Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Possessive   Listen
adjective
Possessive  adj.  Of or pertaining to possession; having or indicating possession.
Possessive case (Eng. Gram.), the genitive case; the case of nouns and pronouns which expresses ownership, origin, or some possessive relation of one thing to another; as, Homer's admirers; the pear's flavor; the dog's faithfulness.
Possessive pronoun, a pronoun denoting ownership; as, his name; her home; my book.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Possessive" Quotes from Famous Books



... all the different persons. When these possessive pronouns are used with nouns, nearly all the syllables are omitted, except the first, which is added to the ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... the mosaic of the apse the Redeemer holds a book, on the open page of which is written: "The Lord, defender of the church of Pudens." In course of time the ignorant people changed the word Pudentiana, a possessive adjective, into the name of a saint; and the name Sancta Pudentiana usurped the place of the genuine one. It appears for the first time in a ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... (and the possessive pronoun casts about her an atmosphere of importance) has been made uncomfortable, and he is up in arms. His and no one's else is the right to criticise Mary. What business have these people to interfere? ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... as the reader may possibly have observed, present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world. ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of John Galsworthy • John Galsworthy

... by the curious, and none is more quaint and delightful than Old St. John's Cemetery at the very core of the town, with streets of quiet, old-time houses on two sides, and busy, bustling, modern thoroughfares on the others. Every citizen of Kingsport feels a thrill of possessive pride in Old St. John's, for, if he be of any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor buried there, with a queer, crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling protectively over the grave, on which all the main facts of his history are recorded. For the most part no great ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... mano: observe the usual idiomatic mode of expressing possession of parts of the body, wearing apparel, etc., by the use of the definite article instead of the possessive adjective his, her, etc., the dative pronoun also being often added to indicate the possessor, as: Yo me corte el dedo, I ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... seemed the pursuit must be successful. They had gone abroad on the same steamer the year before, dawdled through a London season, and come home simultaneously—he rather bored and languid, she of a demure and downcast, but withal possessive, air. She had said they were not engaged—"oh, dear no, only excellent friends," but looking all the while a contradiction of the words. Then unwisely she had taken Hilary to that tiresome tea for the little Rhett girl—and behold! ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... those weeds, not flowers, of speech Which the Seven Dialecticians teach; Filthy Conjunctions, and Dissolute Nouns, And Particles picked from the kennels of towns, With Irregular Verbs for irregular jobs, Chiefly active in rows and mobs, Picking Possessive Pronouns' fobs, And Interjections as bad as a blight, Or an Eastern blast, to the blood and the sight: Fanciful phrases for crime and sin, And smacking of vulgar lips where Gin, Garlic, Tobacco, and offals go in - A jargon ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... say in plain terms, how much more eloquent they would be! Another rule is to avoid converting mere abstractions into persons. I believe you will very rarely find in any great writer before the Revolution the possessive case of an inanimate noun used in prose instead of the dependent case, as 'the watch's hand,' for 'the hand of the watch.' The possessive or Saxon genitive was confined to persons, or at least to animated subjects. And I cannot conclude this Lecture without insisting ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... before a noun, is the possessive pronoun, as the second person, thy or thine, and xul, means end, termination. It is also the name of the sixth month of the Maya calendar. Axul would therefore be thy end. Among all the nations which have recognized the existence of a SUPREME BEING, Deity has been considered ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... the Potomac begins at or near its traditional source, the tiny Appalachian spring at the head of the North Branch where in 1746 Thomas Lord Fairfax's surveyors set an inscribed stone to mark the northwestern corner of that possessive nobleman's vast holdings. Abandoned strip coal mines lie within sight of the spot, and it is doubtful that the infant river trickles more than a few yards before receiving its first injection of the acidic mixture of substances that springs ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... said self-importance, reacting upon those about her, gained both for herself and her opinions a degree of consideration to which she was unaccustomed and which she highly relished. Never had Serena presented so bold a front to her philanthropic and very possessive elder sister. Never had she enjoyed so much attention in the small and rigidly select circle of Slowby society, in which she and Miss Susan moved. Serena spoke with authority upon all subjects, on the strength of a purely fictitious affair of the heart. She is not the first ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... made plain the difficulty of re-sale, and made him think decidedly unpleasant things of "Lewis and Company, Specialists in B.C. Timber." The second was that someone, within recent years, had cut timber on his limit. And it was his timber. The possessive sense was fairly strong in Hollister, as it usually is in men who have ever possessed any considerable property. He did not like the idea of being cheated or robbed. In this case there was superficial evidence that both these ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... Tommy's opinion. In the Yorkshire dialect, when the possessive case is followed by the relative substantive, it is customary to omit the S; but if the relative be understood, and not expressed, the possessive case is formed in the usual manner, as in a subsequent line of ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... the trees, into what seemed a thicker thicket, and found it to be a thatch of branches woven to screen the muzzles of a battery. The big guns were all about us, crouched in these sylvan lairs like wild beasts waiting to spring; and near each gun hovered its attendant gunner, proud, possessive, important as a ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... have lost their literal sense and mean now no more than "my," while the polite forms mean "yours." To translate these terms, "my foolish wife," "my swinish son," is incorrect, because it twice translates the same word. In such cases the Japanese thought is best expressed by using the possessive pronoun and omitting the derogative adjective altogether. Japanese indirect methods for the expression of the personal relation are thus numberless and subtile. May it not be plausibly argued since the European has only a ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... consuming fire of his ardent gaze, and in the fierce embrace that was drawing her shaking limbs closer and closer against the man's own pulsating body. She writhed in his arms as he crushed her to him in a sudden access of possessive passion. His head bent slowly down to her, his eyes burned deeper, and, held immovable, she endured the first kiss she had ever received. And the touch of his scorching lips, the clasp of his arms, the close union with his warm, strong body robbed her of all strength, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... dowered each other with mutual safety, the lady who gave the assent for him saw in a dream the marvellous fruit which was to proceed from him and from his heirs;[4] and in order that he might be spoken of as he was,[5] a spirit went forth from here[6] to name him with the possessive of Him whose he wholly was. Dominic[7] he was called; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ elected to his garden to assist him. Truly he seemed the messenger and familiar of Christ; for the first love that was manifest in him was for the first counsel that Christ ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... the room emptied, and she was free to do so, Hepsey, accompanied by the possessive Jonathan, found her way over to the Maxwells. Before she started to tell them the results of the meeting she cast a glance of whimsical ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... Shirley had gone to bed David sat thinking of the episode. One of the little criticisms, quite definite now, lingered: a suspicion that Shirley's words were not always pearls of wisdom, that her attitude was a little too possessive, her demands upon his time and thought and scanty store of money a trifle less than reasonable sometimes. Sternly he crushed ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... These possessive pronouns, meus, tuus, suus, noster, and vester, take after them these genitive cases,— ipsius, of himself, solius, of him alone, unius, of one, duorum, of two, trium, of three, &c., omnium, of all, plurium, of more, ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... flesh was the same—as though light shone through alabaster—and the sweetness of the deep-set eyes. Moreover she had produced much the same effect on the bystander, as of a child of nature, a creature of impulse and passion—passion, clinging and self-devoted, not fierce and possessive—through all the more superficial suggestions of reticence and self-control. 'This little creature is only at the beginning of her life'—he thought, with a kind of pity for her very softness and exquisiteness. 'What the deuce will she have made of it, by the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... cried, putting a possessive hand on Lady's flank while the latter turned her dainty head and regarded the girl out of softly-wistful brown eyes. "I wanted her as soon as I ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope

... I enjoyed my ..." Mr. Pellew had started to say that he enjoyed himself there. He got alarmed at his own temerity and backed out ... "my cigars there," said he. A transparent fraud, for the possessive pronoun does not always sound alike. "My," is one thing before "self," another before "cigars." Try it on both, and see. Mr. Pellew felt he was detected. He could slur over his blunder by going straight on; any ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... she, laying a strong accent on the pronoun possessive. "Only see what rights and privileges the gentleman is usurping! We live in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... denoting possession may generally be changed to equivalent phrases; as, Arnold's treason the treason of Arnold. Here the preposition of indicates possession, the same relation expressed by the apostrophe (') and s. Change the following possessive nouns to equivalent phrases, and the phrases indicating possession to possessive nouns, and then expand the expressions ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... sometimes smiled at nothing. Her aunt hardly noticed what was happening to her, but her father, who all her life had seemed hardly to take account of her existence, was interested. In her presence he began to feel like a young man. As in the days of his courtship of her mother and before the possessive passion in him destroyed his ability to love, he began to feel vaguely that life about him was full of significance. Sometimes in the afternoon when he went for one of his long drives through the country ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... Zoyland, a village of great historic interest, since between the two is the field of Sedgemoor. The final -oy is probably identical with the -ey (isle) which occurs in Athelney and Muchelney, whilst chedz- may be the possessive of Cedda, a Saxon personal name. The church of St Mary well deserves inspection. The embattled tower has double belfry windows, and is noteworthy for the unusual way in which the buttresses are finished. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... pathetically wan and exhausted. He put her down under a tree and arranged her saddle for a pillow. Again the girl felt a net was being wound round her, that she belonged to him and could not escape. Nor was she sure that she wanted to get away from his possessive energy. In the pleasant sun glow she fell asleep, without any intention of doing so. Two hours later she opened ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... such dreadful possibilities of stumbling on 'conditional moods,' 'imperfect tenses,' 'singular numbers,'—I should have been too glad to put up with the safe spot for the sole of my foot though no larger than afforded by such a word as 'Conjunction,' 'possessive pronoun—,' secure so far from poor Tippet's catastrophe. Well, I ventured, and what did I find? This—which I copy from the book now—'If we love in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... in the saddle, he leisurely looked her over with eyes that smoldered behind half-shuttered lids. To most of her world she was in spirit still more boy than woman, but before his bold, possessive gaze her long lashes wavered to the cheeks into which the warm blood was beating. Her long, free lines were still slender with the immaturity of youth, her soul still hesitating reluctantly to cross the ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... though it may possibly be only a variation of the term above. We are told by Orus Apollo, that the basilisk, or royal serpent, was named Oubaios: [186][Greek: Oubaios, ho estin Hellenisti Basiliskos]. It should have been rendered [Greek: Oubos], Oubus; for [Greek: Oubaios] is a possessive, and not a proper name. The Deity, so denominated, was esteemed prophetic; and his temples were applied to as oracular. This idolatry is alluded to by Moses,[187] who, in the name of God, forbids the Israelites ever to inquire of those daemons, Ob and Ideone: which shews ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... coffee and sat beside him. Her face betokened satisfaction, and she looked at Gregorio with a possessive smile. She had gained her desire, and asked fortune for ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... nad bi mui na tai. Muisse is in old Irish the possessive of the first sing when followed by a noun it becomes mo, when not so followed it is mui; tai is also found for do. O'Curry gave this line as "there is no sorrow ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... of moonlight by the forward window, Miko held Anita, his great hands pawing her with triumphant possessive caresses. ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... silence she wrote again and again to Deering, entreating him for a word, for a mere sign of life. From the first she had shrunk from seeming to assert any claim on his future, yet in her aching bewilderment she now charged herself with having been too possessive, too exacting in her tone. She told herself that his fastidiousness shrank from any but a "light touch," and that hers had not been light enough. She should havekept to the character of the "little friend," the artless ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... column," answered Banneker with perceptible emphasis on the possessive, "doesn't believe that cigarettes are good ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... that given in his "Native Calendar," above mentioned. In the former he says uotan "is from the pure Maya root word tan, which means primarily 'the breast,' or that which is in the front or in the middle of the body; with the possessive prefix it becomes utan. In Tzental this word means both 'breast' and 'heart.'" It must be admitted that these explanations are apparently somewhat strained, yet it is possible they are substantially correct, as they appear to receive some support from the ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... is my house," answered the Baron, taking his cigar from his mouth for the first time since he had lighted it, and holding it out at arm's length with a possessive sweep while he leaned back and looked at the ceiling again. "It all belongs to me," he said. "I took it for the mortgage, with everything ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... minutes the Eye of Zeitoon was grinning at us through a small square window in the wall at one end of the veranda. Then he came round and once more vaulted the veranda rail, for he seemed to hold ordinary means of entry in contempt. His eye looked very possessive for that of one seeking employment as a guide, but he stood at respectful ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... of resentment swept through her; the patronage in his tone, the indefinable suggestion of possession was, she thought, uncalled for. That he should approve of Frank in that possessive manner was not far removed ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... exhibition—the march of an army, the exhilaration of a spectacle; the court as a banquet—the throne, the best seat at the entertainment. The life of the heir-apparent, to the life of the king possessive, is as the distinction between enchanting hope ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... did not "waste" any time that night over home-lessons. How can the beginner of a great singer be expected to care whether the pronoun "that" in "I dare do all 'that' may become a man," is relative or possessive? or whether Smyrna is the capital of Turkey or Japan? or even whether the Red Sea has to ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner

... possession. When she neared the house our sympathy abated; when she came to the broken chest I wished I were elsewhere. We had scarce a word in common; but her whole lean body spoke for her with indignant eloquence. 'My chest!' it cried, with a stress on the possessive. 'My chest—broken open! This is a fine state of things!' I hastened to lay the blame where it belonged—on Francois and his wife—and found I had made things worse instead of better. She repeated the names at first with ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... interj., interjection. interr., interrogative. metath., metathesis. n., noun. na, marks a noun as taking the suffixed pronoun in the third singular only. neg., negative. neut., neuter. obj., object. part., particle. partic., participle. pers., person, personal. pl., plural. poss., possessive. pr., pronoun. pref., prefix. prep., preposition. S, Sa'a language. See Sa'a and Ulawa dictionary. sing., singular. sub., subject. suff., suffix, suffixed. term., termination. tr., transitive. U, Ulawa language. See Sa'a and Ulawa dictionary. v., verb. ...
— Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language • Walter G. Ivens

... work-room, dropped an allusion to her young cousin, the architect, the effect was the same on Charity. The hemlock garland she was wearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind of trance. It was so manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchard should talk of Harney in that familiar possessive way, as if she had any claim on him, or knew anything about him. She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earth who really knew him, knew him from the soles of his feet to the rumpled crest of his hair, knew the shifting lights in his eyes, and the inflexions of his voice, and the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... hand-to-mouth. He had fine gross easy senses, but it was not his good-natured appetite that wrought confusion. If he had loved us for our dinners we could have paid with our dinners, and it would have been a great economy of finer matter. I make free in these connexions with the plural possessive because if I was never able to do what the Mulvilles did, and people with still bigger houses and simpler charities, I met, first and last, every demand of reflexion, of emotion—particularly perhaps those of gratitude and of resentment. No one, I think, paid the ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... attains the faculty of instinctively avoiding these, his technique improves. Perfected, he would never use them, and his sentences would flow untaught from his pen in absolutely clear reflection of his thought. As an example of what I mean by awkwardnesses, I would cite the use of "whose" as the possessive of "which." I know that adequate authority pronounces this correct, so it is not on that score I reject it. Moreover, I recognize that in myself the repulsion is somewhat of an acquired taste. When I began to write I thus employed it myself, but its sound is so inevitably suggestive of "who" ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... were the main principles established upon which English grammar rests. As happened also for the vocabulary, in certain exceptional cases the French and the Saxon uses have been both preserved. The possessive case, for instance, can be expressed either by means of a proposition, in French fashion: "The works of Shakespeare," or by means of the ancient genitive: ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... compare it with this of Goldau, keeping in mind the general conclusions about the two great classes of mountain scenery which I have just stated, he will, I hope, at last cease to charge me with enthusiasm in anything that I have said of Turner's imagination, as always instinctively possessive of those truths which lie deepest, and are most essentially linked together, in the expression of a scene. I have only taken two drawings (though these of his best period) for the illustration of all the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... and had too good memory to succeed. Home had been so unbearable that she had taken desperate measures to escape it, but as the white house with its tree and shrub filled yard could be seen more plainly, Kate suddenly was filled with the strongest possessive feeling she ever had known. It was home. It was her home. Her place was there, even as Adam had said. She felt a sudden revulsion against herself that she had stayed away seven years; she should have taken her chances ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... If he said: "My wife is here," and chose to seize her with possessive grasp, she must meekly fold her hands upon her breast, and say: "Even so, my lord. I am yours. Deal with me ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... truth is, that he could no more help being the central figure than a lion could in any gathering of lesser creatures; the fact that he was Roosevelt decided that. He did use the personal pronoun "I," and the possessive pronoun "My," with such frequency as to irritate good persons who were quite as egotistical as he—if that be egotism—but who used such modest circumlocutions as "the present writer," or "one," to camouflage their self-conceit. Roosevelt enjoyed almost all his experiences with equal zest, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... half-hearted and cold. Those who preach this doctrine remind us—and very justly—of the weakness and insincerity of the "orthodox" moral standard, whether it is enforced by law or by custom. They revolt against the proprietary and possessive view of marriage as giving a woman "a hold over her husband" when he has "grown tired of her," or as justifying a man in enforcing upon his wife the rights which only love makes right, when she has grown tired of him. ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... the proper endings, we are left free to attend to the thought rather than to the vehicle of its expression. Although our pronouns are still declined, the sole inflection of our nouns, with the exception of a few like ox, oxen, or mouse, mice, is the addition of 's, s, or es for the possessive and the plural. Modern German, on the other hand, still retains these troublesome case endings. How did English have the good fortune to ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... asked Adelaide. This was almost war. Mrs. Baxter was a regal and possessive widow from Baltimore whose long and regular visits to Mr. Lanley had once occasioned his family some alarm, though time had now given ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... we call him, was in reality named 'Nicholas Gabrini, the son of Lawrence'; and 'Lawrence,' being in Italian abbreviated to 'Rienzo' and preceded by the possessive particle 'of,' formed the patronymic by which the man is best known in our language. Lawrence Gabrini kept a wine-shop somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Cenci palace; he seems to have belonged to Anagni, he ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... the church with what was almost a possessive eye. These people were his friends. He knew them all, and they knew him. They had, against his protest, put his name on the bronze tablet set in the wall on the roll of honor. Small as it was, this was ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... painfully translated with the assistance of a French-English dictionary from "Il m'a arrache les cheveux," "Il me donne des coups-de-pied," "Il m'a lacere la figure de ses ongles." It is noticeable that our instructor as a rule endeavours to make the possessive pronoun agree with the substantive in number and gender in orthodox Portuguese fashion, and that like a true grammatical patriot he insists upon the substantive having the same gender as in his native tongue; therefore "as unhas" ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca

... Night-Wind" is a delicately beautiful fragment of dreamy metaphor. There is probably a slight misprint in the last line, since the construction there becomes somewhat obscure. "My Love's Eyes" has merit, but lacks polish. The word "azure" in the first stanza, need not be in the possessive case; whilst the use of a singular verb with a plural noun in the second stanza (smiles-beguiles) is a little less than grammatical. "Longing" exhibits the author at her best, the images and phraseology alike ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... ADJECTIVE RADICALS are formed from the nominative and from the genitive (or possessive) case of words belonging to ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton

... gifts take the form of jewelry, not after the ring which you are bringing me: that, you know, I both welcome and wish for. But, as to the rest, the world has supplied me with a feeling against jewelry as a love-symbol. Look abroad and you will see: it is too possessive, too much like "chains of office"—the fair one is to wear her radiant harness before the world, that other women may be envious and the desire of her master's eye ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... not have been pronounced by a negro. It became in his mouth nion. The personal pronouns je, tu, il, were converted into mo, to, ly, and the possessive mon, ton, son into a moue, a toue, a ly, and were placed after the noun, which negro dialects generally start their sentences with. Possessive pronouns had the unmeaning syllable quien before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various



Words linked to "Possessive" :   possessive case, genitive, possessiveness, attributive genitive case, oblique case, possess, attributive genitive, genitive case



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com