"Jargon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he was, and his master had become used to his faults. He had one advantage, and that was a consideration. Although he was a Negro by birth he did not speak like a Negro, and nothing is so irritating as that hateful jargon in which all the pronouns are possessive and all the verbs infinitive. Let it be understood, then, that ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... account his personal appearance, health and heredity. My third preoccupation is to study the surroundings into which I intend to place my actors, the locality and the spot where certain parts may be acted. I enquire into the manners, habits, character, language, and even learn the jargon of the inhabitants of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... beginning, "some braver spirits" (line 23), and ending, "prey on carcasses" (line 36), with the prefatory remark: "I am happy in the opportunity afforded me of introducing the following striking extract from some lines, intended as a satire on the Godwinian jargon." ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... now began to mutter, and finally spoke in a mixed jargon of scarcely intelligible dialects. He now yelled, prayed, and foamed at the mouth, till in about three quarters of an hour he was exhausted and speechless. 'But in an instant he sprang upon his feet, notwithstanding at the time ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... is a barbarous jargon, and the effects of our medicines on the human system in the highest degree uncertain; except, indeed, that they have destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined." JOHN MASON GOOD, M.D., F.R.S., ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... To come before its time like this, with no chance to foresee anything, not even to get her mother here! It was for her mother to make that decision, and she couldn't arrive from Paris till to-night! If only he could have understood the doctor's jargon, the medical niceties, so as to be sure he was weighing the chances properly; but they were Greek to him—like a legal problem to a layman. And yet he must decide! He brought his hand away from his brow wet, though the air was chilly. These sounds which came from her room! To go ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 'Blessed are the peace-makers,' but now in the blaze of day I say unto you: 'Blessed are the war-makers, for they shall be called, if not the children of Jahve, the children of Odin, who is greater than Jahve.'" For those who want more of this mad jargon on the same lines let me refer them to the late Professor Cramb's book on Germany ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... he asked, and listened to the explanation attentively. "Bunday!" he exclaimed at the finish, showing he had fully grasped the situation. Of course he knew all about Bunday! Wasn't it so many weeks after the Chinaman's New Year festival? And in a jargon of pidgin-English he swept aside all moon discussions, and fixed the date of "Bunday" for the twenty-eighth of March, "which," as Dan wisely remarked, "proved that somebody was right," but whether the Maluka or the Dandy, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... night when I sing. You know that I get flowers, enjoy triumphs enough to satisfy me. Well, I'm sick of it all. I believe that I shall end by going mad. It may become a monomania. I often say, Why all this feverishness, this art jargon? Why should I burn myself up with Isolde and weep my heart out with Sieglinde? Why go on repeating words that I do not believe in? Art! oh, I ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... (the overbalance of which, with a most hearty and loving sincerity, I ever acknowledge); and finally, that all which the wisest of men could utter on any such subject, might possibly be nothing but a jargon,—the witless and puny voice of what we take to be a mighty orb, but which, after all, is only a particle in the starry dust of ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... the portraits of Francis I. Well, take that portrait as the basis of what you would call in your metaphysical jargon your ‘mental image’ of the manager’s face, soften down the nose a bit, and give him the rose-bloom colour of an English farmer, and there you ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... is a queer jargon composed of a verbatim translation of Chinese sentences together with a slight admixture of Portuguese and French, the frequent wrongful substitution of similar sounding words and a lavish use of the ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... fowl were very acceptable at the restaurant at the station, after the business of examining the luggage was over. Hannah, evidently nourishing a sense of injury against the natives for their eccentric jargon, and against the universe for the rush and discomfort of the last quarter of an hour, was disposed to express her feelings by a marked lack of relish for her food. She regarded Hadria's hearty appetite with a disdainful expression. Martha ate bread and butter and fruit. She ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... understand Vic's jargon about frequencies and light-rays, for I thought more about football than physics in college, but two things were clear to me. One was that Vic had plunged into some sort of wild experiment, and the other was that Hope had followed him. The rest ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... is meant, for instance, by the following words, with which his ears are constantly stunned twice a day, "Mugs, jugs and porringers, up in the garret, and down in the cellar." I say, how is it possible for any stranger to understand that this jargon is meant as an invitation to buy a farthing's worth of milk for his breakfast or supper, unless his curiosity draws him to the window, or till his landlady shall inform him. I produce this only as one instance, among a hundred much worse, I mean where the words make a ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... of the various schools of composers and virtuosi in the musical countries of Europe, from Corelli down to Vieuxtemps and Joachim. The author's judgment is in most cases fair and unbiassed, and his diction agreeably free from the current jargon of musical criticism.... The value of Mr. Hart's volume is increased by carefully engraved portraits of Corelli, Viotti, Paganini, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... vowed that it was a delightful ball; that there was everybody that every one knew, and only a VERY few nobodies in the whole room. It is a fact, that in a fortnight, and after three dinners in general society, this young woman had got up the genteel jargon so well, that a native could not speak it better; and it was only from her French being so good, that you could know she was not a born ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Commonwealth appear—he must rank foremost. It is difficult to avoid exaggeration in speaking of these men,—men whose deeds vindicate their words, and whose words are unsurpassed by Greek or Roman fame,—men whom even Hume can only criticize for a "mysterious jargon" which most of them did not use, and for a "vulgar hypocrisy" which few of them practised. Let us not underrate the self-forgetting loyalty of the Royalists,—the Duke of Newcastle laying at the King's feet seven hundred thousand pounds, and the Marquis of Worcester a million; but the sublimer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... is, That Chocolate being by Nature cold, it ought not to be used without being mixed with Spices, which are commonly hot, that so they might, both together, become temperate and wholesome. This was the Jargon and Practice of those Times. For the same Reason the ancient Physicians erroneously imagining that Opium was cold in the fourth Degree, never fail'd to correct this pretended Coldness in their narcotick Compositions, with Drugs extremely hot, as ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... not able to help us much. Allan was only a house-surgeon in one of the London hospitals; and Fred, who called himself an artist, had never earned a penny. He was a fair copyist, and talked the ordinary art jargon, and went about all day in his brown velveteen coat, and wore his hair rather long; but we never saw much result from his Roman studies; latterly he had somewhat neglected his painting, and had taken to violin playing and ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... grown to hate Christmas more and more; it was, to use Shakespeare's words, "the bug that feared them all." The very name smacked to them of incense, stole, and monkish jargon; any person who observed it as a holiday by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way was to pay five shillings fine, so desirous were they to "beate down every sprout of Episcopacie." Judge Sewall watched jealously the feeling ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and stood up. Pushing the wizard aside, this Indian faced the audience. It was Le Borgne, his foxy eye yellow as flame, teeth snapping, and a tongue running at such a pace that we could scarce make out a word of his jargon. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... unintelligible jargon while they were lowering the coffin into the grave, and those who happened to know the words of the office by heart were, with some difficulty, able to understand what ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... contempt of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had a stronger ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... haudkerchies, whilst that Gives the kind ogling nymph his hat; Here one in love with choristers, Minds singing more than law affairs. A Serjeant limping on behind, Shews justice lame as well as blind. To gain new clients some dispute, Others protract an ancient suit, Jargon and noise alone prevail, Whilst sense and reason's sure to fail: At Babel thus law terms begun, And now ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... groping along the crooked byways which had led from Paris pavements to the mercy of Louis by way of an escaped gallows he forgot both La Mothe and Amboise. The voice of Paris the beloved, Paris the ever mourned for, was in his ears; the jargon of the Rue Maubert, the tinkle of the glasses through the doubtful but merry songs of the Pet du Deable, whispers of gay voices which had long passed beyond these voices, and the leering face, part satyr and part poet, grew wholly poet ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... smile. It was surprising how well this funny little person managed to ape the jargon and chatter of Bea's set as well as their mode of appearance. She did it mightily well, everything considered, and when she proceeded to offer to go and sit with the old dear or bring her game board and play with him Steve released a broad grin ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... human happiness. And, surely, our just admiration of the character of the reformers must be not a little enhanced, when we consider what they did for letters as well as for the church. Learning does not consist in useless jargon, in a multitude of mere words, or in acute speculations remote from practice; else the seventeen folios of St. Thomas Aquinas, the angelical doctor of the thirteenth century, and the profound disputations of his great rival, Duns Scotus the subtle, for which ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... cheeks, pull out their hair, and such other heathenish conduct. These burials were generally made under their thatch houses or very near thereto. The house where one died was always torn down, removed, rebuilt, or abandoned. The wailing, talks, &c., were in their own jargon; none else could understand, and they seemingly knew but little of its meaning (if there was any meaning in it); it simply seemed to be the promptings of grief, without sufficient intelligence to direct any ceremony; each seemed to ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... ordinary soldierman, trained in the elementary virtues of plain-speaking and direct dealing, love of country and the sacredness of duty, I have had no use for the metaphysician. I haven't the remotest notion what his jargon means. From Aristotle to William James, I have dipped into quite a lot of them—Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer (the thrice besotted Teutonic ass who said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... surely. It was not all in the code jargon—Davis trusted the privacy of the wire sufficiently to send a portion of it in plain English—but he did not trust even that altogether. Miss Colton and I worked it out as we had the first telegram. As the translation progressed I could feel my hair tingling ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... professor, resting his hands on the edge of his desk, talked away in familiar Latin, interspersed with an occasional word in French, when he was at fault for a better. A discussion would then follow in which the students argued in a strange jargon, with never a smile upon their faces. Then, at ten o'clock, there came twenty minutes' reading of Holy Writ. He fetched the Sacred Book, a volume richly bound and gilt-edged. Having kissed it with especial ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... on the table, and Harry sat down and pretended to read it. But he did not understand any thing of the jargon. The words danced up and down. He could only see "Beatrice," "freedom from care," "power to get away from Florence," and the final thought, the one which removed his last scruple, "Lanza can have the cottage, and I shall be clear ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... dislodge him. This said, he withdraws by himself to a little Tent made on purpose, where he dances, and sings houling like an Owl; (which gives the Jesuits Occasion to say, That the Devil converses with 'em.) After he has made an end of this Quack Jargon, he comes and rubs the Patient in some part of his Body, and pulling some little Bones out of his Mouth, acquaints the Patient, That these very Bones came out of his Body; that he ought to pluck up a good heart, in regard that his Distemper is but ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... exercise of his strength. He was not allowed to remain inside the cars between stations, and the only glimpses he got of their scant comfort was when he flung open their doors to call out the names of stations in his own undistinguishable jargon. He was invariably a well-grown powerfully built fellow, as rough in ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... first sailed in dramatic fashion into the orbit of Bavaria's sovereign, Lola Montez was just twenty-seven. In the full noontide of her beauty and allurement, she was well equipped with what the modern jargon calls sex-appeal. Big-bosomed and with generously swelling curves, "her form," says Eduard Fuchs, "was provocation incarnate." Fuchs, who was an expert on the subject of feminine attractions, knew what he was talking about. "Shameless and ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... knowledges, that collection of cerebral rubber stamps, which constitutes the chief mental equipment of the average male. A man thinks that he is more intelligent than his wife because he can add up a column of figures more accurately, and because he understands the imbecile jargon of the stock market, and because he is able to distinguish between the ideas of rival politicians, and because he is privy to the minutiae of some sordid and degrading business or profession, say soap-selling or the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the tone of dogmatism and the smile of contempt were equally unknown to him. Sometimes indeed he raised himself stronger and more lofty in his eloquence, then chiefly, when, fearful for his weaker brethren, he opposed the arrogance of the illiterate deist, or the worse jargon of sensual and cold-blooded atheism. He knew that the clouds of ignorance which enveloped their understandings, steamed up from the pollutions of their hearts, and, crowding his sails, he bore down upon ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... fantastically with Greek scrolls of fruit and flowers, with elegant Corinthian columns jutting out upon the church steps, and with the old conventional wave-border that is called Etruscan in our modern jargon. From the midst of florid fret and foliage lean mild faces of saints and Madonnas. Symbols of evangelists with half-human, half-animal eyes and wings, are interwoven with the leafy bowers of cupids. Grave apostles stand erect beneath acanthus wreaths ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... wild jargon of unmeaning voices strikes your ear and you discover that ninety-nine people out of a hundred have forgotten how to speak English. More than this, the English signs are no more, and on the billboards and before the business offices are ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... but I do not think you will. Our Church can be loving and restful and harmonious and beautiful (thus the jargon of the heretic) but it can also be masterful and tyrannical and terrible, even cruel, so they say, although I do not go that far myself. And the call of it, the memory of it, the significance of it, the power and majesty and awfulness of it will draw ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Running Bear's measured periods, the Wildcat rolled his eyes. Now and then when the Indian's sense of humour got the best of him he varied his Chinook jargon with Wild shrieks ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... me so; if I were to predict your fortune by the vain calculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their despicable jargon, that my planet sat darkly in your house of life. Cross me not, if you can avoid it. I warn you now for the first ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... roots of all order, patriotism, poetry, and religion. They retorted that their critics were blind adherents of antiquated prejudice, and sought to cover superstition and despotism either by unprovable dogmatic assertions, or by taking refuge in a cloudy mystical jargon, which ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... was well acquainted with the general lines and procedure of modern financial speculation, was in fact better versed in the jargon and gossip of the Stock Exchange than Melrose himself; and had made use now and then of the large amount of information and the considerable number of useful acquaintances he possessed to speculate cautiously on his own account—without much result, but without disaster. Also it was very soon ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that he sat on that stone; for that alone he had been beaten! What he said was but the babbling of priests. All priests are alike. They have a common jargon—a common disrespect for what they dare not openly defy. These temple rats of fakirs mimic them. That is all, sahib. A whipping meets ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... this time sixty-nine years old, a tall, robust, vigorous man with a stern face of remarkable vulgar strength. The illiteracy of his youth survived; he could not write the simplest words correctly, and his speech was a brusque medley of slang, jargon, dialect and profanity. It was said of him that he could swear more forcibly, variously and frequently than any other man of his generation. Like the Astors, he was cynical, distrustful, secretive and parsimonious. He kept his plans entirely to himself. ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... again and again at the vast humor of this situation as it lay before him, exulting in the mystification his thieves' jargon would create. His liquor ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... of William III. great progress had been made in the science of colonial government; charters had been granted to Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1662 and 1663, which, except in the survival of the ancient and meaningless jargon of incorporation, had a decidedly modern form. By these regular local representative governments were established with full power of legislation, save in so far as limited by clauses requiring conformity with the law of England; and they ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... and her own less. They talked so much that they wasted part of the afternoon. She dressed slowly; she amused herself by asking Christophe's opinion about her dresses. Christophe praised her elegance and told her naively in his Franco-German jargon, that he had never seen anybody so "luxurious." She looked at him for a moment and then burst ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... His tongue fired the inexperienced soul with a love of arms, as do the drums and trumpets and tramp of soldiers, and their bayonets glittering in the sun. He would have been worth his weight in fustian here, where we recruit by that and jargon; he was superfluous in France, where they recruited by force: but he was ornamental: and he set Dard and one or two more on fire. Indeed, so absorbing was his sense of military glory, that there was no room left in him for that mere ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... now, though in sore straits for writing materials, and having entirely lost count of time, post up my diary, or rather commence my narrative. So far as I can learn from the jargon of the strange and lost people among whom Providence has cast me, this is, in their speech, the last of the month, Thargeelyun, as near as I can imitate the sound in English. Being in doubt as to the true time, I am resolved to regard to- morrow, and every ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... metropolis on a visit to the father of the French pale-faces. Neither the Legs nor the Sailor cared for the gayety and the crowd of cities; the stout mariner's home was in the puttock-shrouds of the old "Repudiator." The stern and simple trapper loved the sound of the waters better than the jargon of the French of the old country. "I can follow the talk of a Pawnee," he said, "or wag my jaw, if so be necessity bids me to speak, by a Sioux's council-fire and I can patter Canadian French with the hunters who come for peltries to Nachitoches ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quite still, permitting Barnaby to gaze, I know not how long, into her eyes, her face so transfigured and her lips smiling, and they, as it were, neither of them breathing, but hearing, as in another far-distant place, the outlandish jargon of the crew talking together in the warm, bright sunlight, or the sound of creaking block and tackle as ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... was flattered by the respectful attention of the naive Russian, continued his sermon. It was before the days of the Beyliss trial. Nevertheless, except for the "ritual" murder, all the rest of the jargon of our anti-Semitic papers was there, and the Jewish character was painted the most ...
— The Shield • Various
... negative. The younger generation, and especially the girls, will occasionally pose for you, and a truly picturesque group they make in their queer mannish dress of bright colors, as they laugh and chatter in their odd but musical jargon. ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... broken by the sound of voices talking—the jargon of peons, I thought—and I remembered that I was alone, and driving across a lonely part of the city. The voices seemed to be approaching down Powell Street, even now perhaps under the very convent walls. They ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... the law spoke about a prisoner being "turned over," when he should have said "discharged." This gave Mr. DOWLING occasion to pass some severe remarks with regard to the use of slang terms generally, by policemen, and to caution them against addressing persons in any such jargon. The lesson was a timely one, and we hope that it may prove effective, since we frequently hear perplexed inquirers complaining that their education has been neglected so far as slang is concerned, and lamenting that, when ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... depopulator of Lyons, is said to have died in the common hospital, in consequence of drinking off at once a whole bottle of ardent spirits. Billaud Varennes spent his time in teaching the innocent parrots of Guiana the frightful jargon of the revolutionary committee; and finally perished ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... in. Another agreeable home-touch was to hear the negro boatmen all talking to each other in English. Their speech may not have been melodious, but it fell pleasantly enough on ears accustomed for so long to hear nothing but Spanish. From my intimate acquaintance with Marryat, even the jargon of the negro boatmen struck me with a delightful sense of familiarity, as did the very place-names, Needham Point and Carlisle Bay. I was fated not to see Barbados ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... senseless cry for a Republic or any other form of government. Leave that to the Legislature. What have you done? You swelled the crowd that invaded the Corps Ligislatif. You, Dombinsky, not even a Frenchman, dare to mount the President's rostrum, and brawl forth your senseless jargon. You, Edgar Ferrier, from whom I expected better, ascend the tribune, and invite the ruffians in the crowd to march to the prisons and release the convicts; and all of you swell the mob at the Hotel de Ville, and inaugurate the reign of folly by creating an oligarchy of lawyers to resist the march ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of New York. A whirlwind of noise and smell and hovering shadows. The jargon of Jewish matrons in brown shawls and orthodox wigs, chaffering for cabbages and black cotton stockings and gray woolen undershirts with excitable push-cart proprietors who had beards so prophetic that it was startling to see a frivolous cigarette amid the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... and more specialised types of comic transpositions. Thus, certain professions have a technical vocabulary: what a wealth of laughable results have been obtained by transposing the ideas of everyday life into this professional jargon! Equally comic is the extension of business phraseology to the social relations of life,—for instance, the phrase of one of Labiche's characters in allusion to an invitation he has received, "Your kindness of the third ult.," thus transposing the commercial ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... alley and snatched the sprite into its arms. It was a colored nurse, who poured out a torrent of broken French and English over the runaway, and made her acknowledgments to Mr. Raleigh in the same jargon. As she turned to go, the child stretched her arms toward her late pursuer, making the nurse pause, and, putting up her little lips, touched with them his own; then, picturesque as ever, and thrown into relief by the scarlet sack, snowy turban, and sable skin of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Academician and that; laughed at Mr. Haydon, or sneered at Mr. Eastlake, or the contrary; deified Mr. Turner on one side of the table, and on the other scorned him as a madman—nor could Newcome comprehend a word of their jargon. Some sense there must be in their conversation: Clive joined eagerly in it and took one side or another. But what was all this rapture about a snuffy brown picture called Titian, this delight in three flabby nymphs by Rubens, and so forth? ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... age, Till he appears upon the stage: And first his bum you see him clap Upon the Queen of Sheba's lap: The Duke of Lorraine drew his sword; Punch roaring ran, and running roar'd, Reviled all people in his jargon, And sold the King of Spain a bargain; St. George himself he plays the wag on, And mounts astride upon the dragon; He gets a thousand thumps and kicks, Yet cannot leave his roguish tricks; In every action thrusts his nose; The reason why, no mortal knows: In doleful scenes that break our heart, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... man was surrounded by a "nimbus" of infallibility; no one had ever enlightened me on the fact that serious-minded men had themselves once been young, and had learned the student jargon of Heidelberg; that this director himself, after a noisy youth, had arrived at the idea that every young man has malicious propensities, and that what seems good in him is only make-believe, and so he must be treated with ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... flight of birds. The right way to achieve flight, as events were to prove, was by the study and practice of gliding. But birds were believed to support, as well as to raise, themselves in the air chiefly by what in the jargon of science is called orthogonal flight, that is, by direct downward flapping of the wings. This view received authoritative support from a famous treatise written in the seventeenth century by Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, an Italian professor of mathematical ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... Sparkle; "the alteration of sound only arises from an habitual carelessness, with which many of what are termed the London Cries are given; a sort of tone or jargon which is acquired by continually calling the same thing—and in which you will find he is not singular. The venders of milk, for instance, seldom call the article they carry for sale, as it is generally sounded mieu, or mieu below, though some have recently adopted the practice of crying ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "A pretty bit of jargon you have managed to string together," said the colonel, looking more amiable than he had before done, "and that is what I suppose you call a poetical description, missie. Well, as it does not convey a bad idea of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed—for he could blush distinctly now—and his mother looked upon him with pleasure, thought the reference to Midas and roosters was of course jargon to her. "Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child has!" she exclaimed. "I declare, Bibbs, sometimes ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... mind the details. I hate the jargon of Art. I only wished to assure myself that I am not to be imposed on. Well, I think I will risk it, and go in. You can put us on a front seat, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Whatever this jargon may mean, the public has allowed it to fall flat. It seems to suggest that the Archbishop of Canterbury, by resuming the tradition of Caiaphas, as "modified" by the Sermon on the Mount, might oust ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... it alike, but no one individual is invariably consistent in his errors or accuracies. Every reader who knows any foreign language imperfectly is aware that HE SPEAKS IT BETTER AT ONE TIME THAN ANOTHER, and it would consequently have been a grave error to reduce the broken and irregular jargon of the book to a fixed and regular language, or to require that the author should invariably write exactly the same mispronunciations with ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... take leave to place a sentinel in the chamber, so that your ladyship, in case you should wish to rise, may have an arm to lean on," Captain Westbury said. "Your woman will show me where I am to look;" and Madame Victoire, chattering in her half-French and half-English jargon, opened while the captain examined one drawer after another; but, as Harry Esmond thought, rather carelessly, with a smile on his face, as if he was only conducting ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... detected the fallacy of all the so-called mediaeval jargon he had read,—"is the Helectric Bell, which does away with our hold, hordinary 'orn blowin', and the hattendant waitin' in the 'all for the usual 'Without there, who waits?' which all of us was accustomed to in mortal flesh. You hobserve this button. I press it so, and it instantly rings ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... their place as accepted English. A vulgarism is an expression decidedly incorrect, and the use of which is a mark of ignorance or low breeding. Cant, as used in this connection, denotes the barbarous jargon used as a secret language by thieves, tramps, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... load was off Link's heart. Chum, most assuredly, was not black and white. So the advertisement could not possibly refer to him. The reverend gentleman, not being a dog fancier, of course had no means of knowing that "sable", in collie jargon, means practically every shade of color except black or gray ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... in a thieve's jargon which were sealed letters to the eavesdropper, but it seemed to him that they all addressed her as Baboushka! This struck him as more odd from its being a Slavonic title, meaning "grandmother." Was it possible that he had before him one ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Mode, which, notwithstanding, their whining style, are not destitute of merit, and those of DANCOURT, who has written several little comedies, of a very lively cast, which are still played, and those of MARIVAUX, whose old metaphysical jargon still pleases such persons as have their head full of love. I might augment this list by the name of several other old authors, whose productions have more ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... February when an Indian, gaunt and wide-eyed from the strain of a forced snow-trail, staggered from the black shadow of the bush into the glare of the blazing night-fires, and in a frenzied gibberish of jargon proclaimed that Bob MacNair had returned to the Northland. And not only that he had returned, but had visited Lac du Mort in company with a man of ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... marriage bed with the same arguments that he used in debarring you. He treats your wife for complaints which she has not, in order to cure her of those which she has, and all the while you have no idea of it; for the scientific jargon of doctors can only be compared to the layers in which they ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... the tiny gold ear-rings in the ears of one. For all the world they were like pirates stepped out of the pages of romance. And, to make the picture complete, their faces were distorted with anger, and each flourished a long knife. They were both shouting, in high-pitched voices, some foreign jargon ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually *has* a 'Colossal Cave' and a 'Bedquilt' as in the game, and the 'Y2' that also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Carlyle, Lord Lytton, Mr. Roebuck, and others, on gypsies; an account of the first and family names and personal characteristics of English and American Romanys, prepared for me by a very famous old gypsy; and finally a chapter on the "Shelta Thari," or Tinkers' Language, a very curious jargon or language, never mentioned before by any writer except Shakespeare. What this tongue may be, beyond the fact that it is purely Celtic, and that it does not seem to be identical with any other Celtic dialect, is unknown to me. I class it with the gypsy, because all who speak ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... Arabic of the desert, that has a distinct word for everything, and for every phase of everything —another speech altogether from the jargon of the towns. ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... became gentle now, in her Anglo-Italian jargon, with a dash of Spanish in it; everything became clear, everything yielded before the violence of that fierce love. Lily was astounded to ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... in front of a building whose squat brick facade was lettered with the reassuring sobriquet of its proprietor. A bench, running the width of the structure, was thick with sprawling loafers, who smoked and spat and spoke a jargon of the seas, the chief part of which was blasphemy. Within, visible through windows never closed, was a crowded barroom ablaze with flaring gas-jets, uproarious with voices thick ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... powder-smoke, stained red with ore-dust, and gleamed in the fitful lamp-light with trickling rivulets of perspiration. The car-pushers were all foreigners—Italians, Bohemians, Hungarians, or Poles—and the uncouth jargon of their shouts intensified the wildness of their appearance. Theirs was the very lowest form of mine drudgery, and but few of them were possessed of intelligence or ambition sufficient ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... millionaire from the country at large; and I doubt whether the man who wrote the lines had any conception when he did write them of the fashion in which they were afterward read. Be that as it may, the actor who essayed to play the American used an inflection, or an accent, or a dialect, or a jargon—or whatever you might choose to call it—which was partly of the oldtime drawly Wild Western school of expression and partly of the oldtime nasal Down East school. I had thought—and had hoped—that both ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Evidences of Paley, in their proper order, unshaken. His Natural Theology will open the heart, that it may understand, or at least receive the Scriptures, if any thing can. It is philosophy in its highest and noblest sense; scientific, without the jargon of science; profound, but so clear that its depth is disguised. There is nothing of the "budge Doctor" here; speculations which will convince, if aught will, that "in the beginning God created the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... but, at times, equally with chords that are unrelated; which, were they sustained for long by an organ, would be intolerably harsh. But the tone of the pianoforte is so fleeting that such a mixture ensures great brilliance and warmth without undue jargon, and is thus akin to the blending of strange colors by modern painters. Many people, in fact, play the pianoforte with too little, rather than too much, pedal; or with too much pedal used the wrong way! A definite ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... this seemed a mere burst of jargon, invented for the purpose of hiding guilt; and his faith in womankind was not heightened when he heard Grace's mother say, sotto voce to Willis, that—"In wrecks, and fires, and such like, a many people complained of having lost more than ever ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... do you say to that? There is the fine old Scots dialect in all its purity with a vengeance! In what part of the island such a jargon is spoken, we are fortunately at present unaware. Certain we are that our fathers never heard it; and as for ourselves, though reasonably cognizant of the varieties of speech which are current in Gilmerton, Aberdeen, the Crosscauseway and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... They abandoned their native speech, and adopted the French tongue, in which the Latin was the predominant element. They speedily raised their new language to a dignity and importance which it had never before possessed. They found it a barbarous jargon; they fixed it in writing; and they employed it in legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They renounced that brutal intemperance to which all the other branches of the great German family were too much inclined. The polite luxury of the Norman presented a striking ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wares spread out to tempt the Court ladies on their way to Mass, when the Duchess herself passed their way and deigned to stop to converse graciously with the strangers. To her inquiries they answered that they came from Piedmont; and their curious jargon of French and Italian lent support to the story. After inspecting their wares she asked for a certain book. "Alas! Madame," Gasparini answered, "I have not a copy here, but I have one at my inn." And bidding him bring the volume to her at the palace, the great lady resumed ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... the rank and jargon of modern criticism, Berlioz is called the father of modern instrumentation. That is, he says nothing in his music, but says it magnificently. His orchestration covers a multitude of weaknesses with a flamboyant cloak of charity. [Now, here I go again; I could have just as easily ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the silent forest around broke suddenly into loud life, with galloping of hoofs, crackling of brushwood, and the short, sharp cries of the hunters. Close behind the pack rode a fourrier and a yeoman-pricker, whooping on the laggards and encouraging the leaders, in the shrill half-French jargon which was the language of venery and woodcraft. Alleyne was still gazing after them, listening to the loud "Hyke-a-Bayard! Hyke-a-Pomers! Hyke-a-Lebryt!" with which they called upon their favorite hounds, when a group of horsemen crashed out through the underwood at the very spot ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... It has already declared war against you and your institutions. It every day commits acts of war against you; it has already compelled you to arm for your defense. Listen to no vain babbling; to no treacherous jargon about 'overt acts'; they have already been committed. Defend yourselves! The enemy is at your door; wait not to meet him at your hearthstone; meet him at the door-sill, and drive him from the Temple of Liberty, or pull down its pillars and ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Being free from inflection or agglutination of any kind, it is incapable of indicating in itself either gender, number or case, voice, mood, tense or person. Of European languages, English stands nearest to Chinese in this respect, whence it follows that the construction of a hybrid jargon like pidgin English presents fewer difficulties than would be the case, for instance, with pidgin German. For pidgin English simply consists in taking English words and treating them like Chinese characters, that is, divesting them of all troublesome inflections and reducing them to a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... before the throne of the Divine goodness, in whatever language, or with whatever rites, pardon is asked for sin, and reward for those who imitate the Godhead in his universal bounty to his creatures. These honours you deserve, and they will surely be paid, when all the jargon of influence, and party, and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... that infernal Swedish jargon!" cried the chairman, "and let us hear what Woodlouse is ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the word is, a musical drama, consisting of recitative airs and concerted pieces; without the intervention of spoken dialogue, it should consist of music, and music alone, from the beginning to the end. With us it has been popularly applied to what has been well characterized as "a jargon of alternate speech and song," outraging probability in a far higher degree than the opera properly so called, and singularly destructive of that illusion or deception in which the pleasure derived from dramatic representations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... with smiling face at their war-dances, and hesitating not to give them advice in warlike matters. He knew their language sufficiently to understand all they said, but from the moment of his captivity had pretended to be entirely ignorant of it, talking to them only in the jargon which then formed the medium of communication between the red men and the whites, and listening with impassive countenance to the most fear-inspiring plans. They, therefore, talked freely before him, not for ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... funeral is over, I hope, and her hymn sung; and our ears shan't be tortured with that discord and jargon. It has made me nervous. Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the highwayman and the deadly purpose of the midnight ruffian is each strictly appropriate in the terms which distinguish and characterize it. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this unnatural jargon would open the path to reformation. And my observations on these people have constantly instructed me that indulgence in this infatuating cant is more deeply associated with depravity and continuance in vice than is generally ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... fog lifted like a curtain. Such a vision met the gaze of the stolid seamen as stirred the blood of those phlegmatic Russians. It was the consummation of all their labor, what they had toiled across Siberia to see, what they had hoped against hope in spite of the learned jargon of the geographers. There loomed above the far horizon of the north sea what might have been an immense opal dome suspended in mid-heaven. One can guess how the lookout strained keen eyes at this grand, crumpled apex of snow jagged through the clouds ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... appears to be very well posted on a number of subjects. She is unusually familiar with the Bible, and quotes scripture freely and correctly. She also uses beautiful language, totally void of slang and Negro jargon, "big" ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the unintelligible jargon. He looked from La to Tarzan. Would the latter understand this strange tongue? To the Belgian's surprise, the Englishman answered in a language evidently identical ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... papa anything on that basis, for you would surely manage to claim the collateral, or whatever you call it in your Wall Street jargon." ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... much from our Roman masters, was miserably disfigured by the subsequent invaders. The unconquered parts of the island retained some purity and some precision. The Welsh and Erse tongues wanted not harmony: but never did exist a more barbarous jargon than the dialect, still venerated by antiquaries, and called Saxon. It was so uncouth, so inflexible to all composition, that the monks, retaining the idiom, were reduced to write in what they took or meant ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... fictions are calculated to excite. With plots of almost incomprehensible absurdity, they combine a style more inflated than any balloon in which Madame Blanchard ever sailed through the regions of air—a language, or rather jargon, composed of the pickings of nearly every idiom that ever did live, or is at present in existence, and sentiments which would be often of a highly mischievous tendency, if they were not rendered ridiculous ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... this hodgepodge of technicalities, was dismayed and distrustful. These men spoke a language evidently familiar to them, which he, although a professional scientist, found a meaningless jargon. The whole thing seemed unreal, had a purely theoretic or literary quality about it that made him question even their premises. In the tainted air of the council room, listening to these little pot-bellied Professoren ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... Frere, and of men like these in learning and genius, concerning my comparative claims to be a man of letters, were to be received as the criterion, instead of the wretched, and in deed and in truth mystical jargon of ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... minutes passed, a quarter, then half of an hour, and still he did not come. To while the time, his playing of the concerto was roundly commented and discussed. There was none of the ten or twelve young men but had the complete jargon of the craft at his finger-tips; not one, too, but was rancorous and admiring in a breath, now detecting flaws as many as motes in a beam, now heaping praise. The spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the vicar, good-humouredly,—"but, the term I used, is an old relic of college jargon; you see how hard it is to cure ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Kow!" cried the inspector, "putty mi more money, hey?" which barbarous jargon, it seems, is always considered necessary to use when talking with a Chinese, no matter whether the latter understands ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... maids out there, got to sentimentalizing over it until the poor children were hypnotized. Why, confound it, I call them lucky to have escaped! I wonder, by the way," he added thoughtfully, "if this Doctor What's-his-name talks English, or the jargon in which that clipping is printed! He'll have a stupid time here in Hillsdale, that's all ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... sharp, to polish it and insure it against cutting the thread of its argument, the work should be performed by two or more. Every sonnet, in short, ought to be a translation. I do not say a translation from the German or any other jargon, but a translation from English—from one man's into another man's English. It is absurd for one workman to do both rhyming and thinking. In this go-ahead age and country, that were a palpable waste of time. Take any 'matter-ful' author, cut out a juicy slice of his thought, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... is this same publication. He hasn't the remotest idea of what it is. Not a word uttered by the adjutant is understood by him. He stands and wonders what it is. A perfect jargon of words, unintelligible and meaningless to him! I remember distinctly how I used to wonder, and how I was laughed at when I asked for information concerning it. We "plebes" used to speak of it often, and wonder if it was not French. When we were better ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... their dupes. But if we quote the lines of La Pucelle, why not also the article[119] in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, which contains three pages of profounder truth and nobler thought than certain voluminous modern works in which Voltaire is insulted in clerical jargon? ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... were others, the jar and clash of gateways, the dripping and splashing of water, the rolling thunder of the ascending and descending iron parachutes in the shaft, the trampling of horses, the distant report of powder-blasts, and the shrill jargon of human speakers, near, yet ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... is the trade-jargon of the Orient. The original of the passage above is as follows: "Deo grande nopillar fantacia; mondo cosi cosi; si estar escrito in testa andar andar; sino aca morir." M. reads "an andar andar," and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... ten-shilling stamp, and duly calling itself an INDENTURE, in fourteenth century capitals. So much I saw as I held it up for the prisoner to read over. The illegally legal instrument is still in existence, with its unpunctuated jargon about "hereditaments" and "fee simple," its "and whereas the said Daniel Levy" in every other line, and its eventual plain provision for "the said sum of L15,000 to remain charged upon the security of the hereditaments in the said recited Indenture ... until the expiration of one year computed ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... swelled proudly as she heard this jargon. It was quite unintelligible to her, but she felt sure it conveyed extreme approval. She turned to look at Truesdale just as he ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... with him into her presence. They kneeled down, being clothed with skins, and several of them having bows of a great size, to beg her not to harm this old man, for he was reputed a saint. The Queen could not understand their jargon but, when their suit was interpreted to her by the Lord Dacre of the North, and when she had had a little converse with the old priest, she answered that, so touched was her heart by his simplicity and ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... the East two or three centuries ago, and so spread by degrees over Europe, may not this name, a little corrupted, be the very name they brought with them from the Levant? It would be matter of some curiosity, could one meet with an intelligent person among them, to inquire whether, in their jargon, they still retain any Greek words: the Greek radicals will appear in hand, foot, head, water, earth, etc. It is possible that amidst their cant and corrupted dialect many mutilated remains of their native ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... suppose we shall soon go a step farther in imitation of our Germanic neighbours, and call poetry by the appellation of poet-art. In the last century, it seemed likely, as Johnson said, that we should babble a dialect of France; in this, there is more danger of our talking a Teutonic jargon. Let us stick to the middle course—for our language is essentially half way between the German and the French, the Teutonic and Romance tongues, and any attempt to approximate too much to either extreme ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... had been much cut and mutilated, so as in some places to resemble the jags or denticles of a saw. He returned the salutation of the orange-man, and bowing to me, forthwith produced two scented wash-balls which he offered for sale in a rough dissonant jargon, intended for Spanish, but which seemed more like the Valencian ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... his drawing on his rarely-abandoned seven-league boots of jargon, once so delicious to me, for the margravine's entertainment. His lack of discernment in treating the princess to it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... deep thinkers whose conclusions show The secret principles that work the world. He prized laborious Hallam; but declared Carlyle half mad; "A coil of restive thoughts, That touch on nothing sound or practical, Told in outrageous jargon, cumbersome As any Laplander's costume!" Which I In ruffled pride would always straight oppose, "Sound or unsound, his word is daylight truth, That breeding heroes once was England's boast, And now we brag of making millionaires. Your 'practical' means shortest ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... Corinthians, Prince, stable-boy, and landlord were all shouting at the top of their lungs. Old Buckhorse was skipping about on a box beside me, shrieking out criticisms and advice in strange, obsolete ring-jargon, which no one could understand. His dull eyes were shining, his parchment face was quivering with excitement, and his strange musical call rang out above all the hubbub. The two men were hurried to their corners, one second sponging them down and the other flapping ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... watched the upturned bill Of our bird at its living spring? Shall we tell how in the time gone by, Beneath all changes of the sky, And in an ordinary home Amid the city's din, Life was to us a crystal dome, Our babe the flame therein? Ah! this were jargon on the mart; And though some gentle friend, And many and many a suffering heart, Would weep and comprehend, Yet even these might fail to see What we saw daily in the child— Not the mere creature undefiled, But the winged cherub soon to be. That ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... be initiated and you will be mentioning with an easy grace to some one else that there are on board so many passengers and so many missionaries. It becomes a part of the jargon of ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... Esquimaux boys they seemed to be, who talked some jargon understanded of the Pymeut pilot. The Boy, lifting tired eyes, saw something white glimmering high in the air up on the right river bank. In this light it refused to form part of any conceivable plan, but hung there in the air detached, enigmatic, spectral. Below it, more on humanity's level, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... impossible to understand this bit of legal jargon. "The wording of the cognovit"—one could speculate on that without seeing it. (2) "The nature of the ostensible consideration" was not far to seek—it being work and labour done for the Plaintiff. And again, supposing ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... can furnish an example of more unintelligible jargon; yet these attributes are believed to be indisputably true by the Malays and others residing at a distance from his immediate dominions, who possess a greater degree of faith than wit; and with this addition, that he dwells in a palace without covering, free from inconvenience. It ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the tribe came about us, but they retired at the chief's bidding. Not one however except those first met with in the Bogan, could speak any of the jargon by which the natives usually ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... inaccessible to strangers. She had lived in almost total ignorance of such opportunities, but now that she could use them to advantage she showed a surprising quickness in picking up "tips," ferreting out rare things and getting a sight of hidden treasures. She even acquired as much of the jargon as a pretty woman needs to produce the impression of being well-informed; and Moffatt's sailing was more ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... twelve, and his favourite part was that of which he understood the least—the inimitable, mouth-filling rodomontade of the ghost in Hamlet. It was a bright day in hospital when my friend expounded the sense of this beloved jargon: a task for which I am willing to believe my friend was very fit, though I can never regard it as an easy one. I know indeed a point or two, on which I would gladly question Mr. Shakespeare, that lover of big words, could he revisit the glimpses of the moon, or could I myself climb backward to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the wrangling of sects, in the incomprehensible jargon of Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monothelites, Monophysites, Mariolatrists, and an anarchy of countless disputants, there sounded through the world, not the miserable voice of the intriguing majority of a council, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the house a cup of painted earthenware containing sediments of coffee. I saw her crafty white eyes look up to mine as she muttered some jargon, and pretended to read the arrangement of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... tongue," [6] would any scholar suppose that Teucer is upbraided with not speaking Greek; he is upbraided with speaking Greek inelegantly and rudely. It is clear that they who continued with the least adulteration a language in its earliest form, would seem to utter a strange and unfamiliar jargon to ears accustomed to its more modern construction. And, no doubt, could we meet with a tribe retaining the English of the thirteenth century, the language of our ancestors would be to most of us ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "tuddah, tuddah, tuddah," as many hours a day as he can without losing his mind. D—— told me he often met young men walking about the streets in all the agonies of this first step in the art of learning to act, and astonishing the passers-by with this mysterious jargon. A pupil of average quickness and nicety of ear learns to say tuddah in about a month. Then he is told to say rose once more. The training his tongue has received enables him to use only its very tip. A great point is gained: he can pronounce ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... wonderful people met to drink wonderful wine. There he saw priests of Mithras and Isis and of more occult rites from the East, men who wore robes of bright colours, and grotesque ornaments, symbolizing secret things. They spoke amongst themselves in a rich jargon of colored words, full of hidden meanings and the sense of matters unintelligible to the uninitiated, alluding to what was concealed beneath roses, and calling each other by strange names. And there were actors ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... others a cool, tranquilly pleasing background is degraded to mere dulness in consequence of the gaudy gowns in front of it. Does the word repoussoir mean any thing to her? Perhaps she is unacquainted with the meaning of it although she possesses a jargon of French as staggering as that of a menu in ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... flowing garments which we meet only occasionally in our Eastern cities, on the person of some laundryman. Then the houses, too, with the curious names on the signs, speak of a far-off land. On every side, also, is heard the uncouth jargon ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... to himself—"it's sentimental jargon, precious twaddle—all this mysterious babble about occult quality and humanity and sympathy. If Jose Querida has the capacity of a chipmunk for mental agony, I've lost my bet ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... understood the winds, nor the points of the compass, nor why one should see the new moon in the west instead of in the east. Very few women do, but those who live much with men generally end by picking up a few useful expressions, a little phrase-book of jargon terms with which men are quite satisfied. They find out that a fox has no tail, a wild boar no teeth, a boat no prow, and a yacht no staircase; and this knowledge is better ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... cant as '1. A corrupt dialect used by beggars and vagabonds. 2. A particular form of speaking peculiar to some certain class or body of men. 3. A whining pretension to goodness in formal and affected terms. 4. Barbarous jargon. 5. Auction.' I have noted the following instances of his use of the word:—'I betook myself to a coffee-house frequented by wits, among whom I learned in a short time the cant of criticism.' The Rambler, No.123. 'Every class of society has its cant of lamentation.' Ib. No.128. 'Milton's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell |
