"Expletive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a mistake for the sword of the Spanish General Don Xavier Winthuysen.—90. Vone banished priest: Rev. Thomas d'Eterville. The MS. gives the following inedited account of D'Eterville. I omit the oft-recurring expletive sacre (accursed):— ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Shelley has done. It begins with a long, slow crescendo on the word "Jerusalem," which is very forceful. Shelley responds to an imaginary encore, however, and the word becomes little more than an expletive. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... society, were precisely those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact. In the radiance of these discoveries, and the tumult of their reaction, she made a fool of herself as freely and conspicuously as when she so rashly adopted Eliza's expletive in Mrs. Higgins's drawing-room; for the new-born Wellsian had to find her bearings almost as ridiculously as a baby; but nobody hates a baby for its ineptitudes, or thinks the worse of it for trying ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... third stories peer the murky faces and towsled heads of some of the inmates. One of the latter spits his furthest into the yard—evidently with the intention of hitting myself: but all his efforts prove vain. Another one shouts with a mordant expletive: ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... little of the flimsy turn in it; and the third line has rather too serious a cast. The fourth stanza is a very indifferent one; the first line, is, indeed, all in the strain of the second stanza, but the rest is most expletive. The thoughts in the fifth stanza come finely up to my favourite idea—a sweet sonsie lass: the last line, however, halts a little. The same sentiments are kept up with equal spirit and tenderness in the sixth stanza, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... which, at the cost of a little patience and industry, gives us the most convincing confirmations of the truth, or exposures of the mistakes of historians, by the undesigned and incidental way in which the use of a name, a date, a proverb, a jest, an expletive, a quotation, an allusion, flashes conviction upon the reader's mind. I mean contemporary correspondence. If we have the private letters of celebrated men laid before us, we are enabled to look right into them, and see their true ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... first, and it is possible that he did not quite intend to use the expletive which broke from him. But he was remembering things also. Here were eyes he, too, had seen before—twelve years ago in the face of an objectionable, long-legged child in New York. And his own hatred of them had been founded in his own opinion ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... another exclamation, this time an expletive of deep relief. He fought with himself a moment, then murmured an apology. "Sorry. You gave me a start-decidedly. Herman Dietz, eh? Well, well! You made me think for a moment that I was a guest in the house ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... ground where they had been lounging to hear him read the list of those who were to return immediately to the front. As the names were called each one summoned turned without comment or exclamation or expletive, picked up his kit dumped in a corner, slung on the heavy equipment, saw that the huge loaf of bread was secure—the extra shoes—refilled his canteen and moved over to the barred gate. Occasionally one shook ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... excuses for Henry, although M. La Tour insists it was a wise and humane act on the part of the King, as it put an end to the long war that was devastating France, or, to use Henry's own forcible phrasing, "By my faith, I have no wish to reign over a kingdom of dead men." The favorite expletive of the Bearnois, "Ventre Saint Gris," seems to have gone out of favor after he became a Catholic, having fallen into bad repute, as it was considered a Protestant oath. There is little doubt that the traditions of his early years had great influence ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... wife—a promise we cannot transcribe literally, because of the free employment of a popular adjective (supposed to be a corruption of "by Our Lady") before or after any part of speech whatever, as an expletive to drive home meaning to reluctant minds. It is an expression unwelcome on the drawing-room table. But, briefly, what Mr. Salter had so sworn to do was to twist his wife's nose off with his finger and thumb. And he did not seem ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... puzzled Monica for a moment, but she remembered that it was an unmeaning expletive much used by people of Miss Eade's education. However, the story did not win her credence; by this time her disagreeable ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... quite impossible to reproduce this extraordinary Caledonian expletive in writing, but that is as near to it as I can get.) Then he ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... 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 plunged ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... infelicitous title, were 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 ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who the unwitting offender was, and asked, "What are they doin' to the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... we fish. By Jove!" (he had caught his father's expletive) "that blockhead has put the tent on the wrong side of the lake, after all. Holla, you, sir!" and the unhappy gardener looked up from his flower-beds; "what ails you? I have a great mind to tell my father of you—you grow stupider every day. I told you to put ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gray white under the tan. Don Diego crossed himself and muttered a prayer. Juan Gonzalvo uttered an expletive and half smothered it in a gasp as the face of Tahn-te caught the light ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... effect" of the stimulus, which gives rise to sensation, is "wrought out"? Suppose somebody runs a pin into me. The "due effect" of that particular stimulus will probably be threefold; namely, a sensation of pain, a start, and an interjectional expletive. Does the Quarterly Reviewer really think that the "sensation" is the "agent" by which the other two ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... exploded his favourite expletive till it sounded ferocious, "That ain't quare feelin's. That's just plain old-fashioned laziness. You git yo'self back thar and tend them frames, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... gave him a patriarchal look and added to the effect of his fervid eloquence and his withering sarcasm. A man of iron heart, he was ever anxious to meet his antagonists, haughty in his rude self-confidence, and exhaustive in the use of every expletive of abuse permitted by parliamentary usage. In debate he resembled one of the old soldiers who fought on foot or on horseback, with heavy or light arms, a battle-axe or a spear. The champion of the North, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... and along the hall to his room. Reaching the open door he heard a curious sound which came from the lighted bathroom beyond. What was it? It seemed like strained and heavy breathing; then he caught muttered, angry words in French, an expletive that reeked of the gutter. What on earth did it mean? He strove to the door, then halted on the threshold, completely petrified. Speech deserted him, he could only stare, hardly able to credit ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... hurl reciprocal excommunications, the scientists of to-day laugh at those of last year. If Pilate meant it this way, we owe him some sympathy and respect. "Speak the truth and shame the devil," they say. Bah! [I think this expletive ought to be spelt Baa.] When you know what the truth is, you are more likely to shame your friends, and become obnoxious and ridiculous. And in most cases you don't know, and if you suppose you do, you are mistaken. I have thought out a way of approximating Truth on a ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... title were 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 "Curse the luck!" was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, [Footnote: Interdicted: forbidden.] being supposed to have a soothing, tranquillizing quality, and one song, sung ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... versification has some abatements. He uses the expletive do very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost, universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and finding the world satisfied, he ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... regain the use of his tongue. He says, "My eye!" (oh, dear and familiar expletive, for a whole calendar month I have not heard you!)—"my eye! ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... himself his usual solace, and smoking furiously for a while, he said: "D—-n!" Into this one favorite and familiar expletive he poured his anger, his vexation, and his fear. He believed at the moment that the inventor was alive. He believed that if he had been dead his boy would, in some way, have revealed the fact. Was he still insane? Had he powerful friends? ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... bitter expletive at that instant Caleb would not have been so surprised as he was at Steve's reception of his question. The latter looked up, just pushed his long hair back from his forehead with one quick hand; and then smiled, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... Vowels in the second Line, the Expletive do in the third, and the ten Monosyllables in the fourth, give such a Beauty to this Passage, as would have been very much admired in an Ancient Poet. The Reader may observe the following Lines in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... expletive of disillusion burst from between Mallory's teeth as he saw the front-page double-column spread, a type-specialty of the usually conservative Ledger upon which it prided itself, dwindle to a carefully handled ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... usual to hear a rifle fired at close range, and the sound would make everybody look up to "see where the —— that came from." The discovery of the culprit would bring out a chorus from the working parties: "Give him a popgun, give him a popgun!" "Popgun" was preceded by the usual Australian expletive. ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... tarp in a conspicuous place and retired to rest. The following morning his efforts were applauded with much picturesque expletive, and even criticism was evoked by a lean puncher who insisted "that the tall guy might be a good cook all right, but he sure didn't know how to spell 'calf.'" Naturally the puncher's erudition leaned toward cattle and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... expletive was totally unnecessary, but it meant a thing he did not say. Whatsoever was thrusting him this way and that, speaking through his speech, leading him to do things he had not dreamed of doing, should have its will with him. He had been fastened to the skirts of this ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bow once more, 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
... beginning to rise to the occasion. He was one of those men who are usually too slack to burthen their souls with a refreshing expletive. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... an unmistakable British accent in the French expletive, "but I'll play no more.... The bank is broken ... and I have lost too much money. Mr. Segrave there has nearly cleaned me out and still I cannot ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... inelegant expletive whereby a Frenchman most adequately expresses his scorn of circumstance. "Zut! If I have lost a fortune, I have gained two devoted friends, so I am the winner on ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... of people. I think on the whole I understand the poorer classes best. They do swear, I find, horribly at times, but they don't intend harm by it. I doubt if they really know what it means. 'Hell' is merely an expletive like 'Oh' or 'By Jove' with us chaps. Funny, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... of poor Mr. Schulemberg at finding that he was sold, though the goods were not! I decline reporting the conversation any farther, lest its strength of expression and force of expletive might be too much for the more queasy of my readers. Suffice it to say, that the swindlee, if I may be allowed the royalty of coining a word, at once freed his own mind and imprisoned the body of M. M. ——; for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want of common decency and common humanity, are marked in strong lines. His traditional peculiarities of expression complete the reality of the picture. The authoritative expletive, 'Ha!' with which ne intimates his indignation or surprise, has an effect like the first startling sound that breaks from a thunder- cloud. He is of all the monarchs in our history the most disgusting: for he unites in himself ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... expletive Peter Ascott had been heard to use for long. "Ascott Leaf, is that you? I thought you were in ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... the floor, and walked with his hands behind him to the window, out of which, still faintly whistling, he gazed with eyes that saw nothing. Once his lips opened to emit mechanically the Englishman's expletive of sudden enlightenment. At length he turned to the shelves again, and swiftly but carefully examined every one of ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... lead-colored head and neck, becoming nearly black on the breast; clear olive-green back, and yellow belly. From his habit of keeping near the ground, even hopping upon it occasionally, I know him to be a ground warbler; from his dark breast the ornithologist has added the expletive mourning, hence the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... a girl, a wench. Gotsch, a stone jug. Holl, a dry ditch. Anan? An? an interrogation used when the speaker does not understand a question put to him. To be muddled, to be distressed in mind. Together, an expletive used thus: where are you going together? (meaning several persons)—what ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... the Midi," cried the woman, recognising the expletive—for no one born north of Avignon says "Tron de l'air"—"I too am from Marseilles. My husband was a Savoyard. That is why ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... this hope without smiling to himself. He had at last obtained the explanation of Madge's effort and success. By the superb result he measured the strength of the love which had led to it. "Great Scott!"—his favorite expletive—he had thought; "what a compass there is in her nature! I had long suspected her secret, but when I touched upon it last night she made my blood tingle by her magnificent resentment. I would sooner have trifled with an enraged empress. Look at her now, smiling, serene, and, although ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... miscellaneous as the audience at Drury Lane Theatre, only mixed more closely; the gallery folk and the stalls worked cheek by jowl. Here a gentleman with an affected lisp, and close by an honest fellow, who could not deliver a sentence without an oath, or some still more horrible expletive that meant nothing at all in reality, but served to make respectable flesh creep: interspersed with these, Hottentots, Kafirs, and wild blue blacks gayly clad in an ostrich feather, a scarlet ribbon, and a Tower musket ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... voice that Winter was puzzled to account for the harmless expression the barrister had twice used. The detective knew that his distinguished friend never, by any chance, indulged in strong language, yet something had annoyed him so greatly that a more powerful expletive would have had a very ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... 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
... in that wretched gaol! No abomination of human speech is unknown to me. One particularly vile expletive was fashionable during my imprisonment; it seasoned every phrase, and preceded every adjective. Its constant iteration was sickening, until long experience made me callous. How thankful I should be to Judge North for trying to purify me in that mud-bath of rascality. I can never ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... term arob or oror which has been rendered in one place. "Divers sorts of flies," Ps. cv. 31; and in another, "swarms of flies," Exod. viii. 21, &c., means merely "an assemblage." a "mixture" or a "swarm," and the expletive. "of flies" is an interpolation of the translators. This, however, serves to show that the fly implied was one easily recognisable by its habit of swarming; and the further fact that it bites, or rather stings, is elicited from the expression of the Psalmist, Ps. lxxviii. 45, that the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... this moment, but that she was knocked down as though by a blow. She had been altogether so unused to such language that she could not get on with her matter in hand, letting the bad word pass by her as an unmeaning expletive. She wearily poured out the cup of tea and sat herself down silent. The man was too strong for her, and would be so always. She told herself at this moment that language such as that must always absolutely silence her. Then, within a few minutes, he desired her, quite cheerfully, to ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Mayne Reid, who is still beloved by here and there a schoolboy, wrote a preface to one of his books—I think 'The Rifle Rangers,' but it is years on years since I saw it—in order to put forth his defence for the introduction of an occasional oath or impious expletive in the conversation of his men of the prairies. He pleaded necessity. It was impossible to portray his men without it. And he argued that an oath does not soil the mind 'like the clinging immorality of an unchaste episode.' The ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... ignorance, alike of Keltic and Hebrew, can only submit it here to the reader's examination. "The ancient Cognizance of the town confirms this etymology beyond doubt, with customary heraldic precision. The shield bears a Rose; with a Maul, as the exact phonetic equivalent for the expletive. If the herald had needed to express 'bare promontory,' quite certainly he would have managed it somehow. Not only this, the Earls of Haddington were first created Earls of Melrose (1619); and their Shield, quarterly, is charged, ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... of goods be in the way, he or she is designated by the article on sale, as: "O oranges, to the right!" or "O eggs, out of the way!" This, which sounds so odd, is meant in good faith, and answers the desired purpose. No one calls out in Arabic, addressing another, without prefixing some expletive. Thus the dealer of sweetmeats drawls out: "In the name of the Prophet, comfits." Even the beggar says: "O Christian, backsheesh!" as he leans upon a crutch and extends his trembling hand. If you respond, all is well; if not, your ears will be assailed by a jumble ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Smith, I didn't want this bother of church restoration at all, but it was necessary to do something in self-defence, on account of those d——dissenters: I use the word in its scriptural meaning, of course, not as an expletive.' ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the earnest and musical—if melancholy—exchange of salutations, the almost imperceptible drawing nearer, with the slightly waving tail the only sign of excitement, and at last the instantaneous dash, the slap or scratch (so rapid one can never tell which), the fiery expletive and retort, and the instant retreat, to sit down again. There seems to be some canon of feline etiquette which forbids two to meet and pass without solemn formalities of this sort, reminding one of the ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... nodded, "an' I may be a fool—but I don't go a-fallin' in love wi' ladies as is above me, an' out o' my reach, and don't chuck away a 'undred guineas for one as ain't likely to look my way—not me! Which I begs leave to say—hass yourself, an' likewise fool—bah!" With which expletive he set his thumb to his nose, spread out his fingers, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... glass and levelled it at the road, Pike gave vent to an expletive that need not be recorded here, but that indicated in him a most unusual degree of excitement. No wonder. The Tontos were now in plain view—only two miles and a half out there on the plain,—and though they were spread out, as a rule, to the right and left ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... in vain to think of any explanation. Two men, however, declared that in their opinion it was only red earth. (A certain obscurity appears in the evidence at this point, owing to the common use of a certain expletive in the mouth of the British working-man.) There was a hot discussion on the subject, and the Bill whose boots were under argument seems to have been the only man to keep his head. He argued very sensibly that if the stains were those of blood, then ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... was ready, Inspector Pryor would have escorted her down stairs, but she shook off his hand with angry scorn, and with an expletive that made even his case-hardened ears burn ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... with yellow." Branch's voice shook. "I'm dying of a fever, and this ivory-billed toucan brings me a quart of poison. Bullets!" It was impossible to describe the suggestion of profanity with which the speaker colored this innocuous expletive. "Weak as I am, I shall gnaw his windpipe." He bared his teeth suggestively and raised two ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... the first go off." He was silent for a few seconds, and then he broke out in a kind of ecstasy. "My Gawd, 'e'll be a bowler such as 'as never been, never in this world. He'll start where I left orf. He'll ..." Words failed him, he fell back on the expletive he had used, repeating it with an awed fervour. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... "When I say a thing, I mean a thing. The sooner you understand that, the better. How dare you argue with me! Fiddle-de-dee!" For two pins Peter would have employed an expletive even stronger, so determined ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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
... 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 Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... figures then are brought to view, Fools, hand in hand with fools, go two by two. Next came the treasurer of either house; One with full purse, t'other with not a sous. 310 Behind, a group of figures awe create, Set off with all the impertinence of state; By lace and feather consecrate to fame, Expletive kings, and queens without a name. Here Havard,[23] all serene, in the same strains, Loves, hates, and rages, triumphs and complains; His easy vacant face proclaim'd a heart Which could not feel emotions, nor impart. With him came mighty Davies:[24] on my life, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... her lover. Her father's keeping secret his receipt of Godfrey's letter until he had mailed its answer, could mean only that the answer was for Godfrey to come home. The General's talk of being tired by the writing of it was a purely expletive irony, for he had written with the brevity of an old soldier to a young sailor; but he had written that trouble was impending, that its source was Arthur, and that the last hope of removing it lay ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... to 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 ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... for making philological observations. I observe that the Cree, although essentially the same language as the Chippewa, yet drops, or never had, many of the suffix expletive particles of the latter, though the prefix particles are pretty much the same in both. The Cree has not, I believe, the double negative nor the adverbial and plaintive forms of verbs, as I have termed them. This renders the language less complex, and much more easy ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... a rapid expletive, and reproached her with not having been to see him. She hesitated a moment; then she simpered the least bit and bridled. "He comes to see me—without reproach! But it would not be the same for me to go to him, though, indeed, you ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... make it passable. For to see insipid mildness complacently 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
... [Footnote: Expletive, equivalent to "The Devil!" or "Damnation!"] girl, be quiet!" ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... This expletive was certainly not appreciated by her who used it. Nothing could much more have astonished or shocked Barbara Polwhele [a fictitious person]—than whom no more uncompromising Protestant breathed between John o' Groat's and the Land's End—than to discover that since she came into the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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
... about in another futile attempt to escape, and cursed his captors with gifts of expletive ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... Isaac, bearing an expression in which anger and horror were extraordinarily intermingled. If it was Sir Isaac he dodged back with amazing dexterity; if it was a phantom of the living it vanished with an air of doing that. Without came the sound of a flower-pot upset and a faint expletive. Mr. Brumley looked very quickly at Lady Beach-Mandarin, who was entirely unconscious of anything but her own uncoiling and enveloping eloquence, and as quickly at Miss Sharsper. But Miss Sharsper was examining a blackish bureau through her ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the two terms, "bub" and "sis," which they consider endears them greatly to the young people, and recommends them to the acquaintance of their honored parents, if these happen to accompany them. The other boarders commonly call our diminutive companion That Boy. He is a sort of expletive at the table, serving to stop gaps, taking the same place a washer does that makes a loose screw fit, and contriving to get driven in like a wedge between any two chairs where there is a crevice. I shall not call that boy by the monosyllable ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... then 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 with him to the stables; ten, and a dozen horses, swiftly ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... 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 absolutely no sense ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... prendre, 'on whom to lay the blame.' Note the expletive use of en and cf.— en vouloir qn., 'to have a grudge against some one.' en venir aux mains, 'to come to blows.' il en est de mme de . ., 'it is the same with ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... are at Cleveland; and, "by the powers of Mercury"—this expletive originated, I believe, with a proud barometer,—it is raining cats and dogs and a host of inferior animals. Everybody seems very impatient, for all are getting out, and yet we have not reached the station,—no; and they don't mean to get there at present. Possession ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... using the Por Dios! which with us is a mark of the purest blackguardism, and the use as common names of that of Our Lord and of Salvador, or Saviour, always strikes a disagreeable note. There is in Madrid a "Calle Jesus," and the sacred name, used as a common expletive, is heard on all sides. One of the most charming of Yradier's Andalusian songs, addressed by a contrabandista ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Berlin. The figure, pensive and poetic, resembles a mediaeval Saint rather than a Sibyl. The painter afterwards found a more congenial theme in The Marriage of the Virgin. The treatment is wholly traditional, the style austerely pre-Raphaelite; the only expletive in the way of an idea comes with attendant angels, lyres in hand. The work was not delivered till 1836, in the meanwhile the first fire had died out, and nature was thrust into the distance. The technique had not improved, the material clothing becomes subject to the mental conception, ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... holding it carefully in line with a fir. After moving once or twice he drove it into the soil, and crawled on hands and knees into the fern so that Seaforth could only see his boots, and surmise by the rustling that he was groping amidst the withered fronds. Once he caught a muffled expletive, after which the rustling ceased awhile, but it commenced again, and Seaforth wondered the more when Okanagan crawled out of the opposite side of the thicket, and set up a second stick in line with the other. He had not the faintest notion of what ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... turn in from the avenue, a tall man in an Inverness with a wide black hat pulled down over his eyes. For the moment she could not remember who he was, but by the time he had stopped in front of the big gate, giving utterance to a well delivered expletive, she knew him perfectly, and stood waiting, motionless, for him to turn and speak to her. She was sure that he would have no recollection of her. He turned, but it was some seconds before ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... 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
... gust of violent, angry, and irrelevant emotion, or, in case the feelings are more under control, merely a bitter remark or a chilling and ironical laugh. It is an interesting fact that a jest may serve as well to give expression to the "feelings" as an expletive or any other emotional expression. All forms of fanaticism, fixed ideas, phobias, ideals, and cherished illusions may be explained as the effects of mental mechanisms created ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... But Mr. Van Brunt coolly said he had promised: she might get as many help 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 king, 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? Miss Fortune disdained a struggle which must end in her own confusion, and wisely kept her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... syllables generally contain nearly the same number of syllables as two Latin or Greek hexameters, but are in most instances capable of conveying more ideas, especially in translating from Greek which abounds so much in what seem to us expletive particles. The caesura, or pause is not invariably fixed on the same syllable of the verse, as in French; in the choice and variety of its position, consists the chief art of appropriate harmony. Accentuation ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... of Golf Committee now suggest a standard ball for England and America. The question of a standard long-distance expletive for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... 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 |
