"Expletive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good trying to get anything out of him. Better split with him at once," said the guest who had used the expletive. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... by running in a real gunman. I wired to Medicine Bend for Henry. Henry comes up last night with a brand-new rifle, presented, I imagine, by the Medicine Bend Black Hand Local, No. 13. This is the gun," explained Lefever feebly, holding forth the exhibit. "The lever," he added with a patient expletive, "broke." ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... "If you will take my advice you will postpone your return here till after that date. In any case, please understand I am unable to attend to money matters at present. It may interest you to know that the tutor is under notice to leave," (here the reader uttered a not very complimentary expletive), "also that I am on the best of terms ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... swallowed as an excellent thing, knowing the rich smack of savour proper to the story, is your anecdotal gentleman's annoyance. But if the anecdote had supported him, Sullivan Smith would have let the expletive rest. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all about her he might have formed a larger estimate of her staying-power. But he did not yet know what she was. That bad word that he had once let out through the window had been in Ranny's simple mind a mere figure of speech, a flowering expletive, flung to the dark, devoid of meaning and of fitness. He did not know what Violet's impulses and her instincts really were. He did not know that what he called her flabbiness was the inertia in which they stored their strength, nor that ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the Kaiser, using his usual expletive. "She's flying the White Ensign and an admiral's pennant, and, yes, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... Mr. Wendover stood a minute looking after him; then, with some vehement expletive or other, walked up to his writing-table, drew some folios that were lying on it towards him, with hasty maladroit movements which sent his papers flying over the floor, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cards and dice were prohibited; and stronger expletive than the elegant ones invented for the special use of the King of Navarre was expiated either by the purse or the skin; Marot's psalmody was the only music, black or sad colour the only wear; and, a few years later, the wife of one of the most distinguished ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... used in a burlesque or ludicrous manner, the pronoun ye is sometimes a mere expletive; or, perhaps, intended rather as an objective governed by a preposition understood. But, in such a construction, I see no reason to prefer it to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... dative), expressing a more remote relation to the person concerned in, or affected by an action or its result—somewhat related to the Engl. expletive you know of the uneducated ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... in another futile attempt to escape, and cursed his captors with gifts of expletive which came from ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... remarked, with his usual unconscious expletive, "I'd rather have a tiger-cat on my trail than that youngster, if he was to look that way. What do you suppose he's got in ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... masculine, contemptibly feminine, ridiculously intellectual, repulsively athletic, and revoltingly frivolous. In appearance they are either lank, gaunt, flat-footed lamp-posts, or else over-dressed, unnaturally-shaped, painted dolls. Their extravagance exhausts expletive! When they belong to the class of society generally denoted with a capital S, they invariably smoke, drink, gamble and swear. They neglect their homes and their children. They have little principle and less sense, no morals, no heart and ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... the horse in;—that's all." Then Tifto found it best to say a few words to Captain Green. But the Captain also said a few words to himself. "D—— young fool; he don't know what he's dropping into." Which assertion, if you lay aside the unnecessary expletive, was true to the letter. Lord Silverbridge was a young fool, and did not at all know into what a mess he was being dropped by the united experience, perspicuity, and energy of the man whose company on the Heath he ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... over a dozen sons, and not one is worth a damn." I fear me that every father with sons grown to manhood has at some time voiced the same sentiment, curtailed, possibly, only as to numbers, and softened by another expletive, which does not mitigate the anguish of his cry, as he sees the dreams he had for his baby boys fade away into ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Presently another expletive. "I'll tell you what it is, Fry, if somebody doesn't knock this thundering Legree on the head, I'll put the book on ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... nothing to the meaning of the sentence, but helps to fill out its form or sound, and serves as a device to alter its natural order. Such a word is called an EXPLETIVE. In the following sentence there is an expletive: THERE are no such books ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... shows great but as yet undeveloped talent. The repeated use of the expletive "do" in such phrases as "I do sigh", or "I pray and do pine", mars the verse somewhat. As Pope remarked and humorously illustrated in his Essay ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Terro-Human Future History; the first story where we encounter the Terran Federation. In it we learn about Odin, the planet that will one day be the capital of the First Galactic Empire; and humble Niflheim, which in more decadent times will become a common expletive, a word meaning hell. This is also where Piper introduced and explained the Atomic Era dating system (A.E.). Uller Uprising is set in the early years of the Terran Federation's expansion and exploration, an epoch of great vitality. In "The Edge of the Knife" Piper compares ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... as many helps as she liked, he would pay for them and welcome; but Ellen would have to stay where she was. He had promised Miss Alice; and he wouldn't break his word "for kings, lords, and commons." A most extraordinary expletive for a good Republican—which Mr. Van Brunt had probably inherited from his father and grandfather. What can waves do against a rock? The whilome Miss Fortune disdained a struggle which must end in her own confusion, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... floor, whipped off his cap, and spun it across the room. "Confound you, Mr. Copplestone!" he growled. "How the—how the—do you do it?" He could not think of an expletive mild enough for Mrs. Cary's ears. "There's something about me that I can't hide. What is it? If you don't tell, I will get you on the Regulation compelling all British subjects to answer questions addressed to them by a ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... and he turned with a start of astonishment, and went into a fit of laughing, re-echoed by all the young ones, who were especially tickled by hearing, from another, the abbreviation that had, hitherto, only lived in the favourite expletive, "As sure as my ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... hear it," answered Michael, "for with such a flock of geese to say it to, the horrid expletive might be constantly on her lips. For my part, I simply refuse to let things be done in this light and airy style. I appeal to Mrs. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... of what is not the truth has been resorted to for the same purpose. At page 123 we read: "The disproportion of the two races—always dangerously large—has increased with ever-gathering velocity since the emancipation. It is now beyond control on the old lines." The use of the expletive "dangerously," as suggestive of the truculence of the people to whom it refers, is critically allowable in view of the main intention of the author. But what shall we say of the suggestion contained in the very ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... he backed instead into the screen of the office window. Without even an expletive he turned, pushed in the screen, clambered adroitly through the aperture, and disappeared almost instantly ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... throttled the expletive half spoken. Could they have dared waylay the major—and so close to the post? A moment more and he was hurrying over to his troop quarters; five minutes, and a sergeant and ten men were running ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... not permitted within hearing distance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout the camp a popular form of expletive, known as "D—n the luck!" and "Curse the luck!" was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by "Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor from her Majesty's Australian colonies, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... dress close about her, perhaps half an inch below a knee that Artemis might have been proud to display. I let the wasp reach the dark blue cloth. Then I seized him. As I put him out of the window, he naturally stung me. Before I had time to apologize for the expletive which escaped me, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates |
