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Phrasing   /frˈeɪzɪŋ/   Listen
Phrasing

noun
1.
The grouping of musical phrases in a melodic line.
2.
The manner in which something is expressed in words.  Synonyms: choice of words, diction, phraseology, verbiage, wording.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Phrasing" Quotes from Famous Books



... plays is au fond that of many a comedy of to-day: that the situations and phrasing in which she presents her amorous intrigues and merry cuckoldoms do not conform with modern exposition of these themes we also show yet would not name, is but our surface gloss of verbal reticence; we hint, point, and suggest, where she spoke out broad ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... Moreover, in phrasing the proposition, the debater should so state the subject that the affirmative side, the side that opens the discussion, is the one to advocate a change in existing conditions or belief. This method obviously corresponds to the way in which business is conducted in practical affairs. No one ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... her best bit of phrasing and it pleased Benham very much. But, indeed, it was not her own phrasing, she had culled it from a disquisition into which she had led Mr. Rathbone-Sanders, and she had sent it to Benham as she might have ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... but still as fluent and persuasive as his own native speech, began an extravagant but perfectly dignified and diplomatic translation of his master's protests. Where and when, by what instinct, he had assimilated and made his own the grotesque inversions and ponderous sentimentalities of Teutonic phrasing, Paul could not guess; but it was with breathless wonder that he presently became aware that, so perfect and convincing was the old man's style and deportment, not only the simple officials but even the bystanders were profoundly impressed by this farrago of absurdity. A happy word ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... take the poem more seriously than Vergil intended it to be when he wrote currente calamo. Yet we may say that on the whole the modulation of the verse, the treatment of the caesural pauses[7] and the phrasing compare rather favorably with the Catullan hexameters which obviously served as its models, that in the best lines the poet shows himself sensitive to delicate effects, and that the pastoral scene—which Horace ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... was not really as full as Carson's phrasing would seem to suggest. The court was told that Rufus Isaacs had bought 10,000 shares—but not from whom he had bought them: that he had paid market price, but not what the price was, nor that the shares ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Catherine Benincasa was probably the most remarkable woman of the fourteenth century, and her letters are the precious personal record of her inner as of her outer life. With all their transparent simplicity and mediaeval quaintness, with all the occasional plebeian crudity of their phrasing, they reveal a nature at once so many- sided and so exalted that the sensitive reader can but echo the judgment of her countrymen, who see in the dyer's daughter of Siena one of the most significant authors of a ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... The effect this composition was calculated to produce rested on a fundamental idea which was quite simple, yet startling in its development. Unfortunately I worked it out rather hurriedly. In not very carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra was to represent the ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it. A forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When the whole had been repeated, there was a sudden jump to a different theme in extreme ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... that the love-tragedy gradually grew into a tragedy of political idealism with Posa for its hero. As finally completed in the summer of 1787, Don Carlos had twice the length of an ordinary stage-play and, withal, a certain lack of artistic unity. But its sonorous verse, its fine phrasing of large ideas, and its noble dignity of style settled forever the question of Schiller's power as a dramatic poet. The third act especially is instinct with the best ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... the piano and her hands fell inevitably into phrasing the "unfinished symphony." She became aware that her mother laid down the stitching and Mr. Elton's evening paper ceased to crackle. As she stopped her father stood behind her. He bent and kissed the little parting in ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... to the final vote it was supported by every member with the sole exception of the New Yorker, Abraham Yates. Delegations from all of the Southern states but Maryland were present, and all of them voted aye. Its enactment gave to the country a basic law for the territories in phrasing and in substance comparable to the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. Applying only to the region north of the Ohio River, the ordinance provided for the erection of territories later to be admitted as states, guaranteed in republican government, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... In the height of the Season it was not easy to get together a goodly selection of guests at short notice, and Francesca had gladly fallen in with Serena's suggestion of bringing with her Stephen Thorle, who was alleged, in loose feminine phrasing, to "know all about" tropical Africa. His travels and experiences in those regions probably did not cover much ground or stretch over any great length of time, but he was one of those individuals who can describe a continent on the strength of a few ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... meaning?—made plain enough at last, though with the most graceful phrasing. Childish vanity and ignorance had forbidden her to dream of such an issue. She had not for a moment grasped the significance to a man of the world of the ruin and disgrace fallen upon her family. In theory she might call herself an exile from the polite ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... foundation of advertising success. Regularity of insertion is just as important as clever phrasing. The man who hangs on is the man who wins out. Cato the Elder is an example to every merchant who uses the newspapers and should be an inspiration to every storekeeper who does not. For twenty years he arose daily in the Roman senate and cried out for the destruction of Carthage. ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman

... apocalyptic phrasing of hope has been traced too often to require long rehearsal here. If the Greeks were essentially philosophers and welcomed congenially ideas like endless cosmic cycles, the Hebrews were essentially practical and dramatic in ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... to read, in the dim light of the Colonel's Bed, thanks to its crabbed orthography and its long formal phrasing, but gradually I made out ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... it?—the mise en scene. Then, at my own time, at my own hour, under circumstances of my own choosing, I will go to them. I will present myself—I will appear before them!" said the Baroness, this time phrasing her idea with ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... nebulous uncertainties, and so she wrote her letter to her dear little "Countess-mama," as she had called her since her engagement. When her mother came with the philosopher's message and saw the letter, she was delighted with the phrasing and thanked her daughter warmly for the joy it would ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... however, a subtle fallacy in the very phrasing of the indictment? The majority does not "rule": it elects representatives who guide. That is something entirely different. When the worst is said of them those representatives of the people are distinctly above the average of the majorities electing them. Take the ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... by year written on his Sussex life, Now seemed to Lake this day. Among his men, All day he drew and pegged the rickyard straw, And piled the barn from floor to the swallows' beam, Brown throated and brown armed, the golden rose Of summer wind glowing upon his face, And all the phrasing of his body good. And twilight fell on the full harvest home, And the barn doors were closed, and painted wagons Stood empty by the ricks, with sunken wheels Smeared with the fallen husks, and voice was none, And silence with the ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater

... grand opera as primo basso cantante. He was warmly received by the press, and had already won a name at the Opera Comique and at concerts. In this singer may be noted the firmness of accent and scholarly mode of phrasing, always in harmony with the prosody of the language, which are part of the tradition of the great school. He always bears himself well on the stage, and the sobriety of his gesture is a salutary example which some of his present colleagues would do ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... little enough of this verse is dull: it nearly all has character, a distinct personal flavour in phrasing and motive. Yet this flavour is best known to the public in its development by the first of brilliant young men to be influenced by Mr. Belloc's style, as apart from his ideas. We may pause a moment to examine this point, for its own special interest and for the ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... accused of partiality and prejudice, we will at once state that we believe it possible for a man to be singular in his manner and quaint in his mode of phrasing, and yet to utter an opinion in some one direction which, if neither novel nor interesting, nor even tenable, shall yet have the one redeeming merit of representing a conceivable point of view. But when a man begins by stating that he belongs to the ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... Nanca had been childless and that we had brought a child—the daughter of Theodomir and Nanca—away from the Indian village and had reared her with my name. Then he showed me with a laugh where three conflicting meanings might be read from the stilted phrasing and eccentric punctuation. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... without notifying Chief Mern that I was done with the agency; and strictly personal reasons, also, influenced me on that point." She was trying hard to keep her poise, not loosing her emotions, preserving her dignity with a man of affairs and phrasing her replies with rather stilted diction. "I have my good reasons for doing all I can in my poor power to help the Flagg ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions, according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the end was near, he ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... Daganoweda and the Mohawks came back also, and Robert in behalf of them all thanked the young chief in the purest Mohawk, and with the fine phrasing and apt allegory so dear to the Indian heart. Daganoweda made a fitting reply, saying that the merit did not belong to him but to Manitou, and then, leaving a half dozen of his warriors to join in the watch, he and the others ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... inferior to "Medee" and "Les Deux Journees." Mendelssohn many years afterward, writing to Moscheles in Paris, asked: "Has Onslow written anything new? And old Cherubini? There's a matchless fellow! I have got his 'Abencerages,' and can not sufficiently admire the sparkling fire, the clear original phrasing, the extraordinary delicacy and refinement with which it is written, or feel grateful enough to the grand old man for it. Besides, it is all so free and bold and spirited." The work would have had a greater immediate success, had not Paris ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... music, that distant, mellow phrasing of the call of love, the music had unstrung him. While he paced the bridge before her coming that music had been melting the ice of his natural reserve. But he did not pardon himself because he had ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... Another way of phrasing this theory which I am arguing against is to bifurcate nature into two divisions, namely into the nature apprehended in awareness and the nature which is the cause of awareness. The nature which is the fact apprehended in awareness holds within it the greenness ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... lacking, too, in intellectual equipment—in culture, in mastery of rhythm and diction, in felicitous phrasing. And yet, on at least two occasions, he rang sublimely true—in his denunciation of Webster, "Ichabod," and in his idyll of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... Cellini had told that last story, would not its main facts have corresponded with those embodied in the following pages, though the tamer phrasing and more conventional attitude of the writer compared with the audacity ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... choice was one of Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words," a quieter measure this time, sweet and flowing, and giving opportunity for a world of delicate phrasing. It was one of the pieces which she had practised with a master, and with which she felt most completely at home; and if the audience found it agreeable to hear, they also, to judge from their faces, found it equally agreeable to watch. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... dark-shaded, turquoise body of water called Lecco; to the right there lies the queen of lakes, the crown of Italy, a corn-flower sapphire known as Como. Over and about it—this terrace—poets have raved and tousled their neglected locks in vain to find the perfect phrasing; novelists have come and gone and have carried away peace and inspiration; and painters have painted it from a thousand points of view, and perhaps are painting it from another thousand this very minute. It is the Place of Honeymoons. Rich lovers come and idle ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... employ a gentleman of refinement to go over "The Bible in Spain" and cross out the like. It all helps in the total of half theatrical and wholly wild exuberance and robustness. Another minute contributory element of style is the Biblical phrasing. His home and certainly his work for the Society had made him familiar with the Bible. He quotes it several times in passages which bring him into comparison, if not equality, with Jesus and with Paul. A little after quoting, "Ride on, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... the first Latin Irene learnt, and its quaint phrasing to this day influenced her thoughts of mortality. Standing by her mother's grave, she often repeated to herself "seu potius exuviae," and wondered whether her father's faith in science excluded the hope of that old-world reasoning. She ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... like candles after a feast—how gladly we listen to this poet with his serene faith in God, and immortal life, and the soul's unending development! "Hope hard in the subtle thing that's Spirit," he cries in the Prologue to "Pacchiarotto": and this, in manifold phrasing, is his leit-motif, his fundamental idea, in unbroken line from the "Pauline" of his twenty-first to the "Asolando" of his seventy-sixth year. This superb phalanx of faith—what shall ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... with the mental effort of suitably phrasing thoughts which he had never before put into speech. I felt an elation of spirit. I was groping into his soul-stuff as he made a practice of groping in the soul-stuff of others. I was exploring virgin territory. A strange, a terribly ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... argue with any one—one adverse criticism of her position always caused her defense to collapse. So she collected all the material she could get on the subject of personal responsibility and sacrifice. Her husband's brilliant way of phrasing became a delight to her. But always, as she listened, vague doubts ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... bronze hand pointed to the stroke of six. As he looked, the first note of the quarter chimes rang out. The car swung the corner and headed down the street. McCarthy stepped forward. The sweet chimes ceased their fourfold phrasing, and the great bell began ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... "Uncle Terry is an estimable type of hardy fisherman, honest and plain-spoken, but manifesting in his phrasing a subtle sarcasm ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... Metamorphoses, X. 519 ff., with features from the stories of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis (Meta. IV. 285 ff.), and the hunting in Calydon (Meta. VIII. 270 ff.). Ovid is quoted in Latin in three early plays; and even where a translation was available, the phrasing of Shakespeare's allusions sometimes shows knowledge of the original. Most of Ovid had been translated into English before Shakespeare began to write, and Golding's version of the Metamorphoses (1567) was used for the references to the Actaeon myth in A Midsummer-Night's ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... was delivered with boisterous earnestness, but the comic phrasing of it created irrepressible hilarity, and they had to leave the room. The preacher, in his closing remarks, reminded his hearers that he was once a black-hearted rascal, drinking, swearing, stealing, poaching, ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... evolved from it certain fundamental principles upon which I have largely based the cultivation of my own memory and mentality, and for which I can never be sufficiently thankful. Then I desired to be a public speaker. I became a "hobbyist" on pronunciation, enunciation, purity of voice, phrasing and getting the thought of my own mind in the best and quickest possible way into the minds of others. For years I kept a small book in which I jotted down every word, its derivation and full meaning with which I was not familiar. I studied clear enunciation by the hour; ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... declamatory tone was too broadly stressed. Certainly the Abbe Peyreyve had neither the emotion nor the ardor of Lacordaire. He was too much a priest and too little a man. Yet, here and there in the rhetoric of his sermons, flashed interesting effects of large and solid phrasing or touches of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... was quite different. Your mother's art was in her phrasing and in the ideal appearance ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... short. They have no preliminary measures, but at once voice the actuating emotion; that done, they come to a close. Although they are so short, they have form and in their structure follow in simple lines the rules of phrasing and motivization taught in our schools. These songs, speaking in general terms, partake more of the character of motifs than of musical compositions. They do not stand alone or apart from the ceremonials or pleasures of which they form an ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher

... young politician and the Crow, were completely fascinated by her. She had not the slightest accent in speaking English, but now and then her phrasing had a quaint turn which was ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... overgrown with grass and nettles, while in contrast to these stood some modern stones of polished granite. The inscriptions on these stones were worded differently from those places farther south. The familiar words "Sacred to the memory of" did not appear, and the phrasing appeared rather in the nature of a testimonial to the benevolence of the bereft. We ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... of minor detail to look after itself, and not complaining if a few notes fell under the desks at the back of the orchestra. Lamoureux had laboriously rehearsed every inch of his repertory until it was note-perfect, and each of his men knew the precise bowing, phrasing, degree of piano or forte, and tempo of every minutest phrase. Now I do not mean by this that the orchestras on which Richter and Mottl performed played many wrong notes, while the Lamoureux orchestra played none; and still less do I mean that Lamoureux got finer results ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... be developed to the highest art by the skill of the individual, often, indeed, only by a good ear for it. Whenever expression of the word's significance, beauty of the vocal material, and perfection of phrasing are found united in the highest degree, it is due either to knowledge or to a natural skill in the innumerable ways of fitting the sung word to the particular resonance—connections that are suitable to realize its significance, and hence its spirit. ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann

... "Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the imposing stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it," I should recognize a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only a printer ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain

... easiest to imitate is Addison. First, we should note the old-fashioned phrasing and choice of words, and perhaps translate Addison into simple, idiomatic, modern English, altering as little as possible. We note that the letter offered by Addison is purposely filled with all the faults of rhetoric which we ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... now as "additional proofs of the truth of Scripture." A little juggling with words, a little amalgamation of texts, a little judicious suppression, a little imaginative deduction, a little unctuous phrasing, and the thing is done. One great service this eminent and kindly Catholic champion undoubtedly rendered: by this acknowledgment, so widely spread in his published lectures, he made it impossible for Catholics or Protestants longer to resist the main conclusions of science. Henceforward ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... for Y: /n./ [ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the information which ITS made publicly available about each user. This information (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in which the user could fill out various fields. On display, two of these fields were always combined into a project description of the form "Hacking X for ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... The phrasing of the edict was ambiguous, as Madison indicated. Notably, while neutral vessels having on board merchandise neutral in property, but British in origin, were to be seized when voluntarily entering a French port, it ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... sat in the third seat from the back found the phrasing strangely familiar. He seemed to know what was coming. Sure enough, it was almost word for word the arguments the women had used when they came before the House. The audience was in a pleasant mood, and laughed at every point. It really did not seem to take ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... with Shaw, with Synge, with Hauptmann, with Brieux. Even if their plays are written in prose, these men are still "makers," and the prose play may be as highly subjective in mood, as definitely individual in phrasing, as full of atmosphere, as if it were ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... drink and myself a lemonade. I didn't want to drink that lemonade. I wanted to take it home and stand it under a glass shade. He himself drank what I was told was a foreign drink in a tiny glass. He lingered over it, untouched, while he discussed with us the exact phrasing of the symphony for the star man's song; then, at the call, with a sweep of his almighty arm he carried the glass to his lips with a "To you, my boy!" held it poised for a moment, set it down, and strode away, followed by rapt gazes ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... to Understand Music," "Studies in Phrasing," "Twenty Lessons to a Beginner," "Primer of Musical Forms," Associate Editor of Mason's "Pianoforte ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... PETTER has much that is interesting to say about men and women, and packs her thought (I risk the "her") into a quasi-Meredithian form of phrasing which does not always escape obscurity. But how much better this than a limpid flow of words without notable content! Souls in the Making (CHAPMAN AND HALL) is mainly an analysis of two love episodes in the life of a young man, the liberally educated son ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various

... counsellors of a pacific policy. Their aim is the same, survival, but our part in the struggle must be, they say, a humble, or at least, an inconspicuous one. We should stoop to conquer, one tells us; while another, phrasing technically the same thought, says, we must march along the path ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook

... when set swinging by heat, to vibrate a certain number of times in a second, thus giving rise to light of a particular shade of colour, appropriate those same vibrations, and those only, when transmitted past them,—or, phrasing it otherwise, are opaque to them, and transparent ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... perfect bearing—all these qualities combined, and many others which we forget, left the auditor free to enjoy the pleasure of listening without having his attention diverted by fatiguing gymnastics. Kalkbrenner's manner of phrasing was somewhat lacking in expression and communicative warmth, but the style was always noble, true, and of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... dissonances were insupportable. That these two composers imagine that to sing is simply to degoiser the note; but the art of singing, or technic was considered by them to be secondary and insignificant Phrasing or any sort of finesse was superfluous. The orchestra must be all powerful. "If Wagner gets the upper hand," Rossini continued, "as he is sure to do, for people will run after the New, then what will become ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... of passages that have less importance for the modern child than they may have had for that of the eighteenth century. The story is thus rendered more compact, and contains nothing to draw attention away from the fine qualities mentioned above. The quaint phrasing of the title, in itself one of the proofs of Goldsmith's authorship, furnishes a good comment on the meaning of the story: "The history of little Goody Two-Shoes/otherwise called Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes/the means by which she acquired her learning and wisdom, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... his own awkward phrasing of the situation, yet the thing had to be said and he knew no other way to ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... energies zealously into the acquirement of the classical learning proffered him at Eton; but a fine scholarship, great possession though it be, was not the only gain of his Eton years. Here, says Murphy in his formal eighteenth-century phrasing, young Fielding had "the advantage of being early known to many of the first people in the kingdom, namely Lord Lyttelton, Mr Fox, Mr Pitt, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... any of the money go to charities?" the answer from an authoritative source was: "No, not in the sense usually conveyed by this word." (The italics are mine.) That answer is cautious. But definite, I think—utterly and unassailably definite—although quite Christian-Scientifically foggy in its phrasing. Christian-Science testimony is generally foggy, generally diffuse, generally garrulous. The writer was aware that the first word in his phrase answered the question which I was asking, but he could not help adding nine dark words. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... her lines over about a thousand times apiece, and practised their inflection and phrasing in as many ways as she could think of, but she had neglected to memorize her cues. Not altogether, of course; she thought she'd learned them, but they were terribly scanty little cues anyway, just a single word, usually, and never more than two, and nothing short of absolutely ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... been very dear to me!' In the pause before she spoke again the beating of his own heart seemed to re-echo the quick sounds of Stephen's galloping horse. He was surprised at the method of her speech when it did come; for she forgot her Quaker idiom, and spoke in the phrasing of her youth: ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... comparison, and collect the results of this experiment.—For a time, indeed, raised by that storm of grief and indignation into a companionship with the wind and the rain, and the lightning, and the thunder, the king 'strives in his little world of man,'—for that is the phrasing of the poetic report, to out-scorn these elements. Nay, we ourselves hear, as the curtain rises on that ideal representative form of human suffering, the wild intonation of that human defiance—mounting ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... likeness to ourselves, the mighty flood-tide of tolerant human sympathy on which they are floated into the safe haven of our hearts. With delightful understanding, Charles Dudley Warner writes: "After all, there is something about a boy I like." Dickens, using the phrasing for a wider application, might have said: "After all, there is something about men and women I like!" It was thus no accident that he elected to write of the lower middle classes; choosing to depict the misery of the poor, their ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... so minute and vague between these smaller particles of the musical sentence,—it is advisable to give no heed to any factor smaller than the "motive," and to undertake the analysis of nothing less than the latter; for even the most scrupulous "phrasing," in the playing of a composition, must avoid the risk of incoherency almost certain to result from distinctly separating all the figures. The melodies in Ex. 8 should not betray the secret of ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius

... may have adhered to it. Such double tablets are often referred to as "case tablets." The existence of two copies of the same deed has been of great value for decipherment. One copy often has some variant in spelling, or phrasing, or some additional piece of information, that is of great assistance. The envelope was rather fragile and in many cases has been lost, either in ancient times, or broken open by the native finders, in the hope of discovering ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... and indefinite in your order. You must be clear and definite. Be careful about your phrasing and expressions. An order should be like a cablegram: convey every idea but ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... soft and timid and scarce audible, as the prayer of Norma might have done; but how it gradually swelled with the influx of divine strength into the soul! The grand difficulty in the opening andante movement of Casta Diva lies in its broad, sustained phrasing, in the long, generous undulation of its rhythm, which with most singers drags or gets broken out of symmetry. Jenny Lind conceived and did it truly. The impassioned energy of the loud-pleading syncopated cries in which the passage attains its climax; the celestial purity and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... with pain as well as astonishment, touched him to the quick. Tenderly he drew her to him. Then briefly, as was the Indian way, yet with the pictured phrasing which caused each scene to spring into vivid life before the young girl's eyes, he told her of the day, already more than eighteen years gone by, when, in the wake of a long midwinter storm, the first sailing vessel ever beheld by his people had fled for refuge to ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr

... Jan Verner want with a fine place like that? He'd have to keep five or six servants, if he went there. The most feasible surmise that could be arrived at was, that Jan was about to establish a mad-house—as Deerham was in the habit of phrasing a receptacle for insane patients—of the private, genteel order. Deerham felt very curious; and Jan, being a person whom they felt at ease to question without ceremony, was besieged upon the subject. Jan's answer (all they could get from him this time) was—that ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... the remark about the 'died of wounds' was a particular friend of mine, who had a great gift of happy phrasing, illustrated in the words I have quoted. Once we had a long talk about the old battles, and, speaking of a common friend who had been killed, he observed, 'I do think it dreadful, his being killed like that—killed outright.' ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... the key. Jog the foot-path way through Tuscany in my company, it's Lombard Street to my hat I charm you out of your lassitude by my open humour. Things I say will have been said before, and better; my tunes may be stale and my phrasing rough: I may be irrelevant, irreverent, what you please. Eh, well! I am in Italy,—the land of shrugs and laughing. Shrug me (or my book) away; but, pray Heaven, laugh! And, as the young are always very wise when they find their voice and have their confidence well ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... things, not enthrallingly [packend], not en relief, not as a romance increasing in interest from variation to variation. He whispered it mezza voce, but it was incomparable in the cantilena, infinitely perfect in the phrasing of the structure, ideally beautiful, but FEMININE! Beethoven is a man and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... never missing a note. It was purely a song of joy expressing exuberance of life and whole-souled enjoyment. He mimicked thirty different American birds, but their songs were hurried without the proper pauses and phrasing. It was what piano player music is to hand-played melodies, lacking the beauty and ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... on smooth roads and talk confusedly." It cannot be said that any psychological observations of the fool's or of the rich man's mind are recorded here. If I sift those maxims more carefully, I cannot find more than two score which, stripped of their picturesque phrasing, could really enter into that world system of naive psychology. And yet even this figure is still too high. Of those forty, most are after all epigrams, generalizations of some chance cases, exaggerations of a bit of ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... knowledge that our civilization was founded by two mighty aristocracies of intellect, to whom the religions of their day were, as they are to us, nothing but more or less graceful fairy-tales.[4] We know that many of the greatest men the world ever saw, while phrasing their relation to the "deus absconditus" in various ways, were utterly free from that penitential, supplicatory abjectness which is the mark of Asian salvationism. And though of course the conscious filiation to Greece and Rome is ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... lifted the Curtains of the Impossible that blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abrupt sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing, is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old Recluse, of the vanished house, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... in Phrasing. Where in literature will you find more beautiful phrases, more effective figures, than abound in this poem? Notice particularly the following, and try to determine why each ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... watched him, and wondered what he was thinking about? Sometimes he came out of his abstraction and teased her, and then she sparkled into gay impertinences; sometimes he asked her what she thought of this or that phrasing, "...though you are a barbarian, Skeezics, about music"; sometimes he would pull a book from the shelf over his desk and read a poem to her; and he was really interested in her opinion,—ardently appreciative if he liked the ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... rendered by the committee of detail, which early in August put into orderly and connected form the conclusions which the convention had reached. It was the committee on unfinished business which suggested the method finally adopted of electing the President. In its final form and phrasing the Constitution is the work of Gouverneur Morris, who prepared the report of the committee ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... shouldn't have been left alone. You mustn't think everybody's forsaken you and you've no friend left to you. It's often the case that you know your true friends in trouble," she continued sententiously. "And if only you could find the best Friend of all now when you need Him most." Her prim phrasing changed to earnestness. "There was a woman once that they dragged out in front of everybody for evil-doing. But He wouldn't have it. He put them to silence, and then when she was all alone with Him ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone

... be easily given of many more discourses, the metaphorical phrasing whereof, depending upon peculiar arts, customs, trades, and professions, makes them useful and intelligible only to such, who have been very well busied in such ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... see, to the right of the Essays. Do you recollect the third chapter of that work—the one which reconstructs the England of the seventeenth century? It has always seemed to me the very high-water mark of Macaulay's powers, with its marvellous mixture of precise fact and romantic phrasing. The population of towns, the statistics of commerce, the prosaic facts of life are all transmuted into wonder and interest by the handling of the master. You feel that he could have cast a glamour over the multiplication table had he set himself to do so. Take a single concrete example of what ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... instincts are uncontrolled. In short, the alarming problem of the social diseases results from masculine promiscuity or the failure of men to adhere to the monogamic standards of morality. In other and familiar phrasing, there is widespread acceptance and practice of the so-called "double standard of sexual morality," a monogamic one for respectable women and promiscuity for many of their male relatives and friends. (See ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow

... of Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, put this in briefer phrasing when he said, "General GOUGH may feel keenly the Ulster situation. Tommy Atkins will feel not less keenly the industrial situation." House listened in significant silence to illustration pointing the moral. In November next four hundred thousand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various

... as Kullak, Dr. Hugo Riemann and Hans von Bulow, may have outstripped him, but as a whole his editing is amazing for its exactitude, scholarship, fertility in novel fingerings and sympathetic insight in phrasing. This edition appeared at ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... eager for their legacies, were impatient with all the legal phrasing, "Being of sound mind" and so forth. They sat up more attentively when the lawyer read, "do ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... new residents, Mrs. Fletcher Story Fosdick and Miss Madeline Fosdick, who are to occupy the magnificent residence now about being built on the Inlet Hill by their husband and father, respectively, Fletcher Story Fosdick, Esquire, the well-known New York banker." The phrasing of this news note caused much joy in South Harniss, and the Item gained ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... punished. In the entire code this deceptive form, of apparently including all persons, was a signally dishonest feature. The makers of the law evidently intended that it should apply to the negro alone, for it was administered on that basis with rigorous severity. The general phrasing was to deceive people outside, and, perhaps, to lull the consciences of some objectors at home, but it made no difference whatever in the execution of the statutes. White men, who had no more visible means of support than the negro, were left undisturbed, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... the right to his opinion that 'The Gods of Greece' surpassed his earlier efforts. To please Wieland he aimed at Horatian correctness, and he came near hitting the mark. There is no progress toward lightness of touch or melody of phrasing,—Schiller was not the man for tuneful titillation of the ear,—but the poem is tolerably free from the bizarre hyperboles that mar its predecessors. It is intellectual, argumentative, but suffused at the same time with ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... this question is contained in the assertion of Lincoln, that our government is "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Lincoln's phrasing of the principle was due to the fact that the obnoxious and undemocratic system of negro slavery was uppermost in his mind when he made his Gettysburg address; but he meant by his assertion of the principle of equality substantially what is meant to-day by the principle of "equal ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... stepped forward—I following close in his rear—and began phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... the one straight, progressive path, let us consider this expression: 'The wages of sin is death'. This leads us to the question: what is death? Do you remember what Drummond says? He first explains in a most interesting way what life is, using the scientist's phrasing. A human being, for instance, is in direct contact with all about him—earth, air, sun, other human beings, etc. In biological language he is said to be 'in correspondence with his environment,' and by virtue of this correspondence ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... recalled Bambi's saying to him that until he learned not to exclude any of the picture he would never do big work. Her words had a tantalizing way of coming back to him, things she had tossed off in the long ago of their visit to New York together. He longed for her vivid phrasing, her quick dart at the heart of the things they talked of. It seemed incredible now that he had ever taken her as a matter of course. As for the enigma of her marrying him, he never ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke

... free cities, the growth of law, the growth of literature, and ending with the centralization of monarchical power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But the lectures then prepared were based merely upon copious notes and given, as regarded phrasing, extemporaneously. It is too late for me now to write them out or to present the subject in the light of modern historical research; but I know of no subject which is better calculated to broaden ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... into any group of facts, but that, taking one broad simple hypothesis as his text, he hammered that over and over, saying the same thing again and again in different ways, but always with a wealth of imagery and picturesque phrasing. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... form of invitation can be adapted to almost any reception, party or other social entertainment, with such variations in the phrasing as ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... passion of the man, who had suddenly disclosed a side of his nature hitherto hidden—the savage piety of the copper Boer impregnated with stereotyped missionary phrasing, Ian Stafford almost laughed outright. In the presence of Jews like Sobieski it seemed so droll that this half-caste should talk about the God of Israel, and link Oom Paul's name with that of Christ the great liberator ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... played the part of Hyllus, spoke his lines exceedingly well. Perhaps the chorus was a little too classical—that is to say, too stiff and lackadaisical; but the phrasing was always pretty and sometimes unexpected, and the lovely ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... attract our notice, the qualities that really give distinction to De Quincey, are the broad sweep of his knowledge, almost unlimited in its scope and singularly accurate in its details, a facility of phrasing and a word supply that transformed the mere power of discriminating expression into a fine art, and a style that, while it lapsed occasionally from the standard of its own excellence, was generally ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... laid down the letter, "there are one or two things about that communication to which I wish to draw your attention. First of all, it is the composition of a vulgar and illiterate, or, at any rate, semi-illiterate person. I don't think its phrasing and illiteracy are affected; I think it has been written in its present colloquial form without art or design, by whoever wrote it; it is written, phrased, expressed, precisely as a vulgar, coarse sort of person would speak. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... dollars. The fortunes of not a few railroad and industrial magnates were instantly and hugely increased by this fraudulent transaction. [Footnote: "Fraudulent transaction," House Ex. Doc. 47, Part iv, Forty-sixth Congress, Third Session, speaks of the phrasing of the act as a mere subterfuge for despoilment; that the act was passed specifically "for the benefit of capitalists," and "that fraud was used in sneaking it through Congress."] Hundreds of millions of dollars in capitalist bonds and stock, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... handicraft or invention. They are merely the phrasing of laws in super-nature, the putting into words truths as absolute in their own sphere, as those laws which govern the conduct of the earth ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... well balanced phrasing took Lavinia's fancy, and absorbed in the music she forgot her audience. She saw how the words were wedded to the notes and watched where the trills and graces came in. Pepusch played the air right through; waited a minute ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... the physiological side, the law of habit as set forth in the definition of association in the preceding section includes all the laws of association. In different phrasing we may say: (1) Neurone groups accustomed to acting together have the tendency to work in unison. (2) The more frequently such groups act together the stronger will be the tendency for one to throw the other into action. Also, (3) the more intense the excitement or tension under which they act together ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... Is it true to say of Bussy D'Ambois that it is characterised by "dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words," that it is "a hideous mingle of false poetry and true nonsense"? The accusation of "nonsense" recoils upon its maker. Involved, obscure, inflated as Chapman's phrasing not infrequently is, it is not mere rhodomontade, sound, and fury, signifying nothing. There are some passages (as the Notes testify) where the thread of his meaning seems to disappear amidst his ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... of a pleasant summer day in the year 191-, if one may borrow a mode of phrasing that once found favour with the readers of the late G. P. R. James, a solitary balloonist—replacing the solitary horseman of the classic romances—might have been observed wending his way across Franconia in a north-easterly direction, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... heard so frequently in the Igorot songs, occurs eight times in this number. It is not quite so well defined here, however, as in the Dang-dang-ay, being modified in this song either by syncopation, by phrasing, or by lack of accent. It is interesting to note however, that it is always given on the tonic or the dominant, and also that it is repeated in true ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... they were still "in the way that goeth up to Beth-horon"; that is to say, in the ascent some two miles long from Gibeon till the summit of the road is reached. There would be a special appropriateness in this case in the phrasing of the record that "the Lord discomfited the Amorites before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth up to Beth-horon, and smote them to Azekah ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... merely autos whose drivers lived up to their mottoes that speed laws are in vain; and other miracles amazing with delicate and pointed phrasing I started to explain. I told of triumphs most astounding, of things which should be quite confounding to resurrected men; but in the middle of my soaring I heard old Thomas Tinkle snoring—he'd gone ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... from the parents of some of the less advanced of you, that I find myself obliged to make a change. Your father particularly, Richard Bultitude," he added, turning suddenly upon the unlucky Paul, "has complained bitterly of the slovenly tone and phrasing of your correspondence; he said very justly that they would disgrace a stable-boy, and unless I could induce you to improve them, he begged he might not be annoyed ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... pausing to pick words, phrasing with the carefulness of the man of method, talking as those persons talk who have read many books and use their tongue but seldom. Farr found much quaintness in the solemn ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... mother to Camilla and treated her with the utmost kindness. Every day Camilla must come to her room to practice and receive instructions in singing. Camilla's instrument was the violin. She could sing with more than ordinary skill and in perfecting her phrasing and in improving her style in vocal music Madam Sontag insensibly improved her violin music. All of Camilla's music was examined by the great singer and in those stray hours picked up between the demand of concerts and travel much of art ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard

... for him to enter upon the path which he had determined to follow. The means used to dissuade him were various. Sometimes a friend would call, then a duty would intervene, then some obligation would press until, to use his own way of phrasing it,—"it seemed as if some unseen person who could read my thoughts and desires was walking by my side and, as fast as I was in danger of yielding to evil, ordering events so as to prevent me from doing ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... Court "made no question of their lawful power by the word of God to assemble the churches, or their messengers upon occasion of counsell, or anything which may concern the practice of the churches," it decided to modify the phrasing of the order.—H. M. Dexter, Congr. as seen, p. 436. Magnalia, ii, 209. Mass. Col. Rec. ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... off into the splendid fantastic nonsense that the wits loved to talk; that grotesque, exaggerated phrasing made fashionable by Lyly. It was like a kind of impromptu sword-exercise in an assault of arms, where the rhythm and the flash and the graceful turns are of more importance than the actual thrusts received. The two old ladies embroidered on in silence, but their ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... The volume, which appears as Tome IV., Textes Elamites-Semitiques, of the Memoires de la Delegation en Perse (Paris, Leroux, 1902), is naturally rather expensive for the ordinary reader. Besides, the rendering of the eminent French savant, while distinguished by that clear, neat phrasing which is so charming a feature of all his work, is often rather a paraphrase than a translation. The ordinary reader who desires to estimate for himself the importance of the new monument will be forced to wonder how and why the same word in the original ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon

... to fumble in his fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. He came and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing. "Circumstances have arisen—circumstances beyond my control," he said and paused, "which will debar me from completing the course I had designed. It would seem, gentlemen, if I may put the thing clearly and briefly, that—Man has lived ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... am sure you did it beautifully, Mr. Hepburn," said Moira, moving closer to him, "and it will be making me think of home." Her soft Highland accent and the quaint Highland phrasing seemed to reach a soft spot ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and humorous sayings. None has equalled him, certainly none has surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed these children of his fancy. Aldrich was always brilliant, he couldn't help it, he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is not speaking, you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... amendment which should protect whites as well as blacks and operate in behalf of corporations as well as individuals. In other words, Conkling was making the interesting contention that his committee had had a far wider and deeper purpose in mind in phrasing the Amendment than had been commonly understood and that the demand for the protection of the negro from harsh southern legislation had been utilized to answer the request of business for federal assistance. The safety of the negro was put ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... to emphasis is phrasing. This is the grouping together of words, phrases, clauses, and other units so that their meaning and significance may be easily grasped by a listener. As has been already said, pauses serve as punctuation marks for the hearer. Short pauses correspond to commas, longer ones to colons and ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... of The Daily Mail's praiseworthy efforts to instruct applicants for situations in the correct phrasing of letters to prospective employers, we propose to supply a similar long-felt want, and give a little advice as to the kind of letter it is desirable to enclose with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various



Words linked to "Phrasing" :   diction, phrase, grouping, formulation, verbalization, choice of words, verbalisation, wording, expression, verbiage, mot juste



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