United States or Chile ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some little solecism which is too slight for direct mention, and which a meaner man might hide or avoid.
She did not laugh once. She did not chat to the waiter. She did not hurry in, nor demand the wine-list, nor call him Solomon. She did not commit one single Colonial solecism at table, as Peter had hated himself for half thinking that she might. Yet she never had looked prettier, he thought, and even there he caught glances which suggested that others might think so too.
For example, he saw faults in Mozart and Beethoven where there are only beauties, and beauties which even an ignorant listener if he is naturally musical will see without trouble. He did not understand the vast difference between the unlettered person who commits a solecism and Pascal, the inventor of a new syntax.
Imagine yourself writing an office-letter to a secretary of state, which letter is to be read by the whole Cabinet Council, and very possibly afterward laid before parliament; any one barbarism, solecism, or vulgarism in it, would, in a very few days, circulate through the whole kingdom, to your disgrace and ridicule.
Both were honestly convinced that they had not lived till that hour that hour whence dated the commencement of their regular united existence. They looked at each other, satisfied, admiring, happy, expecting glorious things from Fate. There was a discreet alarm at the door. Simon came in. It would have been a gross solecism to knock, but Simon performed the equivalent.
"Oh, dear!" she said, with a mincing, apologetic gesture of her head; and then "Dear me!" Having committed the solecism, she found it necessary to draw attention to it. She may have been a Shropshire Norman, but at that relaxed hour of the night, she displayed all the signs of the orthodox genteel attitude. "I don't know when I've been so tired," she apologised.
Lovel; "'pon honour, Jack, you have made a most unfortunate speech; however, if Lady Louisa can pardon you,-and her Ladyship is all goodness,-I am sure nobody else can; for you have committed an outrageous solecism in good manners." "And pray, Sir," said Mrs. Selwyn, "under what denomination may your own speech pass?" Mr. Lovel, turning another way, affected not to hear her: and Mr.
The best qualification for his regard is to commit such a solecism that society cuts you, or such a crime that you get a month's hard. Short of that, it will do to have a hole in your coat, or paint a bad picture, or produce a yesterday's handkerchief. He probably thinks you're on the road to that. When you get there, he'll swear eternal friendship. He can't away with the prosperous."
'Pardon me, my fair lady, answered the Counsellor, 'your avowed rigour alone has induced me to commit the solecism of eating a good supper in your presence; how shall I support your frowns without reinforcing my strength? Upon the same principle, and no other, I will ask permission to drink wine with you. 'This is the fashion of Utrecht also, I suppose, Mr. Pleydell?
I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me. I never learned grammar; and not only Sir Hugh Evans but even Mrs. Quickly might puzzle me about Giney's case and horum harum horum.
Word Of The Day