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More "Inflection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... home," answered Mrs. Dent with rising inflection. "Be you gone crazy over that girl? The last boat from Porter's Falls was in before we went to bed. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... Lawrence never omitted one of my performances, always occupying the stage box, and invariably sending me the next morning a letter, full of the most detailed and delicate criticism, showing a minute attention to every inflection of my voice, every gesture, every attitude, which, combined with expressions of enthusiastic admiration, with which this discriminating and careful review of my performance invariably terminated, was as ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... played upon her red-gold hair, and surprise had driven the weariness from her face. Against the black oak of the chimneypiece she had almost the appearance of a framed cameo. Her voice was quite steady, although its inflection ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... echoed; and the inflection of the pronoun might have flattered him had he not reflected that it was impossible she could have understood his allusion. And now she bethought her that she had not thanked him—and the debt was ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... to go walking, madam, and to go alone. He ordered us—I say, he ordered us not to come. Surely we are right to obey him?" The sarcastic inflection of his voice conveyed his opinion ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... a guide, I'd not wait a minute, or if I could recognize the man whenst I viewed him. The constable promised to send a fellow to meet me here,—what's his name!—yes, Smith, Barton Smith,—who will guide us to where he was last glimpsed. I hope to take him alive." he added with an inflection of doubt. ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and there was an indecisive moment that mounted toward panic. Beardsley watched her churning effort to control it. She said quickly, an inflection of fear in her voice: "Mr. Beardsley, if it really matters—my whereabouts that night—you'll understand my reluctance to say it before! I was with Jeff. Truly! I'm sure ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... think—" said the elderly gentleman, getting in. The inflection of his voice suggested the Irishman. It was not a brogue. There were no strange words. But the general effect was Irish. Garnet congratulated himself. Irishmen are generally good company. An Irishman with a pretty daughter should be unusually ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... with delicatest meditative inflection, "this is indeed sweet. The mighty is fallen indeed. The proud one is suppliant now. The knee is bent that would not bend. Hearken, you and your puling babe, to the Princess Ysolinde! Were your lives in that glass, to save or to destroy—her life and your suffering—to ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the true sense of rhythm and the clearest enunciation; she has a deep and musical voice, which in moments of pathos thrills with a sweet and tender inflection. She has seized, in this instance, upon the touching rather than the harmonious side of Galatea, the pure and innocent girl who is not fit to live upon this world. She is only not human because she is ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... musical inflection jarred on Gifford, who began to wonder whether their companion could be a professional singer. One of their own class he ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... receive you," he said. "It will be among the most memorable incidents of my reign that I welcome to my Court the first visitor from another world, or," he added, after a sudden pause, and with an inflection of unmistakable irony in his tone, "the first who has descended to our world from a height to which no balloon could reach and at ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... of my powers. The detail of my progress would be curious and instructive. What impediments, in the attainment of a darling purpose, human ingenuity and patience are able to surmount; how much may be done by strenuous and solitary efforts; how the mind, unassisted, may draw forth the principles of inflection and arrangement; may profit by remote, analogous, and latent similitudes, would be forcibly illustrated by my example; but the theme, however attractive, must, for ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... delight of that exquisite sound of refinement in the pronunciation. Miss Sharp never misplaces an inflection or slurs a word, she never uses slang, and yet there is nothing pedantic in her selection of language—it is just as if her habitual associates were all of the same class as herself, and that she never heard coarse speech.—Who ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. "I think I begin to smell the toasting of the cheese. Of course, when the villa was burnt out, Madame la Comtesse insisted that, as the fiancee of her brother, Mademoiselle de Carjorac must make her home at the Chateau until the necessary ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... with that tender, indescribable inflection which a woman's voice holds only for the one beloved man, floated down to him, and instinctively he looked up. For an instant his glance lingered, and ever afterwards there remained stamped indelibly upon his memory the impression of her as she leaned there like ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... a peculiar rising inflection, but she did not catch the significance of the question, and replied, "Yes. He is tall and thin and black and slab-sided. That's me, too, except I am short yet; but I expect I will grow. Besides, I've got ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Harry?" I noted a strange inflection in his voice. He stood still and peered into the fog bank. His stop was sudden and suggestive. Just then a passing taxicab almost caught us and we were compelled to dodge quickly. Hobart ducked out of the way and I side-stepped in another direction. We came up on the sidewalk. Again he ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... would bend round the edges of opaque bodies and agitate the ether behind them. He was right in affirming that this bending ought to occur, but wrong in supposing that it does not occur. The bending is real, though in all ordinary cases it is masked by the action of interference. This inflection of the light receives the name ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... Pittsburgh millionaires, or just a plain millionaire from the country at large; and I doubt whether the man who wrote the lines had any conception when he did write them of the fashion in which they were afterward read. Be that as it may, the actor who essayed to play the American used an inflection, or an accent, or a dialect, or a jargon—or whatever you might choose to call it—which was partly of the oldtime drawly Wild Western school of expression and partly of the oldtime nasal Down East school. I had thought—and had hoped—that both ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Inflection. Change in the form of a word to show a modification or shade of meaning. At a very early period in our language there was a separate form for practically every modification. Although separate forms are now less ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... improving the speaker's language equipment let us pass to some remarks upon his use of words. The English language is the largest, the most varied in the universe. Almost entirely free from difficulties of inflection and conjugation, with a simplified grammar, and a great freedom of construction, it suffers from only two signal drawbacks—its spelling and its pronunciation. While it has preserved to a great degree ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... that voice whose soft inflection had always thrilled him, but never as it did now as, turning the handle, he entered his ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... that Jerry found himself on the verge of tears one moment, and the next something she would say, some odd look or quaint inflection would compel his laughter again. He had a mental picture of "MICHAEL," the pet of Peg's home, submitting to the indignity of companionship with mere horses. Small wonder he was snapping at Ethel's mare, when ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... country and Italy with respect to the status quo in Mediterranean, FERGUSSON had stood up and recited the multiplication table up to twelve times twelve, the remarks would have been just as relevant and informing as those he read from the paper. Moreover, the gravity of his aspect and the solemn inflection of his voice, would have compelled Members to listen to the end of the recitation with a sort of dim consciousness that they were really being informed as to the details of an understanding come to between Her majesty's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... on Darling." As she did not reply, he added, with a gentler inflection, "You know why the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... so disagreeable an inflection that Arved was astonished. He looked around and spat at ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... taste in writing, as to make Carteret a dactyl[4]. In matters of genealogy it is necessary to give the bare names as they are; but in poetry, and in prose of any elegance in the writing, they require to have inflection given to them. His book of the Dialects[5] is a sad heap of confusion; the only way to write on them is to tabulate them with Notes, added at the bottom of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... in job; his whole speech, indeed, had the engaging inflection of the Scandinavian tongue overlaid upon ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... having uttered the foregoing without pause or inflection of voice from beginning to end, came to an abrupt stop. Whether from want of breath or ideas it is difficult to ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... tobacco. He did not fail to take it, but at the same time I heard him sizzle out "Zhid" from between his tightly closed lips. I looked at him in amazement: how on earth could he guess I was a Jew, when I spoke my Russian with the right accent and inflection, while his was lame, broken, and half mixed with Polish? That was a riddle to me. But I had no time to puzzle it out, and I ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... the open Bible, and leant forward for a long, silent moment, looking earnestly from side to side into the upturned faces of his hearers. Then he began to talk—to talk, not to preach, speaking every word with an inflection of the truest sincerity. The text was "Forgetting the things that are behind, I press towards the mark," and the "talk" ran ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... is enunciated distinctly, with a rising inflection at the end, and in such manner that the command of ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... to shake hands with me," she said brightly. "You have been away, I believe?" with a delicious inflection. ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... worry my head about you, you old fox. You're too much of a master hand," Cronin returned, with an inflection that sounded like a grin. "I imagine you can hold up ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... in her eyes more of the shining happiness of a bride than they had ever held before. Her face was flushed with a pretty eagerness, and the petulant lines about her mouth were far less apparent than of old. Her laugh had a gay spontaneous ring, and though her voice still had a slightly arrogant inflection it was not without softer notes when she addressed ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... jelly," resumed Pollyanna; "—calf's-foot. I hope you like it?" There was a rising inflection in her voice. ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... express the feelings which disturbed her; but M. Gustave, misunderstanding her silence, and congratulating himself upon the effect he had produced, grew bolder, and with the tenderest and most impassioned inflection he could impart to his voice, continued: "Who could fail to be impressed as I have been? How could one behold, without rapturous admiration, such beautiful eyes, such glorious black hair, such smiling lips, such a graceful mien, such wonderful charms of person and of mind? ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... tapestry, gay with silver lace, coquettish fans, and high-heeled Spanish slippers. Eighteen years old, married, and dead; and muy querida, much beloved! My thoughts stayed behind, as I moved on, and the words, with their soft inflection, would recur dreamily to me, again and again—muy querida; alas! ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... unfortunate waif. Something drew her sympathy toward him, and she pitied him for the mother whom he had never known. In the adjoining room she could hear the voices of her own "childer," with their cultured inflection and language, which was theirs by inheritance and as unconsciously as were "Bony's" harsh tones and rude ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... of inspiration—the Italian dying down with Milton and the French following at the heels of the restored Royalists. For convenience, again, I have set myself certain rules of spelling. In the very earliest poems inflection and spelling are structural, and to modernize is to destroy. But as old inflections fade into modern the old spelling becomes less and less vital, and has been brought (not, I hope, too abruptly) into line with that sanctioned by use and familiar. To do this seemed wiser than to discourage ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... her calm inflection and her supercilious glance I hotly retorted, "Nonsense! You can acquire all the technic you require, right here in Chicago. If you are in earnest, and are really in search of instruction you can certainly get it in Boston or New York. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... out!" said Buck, with a warning cantankerous inflection, firmly and almost brutally reproving this conversational delinquency of George's. "Rule it out, young man! We don't want any of that sort of mountebanking in England. We know what ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... without the "how" in speech. The same written sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful scepticism, or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is the more ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... from a delicate observance of etiquette on the part of the ambassador. After carrying us to his box, which was close to that of the Royal Family, in order that we might see the members of it properly, he retired with Lord Byron to another box, an inflection of manners to propriety in the best possible taste—for the ambassador was doubtless aware that his Lordship's rank would be known to the audience, and I conceive that this little arrangement was adopted to make his person also known, by showing him with distinction apart ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... weight of thoughts that furrowed their brows. Others whispered in one another's ears, imparting excessively mysterious information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the monumental ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... man like the rest of you," he began in the more formal English and high-pitched inflection I knew so well, though the effect was diminished because some one broke in with assumed wonder, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... paramount importance to the arguer is sincerity. This he must really possess if he is to be eminently successful. To feign it is almost impossible; some word or expression, some gesture or inflection of the voice, the very attitude of the insincere arguer will betray his real feelings. If he tries to arouse an emotion that he himself does not feel, his affectation will be apparent and his effort a failure. There are few things that an audience resents more than being tricked into an expression ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... I could not rid my tone of an ironical inflection. I was goaded to it by her attitude, by the scornful turn of her lip and the disdainful glance of her grey eyes—she had her father's eyes, saving that her gaze was as steadfast as ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... word preceding the command Halt should always be given with a rising inflection in order to prepare the men ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... attention to one cock, about a hundred yards away, or a little more perhaps, for by contrast all the other songs within hearing seemed strangely inferior. Its voice was singularly clear and pure, the last note greatly prolonged and with a slightly falling inflection, yet not collapsing at the finish as such long notes frequently do, ending with a little internal sound or croak, as if the singer had exhausted his breath; but it was perfect in its way, a finished performance, artistic, and, by comparison, brilliant. After once hearing this bird I ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... his subject precluded the dramatic suggestion to be looked for in the Pickwick trial, thus rendering comparison inapposite. Nevertheless one was bound to contrast them. Thackeray's features were impassive, and his voice knew no inflection. But his elocution in other respects was perfect, admirably distinct and impressive from its complete obliteration of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... indifferently enough, just in mechanical response to the matter-of-fact inflection of Rosalind's voice. Then she laid down her pen, smiled in a puzzled way up into her daughter's face, and added, "My ears must have played me a funny trick. What did ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... creep as of some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of his voice. She rose, tottering on ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... according to tense; hun "to sell," sin "to hide," tin "to see," and numerous other radical elements, if low-toned, refer to past time, if high-toned, to the future. Another type of function is illustrated by the Takelma forms hel "song," with falling pitch, but hel "sing!" with a rising inflection; parallel to these forms are sel (falling) "black paint," sel (rising) "paint it!" All in all it is clear that pitch accent, like stress and vocalic or consonantal modifications, is far less infrequently employed as a grammatical ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... and to admire her collection of shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same inflection. The meeting with her had become one of the frightfully unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching before him an interminable vista of days, weeks, years—one deadly sameness of hard work, long hours, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... watched the affair with amusement, although Mr. Clark's friends adopted an inflection of voice in speaking to him which reminded him strongly of funerals. Mr. Tucker's week was up, but the landlord of the George was responsible for the statement that he had ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... up to the couch, and his first words roused the woman's interest. He spoke for ten minutes or more, now in whispers, now with a rising inflection; now persuasively, now with well-feigned indignation and scorn. The effect which his argument had on his companion was shown by the swift changes that passed over her face; she interrupted him frequently, asking questions and making comments. At ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... at this language, which established between him and the French gentleman equality at least, raised his piercing eye to the stranger's face, and with a sensible irony conveyed by the inflection of his voice alone, for not a muscle of his face moved,—"I thank you, monsieur," said he; "but, in the first place, to whom have I ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that type of high, sincere manhood which he represents; but it is a dangerous business, this attempting to define the character and disposition of people by the turn of an eyelid, the curve of a lip, or a particular vocal shade and inflection. Not only has Art learned to imitate Nature very closely, but Nature herself plays many a trick upon our credulity in matters of this kind. Upon a woman who owns no higher motive than low and selfish cunning she bestows the musical tones of a seraph, as she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Mrs. Budge, you are prepared for two hungry people. We lunched very early and the ride here is always tiresome. In Madame's absence, I am sure you will take care of Miss Gordon and—me." There was the finest inflection on the "miss." "I shall stay a day or two. Robin, my dear, this ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... found it difficult to say this with the proper inflection. It did not sound as business-like as he could have wished. But she was too much absorbed ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Then with a sudden animation, "I know what to do, I shall tell grandmother about Dora's marriage. It is all plain enough now. Good night, Ruth." And this good night, though dropping sweetly into the minor third, had yet on its final inflection something of the pleasant hopefulness of its major ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... that man?" asked a young lady passenger of the steward, with the imperious inflection which tells of riches able to force obedience from menials who ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the father and daughter together was evidence enough of the strong affection that bound them. The tone in which he had spoken to his son had been brusque and crisp, but when he addressed her, his voice took on a softer inflection, his eyes betrayed the place she ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... I think of you, I don't see all of you, but instead a particular gesture, or I hear an inflection of voice that is too familiar to be borne. Now I see mother's hands and they ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... the same condition," said Reine, "neither better nor worse, and, with the illness which afflicts him, the best I can hope for is that he may remain in that condition. But," continued she, with a slight inflection of irony; "doubtless it is not for the purpose of inquiring after my father's health that you have come all the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... gate on the back porch, see." (This frequent "see" which interlarded Elmer's verbiage was not used in an interrogatory way, but as a period, and by way of emphasis. His voice did not take the rising inflection as he uttered it.) "What does he do, he opens it. I come home, and the wife says to me: 'Say, you better get busy and fix a new ketch on that gate to the back porch. Little Elmer, first thing I know, he'd got it open to-day ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... risen above such follies," Kitty said, and it is impossible to tell you what a disagreeable inflection there was to her voice. "Mother, I am sorry that the poor child has to associate with such volatile creatures as you and I. She ought to have ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... their legs under a table glorified with toasted Sally Lunns and Melton Mowbrays, served by a waitress who said "Thank you" with a rising inflection, they gazed at the line of mirrors running Britishly all around the room over the long lounge seat, and smiled with the triumphant content which comes to him whose hunger for dreams and hunger for meat-pies ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... be too happy," said the mother, and her daughter, from her inflection, knew that she would be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "you would always be better than other people, Miss Ruth—you and Carrie—oh, why are you both so good?" with a despairing inflection in my voice. "How you must both ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... said the broker, with an airy English inflection. "I suppose it's your hard hat, as much as anything. We all wear fur caps in ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... supposed to embody, he had before him only the skeleton of a sentence, from which the flesh and sinews had disappeared; the tone and rhythm of the words were wanting, as were also the indications of gender, number, person, and inflection, which distinguish the different parts of speech and determine the varying relations between them. Besides this, in order to understand for himself and to guess the meaning of the author, the reader was obliged to translate ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and would have been supposed to have missed its aim, had it not copied the mien, the walk, the dress, the motions of the face of those whom it exhibited. Now parody is an imitation of this kind; it is a change of serious to burlesque, by a slight variation of words, inflection of voice, or an imperceptible art of mimickry. Parody is to poetry, as a masque to a face. As the tragedies of Eschylus, of Sophocles, and of Euripides were much in fashion, and were known by memory ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... declension in three genders, but more than this, it had a double set of trigeneric inflexions, Definite and Indefinite, Strong and Weak, just like that which makes the beginner's despair in German."[404] Verbs were conjugated without auxiliaries; and as there was no particular inflection to indicate the future, the present was used instead, a very indifferent substitute, which did not contribute much to the clearness of the phrase. Degrees of comparison in the adjectives were marked, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... if you read much at a time, as the later Kerry essays do not, but nothing that he has written recalls so completely to my senses the man as he was in daily life; and as I read, there are moments when every line of his face, every inflection of his voice, grows so clear in memory that I cannot realize that he is dead. He was no nearer when we walked and talked than now while I read these unarranged, unspeculating pages, wherein the only life he loved with his whole heart reflects itself as in the still water of a pool. Thought comes ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... loud, stereotyped tone, giving the last word a strong upward inflection, suggestive of a final ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... moment the door had opened to him the "glittering woman" had been receding into remote and ever remoter distances, for the Helen Merival before him was as simple, candid, and cordial as his own sister. Her voice had the home inflection; she displayed neither paint nor powder; her hair was plainly brushed—beautiful hair it was, too—and her dress was lovely and in ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... moment she looked doubtful; but the inflection of breeding in his voice, the wholesome, lean face and humorous eyes, reassured her. A smile hovered about the corners of ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... the truth to strike home to his hearers; but if the bird is watched, he will be seen to be picking and hopping about on the branch which serves him as a pulpit, snapping up a bug or a seed here and there. Yet his discourse goes steadily on, by the half hour, or hour, sometimes with a rising inflection, as after a question, sometimes the falling, as having given an irrefutable answer, himself. Once the idea that the bird is preaching has entered a listener's mind, he can never shake ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the greatest master of the anecdote this generation has known. He claimed the humorous story as an American invention, and one that has remained at home. His public speeches were little mosaics in the finesse of their art; and the intricacies of inflection, insinuation, jovial innuendo which Mark Twain threw into his gestures, his implicative pauses, his suggestive shrugs and deprecative nods—all these are hopelessly volatilized and disappear entirely from the printed copy of his ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... taken the plunge and said her say, but the last words are spoken with sinking inflection, followed instantly by a sinking heart. He makes no answer whatever. She dares not look up into his face to see the effect of her stab. He stands there silent only an instant; then raises his cap, turns, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... considerable shrewdness frequently remarked that Stan was an awful ass, but he could paint some. This was the common last analysis, the degree of qualifying favor being measured in each case by the comparative pause between the last two words and the accent and inflection upon the ultimate. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... I did"—still with the sarcastic inflection which all the children, and Anne especially, hated. It flicked on the raw. "Obey me ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the two had never been alone together even for a quarter of an hour; they had scarcely had a word in confidence, and in consequence he had been forced to derive what comfort he could from a chance look, a smile, some inflection of her voice. Even at night, after camp was pitched, it had been little better, for the thin walls of her canvas shelter afforded little privacy, and, being mindful of appearances, he had never permitted himself to be alone with her very long at a time—only long enough, in fact, to make ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... are these: First, That the noun means is necessarily singular as well as plural, so that one cannot with propriety use the singular form, mean, to signify that by which an end is attained; Second, That the subjective mood, to which he himself had previously given all the tenses without inflection, is not different in form from the indicative, except in the present tense. With regard to the later point, I have shown, in its proper place, that he taught erroneously, both before and after he changed his opinion; and concerning the former, the most that can be proved by quotation, is, that ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the Major better he would have been aware that what he meant to say was that he did not wish to know, but he did not detect the inflection of his voice, and went on—"They say he showed the white feather. If it is the same man, I was at school with him, and unless he has improved since then, I am sure I have no wish to ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... two hours every morning and afternoon little Miss Hitty worried her innocent soul over conjugations and declensions and particles, as perseveringly as any professor could have desired. But the dreadful part of the lessons to Hitty was the recitation after tea; no matter how well she knew every inflection of a verb, every termination of a noun, her father's cold, gray eye, fixed on her for an answer, dispelled all kinds of knowledge, and, for at least a week, every lesson ended in tears. However, there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... this calmly as his carriage, Miss Carstairs. See what a week of New York has done for him. Where did he disappear to—did you notice? A great day it has been"—in the rising inflection of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... harping on death I despise so much," he remarked with emphasis of gesture as well as of speech—the inclined head and body, the right hand lightly placed upon the listener's knee, the abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all so characteristic of him—-"this idle and often cowardly as well as ignorant harping! Why should we not change like everything else? In fiction, in poetry, in so much of both, French as well as English, and, I am told, in American art and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... sorry—really," said he. But he said it with the London inflection, which plainly implies: "I'm nothing of ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... go to meeting with me this afternoon, Mabel? Come; this is your last day here; do go once before you leave the White Mountains." "What do you do in 'meeting'?" asked the gay, beautiful, "High Church" New York belle, with just a shade of contemptuous inflection in her voice. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... prominent blue eyes behind invisible pince-nez. Her face was long, like a sheep's, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... human word. Coming to us in the sweet accents of love, it may lure us from paths of rectitude to shameful ignominy and wreck our life with sorrow and remorse, or it may spur us on in noblest efforts to acquire glory and honor, here or hereafter. According to the inflection of the voice a word may strike terror into the bravest heart or lull a timid child to peaceful slumber. The word of an agitator may rouse the passions of a mob and impel it to awful bloodshed, as in the French Revolution, where dictatorial mandates of mob-rule killed and exiled at pleasure, ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... as I adore the works of the great masters. I would as soon have thought of plucking a virgin from the canvas—a Venus from her pedestal, as of appropriating one of them. Enrica Guinigi"—there was a tender inflection in Count Marescotti's voice whenever he named her, an involuntary bending of the head that was infinitely touching—"Enrica Guinigi is an exception. I could have loved her—ah! she is worthy of all love! Her soul is as rare as her person. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... lacking is sentence accent and variety in the inflection of phrases. Miss Keller pronounces each word as a foreigner does when he is still labouring with the elements of a sentence, or as children sometimes read in school when they have to ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the uses of perversity," he said, with inimitable inflection. For a moment his wife eyed ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... account for the change that's come over them. For four years now they've been at us to let their wings grow again. And for four years we've been saying no in every possible tone of voice and with every possible inflection. I've had no idea that Peachy would ever get over it. My God, you fellows have no idea what I've been through with her in regard to this question of flying. Why, one night three months ago, she had an awful attack ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... from it as an insult offered to his intellect and his breeding alike? Indeed, the hope of effecting good showed very thin. The danger of provoking evil bulked very big. What was his duty? He suffered an agony of indecision. And again with a slight inflection of mockery in his tone, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Christmas Carol in a prelude and three scenes. Scene first, Marley's Ghost. Marley was dead, to begin with." These words, or words very similar, were spoken in a husky voice, not remarkable in any way, and with the English cadence in articulation, a rising inflection at the end of every few words. They were spoken with perfect simplicity, and the introductory description was read with good sense, and conveyed a fine relish upon the reader's part of the things described. There was nothing formal, no effort ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... are still unfriendly," Dave suggested, the inflection of his voice making the statement ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... and the slight change of inflection as she said "the packer" had not quite the effect she had intended. Stirling himself had once labored with his hands, and, what was more, afterward had a good deal to bear on that account. He was not particularly ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... elle est charmante!" cried the actress, with an inflection of irony in her strident voice. "Miladi, il faut absolument que nous nous connaissions. Je connais votre chere mere depuis si longtemps! A Paris, l'hiver passe c'etait une amitie des ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... moment before he replied, after which he remarked quietly, and with a peculiar inflection of tone that added deep meaning to his words, while at the same time it betrayed the fact that there was some curious reason to ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... wholly had she depended on her mother and her sister for her opinions, almost her sensations. She took account of everything he did and said, pondering it, and trying to make out exactly what he meant, to the inflection of a syllable, the slightest movement or gesture. In this way she began for the first time to form ideas which she had not derived from her family, and they were none the less her own because they were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... opened the door for the ladies; it was the marquis who said good night with an inflection which gave it a new meaning; it was the marquis who intruded into madame's thoughts, causing her partly to forget the letter and the broken ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... construction now so common in the popular dialects. Strange as it may appear at first sight, it has a deep foundation in the grammatical sentiment, if I may say so, of the Arabic language, which always ascribed a more or less nominal character to the aorist. Hence its inflection by Raf' (u), Nasb (a) and Jazm (absence of final vowel), corresponding to the nominative, accusative and oblique case of the noun. Moreover in the old language itself already another preposition ("li") was joined to the aorist. The less ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... hasn't tried to mix in here, and meddle with you?" Dick asked, helping himself to a piece of pie. You know the tone; it had just that inflection of surprised sympathy which makes you tell your troubles without that reservation which a more neutral listener ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... the teeth of which a small stick was rubbed forcibly backward and forward. With these, rude as they were, very good time was preserved with the vocal performers, who sat around them, and by all the natives as they sat, in the inflection of their bodies, or the movements of their limbs. After the lapse of a little time, three individuals leaped up, and danced around for a few minutes; then, at a concerted signal of the master of ceremonies, the music ceased and they retired to their ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... almost immediately. She had noticed the inflection in her husband's voice, and knew that it would not be safe to retire to the boudoir; like all women who are compelled to study their husbands' characters in order to have their own way, and whose business it is to know exactly how far they can go without endangering ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Syrians, the Phoenicians, and the Arabs, and are "all marked," as the editor has observed elsewhere, "by common features; such appear in their language, their literature, their modes of thinking, social organisation, and religious belief. Their language is poor in inflection, has few or no compound verbs or substantives, has next to no power of expressing abstract ideas, and is of simple primitive structure or syntax. Their literature has neither the breadth nor the flow of that of Greece or Rome, but it is instinct with a passion ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... curvity^, curvation^; incurvature^, incurvity^; incurvation^; bend; flexure, flexion, flection^; conflexure^; crook, hook, bought, bending; deflection, deflexion^; inflection, inflexion^; concameration^; arcuation^, devexity^, turn, deviation, detour, sweep; curl, curling; bough; recurvity^, recurvation^; sinuosity &c 248. kink. carve, arc, arch, arcade, vault, bow, crescent, half-moon, lunule^, horseshoe, loop, crane neck; parabola, hyperbola; helix, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... instructor said, "Miss Allan?" with the usual dreadful interrogative inflection, and Lila shook her head. She slid back into her seat with her cheeks as ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... attorney-at-law?" said the visitor, his tone of voice and inflection making his words at once a question, an assertion and ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... upon her ailments, who appears at the breakfast table with a depressed and melancholy visage, who regales us with an account of how poorly she slept, the nightmares she experienced, the pain she suffers, and who puts into her inflection the poison of self-pity is an emissary of Satan. I have seen a whole family's happiness for the day destroyed by the meaningless ranting of a hysterical woman. Life is hard enough for all, for each of us to at least wish ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... instinct born of her own rejected passion, which caused her to read in the beautiful girl's face all that lay hidden behind the pale, impassive mask. That same second sight made her understand Merlin's hints and allusions. She caught every inflection of his ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of you, I don't see all of you, but instead a particular gesture, or I hear an inflection of voice that is too familiar to be borne. Now I see mother's ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... erbout one y'ar ago, Bas," came the even and implacable inflection of the other, "thet us two stud up hyar tergither, an' a heap hes done come ter pass since then—don't ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... us, "Milton's general practice is not to double the s; thus, Nereus wrinkled look, Glaucus spell. The necessities of metre would naturally constrain to such forms. In a possessive followed by the word sake or the word side, dislike to [of] the double sibilant makes us sometimes drop the inflection. In addition to 'for righteousness' sake' such phrases as 'for thy name sake' and 'for mercy sake,' are allowed to pass; bedside is normal and riverside nearly so." The necessities of metre need not be taken into account with a poet like Milton, who never was fairly in his element till ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... poetry as a melodious and enriched expression of a man's own feelings is in its infancy here. The new poets had to find their own language, to enrich with borrowings from other tongues the stock of words suitable for poetry which the dropping of inflection had left to English. Wyatt was at the beginning of the process, and apart from a gracious and courtly temper, his work has, it must be confessed, hardly more than an antiquarian interest. Surrey, ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Quinton Edge, with that well-remembered, fine-gentleman inflection. "I am almost sorry that I interfered, but this young lady would have it so, and a woman's will is always law. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... low, sweet "quee-o," sometimes hardly above a whisper. When everything is quiet about him one may often hear an extraordinary performance. Beginning the usual call of "quee-o," in a tender and mournful tone, he will repeat it again and again at short intervals, every time with more pathetic inflection, till the wrought-up listener cannot resist the feeling that the next sound must be a burst of tears. Although his notes seem melancholy to hearers, however, the beautiful bird himself is far from expressing that emotion in ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... trance. He loved music, and understood it passing well. He had heard all the rare voices which Paris prided itself in the possession of, but he thought he had never known what music was till now. His heart throbbed in sympathy with every inflection of the voice of Amelie, which went through him like a sweet spell of enchantment. It was the voice of a disembodied spirit singing in the language of earth, which changed at last into a benediction and good-night for the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... she looked doubtful; but the inflection of breeding in his voice, the wholesome, lean face and humorous eyes, reassured her. A smile hovered about the ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... well as plural, so that one cannot with propriety use the singular form, mean, to signify that by which an end is attained; Second, That the subjective mood, to which he himself had previously given all the tenses without inflection, is not different in form from the indicative, except in the present tense. With regard to the later point, I have shown, in its proper place, that he taught erroneously, both before and after he changed his opinion; and concerning the former, the most that can be proved by quotation, is, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... progress would be curious and instructive. What impediments, in the attainment of a darling purpose, human ingenuity and patience are able to surmount; how much may be done by strenuous and solitary efforts; how the mind, unassisted, may draw forth the principles of inflection and arrangement; may profit by remote, analogous, and latent similitudes, would be forcibly illustrated by my example; but the theme, however attractive, must, for ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... whole country vivid to her. Lucy was very grateful to him because he drew her mind away from the topic that constantly absorbed it. Though he never expressed his sympathy in so many words, she felt it in every inflection of his voice. His ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... nothing could weaken; and in him was not the smallest lineament, of body or of mind, to wake a response in her. He was powerless to increase her happiness by a hair's breadth. Her nerves would never answer to the inflection of his voice, or the touch of his hand. How could such things ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... next lot'll tempt you, I'm sure! Lot 33, a magnificent and very finely executed dramatic group out of the "Merchant of Venice," Othello in the act of smothering Desdemona, both nearly life-size. (Assist., with a sardonic inflection. "Group 'ere, Gen'lm'n!") What shall we say for this great work by ROCCOCIPPI, Gentlemen? A hundred guineas, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... she stopped calling him Mr. Ryan and addressed him as Casey Ryan instead, with a little teasing inflection in her voice. Once Casey happened to mention Lund, and when he saw her look of surprise he explained that he drove a stage out of Lund, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... called, after Sir Walter Scott, the "big bow wow" style required for the part of Lady Constance in Shakespeare's history. He knew that he could find in the provinces many veteran players who knew every gesture and inflection of voice associated by tradition with the part; but he was afraid that they would remind Londoners of Richardson's show, and get Faulconbridge laughed at. Then he thought of Adelaide Gisborne. For some hours after the idea ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... to say ladylike, elocution of the Highland chief and the indescribable rising inflection and ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hard as I pronounce it. And so with a great many other words, that are softened and sweetened, and made almost poetical in their sound by the least bit of inflection. How surprised and pleased English ladies would be to hear you speak! Oh, I beg your pardon—I did not mean to—I—I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... seem to know it so dashed well, what, what?" said Gussie. And, reminded apparently by the word "what" of the word "Wattle," he repeated the latter some sixteen times with a rising inflection. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... there was an indecisive moment that mounted toward panic. Beardsley watched her churning effort to control it. She said quickly, an inflection of fear in her voice: "Mr. Beardsley, if it really matters—my whereabouts that night—you'll understand my reluctance to say it before! I was with Jeff. Truly! I'm sure ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... of these troubles afflicted Lady Maud, and when he spoke to her now and then, between the acts, she felt his sympathy for her in every word and inflection. ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... I read in the press of the verbal clash between this Jefferson Davis and Douglas in the Senate. With an insulting inflection Davis had said: "I have a declining respect for platforms. I would sooner have an honest man on any sort of a rickety platform you could construct than to have a man I did not trust, on the best ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... could not be ignored. Gertrude had stopped once to talk to her and to admire her collection of shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same inflection. The meeting with her had become one of the frightfully unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching before him an interminable vista of days, weeks, years—one deadly sameness of hard work, long hours, scanty pay, poor living, growing debts—and inextricably mixed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... word he could have spoken just then, but it was all that was necessary. It told her everything. It was an outburst from a heart too full of emotion to grope after speech, the cry of a man for the One Woman who alone can call forth an inflection more eloquent than phrases and poetry. And, as she came into his outstretched arms as straight and direct as a homing pigeon, they closed about her in a convulsive grip that held her straining to him, almost crushing her in the tempest of ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... remarked: "Mr. Fores, what do you mean by talking to me like that?" But she raised her eyes and her crimson cheeks for one timid instant, and dropped them. His voice had overcome her. With a single phrase, with a mere inflection, he had changed the key of the interview. And the glance at him had exposed her to the appeal of his face, more powerful than ten thousand logical arguments and warnings. His face proved that he was a sympathetic, wistful, worried fellow-creature—and miraculously, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Hugh; but you have never been cruel to me before; it is cruel to doubt my love because my duty compels me to give you up. Ah," with a sudden passionate inflection in her voice, "do you know of what self-sacrifice a woman can be capable? for your dear sake, Hugh, I am content to suffer all my life, to stand aside and be nothing to you—yes, even to see another woman your wife, if only you will be brave and true to ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... from Nina's lips. "I heard him making love to you! I was standing near and heard every tone, every inflection of his voice! I saw how he looked at you!" And so crazed was she by jealousy that her face became distorted and almost ugly, if such a thing were possible, and her great eyes filled ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... of the unfortunate waif. Something drew her sympathy toward him, and she pitied him for the mother whom he had never known. In the adjoining room she could hear the voices of her own "childer," with their cultured inflection and language, which was theirs by inheritance and as unconsciously as were "Bony's" harsh tones and ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... the last question. Often and often we are asked, "Aren't you glad to get back to the food in America?" My answer is, "Rather," and it is to be spoken with a rising inflection. ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... words the pathos and misery which she had witnessed, yet she would hide nothing from the devoted comrade whom she knew Percy would trust absolutely. To him she repeated every word that Percy had uttered, described every inflection of his voice, those enigmatical phrases which she had not understood, and together they cheated one another into the belief that hope lingered somewhere ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... her knee and her chin on her hand and took that problem under deep consideration. Presently she looked up and answered, with a rising inflection ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... come in, and leave your coat there." She pointed to a chair and changed her inflection to a deprecatory laugh full of minute gasps. "This is really lovely—lovely. Why, Richard, you haven't been here for so long—no!—no!" The latter monosyllables served half as responses, half as periods, to some vague ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... thoughts, questioned the acumen of either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the next room and could not see him, told you that he had no sense of the absurd,—a throaty staccato, with never a downward inflection, trustfully striving to please. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... the language, if I may so call them, at once saw that it belongs to the great South African family Sichwana, Zulu, Kisawahili, Mbundo (Congoese), Fiote, and others, whose characteristics are polysyllabism, inflection by systematic prefixes, and an alliteration, the mystery of whose reciprocal letters is theoretically explained by a euphony in many cases unintelligible, like the modes of Hindu music, to the European ear.[FN16] ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of the Onondagas, walked back and forth in the space between the two groups, chanting a welcome. Like all Indian songs it was monotonous. Every line he uttered with emphasis and a rising inflection, the phrase "Haih-haih" which may be translated "Hail to thee!" or better, "All hail!" Nevertheless, under the moonlight in the wilderness and with rapt faces about him, it was deeply ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... calm, but very earnest; and there was in it some inflection or intonation which reminded me of the country girls I had known on the farm and at school. His was of a peculiarly sonorous and vibrant quality, its every tone so clear and distinct that it would have been worth a fortune to a public ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... Coming to us in the sweet accents of love, it may lure us from paths of rectitude to shameful ignominy and wreck our life with sorrow and remorse, or it may spur us on in noblest efforts to acquire glory and honor, here or hereafter. According to the inflection of the voice a word may strike terror into the bravest heart or lull a timid child to peaceful slumber. The word of an agitator may rouse the passions of a mob and impel it to awful bloodshed, as in the French ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... early age even let Greek alone. Her wonderful power of seizing on the genius of a language, and becoming for the time a foreigner in spirit, was noticed by all her teachers; her ear was so delicate that no subtile inflection ever escaped her, nor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... the true vocal expression will follow. One who has a fine appreciation of a piece of literature may, notwithstanding, read it very indifferently. Even in conversation where we are interpreting vocally our own thoughts and feelings, we sometimes misplace emphasis or employ the wrong inflection. How much more likely we are to fall into such errors when we attempt to interpret vocally from a book the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... promised to marry me. I shall be played with no longer. I have the license and here is the preacher. Come Mr. Tousley; come Jane. There are plenty of witnesses—more than enough," he added with a disagreeable inflection; and taking Jane Porter by the arm, he started to lead her ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... quality of paramount importance to the arguer is sincerity. This he must really possess if he is to be eminently successful. To feign it is almost impossible; some word or expression, some gesture or inflection of the voice, the very attitude of the insincere arguer will betray his real feelings. If he tries to arouse an emotion that he himself does not feel, his affectation will be apparent and his effort a failure. There are few things that an audience resents more than being tricked into ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... see Lily, too, and failed. She had been very gentle over the telephone, but, attuned as he was to every inflection of her voice, he had thought there was unhappiness in it. Almost despair. But she had pleaded ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the word in the CHART forcibly, and with the falling inflection, several times in succession; then drop the subvocal or aspirate sounds which precede or follow the vocal, and repeat the ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... to know and to have confidence in a gentle driver, and soon discovers how to secure for himself that which he desires, and to understand his surroundings and his duties. The tone, volume, and inflection of his master's voice indicate much, perhaps more than the words that are spoken. Soothing tones rather than words calm him if excited by fear or anger, and angry and excited tones tend to excite or anger him. In short, bad masters make ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... go on reading into June. For the sake of the finer effects (in "Copperfield" principally), I have changed from St. James's Hall to the Hanover Square Room. The latter is quite a wonderful room for sound, and so easy that the least inflection will tell anywhere in the place exactly as it leaves your lips; but I miss my dear old shilling galleries—six or eight hundred strong—with a certain roaring sea of response in them, that you have stood upon the beach of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... same time is to observe the talk between them, which has great interest for me. This pair were exceedingly talkative at first, uttering not only the usual musical three-syllable warble or call, which Lanier aptly calls the "heavenly word," but often soft twittering prattle, of varying inflection and irregular length, which was certainly the most interesting bird-talk I ever heard. When they could not see me they indulged in it more freely, with changing tones at different times, and after they became accustomed to the room ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... with a quizzical inflection which meant much. 'Look out for the millennium, Mr. Man—still, as a great favor, I'll charge you a fat fee if I ever find that fellow and can get anything out of him. But that's like promising to give you half of the first dollar ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... accent, inflection, and quality of the ghost's voice were identical with that of the living man, and this became still more striking when, a little later, Jacob returned to his seat, and the 'Count,' his visitor, called for the Polish national ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... perfect ease in conversation who, touching pen to paper, exhibit the affected primness commonly ascribed to the maiden aunt. They have not learned that this is a place where words must speak for themselves without comment of inflection, gesture of the hand, or interpreting smile. Here to be unaffected one must take thought. As on the stage a natural hue must be obtained by unnatural means, so in the writing of letters one must a trifle overdo in order ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... a member cried, her inflection seeming to imply that Wilbur's crime was explained by his surname. "Wilbur Minafer! It's the queerest thing I ever heard! To think of her taking Wilbur Minafer, just because a man any woman would like a thousand times better was a little wild one night ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Monastier; it seemed to them frolicsome and racy, like a page of Pickwick; and they all got it carefully by heart, as a stand-by, I presume, for winter evenings. I have tried it since then with every sort of accent and inflection, but I seem to lack the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some minutes had passed, the rattle of the newspaper and the measured ticking of the clock being the only disturbing sounds, "Father," he repeated, this time with a falling inflection. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... gushingly. "But all his letters were in writing, you know. Such wonderful letters!" She raised her blue eyes toward the ceiling in a naive rapture. "So tender, and so—er—interesting!" Somehow, the inflection on the last word did not altogether ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... waiting to see you, teacher," she said, with a peculiarly dark inflection on the word gentleman. "Oh, he's got on an awful interesting look!" snapped out Madeline, with a spiteful little laugh; "and a suit of light clothes, and a new spring overcoat, and he looked at me as though I was a pane of window-glass, and he says, 'Oh—ah—yes—is Miss Hungerford ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... laughed in an explosive breath of relief. The inflection of the laugh made Pete go red and look challengingly from face to face, with the result that ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... dimness of the room;" "a fierce intimate whispering;" "a look that was intimate;" "the noise of the city was intimate," etc. Who has not heard, "The idea!" "What's the idea?" "Is that the idea?" "Yes, that's the idea," with increased inflection at each repetition. And who is without a friend who at some time or another has not sprung "meticulous" upon him? Another example is afforded by the endemic use of "of sorts" which struck London while the writer was in that city a few years ago. Whence it came no one knew, but ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... It was he who added the words, as though he had read them in my own mind; and there was a slight, sarcastic rising inflection of the voice at the end of the sentence, as if he put it to ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... called that voice whose soft inflection had always thrilled him, but never as it did now as, turning the handle, he entered his ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... statement in a voice which he strove to divest of a triumphant inflection. No one said "Rats," though Clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Tamtonian language forms its plurals most irregularly, but usually by an initial inflection. It has a certain crude and primitive grammar, but in point of orthoepy is extremely difficult. With our letters I can hardly hope to give an accurate conception of its pronunciation. As nearly as possible I write its words ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... word which has been corrupted to Mohawk. It is the third person plural, in the sixth "transition," of the Algonkin word mowa, which means "to eat," but which is only used of food that has had life. Literally it means "they eat them;" but the force of the verb and of the pronominal inflection suffices to give to the word, when used as an appellative, the meaning of "those who eat men," or, in other words, "the Cannibals." That the English, with whom the Caniengas were always fast friends, ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... you say ghosts, Harry?" I noted a strange inflection in his voice. He stood still and peered into the fog bank. His stop was sudden and suggestive. Just then a passing taxicab almost caught us and we were compelled to dodge quickly. Hobart ducked out of the way and I side-stepped in another ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... was consuming him. He went furiously down the hall and struck at the door as though it were a man who had stirred his anger by standing in his path. "Come in," invited a woman's voice in Spanish, the inflection distinctly that of old Mexico. In ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... the plunge and said her say, but the last words are spoken with sinking inflection, followed instantly by a sinking heart. He makes no answer whatever. She dares not look up into his face to see the effect of her stab. He stands there silent only an instant; then raises his cap, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... never! Every lineament of his face, every inflection of his voice, as well as every act of his life, and every trait of his character, forbade the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "Slave Songs of the United States" may be found an exposition of Daddy Jack's dialect as complete as any that can be given here. A key to the dialect may be given very briefly. The vocabulary is not an extensive one—more depending upon the manner, the form of expression, and the inflection, than upon the words employed. It is thus an admirable vehicle for story-telling. It recognizes no gender, and scorns the use of the plural number except accidentally. "'E" stands for "he" "she" or "it," and "dem" may allude to one thing, or may include a thousand. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... grab—see?" he went on, with a new inflection of intimacy in his murmur. He was looking straight at ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... every moment stand a temple four-square to God? And in that morning, with its buoyant sunlight, was I any dearer to the Heart of the World than now?" "My beloved is mine, and I am his," she sang over and over again, with all varied inflection and profuse tune. How gently all the winter-wrapt things bent toward her then! into what relation with her had they grown! how this common dependence was the spell of their intimacy! how at one with Nature had she become! how all the night and the silence and the forest seemed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... she returned with a warning inflection of literalness, when he would have welcomed satire, anger, or any reprisal of words as something live and warm; something on which his mind could ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... fair-haired young girl, who, leaving the footman to gather up a number of parcels, turned to the chauffeur. Even in giving an order, there was a winning grace in her lack of self-consciousness, and her voice was fresh in its timbre, enthusiastic in its inflection. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... never so complicated. With him, it was either, "She loves me," or, "She does not;" he never tormented himself, after the fashion of women, by wondering what this look meant, or that inflection, and fearing that the innermost recesses of his mind might be guessed from a ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... great friend of yours—the Marquis de Sogrange?" she asked, with a certain inflection in her tone which Peter was ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... your pardon," he said, his voice keyed to a curious inflection. "I was under the impression that you had—that, in fact, you changed a cheque for ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... conversation entertaining. She appealed to his artistic perceptions and his intelligence, and it must be admitted that she laid herself out to do so. She said nothing of any consequence, but she knew how to make a glance or a changed inflection expressive. He was sorry when she left him, but she smiled at him before ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... mustard," he murmured sotto voce, "and there goes another bright day-dream." Unknown to himself, he spoke directly into the transmitter, and Shirley, clinging half hopefully to the receiver at the other end of the wire, heard him— caught every inflection of the words, commonplace enough, but freighted with the pathos of Bryce's ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... Highness," and she went, but her inflection showed that she knew herself to be in the right. Nita was too good a servant to ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... of his subject precluded the dramatic suggestion to be looked for in the Pickwick trial, thus rendering comparison inapposite. Nevertheless one was bound to contrast them. Thackeray's features were impassive, and his voice knew no inflection. But his elocution in other respects was perfect, admirably distinct and impressive from its complete ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Leffingwells in the bed at the far end of the room, talking! Perhaps he had not been asleep more than an hour, and it was natural that they should lie awake a while, talking about the coming of this young stranger or any other event of the day that interested them. Then he caught a tone or an inflection that he did not remember to have been used by either of the Leffingwells. A third signal of alarm was promptly registered ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... retorted Mr. Connors, flushing a little. "But, for God's sake, are you going to sit here like a wart on a dead dog an' wait for 'em?" he demanded with a rising inflection. "Do you reckon yo're running a dance, or a party, or something ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... neither conjugation nor inflection; and the tenses, or times of action or passion, are limited to three; the present, the past, and the future. The present is signified simply by the verb, as go lai, I come; the past, is expressed by the particle leo, as go lai leo, I did come, or I have ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... instead of the gray gloom of an instant before. His chilled sensibilities had probably been touched and quickened by the warm contiguity of his little companion through the medium of her hand, as it stirred within his own, or some inflection of her voice that set his memory ringing and chiming with forgotten sounds. While that music lasted, the old man was alive and happy. And there were seasons, it might be, happier than even these, when Pansie had been kissed and put to bed, and Grandsir Dolliver ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the stewardess brought her a pillow, handing it without speaking and waiting significantly. She took it in silence, then got out her purse, a meagre-looking one, and put a little coin into the woman's hand. As she did so she said, "Thank you," and the least little foreign inflection—a lingering difficulty with the "th"—gave Noel the last assurance that he needed. How unforgotten the voice was! He believed he would almost have recognized it ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... For one instant the coldly even voice had a tiny inflection in it, as of humour, though he stifled it immediately, as he turned to Meryl and said, gravely, with a bow, "Miss Pym, I think?... A letter has come for you from Edwardstown by runner. I brought it on in case you might wish to send a reply, and to enquire ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... or send it flowing on In pleasant waves? Can draw soft tears, or concentrate them hard To form a base whereon the martyr stands To take his leap to Heaven? What is this sound that, in Niagara's roar Brings us to Sinai; Or in the infant's prayer to Him, "Our Father?" That by a small inflection wakes the world, And sends its squadroned armies on To victory or death; Or bids it, peaceful, rest, and grow, and build? That reassures the frighted babe; or starts The calm philosopher, without a word? That, in ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... season to plough the reapen fields, and he had always taken pleasure in his straight furrows; as straight as though measured by a rule on the level lands; and of the skill with which on the hilly ground Orlando and Rinaldo moved so skillfully, turning in so small a space, answering to every inflection of his voice, taking such care not to break a twig of the fruit trees, or bend a shoot of the vines, or graze ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... stylish store where she works, Case and Rosenstein's. And Gladys, she's awfully stylish, too. She looks as if she'd just stepped out of a fashion plate." And something in her inflection suggested even to Peggy that from Rosetta Muriel's standpoint, she had failed to live up to her opportunities. Certainly in a gingham frock two seasons old, and faded by frequent washings, Peggy did not remotely suggest those large-eyed ladies of willowy figure, ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... father and daughter together was evidence enough of the strong affection that bound them. The tone in which he had spoken to his son had been brusque and crisp, but when he addressed her, his voice took on a softer inflection, his eyes betrayed the place ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... quiet, level manner, almost without inflection, and with his eyes again closed—very much as if he were reading ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... saying yes was one of his chief weapons of annihilation. He had a peculiar, taunting inflection which he could give to it, upon occasion, which caused prickles of flesh upon the victim. To say that Miss Whitmore was not utterly quenched argues well for her courage. She only gasped, as though treated to an unexpected dash of cold water, and ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... color this, to run into my tapestry, gay with silver lace, coquettish fans, and high-heeled Spanish slippers. Eighteen years old, married, and dead; and muy querida, much beloved! My thoughts stayed behind, as I moved on, and the words, with their soft inflection, would recur dreamily to me, again and again—muy querida; ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... sentiment may control the connotation of a word. A word or phrase may have a double or triple connotation, and depend upon vocal inflection, upon gesture, upon the words with which it is linked, upon the experience of speaker or hearer, upon time, place, and external fact, or upon other forces outside it for the sense in which it is to be taken. You may be called "old dog" in an insulting ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... does he do yesterday? He unfastens the ketch on the back-porch gate. We got a gate on the back porch, see." (This frequent "see" which interlarded Elmer's verbiage was not used in an interrogatory way, but as a period, and by way of emphasis. His voice did not take the rising inflection as he uttered it.) "What does he do, he opens it. I come home, and the wife says to me: 'Say, you better get busy and fix a new ketch on that gate to the back porch. Little Elmer, first thing I know, he'd got it open to-day and was crawling out almost.' Say, can you beat ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... the Duchess of Argyle. Miss Greenfield happened to be present, and I begged leave to present her, giving a slight sketch of her history. I was pleased with the kind and easy affability with which the Duchess of Sutherland conversed with her, betraying by no inflection of voice, and nothing in air or manner, the great lady talking with the poor girl. She asked all her questions with as much delicacy, and made her request to hear her sing with as much consideration and politeness, as if she had been addressing ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... told her story quickly and clearly, without a quiver or an inflection of pain in her voice. It was necessary, for the Mother did not know it all, and listened with concentrated attention. But before it was ended she had made up her mind what ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... She understood this somber inflection, and said: "He 'ordered' you? Yes, I see; is your master always as hard to please as to-day, Henry? He certainly ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... characters, should have been chosen to mark some unity of plan, rather than some one character of functional importance, which would have served at least equally well any such hypothetical purpose. On the other hand, as Darwin remarks, "we care not how trifling a character may be—let it be the mere inflection of the angle of the jaw, the manner in which an insect's wing is folded, whether the skin be covered with hair or feathers—if it prevail throughout many and different species, especially those having very different habits of life, it assumes high value; for we can account for its presence ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... she was quite restless, resistive, whined and suddenly appeared startled or distressed with no occasion for this reaction in the environment. Rarely she was suddenly assaultive. When attempts were made to examine her, she was frequently mute or would repeat the question with a rising inflection, not getting anywhere, or would say, "What shall I say," or "I, I——" never finishing her sentence. After orientation questions she might say "This is—this is—this is——" all this, together with a rather perplexed appearance, gave the impression of considerable bewilderment, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... with a curious hardness in her inflection; but her face softened suddenly. "Larry, while you only talked we didn't mind; but no one fancied you would have done this. Yes, I'm angry with you. I have been home 'most a month, and you never rode over to see me; while now you ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... recitative than singing, the measure had, nevertheless, certain divisions or pauses, as if to mark a kind of rhythm. It was brought to a close at regularly recurring intervals, and ended always in the same way, and on the same note, with a rising inflection of the voice. When the song was finished, a certain surprise and expectancy in the listeners kept them silent. This seemed to trouble the singer, who looked round with a comical air of inquiring disappointment. Thus reminded, the audience were ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... sinned, and the heathen are the instruments whereby the Lord hath willed to chastise them," said the messenger, with that peculiar nasal inflection of voice, so characteristic of the "unco' guid." "The great sachem, Miantonimo, chief of the Narragansetts, hath plotted to cut off the Lord's people, just after the time of harvest, to slay utterly old and young, both maids and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... same condition," said Reine, "neither better nor worse, and, with the illness which afflicts him, the best I can hope for is that he may remain in that condition. But," continued she, with a slight inflection of irony; "doubtless it is not for the purpose of inquiring after my father's health that you have come ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... good do they think that will do them?" Mrs. Oglethorpe's face and inflection betrayed no sympathy with the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... House can comprehend. Woke up, hearing familiar voice. 'Twas the voice of Prince ARTHUR, I heard him complain; something about Ground-rents in London. Not, quite his subject; voice, too, didn't seem to come from Treasury Bench. But no mistaking it; same tone; same inflection. Now I come to think of it, more like way he used to talk before he came to govern Ireland. Opened eyes; looked down; behold! it was brother GERALD, opposing STUART's Motion on Land Tax. Very odd; think I'll go to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... the lawyer with a rising inflection. "Do you wish to spoil everything? Do you want ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... one stage to another is in fact constantly taking place under our very noses. Even Chinese is not free from combinatory forms, and the more highly developed among the combinatory languages show the clearest traces of incipient inflection. The difficulty is not to show the transition of one stratum of speech into another, but rather to draw a sharp line between the different strata. The same difficulty was felt in Geology, and led Sir Charles Lyell to ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... significance, the inflection which Philip gave to it as he gazed at Pierre, stood for the one tremendous question which, for a space, possessed the mind of each. Pierre shrugged his shoulders. He could not answer it. And as he shrugged his shoulders he shivered, and at a sudden blast of the wind against the cabin door ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... within the chamber, and to which we of the biped race attach so awful an importance, lay a large gray cat, curled in a ball, and dozing with half-shut eyes, and ears that now and then denoted, by a gentle inflection, the jar of a louder or nearer sound than usual upon her lethargic senses. The dying woman did not at first attend to the entrance either of Dummie or the female at the foot of the bed, but she turned herself round towards the child, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brow. "I wish you could have seen Wanda," she said. "The girl is quite a beauty. Half wild, of course, but with a sort of barbaric splendour about her that dazzles and bewilders one. You will understand when you see her, why the Indians speak the word 'pale-face' with a contemptuous inflection." ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... yet, watching her, I could not believe, even now, that she was false! My state was truly a pitiable one; I could have cried out in sheer anguish. With her long lashes partly lowered, she watched me awhile, then spoke; and her voice was music which seemed to mock me; every inflection of that elusive accent ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... South America!" came flatly upon her announcement. It lacked the upward ring, and his eye did not kindle, his voice did not warm. He himself felt the fictitious inflection, for he added hastily, with happier effect: "It's a wonderful chance, dearest, isn't it?" His voice by then had gained in heartiness, and his smile, always worshipful when turned on her, contained this time something of apology. So close were they, though, in thought, spoken or unspoken, that ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... moment he saw her, "is it thou? Welcome, descendant of a line of kings. Would'st like some cider?" He spoke the word "cider" like the Indians, with a rising inflection on the last syllable. It was an offer no Indian could resist, and the squaw answered simply in the affirmative. From a pitcher of the grateful beverage, which shortly before had been brought into the room, and which, indeed, suggested the offer, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... speech; vote, choice, election, suffrage. Associated Words: phonology, phonetics, phonation, phonography, oral, vocal, non-vocal, aphonic, arsis, ictus, vocalize, modulate, modulation, inflection. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... came very low, and somewhat piping, too, and broken—an eerie sort of voice it was, of brittle and erratic timbre and undulant inflection. Yet it was beautiful. It had the ring of childhood in it, though the ring was not pure golden, and at times fell echoless. The spirit of its utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... but a slight sound came from the lake, and he stayed. It was merely the cry of the night bird, calling to its mate, one would have said, but Robert's attention was attracted by an odd inflection in it, a strain that seemed familiar. He listened with the utmost attention, and when it came a second time, he was so sure that his ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... guess you didn't notice I was in my bare feet, did you? Well, I am. It's a savin'. The rest are nothing but girls—I'm all the boy we've got. Boys are tough. But I don't s'pose you ever was one, so you don't know?" There was an upward inflection to the voice of the Little Blue Overalls. An answer ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... with a warning cantankerous inflection, firmly and almost brutally reproving this conversational delinquency of George's. "Rule it out, young man! We don't want any of that sort of mountebanking in England. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... ornithologists have made the discovery that it is a link between the geese and swans, but is more goose than swan. It is a beautiful white bird, with bright red bill and legs, the wings tipped with black; and has a loud musical cry of three notes, the last prolonged note with a falling inflection. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... began in an emotionless inflection which fell in startling contrast with the surcharged vehemence of the other. Then he halted in the midst of his sentence as Karyl wheeled passionately ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... and histrionic genius. Nat Goodwin and Henry Dixey were the two comedians whose imitations of Mr. Irving's peculiarities of voice and manner were most widely accepted as lifelike, while intensely amusing. But neither of them could approach Field in catching the subtile inflection of Henry Irving's "Naw! Naw!" and "Ah-h! Ah-h!" with which the great actor prefixed so many of his lines. With a daring that would have been impertinent in another, Field gave imitations of Mr. Irving in Louis XI and Hamlet in his presence and to his intense enjoyment. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... read in a calm even monotone, without inflection, but with many pauses, whilst I watched every syllable and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... the door, ushering them in with a wave of the hand, and taking his seat tranquilly amid the dead, embarrassed silence: had imagined him facing the Royal Duke and asking, "Shall we cut?" with a voice of the politest inflection. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the fakirs of the Taksali Gate were like when they talked among themselves, and copied the very inflection of their lewd disciples. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... care—perhaps unconsciously. Her wonderful hair was lifted and wound carelessly upon her head; her beauty had been dimmed by tears. She was, however, quite controlled and showed little emotion at their meeting; but she looked very weary and every inflection of her pleasant, clear voice revealed it. She spoke as one who had suffered much and laboured under great loss of vitality. He found this to be indeed the case, for it seemed that she ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... reflected in their clothes, but only as such differences would be apparent in real life. Indeed, the aim today is to mimic reality in externals, precisely as the real characters themselves are impersonated in every shade of thought and artistic inflection of speech. There are, to be sure, exceptions to this ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... queried Uncle Terry, suddenly interested. "Telly's daft on doing that, an' is at it all the time she can git!" Then he added with a slight inflection of pride, "Mebbe ye noticed some o' her picturs in ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... thoughts that furrowed their brows. Others whispered in one another's ears, imparting excessively mysterious information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the monumental assurance of village clubs, local expressions, provincialisms ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... either forward or back. His voice was again a surprise. Absolute total clarity, almost without inflection as if the words reached the mind without needing a voice. "If you're going to throw me out, this is the best time to do it." Dark brown skin of one of the dark races, jet black straight hair, a dark pair of eyes that were merry and watchful and had the impact of something ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... was no excuse, nor would it silence the cold still voice in his mind that kept repeating sodomite—sodomite—sodomite with a passionless inflection that was ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... voice as ever, with only a slight sarcastic inflection to vary the deep, grave tones; but a very close observer might have seen his fingers clench the handle of a knife while he was speaking, as if their gripe would have dinted ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... which have been most extensively studied, are notably melodious; thus the leading languages of the group display moderately high phonetic development. In grammatic structure the better-known dialects are not so well developed; the structure is complex, chiefly through the large use of inflection, though agglutination sometimes occurs. In some cases the germ of organization is found in fairly definite juxtaposition or placement. The vocabulary is moderately rich, and of course represents the daily ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... a satiric inflection. "Well, why in the name of common sense didn't you say so at first? I do not know, however, that I can positively get you an appointment today. You must not mind if His Lordship keeps you waiting for a few minutes if he happens to be talking ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... disturbing causes, whether productive of an increase or decrease of heat, determines, as the total effect, the inflection of the isothermal lines, especially with relation to the expansion and configuration of solid continental masses, as compared with the liquid oceanic. These perturbations give rise to convex and concave summits of the isothermal curves. There are, however, different orders ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... you to go;' and there was a certain inflection in Mrs. Blake's soft voice which evidently obliged poor Mollie to obey. She rose reluctantly, but there were tears of vexation in her eyes. Audrey felt grieved for her favourite, but she was unwilling to interfere; she only took the girl's hand and ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... front seat, driving, caught the inflection of Tim's voice and cried testily: "You are allus runnin' the walley down. Why don't you tell him about the improvements instead of pintin' out the bad spots ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
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