United States or Andorra ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
That we have no class among us that uses an unintelligible dialect, like that of Lancashire or Yorkshire, is true enough; and, that we have fewer persons who use decided vulgarisms, in the way of false grammar, than is the case in England, may be also accurate; but, it might be well for us to correct a great many faults into which we have certainly fallen, before we declaim with so much confidence about the purity of our English.
Take then any name you may please, provided it be not Smith or Brown, or such vulgarisms; and on the receipt of this letter, write a note, and send it to my house in Portman Square, just saying, `So and so is arrived. This will prevent the servants from obtaining any information by their prying curiosity; and as I have directed all my letters to be forwarded to my seat in Worcestershire, I shall come up immediately that I receive it, and by your putting the name which you mean to assume, I shall know whom to ask for when I call at the hotel.
Even to common minds this familiarity with grand poetic imagery in prophet and apocalypse gave a loftiness and ardour of expression that with all its tendency to exaggeration and bombast we may prefer to the slipshod vulgarisms of to-day. But far greater than its effect on literature or social phrase was the effect of the Bible on the character of the people at large.
The troubles which distracted Europe in the later part of that century, and which led to the devastating wars and revolutions of the earlier part of the following one, completed the debasement of art-workmanship. Louis XIV. had the glory, such as it was, of its resuscitation; but his taste was merely that of an over-wealthy display, which not unfrequently lapses into positive vulgarisms.
"Quite so," replied Mr. Hazlewood, and he turned to his son with a look of keen interest upon his face. "I am not familiar with the phrase, Richard, but not for the first time I notice that the crude and inelegant vulgarisms in which you abound and which you no doubt pick up in the barrack squares compress a great deal of forcible meaning into very few words."
In the first place, learn to speak as correctly as you can; lay aside the vulgarisms of conversation peculiar to the common people; and speak precisely as you would write. By the by, you acquitted yourself to admiration with the Colonel. A little stumbling there was in the beginning; but you got over it. You see, James, the force of truth and simplicity.
Grammatical mistakes easy of correction are not seldom met with but pure vulgarisms occur only in a few copies like that of Berlin. The numberless variants have not much significance for the translator when it is only a question of synonyms, since for them the same European expression can do duty.
The decay of education, the growth of vulgarisms, and the degradation of the fine, but extremely artificial, literary language of the classical period, went hand in hand towards this change with the extreme subtleties and refinements introduced by the ablest of the new writers, who were no longer content, like Quintilian and Pliny, to rest satisfied with the manner and diction of the Golden Age.
Ungrammatical expressions are unfortunately too common even amongst those who have not the excuse of ignorance, but who fall into the use of them merely from carelessness, or unconscious imitation of others. "Says she to me," and other vulgarisms of a like type, are also a gross violation of good taste in conversation.
Dawson into an animation which was like the glow of a slumbering ember, when a strong pressure of air is brought to bear upon it. Hosmer had always considered her an amiable woman, with rather delicate perceptions; frivolous, but without the vulgarisms of Mrs. Worthington, and consequently a less objectionable friend for Fanny.
Word Of The Day