"Inflection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mrs. Kent, lowering her voice to a compassionate inflection. "Poor boy! he has neither father nor mother! He is entirely dependent upon me. Out of my salary I have paid his expenses ever since ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... language contains no alphabet; each symbol represents a different word; the substantives are indeclinable, and the verbs are without inflection. It thus becomes necessary in mastering the language to learn by rote a vast number of signs and characters,—a ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... Scott followed each inflection of the persuasive voice, his lean face glowing with appreciation at every point his idol scored. For the time being, awkwardness was lost and all self-consciousness. Why think about himself, when he could have the chance to watch ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... know she doesn't," replied Aunt Hannah, with a curious inflection. "But don't you see, William, that all this isn't going to quite do? Billy's ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... N. curvature, curvity^, curvation^; incurvature^, incurvity^; incurvation^; bend; flexure, flexion, flection^; conflexure^; crook, hook, bought, bending; deflection, deflexion^; inflection, inflexion^; concameration^; arcuation^, devexity^, turn, deviation, detour, sweep; curl, curling; bough; recurvity^, recurvation^; sinuosity &c 248. kink. carve, arc, arch, arcade, vault, bow, crescent, half-moon, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the memoriter method. A gentleman, who heard him give his "Daniel O'Connell" four times in succession, found that the lecture was repeated without the slightest variation whatsoever, in ideas, sentences, inflection of the voice, or even gesture. Phillips prepared his lectures with the greatest care, and then repeated them hundreds of times. From the moment when he came upon the platform his presence filled the eye and satisfied it. His very ease and poise begat confidence ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of going back to Lacville too?" There was that sarcastic inflection in the Englishman's voice which the Count had learned to look ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... slap across the face from the hand of the most highly favored slave, some allowance is due you of outraged sensibilities. Chiefly, however Esme wondered WHY. WHY, in large capitals, and with an intensely ascendant inflection. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... all the crowd laughed in an explosive breath of relief. The inflection of the laugh made Pete go red and look challengingly from face to face, with the result that all ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... which he seemed to have known since time began. The laughter left it then and she gazed at him with a look which he had not seen in a woman's eyes before. "I think you know," she said. "Toddy Winthrop isn't the only one. You saved me—Oh, you've saved me too." Every inflection of the voice brought certainty to him; the buoyant, soft voice which he remembered. "I am Hope Stuart," she ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... of the conversation above recorded can hardly be had except my reader will take the trouble to imagine the contrast between the Scotch accent and inflection, the largeness and prolongation of vowel sounds, and, above all, the Scotch tone of Malcolm, and the pure, clear articulation, and decided utterance of the perfect London speech of Lenorme. It was something like the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... loath to tear himself away. "You go 'way. I see you no more—no, sir!" he lamented; and then, looking about him with rueful admiration, "This goodee ship—no, sir!—goodee ship!" he would exclaim; the "no, sir," thrown out sharply through the nose upon a rising inflection, an echo from New Bedford and the fallacious whaler. From these expressions of grief and praise, he would return continually to the case of the rejected pig. "I like give plesent all 'e same you," he complained; "only got pig: you no take him!" He was a poor man; he had no choice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of saying yes was one of his chief weapons of annihilation. He had a peculiar, taunting inflection which he could give to it, upon occasion, which caused prickles of flesh upon the victim. To say that Miss Whitmore was not utterly quenched argues well for her courage. She only gasped, as though treated to an unexpected dash of cold ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... always work better than one. Try me, Bucky," pleaded the boy, the last word slipping out with a trailing upward inflection that ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... very plain and simple, but remarkably pure and tender, and might be indicated by straight lines, thus, —— ——/——; the first two marks representing two sweet, silvery notes, in the same pitch of voice, and quite unaccented; the latter marks, the concluding notes, wherein the tone and inflection are changed. The throat and breast of the male are a rich black, like velvet, his face yellow, and his back a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... its voiceless significance, the inflection which Philip gave to it as he gazed at Pierre, stood for the one tremendous question which, for a space, possessed the mind of each. Pierre shrugged his shoulders. He could not answer it. And as he shrugged his ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... his eyes as he raised his head her own widened, and she withdrew from him imperceptibly, dismissing him with a mere inflection. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... had not been for the expression, "My little gentleman," which quarrelled with her seeming identity. Oh no!—if he rubbed away hard enough at those eyes with his nightgown-sleeve, this little matter would right itself. Of course, Mrs. Picture would have called him Doyvy, or the name he gave that inflection to. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... "Mist-er.....er Brierly!" (Mr. Braham had in perfection this lawyer's trick of annoying a witness, by drawling out the "Mister," as if unable to recall the name, until the witness is sufficiently aggravated, and then suddenly, with a rising inflection, flinging his name at him with startling unexpectedness.) "Mist-er.....er Brierly! ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Jack promptly, with a rising inflection, "Are you going to get up, or shall I haul you out ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... felt a slight shock, such as a word or a look from one we love too often gives us,—such as a child's trivial gesture or movement makes a parent feel,—that impalpable something which in the slightest possible inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes leave a sting behind it, even in a trusting heart. This was all. But it was true that what she saw meant a great deal. It meant the dawning in Myrtle Hazard of one of her as yet unlived ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... face was long, like a sheep's, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... there was an indecisive moment that mounted toward panic. Beardsley watched her churning effort to control it. She said quickly, an inflection of fear in her voice: "Mr. Beardsley, if it really matters—my whereabouts that night—you'll understand my reluctance to say it before! I was with Jeff. Truly! I'm sure ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... this question with an inimitable inflection inherited from her mother and grandmother, both of whom had been guardians of San Francisco society in their day. The accent was on the "who." Bob Cheever, whose grandmother had asked or answered the same question in dark old double parlors filled with ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... guide toward rhetorical reading the book contained a carefully prepared collection of rules and directions with examples for practice in Articulation. Inflection, Accent and Emphasis, Reading Verse, for the Management of the Voice and Gesture. These pages were intended for drill work, and in those days the teachers were not content with the dull monotonous utterance of the words or with mere mastery of thought, to be tested by multitudinous questioning. If ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... it is you?" she said, and her voice had the upward inflection, as though she carelessly addressed an inferior. "I remember you very well, but I hardly thought to see you. Indeed, I should hardly have expected to see any one in just ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... practitioner of Parliamentary forms, a stickler for the minutest observation of order. Whilst Mr. Gladstone and other members of old standing were content to preface their speeches with the monosyllable "Sir," nothing less than "Mr. Speaker, sir," would satisfy Mr. Biggar. No one who has not heard the inflection of tone with which this was uttered, nor seen the oratorical sweep of the hand that launched it on its course, can realize how much of combined deference and authority the phrase is capable of. Mr. Biggar, having ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... he called 'Senilia;' in which he shews so little learning or taste in writing, as to make Carteret a dactyl[4]. In matters of genealogy it is necessary to give the bare names as they are; but in poetry, and in prose of any elegance in the writing, they require to have inflection given to them. His book of the Dialects[5] is a sad heap of confusion; the only way to write on them is to tabulate them with Notes, added at the bottom of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... inflection of voice which, as it were, underlines the words. Barkilphedro's tone was thus emphasized; he paused, so as to put a full stop after the word he had just uttered. Then he continued, with the peculiar and respectful tone of a servant who feels that ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Forster known the Major better he would have been aware that what he meant to say was that he did not wish to know, but he did not detect the inflection of his voice, and went on—"They say he showed the white feather. If it is the same man, I was at school with him, and unless he has improved since then, I am sure I have no wish to ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... novel then just out, "Predestined." "He [the author] is one of our [Sun] men, you know." Fraternal pride and affection in inflection, though he said he did not know Mr. Whitman. "Thank you very much indeed," ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... picture of the Madonna di Sisto; in which we see an evident rescript from the Antique, with all the received lines of beauty, as laid down by the analyst,—apparently faultless, yet without a single inflection which the mind can recognize as allied to our sympathies; and we turn from it coldly, as from the work of an artificer, not of an Artist. But not so can we turn from the intense life, that seems almost to breathe upon us from the celestial group of the Virgin and her ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... friend of yours—the Marquis de Sogrange?" she asked, with a certain inflection in her tone which Peter was not ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Inflection Defined Number The Formation of Plurals Compound Nouns Case The Formation of the Possessive ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... was he who added the words, as though he had read them in my own mind; and there was a slight, sarcastic rising inflection of the voice at the end of the sentence, as if he put it ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... a strong inflection of triumphant joy in Miss Clegg's voice as she called the momentous news to her friend that it would have been at once—and most truthfully—surmised that the getting of Hiram had been a more ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... remarked with a peculiar interrogative inflection. Her eyebrows lifted. "Why did you have to? You went over long before the draft ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... warned you that only in double irons would you leave the island," Grief murmured down with a sad inflection. ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... a double set of trigeneric inflexions, Definite and Indefinite, Strong and Weak, just like that which makes the beginner's despair in German."[404] Verbs were conjugated without auxiliaries; and as there was no particular inflection to indicate the future, the present was used instead, a very indifferent substitute, which did not contribute much to the clearness of the phrase. Degrees of comparison in the adjectives were marked, not by adverbs, as in French, but by differences ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Indeed, the inflection of her voice held something in it that was nearly caressing. Kid Follansbee had long admired her, but of late he had been quite hopeless. He had observed the favor in which Ennis had seemed to stand before the girl, and had perhaps been rather jealous. It was ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... of Newton those which he made on the inflection of light hold a high place. They were first published in his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... drawings of Turner we have white and black with only the slightest possible suggestion of blue in the distance;—the corresponding form in language is verse, with its measure of time for measure of space, and just so much inflection of voice as these drawings have of tint,—enough not to be absolutely monotonous. We have in both cases left the idea of mere imitation of Nature, and have entered on Art. Verse grows naturally into music by simple increase of the range of inflection, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... without much inflection, and using as few words as she could. When she had finished she still lay there, as silent and out of Francis's reach as if she were dead. He tiptoed out with a sick feeling that everything ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... have been retained, and are amply sufficient for drill in articulation, inflection, etc. The additional exercises on these subjects, formerly inserted between the lessons, have been omitted to make room for other valuable features ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... than it had been recently, and she found a stool in a dark corner, and listened, with a weary sort of consciousness of the prayers and the singing, but not without a deeper feeling of peace in the tones of a voice every inflection of which she knew so well. It seemed to her that the reading cost him an effort, and there was a note of pathos in the voice that thrilled her. Presently he advanced towards the altar rail —he was accustomed to do this with his little flock—and placing one hand ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... you to tea next Sabbath evening, my dear," the little lady would say, with never a quiver or inflection of voice betraying that she had detected the girl's ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... in a low voice I could hear nothing of what they said. Nothing except one phrase, which the strange man repeated twice, very emphatically. 'Tomorrow night,' he said, and I noticed that his voice had not the Highland inflection which I looked for. Gresson nodded and glanced at his watch, and then the two began to move downhill towards the road ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the shapers of his country's destiny. The phraseology of their current talk to one another and to outsiders reflected this belief. "If I had continued in the House," Sir William would say, with a manner and inflection which conveyed that he had left it of his own free will and not attempted to return to it, "I should have——" or, "If I had taken office——" or even sometimes, "If I were leading the Liberal party——" and no one, indeed, was in a position to affirm that ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... it difficult to say this with the proper inflection. It did not sound as business-like as he could have wished. But she was too ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... curious inflection to her voice that the candidate exclaimed, "Why, what do you mean, Anna?" and she merely replied, "Oh, nothing!" which meant everything. The candidate, understanding, looked more attentively, and his eyes contracted a little, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... was always too quick for him, and this reply held him in puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest inflection of sadness in her voice: "Before we bid each other goodbye, I want at least to thank you for having once thought of me ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... don't find it so, eh?" Hollister questioned eagerly. He was sure he had interpreted that inflection. "And you sometimes resent ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Beechmark Cottage, and tea was coming in. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than the two sisters presented. They were the daughters of a peer belonging to what a well-known frequenter of great houses and great families before the war used to call "the inferior aristocracy"—with an inflection of voice caught no doubt from the great families themselves. Yet their father had been an Earl, the second of his name, and was himself the son of a meteoric personage of mid-Victorian days—parliamentary lawyer, peer, and Governor of an Indian Presidency, who had earned his final step in ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... command is enunciated distinctly, with a rising inflection at the end, and in such manner that the command of EXECUTION ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... curious inflection of her voice, as though she were not quite certain of the tone she wished to strike, whether ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... the end of a sentence. Yet the inflection of his voice showed plainly that it was not the end of the idea that had been ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... said gravely, with that quaintest inflection of the English he had ever heard, "yes, mistaken. He mais—but it is just that the complaint. You ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... plains, which have been most extensively studied, are notably melodious; thus the leading languages of the group display moderately high phonetic development. In grammatic structure the better-known dialects are not so well developed; the structure is complex, chiefly through the large use of inflection, though agglutination sometimes occurs. In some cases the germ of organization is found in fairly definite juxtaposition or placement. The vocabulary is moderately rich, and of course represents the ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... merriment in that sound, no inflection of satisfaction or joy. It came out of his wide-extended jaws with a roar, no facial softening with it, no blending of the features in the transformation of a smile. Mrs. Carlson struggled to her knees at the sound of it, lifting her moaning ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... goodness was reflected in her face and in the tones of her voice, which were soft and low, yet very decided. She possessed a clear, sweet tone, unlike the slow, peculiar drawl often aiding with the rising inflection peculiar to many country folk among the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... we hunting?" the stranger broke in, and Dalgard realized that perhaps the other did not follow the mind talk. His words had an odd inflection, a clipped accent which ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... creep as of some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of his voice. She rose, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... to look at him, for there had been a curious inflection in his "what, what!" He was a stout, highly colored man with large, staring gray eyes. The young American wondered where he ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... at the end of a chapter in his book, and he closed the volume, uttering only the single negative participle, with the interrogative inflection, as he glanced at his ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... think of you, I don't see all of you, but instead a particular gesture, or I hear an inflection of voice that is too familiar to be borne. Now I see mother's hands ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... froze to hear the man and to see the poison of that rat soul of his exuding from his every pore, in every gesture and in each fresh inflection of his rasping voice. And all his men shouted their fierce approval and shook in our faces their bloody butcher's bayonets. It was a bitter draught. If they had killed us then it would have had to have been done in most cold blood, exceeding ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... the utmost respect and courtesy, yet there was a slight inflection upon certain words which irritated Mrs. Montague ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Devon. Her eyes were very large and of a deep violet All these charms of dress and face and colour I could have gallantly withstood, but the voice of her settled my business at once. Its rich, full tone, its soft, appealing inflection, the pretty foreign accent with which she then chose to speak English—I can hear them now. I have always been sensitive to beautiful voices, and Madame Gilbert's voice is beyond comparison the most beautiful voice ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... dull if you read much at a time, as the later Kerry essays do not, but nothing that he has written recalls so completely to my senses the man as he was in daily life; and as I read, there are moments when every line of his face, every inflection of his voice, grows so clear in memory that I cannot realize that he is dead. He was no nearer when we walked and talked than now while I read these unarranged, unspeculating pages, wherein the only life he loved with his whole heart reflects itself as in the still ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... round and pointing at the monuments with his whip. In this broad new thoroughfare there were only buildings of recent erection. Still, the wave of the cabman's whip became more pronounced and his voice rose to a higher key, with a somewhat ironical inflection, when he gave the name of a huge and still chalky pile on his left, a gigantic erection of stone, overladen with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and the slight change of inflection as she said "the packer" had not quite the effect she had intended. Stirling himself had once labored with his hands, and, what was more, afterward had a good deal to bear on that account. He was not particularly vindictive, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... that he might elect to accompany her to Cavloccio. She would willingly have paid him for loss of time. Her ear was becoming better tuned each moment to his strange patois. Though he often gave a soft Italian inflection to the harsh German syllables, she grasped his meaning quite literally. She had read so much about Switzerland that she knew how Michel Croz was killed while descending the Matterhorn after having made the first ascent. That historic ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Destruction refers to the conquest of desire and attachments, i.e., renunciation of all attractive things. Certainty means the unalterable belief that what is said about yoga in the Vedas and by preceptors is true. The nom. sing. inflection stands for the instrumental plural. Eyes include the other senses. All these should be restrained. Food means pure food. Suppression refers to the subjugation of our natural inclination towards earthly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of a piece of literature may, notwithstanding, read it very indifferently. Even in conversation where we are interpreting vocally our own thoughts and feelings, we sometimes misplace emphasis or employ the wrong inflection. How much more likely we are to fall into such errors when we attempt to interpret vocally from a ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... Cleek, with a strong, rising inflection. "So the lady was of the careful and calculating kind? She didn't care for youth and all the rest of it when she could have papa and the money-chest without waiting. A common enough occurrence. Still, this does not make up an 'affair,' and especially an 'affair' ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... awkwardly eager she ripped the envelope, tore out the letter, and spread it open on her lap, then pulled her spectacles down from her hair, and read with loving inflection: ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... voice of Jefferson Worth came as if from a machine incapable of inflection. "I have written Mr. Greenfield that I would look into the proposition for him. I will go out with the outfit. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... find any." Naughty Patty put a most pathetic inflection in her voice, which touched ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... alarmed," he hastened to assure her. "I don't think there is anything for you to be uneasy about, except that his influence is always evil—" he paused on a raised inflection and looked at her admiringly. "One of the reasons," he went on regardless of the abrupt change, "why I like you and feel so sure that you are sound and good and strong clear through is because you ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... yesterday? He unfastens the ketch on the back-porch gate. We got a gate on the back porch, see." (This frequent "see" which interlarded Elmer's verbiage was not used in an interrogatory way, but as a period, and by way of emphasis. His voice did not take the rising inflection as he uttered it.) "What does he do, he opens it. I come home, and the wife says to me: 'Say, you better get busy and fix a new ketch on that gate to the back porch. Little Elmer, first thing I know, he'd got it open to-day and was crawling out almost.' ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... the one with the other. Of all human affections, this, the first that takes root in the infant's heart, is the last to die out under the blighting influence of vice, the deadening blows of time. "My Mother" is spoken by the world-hardened citizen with a gentler inflection,—a reverential cadence, as if the inner man stood with uncovered head before ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... the familiar! Kill the devil's imp!" came in various voices, the angry tones being not without an inflection of fear. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... excuses for her—he had no high opinion of himself, of his general reputation—and had built dreams on the fanciful imagining that she should, despite everything, some day like him. He wearied his brain in recalling a chance expression of her eyes that could not have been unfriendly; an inflection of her voice that might have carried a hope, if only their paths had been less crossed: and his pride, despite rebuffs, sought her as a moth seeks a flame. It drew him to her and kept him from her, for he lacked for the first time in his life the boldness to stake everything on the ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... cried the Countess, with a heart-rending inflection in her voice. She drew a chair to the table as if to strengthen her illusions ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... gather up a number of parcels, turned to the chauffeur. Even in giving an order, there was a winning grace in her lack of self-consciousness, and her voice was fresh in its timbre, enthusiastic in its inflection. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... and Predicate, Inflection, Number, Nominative Subject, Possessive Genitive, Agreement of Verb, Direct ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... sharply, but there was no other sound except the clock, which, in the pause, struck four. "I thought—" continued the minister, with a rising inflection. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Lady Clifford who spoke. There was a brittle, intensely Gallic intonation about the query with its upward inflection, reminding one somehow of a postman's knock, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the true sense of rhythm and the clearest enunciation; she has a deep and musical voice, which in moments of pathos thrills with a sweet and tender inflection. She has seized, in this instance, upon the touching rather than the harmonious side of Galatea, the pure and innocent girl who is not fit to live upon this world. She is only not human because she is superior to human folly; she cannot understand sin because ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... the delicate inflection and the pause before the final word, Old Man Curry might have been inquiring about the last moments of a departed friend. The Kid was looking at the ground, so he missed the twinkle in the old ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... There was indeed nothing original in her music; it was mainly a reconstruction of common phrases afloat in the musical atmosphere; but she managed the slight dramatic element in the lyric with taste and skill, following tone and sentiment with chord and inflection; so that the music was worthy of the verses—which is not saying very much for either; while the expression the girl threw into the song went to the heart of the ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... recognize the man whenst I viewed him. The constable promised to send a fellow to meet me here,—what's his name!—yes, Smith, Barton Smith,—who will guide us to where he was last glimpsed. I hope to take him alive." he added with an inflection of doubt. ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... good do they think that will do them?" Mrs. Oglethorpe's face and inflection betrayed no sympathy ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... at last," repeated Muriel Harding. "This September it doesn't matter a particle whether or not we are met at the station. We are sophomores. We know what to do and where to go without the help of the celebrated Sans Soucians." Muriel's inflection was ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... quiet-mannered, refined looking woman, of a gracious and pleasant personality. She was tall and fair, rather English in type, and spoke with a noticeable English accent. She frequently ended sentences of simple statement with a rising inflection and was addicted to the use of the word very, ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... care—perhaps unconsciously. Her wonderful hair was lifted and wound carelessly upon her head; her beauty had been dimmed by tears. She was, however, quite controlled and showed little emotion at their meeting; but she looked very weary and every inflection of her pleasant, clear voice revealed it. She spoke as one who had suffered much and laboured under great loss of vitality. He found this to be indeed the case, for it seemed that ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... Inflection. Change in the form of a word to show a modification or shade of meaning. At a very early period in our language there was a separate form for practically every modification. Although separate forms ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... an inquiring inflection, is much better than simply "What?" when you do not hear what is said. The abruptness of the ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... There was an icy inflection in the tones which sent a chill to Marcantonio's heart as he listened. One of the Chiefs of the Ten was always a member of the still more dreaded Inquisition, whose identity was never known, and the passionless voice held a hint of indisputable authority—was his suffering ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... theatrical family. A good-looking young woman, with large, dark eyes, a profusion of dark hair, a low forehead, and healthy strawberry-and-cream complexion, she was personally attractive, and wonderfully effective. Every movement, gesture, and inflection of voice had been carefully studied, and when making an ordinary remark in conversation she would deliver her words with a deliberate attempt at stage effect. Her Juliet with her father's Romeo, was her best character, but they failed signally ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... on at the speedy gallop of an Arab horseman, managing his steed more by his limbs and the inflection of his body than by any use of the reins, which hung loose in his left hand; so that he was enabled to wield the light, round buckler of the skin of the rhinoceros, ornamented with silver loops, which he wore on his arm, swinging it as if he meant to oppose its slender circle to the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... imagined him conducting his expectant guests to the door, ushering them in with a wave of the hand, and taking his seat tranquilly amid the dead, embarrassed silence: had imagined him facing the Royal Duke and asking, "Shall we cut?" with a voice of the politest inflection. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... He lives, indeed, like a prince. And of what use is it to him? He has lost all that was worth living for—his family, his country; he has seen his king and queen murdered; he has seen all these miseries and infamies," pursued the lawyer, with a rising inflection and a heightening colour; and then broke suddenly off,—"In short, sir, he has seen all the advantages of that government for which his nephew carries arms, and he has the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... word with a peculiar rising inflection, but she did not catch the significance of the question, and replied, "Yes. He is tall and thin and black and slab-sided. That's me, too, except I am short yet; but I expect I will grow. Besides, I've got the Catt inside of me. I scratch like fury when I am mad. Now Tom ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... legs under a table glorified with toasted Sally Lunns and Melton Mowbrays, served by a waitress who said "Thank you" with a rising inflection, they gazed at the line of mirrors running Britishly all around the room over the long lounge seat, and smiled with the triumphant content which comes to him whose hunger for dreams and hunger for meat-pies are ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... the Sioux threw himself forward under his horse's neck and fired. The bullet went wild, of course, but it shrieked with the rising inflection of a wind-squall through bared boughs, seeming to come ever nearer. Miss Caldwell screamed and covered her face. The ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... him the long, musical name, without missing a syllable, and with a certain approving inflection which evidently had an ingratiating effect upon the many-syllabled aristocrat; for he lifted his carefully gloved hand and passed it ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... mother, doubtless, of all your comings and goings. She looks upon you as a tyrant, and a disreputable person, too. She has been taught to hate you, and she carries out the teaching—oh, I can see it in every line of her face, every inflection of her voice: she has been taught to loathe you, my poor, misjudged friend, and she ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... straws would have seemed stable, caught the inflection of defiance and daring and hope of the ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... way of saying "thank you" to a waiter; with the rising inflection, you know, which is nicely calculated to make the servant feel himself ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... said Betty, softening a little. But she did not like the woman, who was not frankly plebeian, but had buttered herself over with a coat of third-rate pretentiousness. And her voice and method of speech were irritating. She had a fat inflection and the longest drawl Betty had ever heard. Upon every fourth or fifth word she prolonged the drawl, and accomplished the effect of smoothing down her voice with her tongue. Capable as she might be, Betty wondered if she could stand Miss Trumbull through the summer. But the position was a very ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... vacant, though not vicious, face of the unfortunate waif. Something drew her sympathy toward him, and she pitied him for the mother whom he had never known. In the adjoining room she could hear the voices of her own "childer," with their cultured inflection and language, which was theirs by inheritance and as unconsciously as were "Bony's" harsh tones and ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... that inflection by which we signify whether the noun is the name of a male, a female, of an inanimate object or something which has no distinction ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... what a fascination she felt for everything that concerned Miss Elton. Every act, every garment, every inflection of the girl she hated most was interesting to her. She watched Madeline like a cat, and disliked her ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... I thought might interest her, but could obtain little other response than "Yes," with a faint rising inflection. After one of these unsuccessful attempts I detected a slight, peculiar smile on Miss Warren's face. It was a mischievous light in her dark eyes more than anything else. As she met my puzzled look it vanished instantly, and she turned away. Everything in my training and calling stimulated ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... instinct born of her own rejected passion, which caused her to read in the beautiful girl's face all that lay hidden behind the pale, impassive mask. That same second sight made her understand Merlin's hints and allusions. She caught every inflection of his voice, heard everything, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... bring surprise with it. He was in a world where anything might happen. In all the house his favourite room was the high, thin drawing-room with an old gold mirror at one end of it and a piano muffled in brown holland. The mirror caught the piano with its peaked inquiring shape, that, in its inflection, looked so much more tremendous and ominous than it did in plain reality. Through the mirror the piano looked as though it might do anything, and to Henry, who knew nothing about pianos, it was responsible for almost everything ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... room, talking all the time in a kindly effort to set her at her ease, and to express a warm welcome with gentle dignity, not forgetting the cloud of sadness which hung over the house and rendered her presence necessary. She called her "Nurse Gray" at the conclusion of every sentence, with an upward inflection and pretty rolling of the r's, which charmed Jane. She longed to say: "You old dear! How I shall enjoy being in the house with you!" but remembered in time that a remark which would have been gratifying condescension on the part ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... but he gave his pledge and his thanks with what courtliness he could muster, and releasing his passive prisoner, pushed her gently into the safe-keeping of the old cniht. Yet he was not so obtuse as to step back, as though the incident were closed; he read the King's inflection more correctly than that. Holding himself somewhat stiff in the tenseness of his feelings, he stood his ground in ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... numerous other radical elements, if low-toned, refer to past time, if high-toned, to the future. Another type of function is illustrated by the Takelma forms hel "song," with falling pitch, but hel "sing!" with a rising inflection; parallel to these forms are sel (falling) "black paint," sel (rising) "paint it!" All in all it is clear that pitch accent, like stress and vocalic or consonantal modifications, is far less infrequently employed as a grammatical process than our own habits ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... once, Betty's heart seemed to stop still. She heard a voice, familiar in a sense, and yet so unlike the voice of which she had once known every inflection. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... talk to her and to admire her collection of shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same inflection. The meeting with her had become one of the frightfully unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching before him an interminable vista of days, weeks, years—one deadly sameness of hard work, long hours, scanty ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... —One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt, One trivial letter ruins all, left out; A knot can change a felon into clay, A not will save him, spelt without the k; The smallest word has some unguarded spot, And danger lurks in ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... rather shy," he says, half proudly, half in apology; but Laura, who does not care a fig for children in general, kisses Cecil in spite of resistance. "Mother, I have added to your dignity by bringing home a granddaughter." Then, with a tender inflection, "This is ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... large will materially serve the needs of this group of personages, only in so far as it may afford them a larger volume or a wider scope for what has in latterday colloquial phrase been called "graft." These personages are, of course, not to be spoken of with disrespect or with the slightest inflection of discourtesy. They are all honorable men. Indeed they afford the conventional pattern of human dignity and meritorious achievement, and the "Fountain of Honor" is found among them. The point of the argument is only that their material ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Mallory came up on the same boat with her." The inflection suggested that the words were meant not to tell a fact, but some ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... y'ar ago, Bas," came the even and implacable inflection of the other, "thet us two stud up hyar tergither, an' a heap hes done come ter pass since then—don't ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the little inventor as with Celestina. There was no question that his aunt was delighted with him. One could read it in her affectionate touch on his arm; in her soft, nervous laughter; in the tremulous inflection ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... a key of spontaneous apology, with a very zealous inflection of concern—yet, at the same time, with a kind of entirely respectful and amiable abruptness, as of one hailing a familiar friend,—were pronounced in a breath by a brisk, cheerful, unmistakably ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... Mrs. Crapps took on a more persuasive inflection as she delivered this peroration; and it was easy to see that she had affected the nerves if not the minds of her audience. There was a deep hush as she concluded. She lifted for a moment her sharp black eyes toward heaven, and then dropped her glance ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... inflection or bay on the W. border of the Mare Serenitatis S. of Posidonius. Like many other similar formations on the edges of the Maria, it appears at one time or other to have had a continuous rampart, which on the side facing the "sea" has been destroyed. ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... — N. curvature, curvity[obs3], curvation[obs3]; incurvature[obs3], incurvity|; incurvation[obs3]; bend; flexure, flexion, flection[obs3]; conflexure|; crook, hook, bought, bending; deflection, deflexion[obs3]; inflection, inflexion[obs3]; concameration[obs3]; arcuation[obs3], devexity|, turn, deviation, detour, sweep; curl, curling; bough; recurvity[obs3], recurvation[obs3]; sinuosity &c. 248. kink. carve, arc, arch, arcade, vault, bow, crescent, half-moon, lunule[obs3], horseshoe, loop, crane neck; parabola, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... word preceding the command Halt should always be given with a rising inflection in order to prepare the men for the ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... of this willingness to dispense with inflection, of this endeavour on the part of the speakers of a language to reduce its forms to the fewest possible, consistent with the accurate communication of thought. Of our adjectives in 'en', formed on substantives, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the thoughts or intentions of those who had their interests in keeping. He tried his best to be cordial and natural in manner—to be, in brief, the sincere friend that he had professed himself—and Mr. Mayhew did not notice anything amiss; but even at some inflection of his voice, or at a pause in the conversation, Ida would turn towards him this sudden, questioning, child-like look, which touched him deeply while it puzzled him. But she gradually began to grow "distrait" and quiet, and to look less and less often. Van Berg ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... she says at last with a child's sad, unconscious inflection, "but all the same, I have found you. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... have sinned, and the heathen are the instruments whereby the Lord hath willed to chastise them," said the messenger, with that peculiar nasal inflection of voice, so characteristic of the "unco' guid." "The great sachem, Miantonimo, chief of the Narragansetts, hath plotted to cut off the Lord's people, just after the time of harvest, to slay utterly old and young, both maids ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... system is thus of vital importance for the development of all of the arts of expression. These smaller muscles might almost be called organs of thought. Their tension is modified with the faintest change of soul, such as is seen in accent, inflection, facial expressions, handwriting, and many forms of so-called mind-reading, which, in fact, is always muscle-reading. The day-laborer of low intelligence, with a practical vocabulary of not over five hundred ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... these: First, That the noun means is necessarily singular as well as plural, so that one cannot with propriety use the singular form, mean, to signify that by which an end is attained; Second, That the subjective mood, to which he himself had previously given all the tenses without inflection, is not different in form from the indicative, except in the present tense. With regard to the later point, I have shown, in its proper place, that he taught erroneously, both before and after he changed his opinion; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... have made the discovery that it is a link between the geese and swans, but is more goose than swan. It is a beautiful white bird, with bright red bill and legs, the wings tipped with black; and has a loud musical cry of three notes, the last prolonged note with a falling inflection. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... I wish you to go;' and there was a certain inflection in Mrs. Blake's soft voice which evidently obliged poor Mollie to obey. She rose reluctantly, but there were tears of vexation in her eyes. Audrey felt grieved for her favourite, but she was unwilling to interfere; she only took the girl's hand ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... part of the carina; the disc is not more deeply embedded than the upper part. The umbo (and primordial valve when distinguishable,) of the carina is seated just above the embedded fork (or disc in L. fascicularis), at the point where the inflection takes place; hence the main growth of the carina is upwards,—the fork, however, being of course, likewise added to at its point: in L. fascicularis, the growth is both upwards ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... doubtful; but the inflection of breeding in his voice, the wholesome, lean face and humorous eyes, reassured her. A smile hovered about the corners ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... monsieur—bon soir, madame." Not an inflection was changed, not a note was altered. The firm hand of necessity had wound them up day after day, all those three years, and they had ticked together and tocked together to the swing of the pendulum of fortune ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... detached, individual life, so wholly had she depended on her mother and her sister for her opinions, almost her sensations. She took account of everything he did and said, pondering it, and trying to make out exactly what he meant, to the inflection of a syllable, the slightest movement or gesture. In this way she began for the first time to form ideas which she had not derived from her family, and they were none the less her own ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... patiently," she begins, "to all that you have said." (The devil himself could not deny this. "Patience" hardly seems the word. "Enthusiastically" she might almost have said). "Now"—with rising inflection—"you ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... to spare us the discomfort of repentance by teaching us to declare with a new inflection, "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves," forget that there is another side to this argument. It is, of course, very alluring to be told that we are not really blameworthy for acts which hitherto we have blamed ourselves for—that our impulses are God-given—that ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... some of my own tobacco. He did not fail to take it, but at the same time I heard him sizzle out "Zhid" from between his tightly closed lips. I looked at him in amazement: how on earth could he guess I was a Jew, when I spoke my Russian with the right accent and inflection, while his was lame, broken, and half mixed with Polish? That was a riddle to me. But I had no time to puzzle it out, and I ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... glad to receive you," he said. "It will be among the most memorable incidents of my reign that I welcome to my Court the first visitor from another world, or," he added, after a sudden pause, and with an inflection of unmistakable irony in his tone, "the first who has descended to our world from a height to which no balloon could reach and at which ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg |
