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Adjective   Listen
adjective
Adjective  adj.  
1.
Added to a substantive as an attribute; of the nature of an adjunct; as, an adjective word or sentence.
2.
Not standing by itself; dependent.
Adjective color, a color which requires to be fixed by some mordant or base to give it permanency.
3.
Relating to procedure. "The whole English law, substantive and adjective."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adjective" Quotes from Famous Books



... Mr Pickering with furtive side glances. He was not handsome, nor, on the other hand, was he repulsive. 'Undistinguished' was the adjective that would have described him. He was inclined to stoutness, but not unpardonably so; his hair was thin, but he was not aggressively bald; his face was dull, but certainly not stupid. There was nothing in his outer man which his millions would not offset. As regarded his ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... "The adjective," replied my interlocutor, "should always precede the substantive, for we should never utter the name of God without first ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... is the richest in the world, and yet somehow in moments when words count most we generally choose the wrong ones. The adjective "cross" as a description of his Jove-like wrath that consumed his whole being jarred upon Derek profoundly. It was as though Prometheus, with the vultures tearing his liver, had been ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... secretary. He groped in the chambers of his imagery for some superlative adjective to express his emotion before this colossal display of wealth. But his ample vocabulary had faded quite. He could only shake his head and give vent to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... Futunan(s), or Wallis and Futuna Islanders adjective: Wallisian, Futunan, or Wallis ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... adjective meaning calm, and little glaring, and is specially attributed to the moon in spring. The line is from an ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... small leisure for reading other than that through which he kept himself acquainted with every movement, and as far as was humanly possible with every fact, that seemed to bear upon the wide range of subjects handled by him. So prodigious was his industry, however—only Dominie Sampson's adjective will serve—and so quick his faculty for detecting at a glance the quality of a book and extracting from it the pith and marrow, that even in the busiest periods of his life he contrived to keep abreast of the things best worth knowing, not only ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... well, and even those who had dubbed her "The Beautiful Yankee" added another superlative adjective. A spot of bright red burned in either cheek and she held her head very high. "How haughty she is!" Prescott heard some one say. Her height, her figure, her look lent colour to ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... the nights that succeeded have yet lost for me their novelty. As a consequence, if, in looking back, my days appear to be wholly monopolized by work, my nights seem consecrated as wholly to amusement. The poet's "hideous" is the last adjective I could apply to the night ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... 7. Epithet. An adjective or term placed upon a person or thing and expressing some quality especially appropriate ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take "ranch" eggs, how pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with "yard" eggs, such an "out in the open—let the rest of the world go by" impression they confer. And so reassuring, too, as though ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... every other case, the shortness is appropriate to exercise; while the prose form does not encourage those terrible chevilles—repetitions of stock adjective and substantive and verb and phrase generally—which are so common in verse, and especially in octosyllabic verse. It is therefore in many ways healthy, and the space allotted to these early examples of it will not, it is hoped, seem ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... venture to find fault with his million-times-quoted adjective "unique" as it is used. It has been stamped on stationery and menu cards, and has gone the world over in his volume "Our Italy," and no one ever visits this spot who has not made the phrase his own. To me it deserves a stronger ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... concession to morbid sentiment. After the demise of the duke she had found it so depressing to be invariably addressed with suave deference by every male voice she heard. If the butler could have snorted, or the rector have rapped out an uncomplimentary adjective, the duchess would have felt cheered. As it was, a fixed and settled melancholy lay upon her spirit until she saw in a dealer's list an advertisement of a prize macaw, warranted a grand talker, with a vocabulary of over ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... will, however, admit that this misleading adjective comes as a boon in the discourse I am now meditating. Since, returning to my old theme of the Garden of Life, I find that the misapplication of that word Hanging, and its original literal suggestion, lends added significance to this allegoric dictum: Of all ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... but English-speaking acquaintances often called him "old Stewart," and others "ce vieux Stewart." Indeed, at a first glance he might have passed for anything up to sixty, for his face was a good deal more lined and wrinkled than it should have been at his age. Ste. Marie's adjective had been rather apt. The man had a desiccated appearance. Upon examination, however, one saw that the blood was still red in his cheeks and lips, and, although his neck was thin and withered like an old man's, his brown ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... first words come later when, to Lodovico's question, 'Did you and he consent in Cassio's death?' Othello answers 'Ay.' Then he falters out, 'Dear General, I never gave you cause.' One is sure he had never used that adjective before. The love in it makes it beautiful, but there is something else in it, unknown to Cassio, which goes to one's heart. It tells us that his hero is ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... tithemi, put) is something placed upon a person or thing; the epithet does not strictly belong to an object like a name, but is given to mark some assumed characteristic, good or bad; an epithet is always an adjective, or a word or phrase used as an adjective, and is properly used to emphasize a characteristic but not to add information, as in the phrase "the sounding sea;" the idea that an epithet is always opprobrious, and that any word used opprobriously is an epithet is a popular error. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... more, went straight to her son's room, and, in a calm rage, woke him up, and poured into his unwilling ears a torrent of mingled fact and fiction, wherein floated side by side with Letty's name every bad adjective she could bring the lips of propriety to utter. Before he quite came to himself the news had well-nigh driven him mad. There stood his mother, dashing her cold hailstorm of contemptuous wrath on the girl he loved, whom he had gone to bed ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... in the lonely hollow or "pocket", between two spurs, at the head of a blind gully behind Mount Buckaroo, where there was a more or less dusty patch, barely defined even in broad daylight by a spidery dog-legged fence on three sides, and a thin "two-rail" (dignified with the adjective "split-rail"—though rails and posts were mostly of saplings split in halves) running along the frontage. In about the middle of it a little slab hut, overshadowed by a big stringy-bark shed, was pointed out as ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of young pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs [Footnote: China pigs. What adjective would we use now?] have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest periods that ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... seen on the ranges: a thoroughbred with slender legs and sensitive ears. The rider sat his saddle well; remarkably well for one obviously from another life. Both the horse and man were immaculately groomed. At a distance they made a pleasant picture, one fulfilling adequately the adjective "smart." Not until an observer was near, very near, could the looseness of the skin beneath the man's eyelids, incongruous with his general youth, and the abnormal nervous twitching of a muscle here and there, have been noted. For perhaps ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... stall or shed where oxen are kept. "Boose" is the word from which it originally sprang. A very expressive phrase in common use is to "quad" or "quat"; it is equivalent to the word "squat." Other words in this dialect are "sprack," an adjective meaning quick or lively; and "frem" or "frum," a word derived from the Anglo-Saxon "fram," meaning fresh or flourishing. The latter word is also used in Leicestershire. Drayton, who knew the Cotswolds, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... probably know anything about "Mystics;" know even what the term means: but as it is plainly connected with the adjective "mystical" they probably suppose it to denote some sort of vague, dreamy, sentimental, and therefore useless and undesirable personage. Nor can we blame them if they do so; for mysticism is a form of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... average young amateur; but little skill is needed to manufacture a very fairly efficient substitute for the professionally-built article—to wit, a ladder of the kind to which builders apply the somewhat disparaging adjective "duck." ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... a pronoun. It is used as such in legal documents, but it is incorrect to employ it in business letters as other than an adjective. Use instead "they," "them," ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... may have referred to some band of people, perhaps to these very gipsies in the plantation. I do not know whether the spotted handkerchiefs which so many of them wear over their heads might have suggested the strange adjective ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... of six iambic feet, such as l. 357, written especially to illustrate this form. Why does Pope use the adjective "needless" here? ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... girl,' exclaimed the old gentleman the moment I entered the room.' (You will notice I put no comma after 'plain.' I am taking it he did not intend one. You can employ one adjective to qualify another, can't you?) 'And I will put it to her, What difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... BEAUTIFUL things that ever was done, perhaps,' said Inspector Wield, emphasising the adjective, as preparing us to expect dexterity or ingenuity rather than strong interest, 'was a move of Sergeant Witchem's. It ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to amphikupellon being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman's fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from, us to hold up his translation as what ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... Let those officious neighbors keep on talking; and when they have talked themselves blind, you may tell them, for me, that what money we have is safe," said Marcy, with a good deal of emphasis on the adjective. "If you want to see what mother brought back from the city, go and look at the servants. Every one of them is dressed in a new suit. Now go on and tell me the bad news. I'm ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... leering or "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... suggest that some other adjective than "awful" would better apply to "generous," but refrained. It would not do, she considered, to begin too sternly or suddenly in the reconstruction of her ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... doth us teach, That it hath nine parts of speech;— Article, adjective, and noun, Verb, conjunction, and pronoun, With preposition, and adverb, And interjection, as I've heard. The letters are just twenty-six, These form all words when rightly mix'd. The vowels are a, e, o, i, With u, and sometimes w and y. Without ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... compounds were left both hyphenated and separate depending on their part of speech, for example: science-fiction science fiction (adjective) (noun) ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... in contrast with David, also called 'Thy servant.' The latter was imperfectly what Jesus was perfectly. His complete realisation of the prophetic picture of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah is emphasised by the adjective 'holy,' implying complete devotion or separation to the service of God, and unsullied, unlimited moral purity. The uniqueness of His relation in this aspect is expressed by the definite article in the original. He is the Servant, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... talk is of a "League of Nations" merely. I follow the man who is, more than any other man, the leader of English political thought throughout the world to-day, President Wilson, in inserting that significant adjective "Free." We western allies know to-day what is involved in making bargains with governments that do not stand for their peoples; we have had all our Russian deal, for example, repudiated and thrust back upon our hands; ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... King was returned to the ranch and Prince sent to us. Now Prince had proved himself an excellent wheeler, yet he had to go into the lead and let the Outlaw retain his old place. There is an axiom that a good wheeler is a poor leader. I object to the last adjective. A good wheeler makes an infinitely worse kind of a leader than that. I know . . . now. I ought to know. Since that day I have driven Prince a few hundred miles in the lead. He is neither any better nor any worse ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... the word audacity or the adjective audacious to you again, Christy. I see that it nettles you, to say the least," added the captain, pressing his ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic

... had thought to pique him with this adjective, she was disarmed by the heartiness of his admission, "As green as grass! But I'd like to help you all ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... seems, a Scottish word which answers to Askepot to a hair. See Jamieson's Dictionary, where the reader will find Ashiepattle as used in Shetland for a 'neglected child'; and not in Shetland alone, but in Ayrshire, Ashypet, an adjective, or rather a substantive degraded to do the dirty work of an adjective, 'one employed in the lowest kitchen work'. See too the quotation, 'when I reached Mrs. Damask's house she was gone to bed, and nobody to let ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... language—more favourable to narrative poetry at least—than that which has been commonly termed heroic verse,"[363] and he proceeded to show that the first half-dozen lines of Pope's Iliad were each "bolstered out" with a superfluous adjective. "The case is different in descriptive poetry," he added, "because there epithets, if they are happily selected, are rather to be sought after than avoided.... But if in narrative you are frequently compelled to tag your substantives with adjectives, ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... over the horse's head with a movement that brought out the beautiful lines of her figure, she turned her back upon the pawing, restless animal with as little concern as though she had delivered him to a correctly uniformed groom. No she was not pretty; she was—magnificent. The adjective ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... very singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic et haec ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... adverb instead of an adjective. Thus on page 332, speaking of a tame frog on the bar at a rancho, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... IV, paragraph 10. The word "guess" might confuse the reader in the sentence: My donna primissima will be another guess sort of lady altogether. This is an archaic use of "guess" as an adjective meaning "kind of" as in the following example from Frazer's Magazine, 1834: Every one knows what guess-sort of wiseacre France gave birth to ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... "Amphibious. Adjective, derived from two Greek words, amphi, a fish, and bios, a beast. An animal supposed by our ignorant ancestors to be compounded of a fish and a beast; which therefore, like the hippopotamus, can't live on the land, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... to record that this man, who had the moral hardihood to send a profane adjective over the wires, with the name of this noble girl, lost his election. While all other districts went strongly Republican, his was lost by a large majority. When the news came that the Republicans had carried the State, due credit was awarded to Anna Dickinson. The Governor-elect made ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... very sing-song voice, and with an air of anxious simplicity, Doddle began, 'Article, noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, outerjection, beginning with ies in the plural—as, baby, babies; lady, ladies; hady, hadies. Please, sir, isn't that last ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... forward over his eyes, needing to be constantly thrown back by a picturesque action of the hand. The features were large and regular, the complexion dark, the eyes a pale blue, under bushy brows. The whole aspect of the man, indeed, was not unworthy of the adjective "Olympian," already freely applied to it by some of the enthusiastic women students attending his now famous lectures. One girl artist learned in classical archaeology, and a haunter of the British Museum, had made a charcoal study of a well-known archaistic "Diespiter" of the ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... Mrs. Wilberforce said, "and how is your dear mother?" Ordinarily Mrs. Warrender was spoken of as their mother, tout court, without any endearing adjective. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... daily task, editing the Banner, making it as luscious and effulgent as a seed catalogue, with rhetorical pictures about as florid and unconvincing. To him the town was a veritable Troy—full of heroes and demigods, and honourables and persons of nobility and quality. He used no adjective of praise milder than superb, and on the other hand, Lige Bemis once complained that the least offensive epithet he saw in the Banner tacked after his name for two years was miscreant. As for John Barclay, he once told General Ward that a man could take five dollars in to Brownwell ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... an absolute belief that there exists but one way of expressing one thing, one word to call it by, one adjective to qualify, one verb to animate it, he gave himself to superhuman labour for the discovery, in every phrase, of that word, that verb, that epithet. In this way, he believed in some mysterious harmony of expression, and when a true word seemed to him to lack euphony ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... bairn, Maggie?" answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Mencke, remarking the adjective for the first time, and looking somewhat annoyed. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... persistent about this matter, monsieur. Ever since that night when those curious people stopped here in the rain.... Can it be that you suspect them of evil designs upon my trinkets?" Duchemin shrugged. "Who knows, madame, what they were? You call them 'curious'; for my part I find the adjective apt." ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... wonderfully lovely?" cried Jessie, getting more excited with each adjective, and when the others laughed merrily at the extravagance of her description, she added, defiantly, "I don't care; it is! I'll ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... this adjective in the widest possible sense. It embraced all reputable action and covered virtue. If conduct were 'sporting,' he demanded no more from any man; while, conversely, 'unsporting' deeds condemned the doer in all relations of life and rendered him ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... and clean and homelike," said the girl quickly. At any other time he would have winced at the last adjective. It struck him now ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... is certainly that, and more. Indeed, the English language does not supply us with an adjective ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... example 'tchelo' ([Russian]) is the Russian for forehead, 'tal' is Welsh for the same; 'iasnhy' (neuter 'iasnoe') is the Russian for clear or radiant, 'iesin' the Welsh, so that if it were grammatical in Russian to place the adjective after the noun as is the custom in Welsh, the Welsh compound 'Taliesin' (Radiant forehead) might be rendered in Russian by 'Tchel[o]iasnoe,' which would be wondrously like the Welsh name; unfortunately, however, Russian grammar would ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... to glance down and discover that the yellow nondescript was no more than a pup when a burly youth charged into the restaurant and demanded in no uncertain tones to know where that adjective dog ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... are bright," he said contemptuously. "The average American is bright. If one prefixes no stronger adjective than that to his name, he accomplishes very little in life. Don't think me a pessimist," he added, smiling. "All over the country the Schools and colleges are instilling the principles of conservatism and practical ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... employment for the rest of the morning, and lunch-time found him still dissatisfied. An adjective avoided his quest—the right adjective; the one and only word which expressed the precise shade of meaning desired. From the recesses of his brain it peeped at him, now advancing so near that it was almost within grasp, anon retreating to a shadowy distance. There was no ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... 74,000 showed their opposition by not voting; therefore it is the duty of every self-respecting woman in the State to fold her hands and refuse to help any religious, charitable or moral reform or any political association, until the men shall strike the adjective 'male' from the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... not on watch were taking it easy. Like unto their officers, submarine sailors are an unusual lot. They are real sailors, or machinist sailors—boys for whose quality the navy has a flattering, picturesque, and quite unprintable adjective. A submarine man, mind you, works harder than perhaps any other man of his grade in the navy, because the vessel in which he lives is nothing but a ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... shops for further explorations. Scutari has always been described as such a beautiful town. The adjective does not seem picturesque: yes, quaint, strange decidedly. One's second impression ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... very much as she did, although he would not have used the same adjective. There was something unusual about this girl. Why it was, he did not understand, but she seemed somehow to belong in a special way to the sweet old garden with its June roses. Maurice had fancies that would have astonished Katherine beyond measure if she could have ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard

... evil of having in a formulary of worship too many things that have to be laboriously explained, it might be well if in the Litany the adjective "sudden," which ever since Hooker's day has given perpetual occasion for cavil, were to yield to "untimely," or some like word more suggestive than "sudden" of the thought clumsily expressed in the "Chapel Liturgy" by the awkward phrase, "death ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... reassuring beyond the common, but one was quite silently so; the other, who spoke a little English, encouraged us from time to time to believe that they were "strong mans," afterward correcting himself in conformity to the rules of Portuguese grammar, which make the adjective agree in number with the noun, and declaring that they were "strongs mans." We met many toboggan men who needed to be "strongs mans" in their ascent of our track, with their heavy toboggans on their heads; but some of them did not look strong, and our own arrived ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?' 'Oh, against all rule, my lord—most ungrammatically. Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus, stopping, as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds and three-fifths ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... is a classic adjective, but a barbarous substantive, (Ludewig, p. 245.) Justinian never collected them himself; the nine collations, the legal standard of modern tribunals, consist of ninety-eight Novels; but the number was increased by the diligence of Julian, Haloander, and Contius, (Ludewig, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... great deal to answer for. Of course we refer to phrenological bumps, from which, possibly, the powerful adjective "bumptious" is derived, it being applicable to a person whose conflicting bumps keep him continually on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various

... most delicious drink, But best of all when fresh, I think. Add then my second, and you make An adjective, small pains to take! My third must strait and narrow prove Or 'twill not lead to heaven above. Now for my whole—a countless host In which each ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri

... was not being turned into a howling wilderness; and she observed, as is often done so astutely, that "when you do find a neat, capable, colored help, it's as good help as you can have." Which you may notice is just as true without the third adjective as with. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... are at a loss to comprehend where the difficulty lay! So wags the world. Tempora mutantur—excuse me for quoting the Etruscan. What would we do without the Atalantic telegraph? (Pundit says Atlantic was the ancient adjective.) We lay to a few minutes to ask the cutter some questions, and learned, among other glorious news, that civil war is raging in Africa, while the plague is doing its good work beautifully both in Yurope and Ayesher. Is it not truly remarkable that, before the magnificent light ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... adjective, Sampson jumped up, cast away his patient's hand, forgot her existence—she was but a charming individual—and galloped into ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... adjective is made emphatic by being put before its noun; in 4, 14 the same effect is gained by putting horribil last in ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.

... The adjective was hardly accurate about a young lady who measured five feet six, but Maulevrier had not yet grown out of the ideas belonging to that period when Mary was really his little sister, a girl of twelve, with long hair and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... mind! Grammar teaches us the laws of the verb and nominative case, as well as of the adjective and substantive. ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... us do you intend that adjective to apply?" inquired Elnora. "I never was less ashamed in all my life. Please remember I am in my own home, and your presence here ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... which pertains to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized by the epithet sylvaticus in Varro, De re rustica, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent silvestris, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22. (Occasionally it is used of men, as ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... perceptible. Don't make faces, Mr. Sheffield; a little, I say; a little of everything is best—ne quid nimis. Avoid all extremes. So it is with sugar. Mr. Reding, you are putting too much into your tea. I lay down this rule: sugar should not be a substantive ingredient in tea, but an adjective; that is, tea has a natural roughness; sugar is only intended to remove that roughness; it has a negative office; when it is more than this, it is too much. Well, Carlton, it is time for me to be seeing after my horse. I fear he has not had so pleasant an afternoon as I. I have enjoyed myself ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... so quyke[gh]"[53] (those sights so living), the -e[gh] ( -es) is a mark of the plural, very common in Southern writers of the fourteenth century, and employed as a plural inflexion of the adjective until a very late period ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... this sound advice to his pupil, Guy de Maupassant: "Whatever may be the thing which one wishes to say, there is but one word for expressing it, only one verb to animate it, only one adjective to qualify it. It is essential to search for this word, for this verb, for this adjective, until they are discovered, and to ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... classical constructions are: the ablative absolute, as, which doen (IV, xliii); the relative construction with when, as, which when (I, xvii), that when (VII, xi); the comparative of the adjective in the sense of "too," as, weaker (I, xlv), harder (II, xxxvi); the participial construction after till, as, till further tryall made (I, xii); the superlative of location, as, middest (IV, xv); and the old gerundive, as, wandering wood (I, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... the end of the smooth stem, which rises from one to two feet high in the woods throughout a southerly and westerly range. As several other skullcaps have distinctly saw-edged leaves, this plant might have been given a more distinctive adjective, thinks one who did not have ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... my gig-lamps," puffed Beetle, emerging. "Wasn't it glorious? Didn't I 'Eric' 'em splendidly? Did you spot my cribs from King? Oh, blow!" His countenance clouded. "There's one adjective I didn't use—obscene. Don't know how I forgot that. It's one ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... kind of fish. Terms like garatum (prepared with g.) have been derived from it. Prepared with the addition of wine it becomes {oe}nogarum,—wine sauce—and dishes prepared with such wine sauce receive the adjective of {oe}nogaratum, ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... told the story of Genevra Lambert to the old man, who, utterly confounded, stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with a dreadful adjective appended to the fools, and an emphasis in his voice which showed ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... ha! that was from the late premier, I suppose. He merely forgot an adjective—it is cheap bread that the people ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various

... President of the United States with that of her Majesty on an occasion like this. I was struck, both in what he said, and in what our distinguished guest of the evening said, with the frequent recurrence of an adjective which is comparatively new—I mean the word "English-speaking." We continually hear nowadays of the "English-speaking race," of the "English-speaking population." I think this implies, not that we are to forget, not that it would be well for us to forget, that national emulation ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... M. Zola actually carried his study of English I could hardly say, but during the last months of his exile he more than once astonished me by his knowledge of an irregular verb or of the correct comparative and superlative of an adjective. And if he seldom attempted to speak English, he at least made considerable progress in reading it. By the time he returned to France he could always understand any Dreyfus news in the English papers. Of course the language in which the news was couched ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... instead of one, expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary, although his song lacks the variety and the finish of his caged namesake. What tone of sadness in his music the man found who applied the adjective tristis to his scientific name it is difficult to imagine when listening to the notes that come bubbling up from the bird's ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... as applied to psychological rather than chemical analysis have already become, among the illuminati, so widely adopted that these denominations now stand in considerable danger of being weakened in significance through a too careless use. The adjective "bromidic" is at present adopted as a general vehicle, a common carrier for the thoughtless damnation of the Philistine. The time has come to formulate, authoritatively, the precise scope of intellect which such distinctions ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess

... picture, and what you write will mean something to those who know the master's work; you may even conjure up an image before untutored eyes. But neither minute description nor well-turned phrase, neither sensuous adjective nor spiritual smile can tell half the truth of a ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... although he looked much older, his long untrimmed brown beard and un-kept hair being thickly streaked with grey. He was quiet in manner and speech, and the latter was entirely free from the Great Australian Adjective. His story, as far as he told it to me, was a simple one, yet with an element of tragedy ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... masses of blond hair drawn softly back from the high round forehead, at the large blue eyes beneath the long sweep of darker lashes, at the exquisite curve of the lips and the firmly modeled chin. Yes; Jim had seen truly; the ordinary adjective "pretty"—applicable alike to a length of ribbon, a gown, or a girl of the commoner type—could not be applied to Lydia Orr. She was beautiful to the discerning eye, and ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... An adjective is a pliable weapon, and, in the hands of a woman, can be made to mean anything under the sun. Mrs. Cary's "piquant"—pronounced in a manner that was neither French nor English, but a startling mixture ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... hair. It frizzled like a furze-bush about her tiny face, and curled over her forehead. Her white even teeth showed prettily between her lips. She was not without points, but notwithstanding these it could not be said that she deserved the adjective pretty; and he was already convinced that it was not good looks that prejudiced her in Father Peter's eyes. Nor was the excuse that her singing attracted too much attention an honest one. What Father Peter did not like about the girl was her independent mind, which displayed itself ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... the way intended by the writer; and in doing this he can receive assistance in various ways. Partly by the inflection of the words; partly by their arrangement; partly also by punctuation. As to inflection, we see in Latin an adjective and a substantive standing together, yet differing in gender, in number, or in case; and we know that the adjective does not qualify the substantive. But English has not the numerous inflections of Latin. More scrupulous care ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce

... vehicle which has not been used by us, at one time or another, even to the arch donkey and the low-backed car with its truss of hay, like that of the immortal Peggy. I thought at first that 'arch' was an unusual adjective to apply to a donkey, but I find after all that it is abundantly expressive. Benella, who disapproves entirely of this casual sort of travelling, far from 'answerable roads' and in 'backwards places' (Irish for 'behind the times'), ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... new adjective. But it needs a new definition, and the complement of a corresponding noun. I would fain set down on paper some observations and reflections which may serve to make its meaning clear, and render due praise to that most excellent ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... that what you ask is impossible," said the young man, taking his adjective for granted in a manner ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... that he will walk three miles for it. Surely every one will admit that this is lamentable. It is not even a good mixture, for I used to try it occasionally; and if there is one man in London who knows tobaccoes it is myself. There is only one mixture in London deserving the adjective superb. I will not say where it is to be got, for the result would certainly be that many foolish men would smoke more than ever; but I never knew anything to compare to it. It is deliciously mild yet full of fragrance, and it never burns ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie

... go to Italian, and look at the word nicchia. Both from Alberti and from Baretti we find it to bear the meaning of "a charge, a duty, or an employment;" and if before this word we place the adjective piccola, we have piccola nicchia, "a small task, or trifling service to be performed." Now I think no one can fail to see the identity of the meanings of the expressions piccola nicchia and pique-nique; ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... in its earlier part, a series of incidents that is, we believe, the most ingenious yet planned by its author.... The adventure develops and grows, the tension increases with each page, to such an extent that the hackneyed adjective, 'breathless,' finds an appropriate place."—NEW YORK ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... miserable old sinner," rejoined the doctor, warmly. "Often—often I would enjoy a fine round Elizabethan oath—note how that single adjective condones my poor taste. But I hold that good is inflowing and that it possesses whom it may possess. If a man is too busy fighting, it ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... composition. Thus the terms Trachytic porphyry, Trachytic tuff, etc., merely refer to the same rock under different conditions of mechanical aggregation or crystalline development which would be more correctly expressed by the use of the adjective, as porphyritic trachyte, etc., but as these terms are so commonly employed it is considered advisable to direct ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... she was, and content with her simple tasks the whole day long. What a quiet, peaceful life was that at the California missions in the old days! Perhaps, reader, you think humdrum would be the more appropriate adjective to use than peaceful or even quiet. And to one like our Father Uria, thousands of miles from his early home, cut off from all the pleasures and advantages of ordinary social intercourse, it was, as we have seen, more, much more, than humdrum. But for Maria, the life at the mission ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... with the Concord philosopher. The latter, as we know, decried the mystical conception of fixed symbolism in any domain. But Freud, although theoretically agreed, falls victim in practice to the fascinations of the dream-book cipher method which he has condemned. The adjective Freudian is now justly a by-word, among psychopathologists, for a stereotyped habit of reducing each item of a dream to some cryptic allusion or roundabout reference to the primitive demands of the infantile and sexual life. Freud's fertility in such interpretations has led ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... its hearers,[53] in this respect resembling poetry, which to Quintilian, seems to have no visible aim but pleasure.[54] Occasional speeches relied much more on style than did those of the law court and senate, thus meriting Aristotle's adjective "literary," that is written to be read instead of spoken to be heard.[55] Cicero, like Quintilian, considers these less practical, as remote from the conflict of the forum, written to be read, "to be looked at, as it were, like ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... true that after a time the interests that have coloured certain figures with certain hues and shades disappear; but then the reputation, good or bad, of a personage is already made; his name is stamped on the memory of posterity with an adjective,—the great, the wise, the wicked, the cruel, the rapacious,—and there is no human force that can dissever name from adjective. Some far-away historian, studying all the documents, examining the sequence ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... provide an object lesson as to the proper way of sitting upon it. Unfortunately, Desire was not looking. They had come a little way "up trail"—at least Desire had said it was a little way, and her companion was too proud of his recovered powers of locomotion to express unkind doubt of the adjective. There had been no rainy days for a week. The air was sun-soaked, and salt-soaked, and somewhere there was a wind. But not here. Here some high rock angle shut it out and left them to the drowsy calm of wakening Summer. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... And henceforth do eschew their company, For what is written irksomely, will be Read in like manner. What did I say last In my late canto? Something, I believe Of gratitude. Now this same gratitude Is a fine word to play on. Many a niche It fills in letters, and in billet-doux,— Its adjective a graceful prefix makes To a well-written signature. It gleams A happy mirage in a sunny brain; But as a principle, is oft, I fear, Inoperative. Some satirist hath said That gratitude is only a keen sense Of future favors. As regards myself, Tis my misfortune, and ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... hastily. She could not remember ever to have seen a baby's toes. "I've no doubt they are—are excellent toes." The word did not satisfy her, but the suitable adjective was not ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... ship out of soundings, Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings, Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle, Deaf to even the definite article— No verbal message was worth a pin, Though you hired an earwig ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood



Words linked to "Adjective" :   descriptive adjective, superlative degree, jurisprudence, relational adjective, positive, substantive, comparative, classifying adjective, procedural, adjectival, qualifying adjective, superlative, positive degree, major form class



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