"Lingo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the daughters of Eve. Field prepared the menu with infinite care, and to the carnal eye it read like a dinner fit for the gods. But in reality it consisted of typical New England dishes, in honor of our New England guest, masquerading in the gay and frivolous lingo of the French capital. Codfish-balls, with huge rashers of bacon, boiled corned beef and cabbage, pork and beans, with slices of soggy Boston brown-bread, corn-bread and doughnuts, the whole topped off with apple-pie and cheese, were served with difficult gravity by the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... or two of French Sir Walter suddenly recollected himself and said: "Well, here have I been parley vooing to you in a way to surprise you, no doubt, but these Frenchmen have got my tongue so set to their lingo that I have half forgotten my ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... groaned, and he lifted both hands to show that he did not understand. Then he raised his voice. "Nuna-talmute," he cried. "Nuna-talmute— Nuna-talmute! Ain't there one of that lingo among you?" ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... out one of the new American soldiers, "can you sling enough of this lingo to lead us to a place where we can get ham and eggs? I mean a real eating place, not just a coffee stand. I've been opening my mouth, champing my jaws and rubbing my stomach all day, trying to tell these folks that I'm hungry and want a square meal, and half ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... only a bit weak, messmate. Avast there! take a good grip o' the health tack; haul in your slack, and ahoy! you'll be full sail again in a week. I say, what do you think of that? I'm getting on with my nautical lingo, ain't I?" ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... he said, "foisted upon them by a remission of ten per cent. in taxes for every hundred words of the lingo learned by heart, with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... alphabet which any man—of common sense and business habits—could as easily master as he could count five on his fingers; and there was no end to his ridicule of the men with horse-hair head-dresses, and their quirks, quiddits, cases, tenures, and such-like devil's lingo. Lawyers, according to him, were a set of thorough humbugs and impostors, who gained their living by false pretence—that of affording advice and counsel, which every sane man could better render himself. He was unmistakably mad upon ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... avowed that he was too scared to be certain of anything, but was ready to swear that to his ears the words uttered seemed to be Swedish. He had once heard sailors from Sweden talking, and the chatter sounded like their lingo. ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... lingo seems to be somewhat similar to Chinese. It's not what they say, but how they say it. For instance, psonqule may mean "I love you" or "you ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... are not to touch anything at first, for it is all going to be yours soon. Forward, march!' So far, so good. But all those people of Africa, to whom Napoleon was foretold under the name of Kebir-Bonaberdis—a word of their lingo that means 'the sultan fires'—were afraid as the devil of him. So the Grand Turk, and Asia, and Africa had recourse to magic. They sent us a demon, named the Mahdi, supposed to have descended from heaven on a white horse, which, like its master, was bullet-proof; and both of them ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... again opened his eyes Ralph caught the vague hum of a lingo of switch pidgin, smut-faced, blear-eyed men near by, himself stretched at full length on sleeping car cushions on the floor of the doghouse. He sat up promptly. There was a momentary blur to his sight, but ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... with no other rudiments than "ma" and "pa" "speed the soft intercourse from pole to pole." As yet, that part of mankind which knows not its right hand from its left is the only one possessed of a worldwide lingo. The flux that is to weld all tongues into one, and produce a common language like a common unit of weight, measure and coinage, remains to be discovered. A Chinese pig, transplanted to an Anglo-Saxon stye, has no difficulty in instituting immediate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... been no covenant between sayer and sayee. When we hear people speaking a foreign language—we will say Welsh—we feel that though they are no doubt using what is very good language as between themselves, there is no language whatever as far as we are concerned. We call it lingo, not language. The Chinese letters on a tea-chest might as well not be there, for all that they say to us, though the Chinese find them very much to the purpose. They are a covenant to which we have been no parties—to which our ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... with you!" said the American, beginning to collect his traps. "You're a bad one, you are. I don't like such lingo—I don't, by George! I never took you for an angel, but I vow I didn't think you were the cantankerous little toad you are! I don't set up to be a saint myself, and if a man knocks me down and pummels ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... wheels in all the political machines of Europe, must surely, with very little difficulty, find out what passes in the rude uninformed mind of a girl."—"Sister," cries the squire, "I have often warn'd you not to talk the court gibberish to me. I tell you, I don't understand the lingo: but I can read a journal, or the London Evening Post. Perhaps, indeed, there may be now and tan a verse which I can't make much of, because half the letters are left out; yet I know very well what is meant by that, and that our affairs don't ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... was a fussy Flamingo, Who remarked to his family, "By jingo! I think I would go To that animal show, But they all talk such barbarous lingo." ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... bizarre, the slipshod or the affected, the newfangled or the obsolete, the flippant or the sepulchral. I need not specially recommend you to write in "Wardour-street English," the sham archaic, a lingo never spoken by mortal man, and composed of patches borrowed from authors between Piers Plowman and Gabriel Harvey. A few literal translations of Icelandic phrases may be thrown in; the result, as furniture-dealers say, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... yit been much talk atween us—i'deed not any, I mout say. Ye know I can't parley thar lingo. But I've approached her wi' as much skill as I iver did bear or buffler. An', if signs signerfy anythin', she ain't bad skeeart about it. Contrarywise, Frank. If I ain't terribly mistuk, she shows as ef she'd be ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... lingo, 'house freak'] n. A hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position at a commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have influence out of all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and still not have to wear a suit. Used esp. ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... intense disgust). How on earth are we going to get that beggar out? Set the Conductor at him, CULCHARD, do—you can talk the lingo best! ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... you scold, Jacques," said one of them, speaking a strange half-French, half-English lingo. "Le diable t'emporte for a grumbling rascal. You won a woman and I got nothing. What ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of a shoe-lace, is run through the eyelets, and on the principle of a shoe-lacing the man is laced in the canvas. Only he is laced more severely than any person ever laces his shoe. They call it "cinching" in prison lingo. On occasion, when the guards are cruel and vindictive, or when the command has come down from above, in order to insure the severity of the lacing the guards press with their feet into the man's back as they draw ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... promptly ducked their heads, and one of them called out in his lingo that this was the slayer of crocodiles and of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... friends, the Me'sdames Boufflers, the Comte de Boisgelin,(285) M. d'Haveri(?), &c. The Duke, Mie Mie, and I are invited, and the Duke intends to bring Mr. Grieve with him, and as a Member de la Chambre Basse he will pass muster, but he is most wretched at the lingo. They will assemble in the evening at the Duke's, where I suppose that there will be tweedle dum, and tweedle dee, for the whole evening, till supper. George will not, after this, call our house a hermitage; if it is, it is a reform of ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... crowd. I want to know who are the traitors. I want to know a lot of things that I'll tell you from time to time. I want you to get next to these Reds, and learn about their ideas, so you can talk their lingo. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that leg?—I'll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose now ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships. But flukes! man, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... that kid threw himself down on the floor, and he said, 'McHenry, I knowed you was goin' away and I had to come to see you.' That's what he said in his Kanaka lingo. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... home, and improve the occasion by cracking a few more bovine skulls if we meet them, the northern burring brutes. Their lingo sickens ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... going up to town with his sister, of whom he was glad to be rid, to place her with an aunt. 'She would not let me be quiet,' said Hector, 'but I must come, for she is as obstinate as a mule, and bring our compliments and her special thanks for a signal favour, that is her lingo, which she makes a plaguey rout about; your methodist parson trick, you know, of taking her out of the water; after your damned canting gang had frightened the horses and thrown her into it. She says she ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... dryly. "I happen to have known him during some years. You and I might regard him as a man of few words, but he has acquired a wonderful vocabulary for the benefit of sailor-men. I believe he can swear in every known lingo. His accomplishment in that direction no doubt annoyed Frascuelo, who became frantic when he heard that the ship would not call at any South American port. I imagine, too, that the unfortunate fellow is still suffering from the drug which, he says, was administered to him. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... England, is it?—and the post-mark is 'Roma': that's Rome in some lingo, I expect. It is in Latin, anyhow, I know. Mortuus est Romae—'He died at Rome.' It's in the Latin Grammar. Let's see what the fellow says, anyhow," added Ricardo, breaking ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... fire with men who spoke their own language and who did not pretend to be above them in the social scale the doughboys forgot that they were four thousand miles from home and that they couldn't 'sling the lingo.' ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... Flix, or else speak English," called Louis, as he left his bed. "There is no end of 'paddies' along this river, and I'm sure they cannot understand your lingo." ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... enclosed paper, {253} written by a Suffolk Archdeacon for his Son's East Anglian Notes and Queries: and now reprinted, with his permission, by me, for the benefit of others, yourself among the number. Can you make out the lingo, and see what I think the pretty Idyll it tells of? If I were in America, at your home, I would recite it to you; nay, were the Telephone prepared across the Atlantic! Well: it was sent, as I say, to Carlyle: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... cured was just a walking skeleton. Some thief had made away with my boots and breeches, so I stopped among the natives and never laid eyes on a white face for two years. I soon picked up the Burmese lingo, which some say is difficult; but to me it was aisy as kiss me hand. Then I was received into the priesthood; that was over seven years ago, and here I am still. Of course, as ye know, I can go or stay ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... handling caused—and bared the poor broken body to view. The squareheads cursed deeply and bitterly at the sight of the shocking bruises on the white flesh. Nils was delirious, staring up at us with brilliant, unseeing eyes, and babbling in his own lingo. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... dear, at this rate you'll leave my father nothin' to say. You're keepin' all the black prophecies to yourself. Why don't you rise up, man alive," she added, turning to him, "and let her hear how much of the divil's lingo you can give?—It's hard, if you can't prophesy as much evil as she can. Shake yourself, ruffle your feathers, or clap your wings three times, in the divil's name, an' tell her she'll be hanged; or, if you wish to soften it, say she'll ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... may, and 'tis like I may not. I am somewhat dainty in making a resolution, because when I make it I keep it. I don't stand shill I, shall I, then; if I say't, I'll do't. But I have thoughts to tarry a small matter in town, to learn somewhat of your lingo first, before I cross the seas. I'd gladly have a spice of your French as they say, whereby to ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... back," he said. "They'll have it all trodden up again—Hi! You! Ge' back 'ere!" There is as special a lingo for talking to cattle as there is for talking to babies. I used it as well as I could. I swung the lantern in their faces, I brandished the hoe-handle at them, I jabbed at them recklessly. They snorted and backed and closed in again,—crazy, ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... Dagoes, Pedro and Christo, passed into the land beyond. There were the same little marks, but nothing else. Weiss, Wagner, and Myers, the three Germans, got nutty about this time, and talked together in their lingo while they pumped; and when they were alone they talked to themselves. I confess that I got nutty. Who wouldn't, with this menace hanging over him? I walked around the deck when I was off pump duty, and I remember that I ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... horses picketed near them. The ladies went out to see them as they sat in the sunlight, not at all inconvenienced by its glare. They seemed merry, careless fellows, laughing and chattering away in their own curious lingo—a mixture of English ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... does sound good to hear ye talk good Yankee talk, Phoebe," she said. "Ye hevn't dropped yer play-actin' lingo ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... who was interpretin' for th' old Injun, asked him quiet-like, in th' Injun lingo, 'How many of you was there, John?' An' th' old Injun he paused like, while every one waited t' hear, an' then he pointed to th' ground, an' said some Injun words. An' Barry, he said in that quiet, firm, even ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... fellow, and I really want a hand here confoundedly. I think it will all do very nicely; but, of course, there's a lot of things to be arranged—settlements, you know—and I can't make head or tail of their lingo, and a fellow don't like to sign and seal hand over head—you would not advise that, you know; and Chelford is a very good fellow, of course, and all that—but he's taking care of Dorcas, you see; and I might be left in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... visions of which tortured the women from the western hemisphere and prevented their taking any pleasure in other victories. To be received into those inner circles became their chief ambition. With this end in view they dressed themselves in expensive costumes, took the trouble to learn the "lingo" spoken in the country, went to the extremity of copying the ways of the native women by painting their faces, and in one or two cases imitated the laxity ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... "What lingo is that?" said the amazed Carlier. "In the first moment I fancied the fellow was going to speak French. Anyway, it is a different kind of gibberish to ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... dialect, which greatly retarded their improvement in English. But it was thus they had talked when they first made love, and it was, moreover, the only way in which their tongues could move unfettered. Her language no longer sounded to William like "lingo," as he had styled it in the boyish days when he found her wandering alone on the prairie. No utterance of the human soul, whether in the form of language or belief, is "lingo," when we stand on the same spiritual plane with the speaker, and thus ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... awful lonesome with school out and Billy Downs gone back East. There's so few fellows here my age, and Jack won't let me play much with the little Mexicans. They aren't much fun anyhow when I can't talk their lingo." ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... benefit of 'ARRY himself, who is not perhaps familiar with the "Lingo Roruano"—though he may know something of a "Romano" dear to certain young sportsmen, though not dearer to them than other caterers,—may ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... "I like the sailor lingo," he said, curling his moustache, and turning over his pink shirt-collar. "They've a loose dash about 'em. It must go far with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... I know about ships?" Condy confessed to Blix. "If Billy Isham is going to command a filibustering schooner, I've got to know something about a schooner—appear to, anyhow. I've got to know nautical lingo, the real thing, you know. I don't believe a REAL sailor ever in his life said 'belay there,' or 'avast.' We'll have to go out and see Captain Jack; ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... they are chasing he lets it fall promiscuous, and even if you are rowing fit to kill yourself you do not escape it; but on shore here if you keep up your spirits things ain't altogether so bad. Now I have got you here to talk to in my own lingo I feel quite a different man. For although I have been here ten years, and can jabber in Spanish, I have never got on with these fellows; as is only natural, seeing that I am an Englishman and know all about their doings ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... dandy and warrior, but he forgot the speech, and what do you think he did? Far from being disconcerted, he recited a portion of the Swedish Catechism to His Most Christian Majesty and his Court, not one of whom understood his lingo with the exception of his own suite, who had to keep their gravity as ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tour, and he had only taken what little money he required; of this he had one or two pieces left, which he gave them. But it wouldn't satisfy the beggars, and they signified to him - for you see, Giglamps, Billy didn't understand a quarter of their lingo - that he must fork out with his tin unless he wished to be forked into with their steel. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... one for size." She'd picked up poker lingo, and the basic rules of the game, Malone realized, from the other players—or possibly from someone at the hospital itself, ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... noticeable when he poured his whiskey, though I never knew him to spill a drop. He had been twenty-eight years in Melanesia, ranging from German New Guinea to the German Solomons, and so thoroughly had he become identified with that portion of the world, that he habitually spoke in that bastard lingo called "bech-de-mer." Thus, in conversation with me, SUN HE COME UP meant sunrise; KAI-KAI HE STOP meant that dinner was served; and BELLY BELONG ME WALK ABOUT meant that he was sick at his stomach. He was ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... waxwork figures with the wax-white skins. Hank immediately sprang forward with a stream of oaths so farfetched that Simpson did not recognize them as English at all, but thought he had lapsed into Indian or some other lingo. He only realized that Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was welcome—uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though more calmly and leisurely, advanced ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... tray of kabobs and wine, said to him, "There is a black cook in the Khan who requires from the bazar only meat; and thou art now become his like; so go thou to him civilly and accost him in friendly fashion and speak to him in the blacks' lingo, and salute him, saying, ''Tis long since we met in the beer-ken.' He will answer thee, 'I have been too busy: on my hands be forty slaves, for whom I cook dinner and supper, besides making ready ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... finished it, but he could not pain his mother by letting her know that her son had again failed, so Allen had the money, and really believed, as he said, that all Jock had done was to put the extreme end to it, and correct the medical lingo of which he could not be expected to know anything. Allen was always so gentle, courteous, and melancholy, that every one was getting out of the habit of expecting him to do anything but bring home news, discover anything ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ridiculous peer, his more ridiculous sister and his most ridiculous butler—are of the "stock" variety, Mr. WODEHOUSE'S way of treating them is always fresh and amusing. But in his next frolic I beseech him to give golf and its tiresome lingo a complete rest. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... dear year, to go errands, chap sand, carry water, and keep the housie clean. I have heard him say, when auld granfaither came to their door at the dead of night, tirling, like a thief of darkness, at the window-brod to get in, that he was so altered in his voice and lingo that no living soul kenned him, not even the wife of his bosom; so he had to put grannie in mind of things that had happened between them, before she would allow my father to lift the sneck, or draw the bar. Many and many a year, for ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... lingo pretty fast, Trix," Dick chuckled, when they were well away from Sir Redmond. "Milord almost fell out of the saddle when you fired that at him. Where did ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... lingo they speaks, an' they not knowin' his lingo, an' he not knowin' how far they took he before he wakes up, or rightly how t' find his tilt, he sticks t' the' Injuns, an' they keeps workin' north till ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... alike as two peas in a pod. I never did know where he hailed from. He was a close-mouthed chap. But I somehow got the idea he must have been brought up near salt water. He talked so much sailor lingo." ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the look of a good Christian," said he in a voice of soldierlike cordiality, and shaking me by the hand. "I do not like those people who look on a landing-place as a frontier line, and treat their neighbors as if they were Cossacks. When men snuff the same air, and speak the same lingo, they are not meant to turn their backs to each other. Sit down there, neighbor; I don't mean to order you; only take care of the stool; it has but three legs, and we must put good-will in place ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... away in their foreign lingo," said Andrew that evening to his wife Leezibeth, the housekeeper "and I'm thinking it was siccan a language was talked in Sodom and Gomorrah. And he was a' smiles, and she was a' smiles, and they seemed to think nae shame o' themselves ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... you, quite an oddity.' The oddity, you may be certain, ground his teeth. She had a way of standing in our midst, nodding around, and addressing us in what she imagined to be French: 'Bienne, hommes! ca va bienne?' I took the freedom to reply in the same lingo: Bienne, femme! ca va couci-couci tout d'meme, la bourgeoise!' And at that, when we had all laughed with a little more heartiness than was entirely civil, 'I told you he was quite an oddity!' says she in triumph. Needless to say, these ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see why they don't stop and play," complained Honey. His tone was the petulant one of a spoiled child. It is likely that during the whole course of his woman-petted existence, he had never been so completely ignored. "If I only knew their lingo, I could convince them in five minutes that ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... entitled The Complaynt of Scotland, written in 1548, seems to be the only man who took more interest in the means than in the ends of seamanship. He was undoubtedly a landsman. But he loved the things of the sea; and his work is well worth reading as a vocabulary of the lingo that was used on board a Tudor ship. When the seamen sang it sounded like 'an echo in a cave.' Many of the outlandish words were Mediterranean terms which the scientific Italian navigators had brought north. Others were of Oriental origin, which was very natural ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... you are saying," he began, "and I suppose that our lingo makes no sense to you—" He paused in helpless wonderment as to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... it was a very mottled or motley tongue, but he might as well have talked English or Double-Dutch to our hands, or better, for they had picked up the meaning of some orders from me before I got used to their lingo. And then he says 'tis office work and superintendence he understands. How can you superintend, I told him, what you don't know yourself? No, no; go home and bring a pair of hands fit for a quarryman, before I make ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make a really great speech. He has a strong intellectual grasp of what he wants to say and a high moral measure of its significance to the nation; but for a Premier he is too prone to lapse into the lingo of partisan debate which in Canada—since the battering days of the giants that followed Confederation—has not been on a very high level. Meighen's best speeches are temperamentally big, but he has yet made no great speech which will live, either in whole or in part, as a glorification of his country. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... said Captain Pringle, as they watched the men board a train. "You can talk this blessed lingo like a native. I can't get my tongue around the words, and they talk so fast that I can't understand them. Here's an old chap wants to say something," and he turned towards an old military-looking man, who saluted Bob, and then ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... a few words must be said as to the vocabulary of sharpers, pickpockets, thieves, and murderers, known as Argot, or thieves' cant, which has of late been introduced into literature with so much success that more than one word of that strange lingo is familiar on the rosy lips of ladies, has been heard in gilded boudoirs, and become the delight of princes, who have often proclaimed themselves "done brown" (floue)! And it must be owned, to the surprise no doubt of many persons, that no language is more vigorous or more vivid than that of this ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... will only say that he was in no way behind his friend Bill King in bravery, and though he spoke the sailor's lingo like his shipmates, he was vastly his superior in manners and appearance. Indeed, he and my mother were a very handsome couple. They were also, I may say, deservedly looked upon with great respect by the ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... rolled down the stairs and lay crushed at the bottom. Withal he had spoken so quietly, Dr. Leiden possessed a temper drawn from his Teutonic ancestors. With his little face all puckered, he swore so roundly at my uncle in some lingo he had got from his father,—High German or Low German,—I know not what, that Grafton and his wife were glad enough to pick their way amongst the broken bits of glass and china, to the hall again. Dr. Leiden shook his fist at their retreating persons, saying that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sea-lingo (Pacific) Dutchman includes all Teutons and folk from the basin of the Baltic; Scattermouch, all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the man, "all that high-falutin' lingo for a potful of squirril. But you're welcome enough. I don't begrudge anybody sup." Then he broke into a laugh at the puzzled faces of his guests, and translated his reply into very lame Spanish. The boys, however, were delighted to be so hospitably received, and grinned ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... I seem to see that the Churches are going down. After all, every Church—even the Church Catholic—is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Where I've differed from four out of five of my clerical brethren (oh, drat the professional lingo!)—from the majority of the clergy hereabouts, is that while they look on the Church and its formularies as something even more sacred than the Cross itself, I have believed in it as the most effective instrument for teaching the Cross." ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... their fight in all the vanished sea lingo of that day would bewilder the land-man and prove tedious to those familiar with the subject. The boatswains piped the call, "all hands clear ship for action"; the fife and drum beat to quarters; and four hundred men stood by the tackles of the muzzle-loading guns with their clumsy ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... man, "I think that's about all. It isn't exactly what he said, because Spanish lingo's awkward stuff to put into plain English; but that's about what it all meant; and, speaking as a friend, I should advise you to get a passage up north ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... said Reuben sadly, "'tis the chances of the wilderness. You'd better tell the poor old creetur', Swiftarrow; you understand her ways and lingo ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mississippi, and then Louisiana and all that lies beyond, and Mexico and its gold! Ha! the Mississippi open from its source—and the Lord in Heaven knows where that may be—to the last levee! and not a Spaniard to stop a pirogua, and right to trade in every port, and no lingo but plain English, and Mexico like a ripe apple,—just a touch of the bough, and there's the gold in hand! If I were a dreamer, I ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... twirling his moustache, and staring after them, "what was it the Dons said? Peste! I could not make out a word of their lingo, except ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... drew out a good six-pound trout. Filled with admiration for the feat, while he was tying a string through the fish's gills I said to him, "Muy mahe," which another Indian had told me meant "big trout." Without looking up or turning his head, he said to me in perfect English, "What sort of lingo are you giving me, young man? The true pronunciation of those words is," and then he repeated "Muy mahe," with just a little twist to his words that I had not given them. Resuming the conversation he remarked, "Why not speak English? ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... from that of the country's representatives. His Excellency senor don What's-his-Name was in their eyes, a mud-eel, and in their lingo a congrio; the illustrious orator What-do-you-call-him, who took up a sixteen-page sheet in the Congressional Record every time he spoke, was a percebe, a "barnacle on the keel of Progress"; every act of parliament struck them as a bit of balderdash, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... brought up on stories of Black Hawk, the Prophet, and the Sacs and Foxes of Illinois and Wisconsin. A Delaware Indian, clad in the ordinary garb of a Western farmer and driving a yoke of oxen, and employing the same curious lingo used by the white farmers, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... palaver one day About souls, heaven, mercy, and such; And, my timbers! what lingo he'd coil and belay; Why, 'twas just all as one as High Dutch; For he said how a sparrow can't founder, d'ye see, Without orders that come down below; And a many fine things that proved clearly to me That Providence takes us in tow: "For," says he, "do you mind me, let ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... fearless, quite; and with a heart full of passions. Meredith, the Old Timer, you know, has kept her up there among the hills. She sees no one but himself and Ponka's Blackfeet relations, who treat her like a goddess and help to spoil her utterly. She knows their lingo and their ways—goes off with them for a week at ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... "It's a d——d lingo, and never did any one good—at least no British subject; for I suppose the French themselves must talk together in some language or other. I should have much more faith in this Jasper, did he know ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... transport Back in St. Nazaire, Second thing you asked us,— "Quand finit la guerre?" Didn't know your lingo You weren't hard to get, Peace was what you wanted— ...
— "I was there" - with the Yanks in France. • C. LeRoy Baldridge
... Afterwards went to the Colonial Office, and had Robert Hay's assistance in my inquiries; then to the French Ambassador for my passports. Picked up Sotheby, who endeavoured to saddle me for a review of his polyglot Virgil. I fear I shall scarce convince him that I know nothing of the Latin lingo. Sir R.H. Inglis, Richard Sharp, and other friends called. We dined at Miss Dumergue's, and spent a part of our soiree ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... enough, the four men were not hoboes at all; neither were they yeggmen; and the lingo they talked so glibly among themselves, although perfect in its enunciation, and in the words that were ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... Charlie Grandjean, that used to ride fer Perkins & Company was French and he told me once that they didn't talk no French nor nothin' like it. They talks their own lingo and there ain't nobody but a Basco that ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... this rapidly spoken lingo perfectly well, but he would have laughed anyhow, for there was more than a suggestion of the comic in the shrewd seriousness that seemed to focus itself in Daddy ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... hands upon a spot of earth, or in a mine hole, or by the side of a stream and how much will he produce? What are the chances that he will not starve to death before he can produce anything? If you give him tools, and "grub-stake" him, in mining lingo, or support him until he has produced something and it has been marketed, the produce of other men has been given him. They have got to be paid for their produce in some way. The man in question can't have all he produces without defrauding the men who produced ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... sir, as there ain't nobody a-livin' in that perticler place, you don't go for to look to hearin' of voices, or, in plain lingo, there's something queer ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... creation? That we walk erect? Some brutes are bipeds. That we do not slay one another? We do. That we build houses? So do they. That we remember and reason? So, again, do they. That we converse? They are chatterboxes, whose lingo we are not sharp enough to master. On no possible point of superiority can we preen ourselves save this: that we can laugh, and that they, with one notable exception, cannot. They (so, at least, we assert) have no ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... b'long quite top-side.... I say, this lingo is about the edge. Put me down for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... unmarried women, I mean. But it was no go! Old Paloma sided with the girl, and said if the girl went she went, too. Also, she called me more kinds of a fool than the English language has accommodation for. You'd like the Spanish lingo, Sarah, for expressing yourself in such ways, and you'd have liked old Paloma, too. She was a good woman, though she didn't have any teeth and her face could kill a strong man's appetite in ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... the best painted portion of the picture,—most life-like and free from mannerism. It is a mighty work, and too little appreciated, like many other works of art, chiefly owing to the critics, who do not understand it, and write a lingo of their own which is not easy to make out and does not come to much after all. [Footnote: All this shows what a heart there was in Michael Angelo, and dissipates the assertion of a recent English biographer that Michael Angelo painted masks instead of faces, with little ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... confounded clutter!" said a young man, whose swarthy visage, seen in the torchlight, struck Wood as being that of a Mulatto. "You frighten the cull out of his senses. It's plain he don't understand our lingo; as, how should he? Take pattern by me;" and as he said this he strode up to the carpenter, and, slapping him on the shoulder, propounded the following questions, accompanying each interrogation with a formidable contortion of countenance. "Curse you! Where are the bailiffs? Rot you! have you lost ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sitting opposite me, and suddenly he sings out something in his own lingo, and sprang to his feet, and rushed down toward the hole leading to the windy cave. He was laughing awfully. I followed—but could not catch him. He jumped into the hole and the noise stopped. And I stayed through the shake, and saw ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... mewed awfully in the drawer, where you put her. Perhaps she was saying over the commandment you gave her to learn; but Mrs. Green didn't understand her lingo, ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... lies peddled by McClellan's worshippers, the most enormous and the most impudent is that one by which they attempt to explain, what in their lingo they call, the hostility of the abolitionists towards McClellan. Concerning this matter, I can speak with perfect knowledge of almost ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... the leaves at her. She smiled and held out her hands, and with a gurgle of gladness, the little fellow gave a final struggle, scrambled to his feet and toddled unsteadily across the lawn to her chair, jabbering baby lingo, the only word of which she could understand ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... with intense heat, but he managed, by turning the raft round with his paddle, and lifting the lid of the basket, to shelter Charley from its burning rays. The child sat up and looked about him, prattling away frequently in a lingo Dick could not understand: sometimes also he spoke a little English, which he seemed to have known before he came on board the Laurel, but since then he had picked up a good many words. Dick now tried to amuse him and himself by teaching him ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... how a chap gets to understand these fellows' lingo after he's listened to it a bit," he announced to Ann. "I wouldn't have believed it of myself that I could see into it as quick as I have. I couldn't say as I understand everything they say just when they're saying it; but I understand it right enough when I've had time to translate ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the fantastic rocks, twisted into innumerable grotesque shapes, and, along the shores, hollowed out into caverns of all sizes, some large enough to shelter an army. He was quite familiar with the natives, understanding enough of their queer lingo to get along. By his friendly aid we got some food—yams, and fish cooked in native fashion, i.e. in heated holes in the ground, for which the friendly Kanakas would take no payment, although they looked murderous enough to be ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... it, without a word, took up his wallet and blunderbuss, and after saying a few words to the old woman in a lingo that I could not understand, he ran out to the shed. A few minutes later, I heard him galloping out into ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... gun, or shout. If we are alive we shall answer him. If we don't answer, he had better see about it. I don't want to scare you, but this is not a joke, and I can't afford to be misunderstood. Now I'm going to tell him all that in his own lingo." ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Spanish or Visayan. And the first thing he said when I had extricated him, thanks to my vituperative knowledge of these sweet tongues, was: 'If them niggahs, seh, think Ah'm a-goin' to learn their cussed lingo, they're mahtily ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... o' them murderin' Frenchmen, and nothin' 'd make me change my opinions. Why! I've 'eard it said that them frog-eaters can't even speak the King's English, so, of course, if any of 'em tried to speak their God-forsaken lingo to me, why, I should spot them directly, see!—and forewarned is forearmed, as ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... replied, "Well, I don't exactly think that, but I'm bound for to say the schooner has got such a rakish look that it wouldn't seem unnatural like if you were to hoist a black flag at the peak. An' you'll excuse me, shipmets, if I say that yer lingo ain't just so polished as ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... The lingo was rippling from Leith's lips, but perforce I stopped him. "Pray translate. Remember, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... the most mixed-up lingo I know," he said. "Mother seal is called a 'cow,' yet the baby is called a 'pup.' The cow seals are kept in a 'harem,' which usually means a group of wives. The whole gathering is called a 'rookery,' though there are no rooks or other birds ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... had heard plenty of it—was the lingo of thieves and what the story-writers call bandits—though we never knew until years afterward that we had in Iowa a distinct class which we should have called bandits, but knew it not. They stole horses, dealt in counterfeit money, and had scattered all ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick |
