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What is true of the particular idiom that we started with is true of everything else in language. Nothing is perfectly static. Every word, every grammatical element, every locution, every sound and accent is a slowly changing configuration, molded by the invisible and impersonal drift that is the life of language. The evidence is overwhelming that this drift has a certain consistent direction.
She was writing Aunt Lucile a note saying she meant to stay in town for a few days. "But if you get any frantic telephone calls in the meantime, tell them I'm all right." He wondered a good deal, as his hours marched past in their accustomed uneventful manner, what she could be doing with hers. It was an odd locution for her to have employed that she was "going out for the day."
'Since they began to sort us about, said De Blacquaire, 'I've lost sight of you. And you've never answered my question. Now, what the devil did you do it for? 'Look here, said Polson, using his favourite locution, 'you've threatened two or three times to make an end of me. 'Yes, said the Major, nodding and drawling on the word. 'That's right enough, But what's that got to do with it?
So, too, ask the man in the street for the colour of trees, and he will reply "green." If I may permit myself a vulgar locution, the green is in his eye. Trees are, of course, all colours of the rainbow, according to kind and season; and grass, too, is by no means always so green as people think it.
A very proper locution, although it seems a misuse of words to us, as it expresses the idea of rendering honor to those who are deemed worthy thereof.
And instantly the words were out George had realized that she might have said: "Did you want to see father?" ... in the idiom of the shop-girl or clerk, and that if she had said 'did' he would have been gravely disappointed and hurt. But she had not. Of course she had not! Of course she was incapable of such a locution, and it was silly of him to have thought otherwise, even momentarily.
Employing a very old-fashioned locution, the citoyenne Gamelin had declared: "that by dint of eating chestnuts they would be turning into chestnuts." As a matter of fact, on that day, the 13th July, she and her son had made their midday dinner on a basin of chestnut porridge.
In this locution of God addressed to the soul there is no escape, for in spite of ourselves we must listen; and the understanding must apply itself so thoroughly to the comprehension of that which God wills we should hear, that it is nothing to the purpose whether we will it or not; for it is His will, Who can do all things.
Knowing what was to come, and thoroughly nerved to confute the main incident, Richard barely listened to his barbarous locution: but when the recital arrived at the point where the Bantam affirmed he had seen "T'm Baak'll wi's owen hoies," Richard faced him, and was amazed to find himself being mutely addressed by a series of intensely significant grimaces, signs, and winks. "What do you mean?
Borrow was shy, eccentric, angular, rustic in accent and in locution, but with a charm for me, at least, that was irresistible. Hake was polished, easy, and urbane in everything, and, although not without prejudice and bias, ready to shine gracefully in any society.
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