form to that of any English translator—are given in this booklet. Neale's Collected Hymns (Hodder & Stoughton, 6s.) are useful for translators and composers of vernacular hymns. But his work is, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... that the German Minister to Patagonia, with the assistance of the Swedish Charge d'Affaires, has caused the following Proclamation to be distributed, along with a translation into the vernacular, among the natives; alleging that it reproduces a leaflet composed by the ALL-HIGHEST and dropped from a German aeroplane ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... multitudes of others, Christine and Dennis at last received an army biscuit (hardtack in the soldier's vernacular) and a tin-cup of what resembled coffee. To him it was very touching to see how eagerly she received this coarse fare, proving that she was indeed almost famished. Too weak to stand, they sat down near the door on the sidewalk. A kind lady presently came and said, "If you have no ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... vernacular he thus rambled on all the time Kearney was at work, his rude speech being an appropriate symphony to the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... their own society or not, was certain to visit and hold council with them, as the veterans of the Christian army in India, and the men most experienced in the character and language of the natives; they were the prime leaders and authorities in all that concerned the various vernacular translations of the Scriptures, and their example was as a trumpet-call to others to follow them in their labours; while all the time the simplicity, humility, self-denial, and activity of the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... And yet, though helping much the cause of the Reformation by the freedom of his social and clerical criticism, by his unsparing exposure of every form of corruption and injustice, and, not least, by his use of the vernacular for political and religious purposes, he can scarcely be classed in the great army of the Protestant Reformers. He was a reformer from within, a biting, unsparing exposer of every priestly abuse, but a loyal son of the Church, who ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... dramatist possessed. It should be said that during the fifteenth century the popularity of these plays increased enormously, records of their performance being found in all parts of England, including Cornwall and Wales, where they were acted in the vernacular. ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... Reservation, with a million acres of homesteads, was to be thrown open. A lottery with 1500 square miles of territory as the sweepstakes and 100,000 people playing its wheel of fortune. Trying to describe its size and sweep and significance, I find myself, in the vernacular ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... these Slavonic translations of the Scriptures, the Church Services, and other books, and the preachers in the vernacular for the infant Russian nation? The books had been translated about one hundred and twenty-five years previously, for the benefit of a small Slavonic tribe, the Moravians. This tribe had been baptized by German ecclesiastics, whose books and speech, in the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... In his crude vernacular, which I have endeavoured to reproduce faithfully, the aged rustic had said Hatcher's Lake was better than three miles distant. I am convinced what he meant ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Building of Opera Houses A Study of Influences The First Italian Opera House in New York Early Impresarios and Singers Da Ponte, Montressor, Rivafinoli Signorina Pedrotti and Fornasari Why Do Men Become Opera-Managers? Addison and Italian Opera The Vernacular Triumphant ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... genuine that it only needs a few words from the reappearing Saint to persuade him to accept Christianity.—Monologue and dialogue are throughout in song. The following is one of the three verses in which the barbarian proclaims his loss; the last two lines in the vernacular are ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... regular use limited to literate minority), Mende (principal vernacular in the south), Temne (principal vernacular in the north), Krio (English-based Creole, spoken by the descendants of freed Jamaican slaves who were settled in the Freetown area, a lingua franca and a first language for 10% of the population ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of Hampole, especially his translation and exposition of the Psalter, edited by the Rev. H.R. Bramley (Oxford, 1884), and the Prose Treatises edited by the Rev. G.G. Perry for the Early English Text Society. Dr Murray further calls attention to the Early Scottish Laws, of which the vernacular translations partly belong to the ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... under obligations to serve the Government for a specified time as interpreters at the legation and the consulates in Japan. A limited number of Japanese youths might at the same time be educated in our own vernacular, and mutual benefits would result to both Governments. The importance of having our own citizens, competent and familiar with the language of Japan, to act as interpreters and in other capacities connected with the legation and the consulates in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... birthplace to spend his life in the sacred fields as a missionary. He was thoroughly equipped for roughing it, with a splendid physique and perfect health, imperturbable spirits, and a rare command of classic and vernacular Arabic. He wanted to go to Beirut with as few impedimenta as possible, and, after some talk, we merged our two parties into one. Our preparations for the journey were of the simplest sort. We agreed to dispense ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... had gone to church and preached a sermon an hour and a half long. The sheriff, too, was there in a red coat, and had no doubt got his place by interest. 'Pomp and 'umbug I calls it, and we poor chaps pays for it all.' Fitzjames heartily enjoyed good vernacular embodiments of popular imagination. He admitted that he was not quite insensible to the pleasures of pomp and humbug as represented by javelin men and trumpeters. His work, as my quotation indicates, included some duties ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... over seventy years of age his mind was notably clear, orderly and active, and his talk (usually a carefully constructed monologue) was stately, formal and precise. He used no slang, and retained scarcely a word of his boyhood's vernacular. The only emotional expression he permitted himself was a chuckle of glee over an intellectual misstatement or a historical bungle. Novels, theaters, music ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... as in all the ancient voyages and travels, the names of persons, places, and things, are generally given in an extremely vicious orthography, often almost utterly unintelligible, as taken down orally, according to the vernacular modes of the respective writers, without any intimate knowledge of the native language, or the employment of any fixed general standard. To avoid the multiplication of notes, we have endeavoured to supply this defect, by subjoining those names which are now almost universally ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... connotative terms without a distinctly ascertained connotation, and with no more precise notion of their meaning than can be loosely collected from observing what objects they are used to denote. It is in this manner that we all acquire, and inevitably so, our first knowledge of our vernacular language. A child learns the meaning of the words man, or white, by hearing them applied to a variety of individual objects, and finding out, by a process of generalization and analysis which he could not himself describe, what those different objects have in common. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... capello[5]) were capable of inflicting a wound likely to be fatal to man. The third is the carawala[6], a brown snake of about two feet in length; and for the fourth, of which only a few specimens have been procured, the Singhalese have no name in their vernacular—a proof that it is neither deadly nor abundant. But Dr. Davy's estimate of the venom of the carawala is below the truth, as cases have been authenticated to me, in which death from its bite ensued within a few days. The effect, however, is not uniformly fatal; a circumstance ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... relation with himself—though not unmindful that there might still, as time went on, be others, including a more intimate degree of that one, that would seek, possibly with violence, the larger or the finer issue—which was it?—of the vernacular. Miss Verver had told him he spoke English too well—it was his only fault, and he had not been able to speak worse even to oblige her. "When I speak worse, you see, I speak French," he had said; ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... and a brother to the man who knows his vernacular. And a Frenchman is French because he speaks his own language. But the American has no language. He is dialect, slang, provincialism, accent, and so forth. Now that I have heard their voices, all the beauty of Bret Harte ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... proof of possession, and approached to exorcise the demon; but Sister Claire resisted, and pretending to spit in the face of the exorcist, put out her tongue at him, making indecent gestures, using a word in harmony with her actions. This word being in the vernacular was understood by ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sensation of delight and despair.' Dr. Beattie (Life, p. 243) wrote on Jan. 5, 1778:—'We who live in Scotland are obliged to study English from books, like a dead language, which we understand, but cannot speak.' He adds:—'I have spent some years in labouring to acquire the art of giving a vernacular cast to the English we write.' Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto, p. 222) says:—'Since we began to affect speaking a foreign language, which the English dialect is to us, humour, it must be confessed, is less ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... of this tale, I could wish for a pen supernally dipped, or for a metaphysician's plating to my vernacular, or for the linguistic patois of that land off somewhere to the west of Life. Or maybe just a neurologist's chart of Hester's nerve history ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... (official) universal Bantu vernacular, French (official), English (official), Kiswahili (Swahili) ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... bank account, however quickly it increased, failed to give Jonas Miller and his wife full pleasure, unless, as some say, the mere knowledge of possession of wealth can bring pleasure to miserly hearts. For Jonas Miller was, in the vernacular of the Pennsylvania Dutch, "almighty close." Millie, Reists' hired girl, said," That there Jonas is too stingy to buy long enough pants for himself. I bet he gets boys' size because they're cheaper, for the legs o' them always just come to the top o' his shoes. Whoever lays him out when he's dead ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... marvellously intricate, almost defies acquisition. Suppose this difficult vernacular mastered; the would-be student discovers that literary works, even newspapers and ordinary correspondence, are not composed in it, but in another dialect, partly antiquated, partly artificial, differing as widely from the colloquial speech as Latin does from Italian. Make a second ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... eyes are soft, their clothes are desperately European, but ill-fitting and tired. They chatter together ceaselessly and rapidly like starlings, with curious inflections in their English speech, and phrases snatched up from the vernacular. They are forever glancing and whispering, bursting at times into wild peals of laughter which lack the authentic ring of gladness. They are a people of shadows blown by the harsh winds of destiny across the face of a land where they can find no permanent resting place. They ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... And this signification would be in entire agreement with the Syriac translation. (5) This Syriac translation (if it be a translation, which is very doubtful, for we know neither the time of its appearance, nor the translators and Syriac was the vernacular of the Apostles) renders the text before us in a way well explained by ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... eagle—Prometheus and the eagle in one shape—was fast fettered by sheer force and strength to his rock in the Atlantic, there arose a man in Central Germany, on the old Thuringian soil, to whom it was given to assert the dignity of vernacular literature, to throw off the yoke of classical tyranny, and to claim for all the dialects of Teutonic speech a right of ancient inheritance and perfect freedom before unsuspected and unknown. It is almost needless to mention this honoured name. ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... satisfaction. The polished contemporaries of Abolitionists turn over the pages of antique denunciation, and their lymph really quickens in their veins as they read the prophetic vehemence of an Isaiah, the personality of a Nathan, the unmeasured vernacular of Luther, the satire and invective of all good upbraiders of past generations, until they reach their own, which yet waits for a future generation to make scripture and history of its speech and deeds. Time is the genial critic that effaces the contemporary glosses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... weaken his view of the Roman aesthetic inefficiency. "It was not," he said, "the spontaneous utterance of an aesthetic instinct, but the outcome of material needs and of patriotic pride," and hence only an incomplete expression of Roman civilization. "To them, in brief, art was not vernacular: their purest taste, their brightest gifts of mind, found no ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... his innocence had used a phrase (M'wani-m'wani) which signifies "the sleepless one," and also stands in the vernacular for "busy-body," or one who is eternally concerned with ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... should be few, and we should not allow ourselves to be enslaved by them. Instead of seeking to frame a technical language, we should vary our forms of speech, lest they should degenerate into formulas. A difficult philosophical problem is better understood when translated into the vernacular. ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... motto of several illustrious amateurs since Grolier and Maioli stamped it on the beautifully decorated morocco of their bindings. Other people have invented book-plates, containing fell curses in doggrel Latin or the vernacular on the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... hovels, they groped along a checkered surface of brick-work. The flare of Heywood's match revealed a heavy wooden door, which he hammered with his fist. After a time, a disgruntled voice within snarled something in the vernacular. Heywood laughed. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... then why have there been so few good translators? why is it that there has been such great difficulty in combining the two necessary qualities, fidelity to the original and purity in the adopted vernacular? why is it that the authorized versions of the Church are often so inferior to the original as compositions, except that the Church is bound above all things to see that the version is doctrinally correct, and in a difficult problem is ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... shingling industry left on the household. In the sawing of blocks there would always be some too knotty or gnarled to split into shingles. These were what were known in the vernacular as "on-marchantable shingle-bolts." They formed in many a pioneer's home and in many a pioneer school-house good solid seats for children and even grown people to sit on. And even in pioneer meeting-houses these blocks ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the vernacular, but the tone in which the young man spoke rang so confidently that it brought to Ford a pleasant thrill of satisfaction. From the first he had found in the personality of the young man something winning and likable; a shrewd manliness and tolerant good-humor. His ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... have said that," said Bones in the vernacular, "and their widows are wives again ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... he goes as much with the English as with the Italians. Can he keep up his vernacular among them and ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... you'd never come. Why, I'm not so sick——Gay, go outside and wait for the doctor and the nurse. Just think, I'm going to afford a nurse. Oh, the pain in the chest is something fierce." She had lapsed into her old-time vernacular. "Every bone of me aches and my heart thumps as if it was awful mad at me. I guess it ought to be, Mary. How good it is to have you. Take off your things. Gee, that pain is some pain! Um—I wonder ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... already taken the liberty of putting the thoughts of his betters into words, we must now do so for him; and, if he had expressed his thoughts in his own vernacular as he rubbed the hack's ears in the stable, his speech would have been ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Speech in any vernacular—and Wee Willie Winkie had a colloquial acquaintance with three—was easy to the boy who could not yet manage ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:—'Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten' ('No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground y' know. ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... later Arch-duchess Anne and The Young Princess. There are also the humorous and pathetic studies in Roadside Philosophers and the like, in which, forty years ago, Meredith anticipated, with the dignity of a poet, the vernacular studies of others. And, finally, there is a section containing poems of impassioned meditation, beginning with the lofty and sustained ode to France, December 1870, and ending with the volcanic volume ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... then may blank verse be more easily fabricated than rhyme. And if to these labors we add others equally requisite, a style in general more elaborate than rhyme requires, farther removed from the vernacular idiom both in the language itself and in the arrangement of it, we shall not long doubt which of these two very different species of verse threatens the composer with most expense of study and contrivance. I feel it unpleasant to appeal ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... worship of the sun, of light, of fire, has left its impress upon the language and in vernacular art and customs. Among scores of derivations of Japanese words (often more pleasing than scientific), in which the general term hi enters, is that which finds in the word for man, hito, the meaning of "light-bearer." On the face of the broad terminal ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... tailor's apprentice, he had the misfortune to lose his eyesight; he afterwards earned his subsistence as a violinist. About the year 1790 he removed to Inverlochy, in the vicinity of Fort-William. Composing verses in the vernacular Gaelic, he contrived, by vending them, to add considerably to his finances. In preparing for publication a small volume of poetry, he was aided by the poet Evan Maclachlan,[15] who then was employed in the vicinity as a tutor. Latterly, M'Dougall became family bard to Colonel ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... literature, we include a consideration also of those works written in Latin which are products of the times, and bear a part in the progress of the people and their literature. They are exponents of the Saxon mind, frequently of more value than the vernacular writings. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... calculated to secure the predominance of the English language in the new colonies. In support of this recommendation they pointed out that the preservation of the "Taal" is purely a matter of sentiment. The Boer vernacular, so called, "has neither a literature nor a grammar"; it is distinct from "the Dutch language used in public offices and official documents." No one acquainted with the conditions of Boer life will dispute the truth of this contention. The Boer child, if he is to receive ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder put a question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in the tongue best suited for its telling. After all it could never have been told in English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding from time to time, and then came up to my rooms where ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... you,' and Esclairmonde took the girl's hand. 'You know how much I owe to Father Malcolm,' she softly added, as she led the maiden to a carved rood at the end of the cloister, and, before it, repeated the vernacular version of the Lord's Prayer till Eleanor knew it perfectly, and promised to follow up her ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Kid answered, which in the vernacular means that any sum up to $200 be laid on one card save only on the last turn, when the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... a few months of life in St. Petersburg had fully convinced me that the Russian language is one of those things which can only be acquired by practice, and that even a person of antediluvian longevity might spend all his life in that city without learning to express himself fluently in the vernacular—especially if he has the misfortune of being able to speak English, French, and German. With his friends and associates he speaks French or English. German serves as a medium of communication with ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... foreign simulating a vernacular origin.—These may occur in any mixed language whatever; they occur, however, oftener in the English ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... boats and the nets, the limestone cliffs of Gallantry Bower rising steep and white at the head of the village street, with the brilliant sea at the foot; the walks down by the quay pool (not key pool, you understand, but quaay puul in the vernacular), the sails in a good old herring-boat called the Lorna Doone, for we are in ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of style and mode of expression the English language can develop; and what is more,—together with classical richness, there are also the pointed seriousness and persuasive simplicity of our own vernacular Saxon, which increase the attractions of Burke's style to a wonderful extent. But, beyond controversy, among these great endowments, the imaginative faculty is that which appears to be the most transcendent in the mental constitution of Burke. And so truly is this the case, that ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... boxed-in affair lined with zinc; and the zinc was suffering from tetter or other serious skin trouble and was peeling badly. There was a current superstition about the place to the effect that the bathroom and the water supply might on occasion be heated with a device known in the vernacular as ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Baiocas mittens Botoni militiae suae principi nutriendum tradidit, ut, ibi lingua eruditus Danica, suis exterisque hominibus sciret aperte dare responsa, (Wilhelm. Gemeticensis de Ducibus Normannis, l. iii. c. 8, p. 623, edit. Camden.) Of the vernacular and favorite idiom of William the Conqueror, (A.D. 1035,) Selden (Opera, tom. ii. p. 1640-1656) has given a specimen, obsolete and obscure ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... butler has dropped a lamp and run away. Bring a pail of water quickly and call to the malli[3] to bring a pail of earth as you get it. Hasten!—and there is baksheesh," said Mrs. de Warrenne quietly in the vernacular. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... was low and sepulchral, but either the ghostly apparition that uttered the command had slipped up on its vernacular, or it was the spirit of a bandit. Some demand of the kind was, however, urgently necessary, for George did not, as formerly, show a desire to flee; his belligerent attitude suggested fight and he was ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... Buggins, than whom no Goose had a more fluent use of his vernacular. He was not polished as Robinson, nor had he ever possessed the exquisite keenness of Crowdy. But in speaking he always hit the nail on the head, and carried his hearers with him by the energy and perspicuity of his argument. But by degrees ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... desertion, and from the first moment began to agitate. What! punish a hero for his heroism? That, in Four Eyes' vilely profane opinion, expressed with elaborate expletives in the Legion's own choicest vernacular, was what it would amount to if St. George were branded "deserter." Precisely why Max had joined Stanton's caravan instead of returning to Sidi-bel-Abbes, perhaps a few days late, Four Eyes was not certain; but there was no one better instructed than he in pretending to know things he merely ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... and fork, of breaking his bread properly, and of removing his spoon from his coffee-cup, they were quite overpowering. During his two years in the army he had drifted into the easy habits and easier vernacular of the enlisted man. Whatever knowledge he had of the amenities of life had almost been forgotten. But, though his social virtues were few, he passionately identified himself with them rather than with his faults, which were many. To prove his politeness, for ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the place where the evil, if it be admitted to exist, should be corrected. And its correction would be found in the greater progress of the student, beyond the task of composition, to the examination of the most approved vernacular writings. It is not so much by his own imperfect attempts as by familiarity with the nature and finished productions of other minds, that he may expect to facilitate his conceptions, to extend the circle of his thoughts, to correct his judgment and his taste, and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... subject of proverbs generally; but we are compelled to agree with Motherwell, when he says that this writer's rendering of the Scottish dialect is "most barbarous;" nor do we wonder that it excited the profound contempt of Allan Ramsay, who, from his thorough knowledge of the Scottish vernacular, was openly indignant at the reputation gained by Kelly's work, and made a collection himself, which was published at Edinburgh in 1763. In a sensible but pedantic preface, which he addressed to the "Tenantry of Scotland, Farmers of the ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... of the personal pronoun itself, utterly regardless of what it covers and includes. Reason, conscience, understanding, have no impersonality to him. When he uses the words, he uses them as synonymes of his determinations, or as decorative terms into which it pleases him to translate the rough vernacular of his wilfulness and caprices. The "Constitution," also, a word constantly profaned by his lips, is not so much, as he uses it, the Constitution of the United States as the moral and mental constitution of Andrew Johnson, which, in his view, is the one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... English readers. There is, however, we are tolerably assured, a certain class of critics who venture to lament that this laughter-inspiring muse should have descended from the sunny Parnassus of its own vernacular to the meads below, where disport the unlearned and uninspired, the mere kids and lambs of its celestial audience: a generous absurdity, at which the very Devil of Delphos might have demurred. These ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all over her head; who answered indifferently to the name of William or Bill; whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the vernacular; who could act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight servants and two horses, their accounts and their diseases, and look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes—yea, after they had proposed to ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... copy of a sign conspicuously displayed in front of a small public-house in the village of Folkesworth,[4] near Stilton, Hunts. It contains as much poetry as, perhaps, the rustic Folkesworth folks are worth; and doubtless they think it to be (in the Stilton vernacular) 'quite the cheese:' ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... galop. Sometimes he's an ugly little cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid money-lender, or an aproned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always—if you don't mind the vernacular—'on the snatch.'" ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... stare at my supposing that Boswell may have been the first down-bringer of the word principles into common life; the best answer will be a prior instance of the word as true vernacular; it has never happened to me to notice one. Many words have very common uses which are not old. Take the following from Nichols (Anecd. ix. 263): "Lord Thurlow presents his best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Thicknesse, and assures them that he knows of no cause to complain of any part of Mr. Thicknesse's ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... to my picture of society when I got him into it. I lacked the touch of the literary diner-out; and I had, as the reader will probably find to his cost, the classical tradition which makes all the persons in a novel, except the comically vernacular ones, or the speakers of phonetically spelt dialect, utter themselves in the formal phrases and studied syntax of eighteenth century rhetoric. In short, I wrote in the style of Scott and Dickens; ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... hard to find. It is surprising that a writer of Byron's experience should have fallen into the error of supposing that simplicity could be attained by the mere use of common language. For even Wordsworth, who is a master of simple strength, could never allow his peasants to talk their ordinary vernacular without a fatal drop into the commonplace; and all verse that is to be plain and unaffected in style and thought requires the most studious composition. Byron seems scarcely to have understood that blank verse has any rules of scansion, and his signal failure in this metre has ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... archiepiscopal; where that university still subsists in which philosophy was formerly taught by Buchanan, whose name has as fair a claim to immortality as can be conferred by modern latinity, and perhaps a fairer than the instability of vernacular languages admits. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... the young colonist of good English family linked his fate with that of the dark-skinned girl of the tepee. It was the first marriage of Englishman and Indian in the colony, and meant much to the struggling settlers in furthering peaceful relations with the savages. Speaking in the society-column vernacular of a later day, the occasion was marred by the absence of the bride's father. The wary old chieftain was not willing to place himself within the power of the English. But the bride's family was represented by two ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... spoken last night, if he had discovered anything. He was not the man to hold his tongue when he had a chance of talking. He would be sure to make the most of any opportunity for display of intellectual emotion, and he would have burst his buttons if he had known. That was the way she put it in a vernacular which was not Andalusian. Such men love a grievance, because it gives them an opportunity to talk—with a good case and to some point, not into the air at imaginary things, as she had so often seen Jean Jacques do. She knew her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... long chance. A Mounted Policeman can't use his gun except in self-defense. He isn't supposed to smoke up a fugitive unless the fugitive begins to throw lead his way—which method of procedure gives a man who is, in the vernacular, "on the dodge" all the best of a situation like that; for it gives an outlaw a chance to take the initiative, and the first shot often settles an argument of that kind. The dominating idea, as I understood it, was that the majesty of the law should prove a sufficiently powerful ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... insignificant similarity of themes is a fault of the work and of the style, ever in high disdain of vernacular harmony, refreshing to be sure, in its saucy audacity, and anon enchanting with a ring of new, fiery chord. As the sonorous theme sings in muted brass, picking strings mockingly play quicker fragments, infecting the rest with frivolous retorts, and then a heart-felt song pours ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... the living Latin speech of all clerks, of all scholars, of all engaged in serious affairs-were added the newer bonds of connexion involved in the common knightly and social ideals, in the general spread of a common art and a common vernacular language and literature. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... of Leoncavallo's opera is "Pagliacci," not "I Pagliacci" as it frequently appears in books and newspapers. When the opera was brought out in the vernacular, Mr. Frederick E. Weatherly, who made the English adaptation, called the play and the character assumed by Canio in the comedy "Punchinello." This evoked an interesting comment from Mr. Hale: "'Pagliacci' is ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... I rather like the race. Anyway, it makes an interesting mixture. We have had to put them all together, and they get on capitally, exchanging stories and gossip and sympathy like men of the same company. One of them, a Boer,—" she hesitated for the right word; then she adopted the vernacular of the service—"went out, the other day; and, among his mourners, the sincerest ones were the two London Tommies in the two next beds. War isn't all hatred, by any means. Turn nurse for a month and ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... time to receive a half-malicious, half-ceremonious bow from John, as he drove off—what that excellent woman did say I have not the slightest recollection. I only remember that it did not frighten and grieve me as such attacks used to do; that, in her own vernacular, it all "went in at one ear, and out at t'other;" that I persisted in looking out until the last glimmer of the bright curls had disappeared down the sunshiny road—then shut the front door, and crept ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... The policy of a government is summoned by neither before the partial tribunal of a sentiment, or the intricate scheme of some Machiavelli subjected to the imperfect analysis of a headstrong imagination. But Gibbon, though he writes in the vernacular, has lost all the honest nationality that should give an air of sincerity to his work; his brilliant antithesis belongs to the ornate school of the French literature of the day; and, fascinating as is the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... two that contained characters in the Sangley language, which, translated into our Castilian vernacular, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... it in the boat, Jess," commanded Rob. "Now you mush on!" he ordered the Aleut, pointing to the carcass of the bear. ("Mush on," in Alaska dog-train vernacular, means "march on," being a corruption from the ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... popularity of the verse in the vernacular. Clearly, then, the Latin version is a translation of this, and not vice versa. It must have been a rhyming formula in the vernacular, which had a life of its own quite outside its ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular: - "Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten." (" No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground, y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't apologise!") ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... enough glad to see you, Mr. Champeen-of-the-World," Kirby answered, falling into the easy vernacular of the outdoor country. "Come to the big town to spend that thousand dollars you won the ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... P. discovered, after a little conversation in the vernacular, that his companion was a New York dry-goods clerk, he gave up the study of the French-Canadian character and went on with ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... Javert, "tommy-rot!" Strange language in a military court! Where had he laid hold of that choice bit of our vernacular? ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... boy was called Edmund, or, in my vernacular, Eddy. There were in his nature a gravity, depth, and sweetness which won my heart and respect, and we became friends in that intimate and complete way that seems possible only to boys in their early teens. For that matter, neither of us was yet over ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... not deny that there was a measure of truth in his brief remark. She did want to "show 'em." Bill's vernacular expressed it exactly. She had compassed success in a manner that Granville—and especially that portion of Granville which she knew and which knew her—could appreciate and understand and envy according to its ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the Chinese press is remarkable. Although no complete statistics are available there is reason to believe that the number of periodicals in China now approximates 10,000, the daily vernacular newspapers in Peking alone exceeding 60. Although no newspaper in China prints more than 20,000 copies a day, the reading public is growing at a phenomenal rate, it being estimated that at least 50 million people read the daily publications, or hear what they say,—a fact which ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... the work itself, and on the manuscripts which contain it. Mr. Morton is unquestionably right in his statement that the Latin MS. in Magdalen College, Oxford, No. 67., is only an abridged translation of the original vernacular text. Twenty-three years ago I had access to the same MS. by permission of the Rev. Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen College, and after reading and making extracts from it[1], I came to the same conclusion as Mr. Morton. It hardly admits, I think, of a doubt; for even without ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... (yid'-ish), Yid. Judeo-German, the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe. The basis is an archaic form of German, on which are grafted many words of Hebrew origin, and words from the vernacular of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... visited them next day in their dark and miserable home, which, however, was scrupulously clean, and we drank tea and discussed people and events in distant Europe far into the night. And Madame sang Polish love-songs in a sweet, pathetic voice, and I recounted one or two American yarns in Yankee vernacular which excited inordinate gaiety, so easily amused were these poor souls with minds dulled by long years of lethargy and despair. And I wondered, as I glanced around the squalid room, how many years had elapsed since its mud-walls ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... strong for discipline. The more dignified the sergeant became, the more refractory was his neighbour, until, at last, the affair ended in a summons as formal as that which would be made to a place besieged. The answer was truly heroic, being rendered into the vernacular, "I won't." An old woman advanced from the crowd to reason with the sergeant, but she could get no farther than "Ecoutez, Mons. le Sergeant"—for, like all in authority, he was unreasonable and impatient when his power was called in question. He ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... step forward and cocked his revolver. One of the beach-combers shouted out something in angry vernacular, and Charlie instantly responded. All this time the line had been slowly advancing upon the enemy, and Wilbur began to wonder how long that heartbreaking suspense was to continue. This was not at all what he had imagined. Already he was within twenty feet of his ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... is picturesque about the man-killer of the mountain country. He is lacking sadly in the romantic aspect and the delightfully studied vernacular with which an inspired school of fiction has invested our Western gun-fighter. No alluring jingle of belted accouterment goes with him, no gift of deadly humor adorns his equally deadly gun-play. He does his killing in ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... to survey and illustrate the development of the vernacular literatures of mediaeval and Europe; and for that purpose it is unnecessary to busy ourselves with more than a part of the Latin writing which, in a steadily decreasing but—until the end of the last century—an always considerable proportion, served as the vehicle of literary expression. But with ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the speech of the evening in the vernacular of the host, which was violently applauded by the residents, especially by the military officers from the citadel, who had been informed that he was the commander-in-chief of the armies of his country. ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... the House to his political adversaries. During the exciting period preceding "secession" Mr. Stephens held and avowed moderate opinions; but, swept along by the resistless torrent surrounding him, he discovered and proclaimed that "slavery was the corner-stone of the confederacy." In the strong vernacular of the West, this was "rather piling the agony" on the humanitarians, whose sympathies were not much quickened toward us thereby. As the struggle progressed, Mr. Stephens, with all the impartiality of an equity judge, marked many of the virtues of the ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... attitude toward the world, and by the time the veal had arrived (it was Wednesday night) she was laughing whole-heartedly at Kid's ingenuous conversation. Miss McCoy's vocabulary was rich in the vernacular of the plains, and in vacation she let herself go. During term time she was forced to curb her discourse, owing to the penny tax on slang. Otherwise, her entire allowance would have gone ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... which was frequented by a good many guests of the Scotch and Irish nations, who were devoted to the exercise of arms in the service of the Emperor. It was by this communication that the English tongue became vernacular to young Ferdinand, who, without such opportunity, would have been a stranger to the language of his forefathers, in spite of all his mother's loquacity and elocution; though it must be owned, for the credit of her maternal care, that ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... hope of a return to Florence, though he retained the longing for it, dwelt in Ravenna for a number of years, under the protection of its gracious lord. And here by his teachings he trained many scholars in poetry, especially in the vernacular, which vernacular to my thinking he first exalted and brought into repute amongst us Italians no otherwise than did Homer his amongst the Greeks or Virgil his amongst the Latins. Before him, though it is supposed that it had already been practised some short space of years, yet ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... for the skipper, that he generally left the old hands alone, for they returned his choicest epithets in kind, always giving him quite as good in the rude vernacular as he gave—discipline being rather slack now the vessel was ashore, as in the merchant service a wreck is supposed by the crew to dissolve all contracts and annul whatever articles may have been signed. Such, at least, is my experience of ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in the conspicuous position named were Raoul Yvard himself, and Ithuel Bolt. Their conversation was in French, the part borne by the last being most execrably pronounced, and paying little or no attention to grammar; but it is necessary that we should render what was said by both into the vernacular, with the peculiarities that belonged ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... been indifferent, with regard not merely to forms, but to religion itself, we should not have seen the outward show of piety in the highest ranks; we should not have seen a house of commons legislating in favor of Edward's liturgy, and a nation turning to worship in their vernacular tongue. Nothing but a widely diffused spirit of piety can account for the character of those miracles of literature which made the days of Elizabeth glorious, and which are stamped with nothing more strongly than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of this, I say, Erema!" Major Hockin exclaimed, as he ran in and saw me scarcely even caring to hold my own with the gentle Maximilian—to which name Mr. Strouss was promoted from the too vernacular "Hans." "My dear, I never saw you look ill before. Why, bless my heart, you will have crows'-feet! Nurse, what are you doing with her? Look at her eyes, and be ashamed of yourself. Give her goulard, tisane, tiffany—I never know what the proper word is—something, any ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... affair, this! A total lack of tall trunks, frills, and curling-kids. Driven by the oestrum of a Yo-Semite pilgrimage, the San-Francisco belle forsakes (the Western vernacular is "goes back on") her back-hair, abandons her capillary "waterfalls" for those of the Sierra, and, like John Phoenix's old lady who had her whole osseous system removed by the patent tooth-puller, departs, leaving her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... but knew no Hebrew at all. When our Lord was on earth, the Hebrew was a dead language; it may have been the language of the temple, as Latin is now the language of the Roman Catholic mass; but the common people did not understand it; the vernacular of the Palestinian Jews was the Aramaic, a language similar to the Hebrew, sometimes called the later Hebrew, and having some such relation to it as the English has to the German tongue. There is some dispute as to the time when the Jews lost the use of ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... prevalent on the passage to Bear Island. Mr. Cooke had never felt better, and looked every inch a sea-captain in his natty yachting-suit. He had acquired a tan on the island; and, as is eminently proper on a boat, he affected nautical manners and nautical ways. But his vernacular savored so hopelessly of the track and stall that he had been able to acquire no mastery over the art of marine invective. And he possessed not so much as one maritime oath. As soon as we had swung clear of the cove he made for the weather stays, where he assumed a posture not unlike that in the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
