Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Epithet   /ˈɛpəθˌɛt/   Listen
Epithet

noun
1.
A defamatory or abusive word or phrase.  Synonym: name.
2.
Descriptive word or phrase.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books



... insidious suggestions and doubts he carefully spread abroad, the queen, as he saw with pleasure, looked on the new commander of the National Guards as a "Grandison-Cromwell" (Mirabeau's damaging epithet), whose concealed ambition aimed at the constableship of France, as a step to that dread of French sovereigns, the "Mayorship of the Palace;" and hence the court systematically declined the aids ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... fealty to the real thing in whatever we did. This we felt, as we had felt it long before, to be the sole source of beauty and of art, and we warmed ourselves at each other's hearts in our devotion to it, amidst a misunderstanding environment which we did not characterize by so mild an epithet. Boyesen, indeed, out-realisted me, in the polemics of our aesthetics, and sometimes when an unbeliever was by, I willingly left to my friend the affirmation of our faith, not without some quaking at his unsparing strenuousness in disciplining the heretic. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... cuckoo ever unkind: the significance of this epithet is amply explained by the poem of "The Cuckoo and ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... whom does this epithet apply better? To us who dress as the generality of men, thus leaving no doubt as to our sex and freeing our consciences from the ignominious Roman yoke, direct ourselves by that straight and narrow way which leads to salvation; ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... sum which he was now to receive. What shall we say? The vender is designated by Mr. Schlichtegroll, in the preface of the last sale catalogue of the duplicates of the Public Library (1815, 8vo.) as "bibliopola honestissimus"—and let us hope that he merits the epithet. Besides, books of this excessive rarity are objects of mere caprice and fancy. To return to this "bibliopola honestissimus," I looked out a few more tempting articles, of the Aldine character,[68] and receiving ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... concentration on its more obvious weaknesses, or of respect for its undoubted strength. For the prisoner's proceedings on the night of the murder, however, supposing she had committed it, and still more on the morning after, it would have been difficult to find a better epithet; the only drawback was that this one had seen service in the cause of almost every murderer who ever went to the gallows—as counsel for the prosecution remarked in his reply, with deadly deference to his ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... epithet which concerns me, I suppose," I remarked with dignity, though suddenly I felt the chill of the icy air far, far more cruelly than I had felt it yet. I was so cold, in this white desolation, that it seemed ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... describing the flowers of this plant, calls them elegantissimi; and to one of its varieties HALLER applies the epithet pulcherrima: such testimonies in its favour will, we presume, be sufficient to recommend it ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... swab!" the one-eyed man said thickly, and with it spat out a vile epithet that instantly raised a flame of hot ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... looked upon as a young chief likely to rise to a very high position among the Iceni. Among the common herd his glowing laudations of Roman patriotism, devotion, and sacrifice, caused him to be regarded with disfavour, and the epithet "the Roman" was frequently applied to him. But the wiser spirits saw the hidden meaning of his stories, and that, while holding up the Romans as an example, he was endeavouring to teach how much can be done by patriotism, by a spirit of self sacrifice, and by unity against a common foe. Parta was ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... which he met with in their Works upon this Subject. Homer in that Passage, which Longinus has celebrated for its Sublimeness, and which Virgil and Ovid have copy'd after him, tells us, that the Giants threw Ossa upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa. He adds an Epithet to Pelion ([Greek: einosiphullon]) which very much swells the Idea, by bringing up to the Readers Imagination all the Woods that grew upon it. There is further a great Beauty in his singling out by Name these three remarkable Mountains, so well known to the Greeks. This last ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Majesty, the Duke of Marlborough, Earl Spencer, Mr. Johnes, and the late Mr. Cracherode (now in the British Museum), need not travel on the Continent for the sake of being convinced of their exquisite beauty and splendour. Mr. Edward's unique copy (he will forgive the epithet) of the first Livy, upon vellum, is a Library of itself!—and the recent discovery of a vellum copy of Wynkyn De Worde's reprint of Juliana Barnes's book,[61] complete in every respect, [to say nothing of his Majesty's similar copy of Caxton's Doctrinal of Sapience, 1489, in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... and keen; his hair, which escaped in loose clusters from a jean shooting-cap set jauntily on a well-shaped head, was of that deep sunny auburn rarely seen but in persons of vigorous and hardy temperament. He was good-looking on the whole, and would have deserved the more flattering epithet of handsome, but for his nose, which was what the French call "a nose in the air,"—not a nose supercilious, not a nose provocative, as such noses mostly are, but a nose decidedly in earnest to make the best of itself ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ch. xxx. p. 177; Rajavali, p. 269. Woollen cloth is described as "most valuable"—an epithet which indicates its rarity, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... are low of stature, but I do not think the epithet "dwarfish" applies to them with propriety. With the view of ascertaining this point, I once took five men promiscuously from a party of twenty, and found their average height to be 5 feet 5 inches. Some individuals of the remainder measured 5 feet 7 or 8 inches, ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... court would prevent my purpose. Before I depart from this for a better world I wish to address myself to the landed aristocracy of this country. The word 'aristocracy' I do not mean to use as an insulting epithet, but in the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... pir—a lion without a saint, is a favourite Persian epithet, when applied to a desperado, a ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... young Queen had decided all those respectable persons who were pressing forward to pay their homage to her; that she liked none but the young; that she was deficient in decorum; and that not one of them would attend her Court again. The epithet 'moqueuse' was applied to her; and there is no epithet less favourably ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... beautifies human character. And here let me register my last attack upon Socialistic controversy, which is, that fundamentally it tends to degrade human character by adopting for, and applying to the manual workers of the world a contemptuous epithet. When Marx, if it was he, I am not sure, shouted: "Proletariat of all nations, unite" he said a very wicked thing. It is not my conception of the manual worker that he is a mere "child getter," ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... The revival at the Renaissance of speculation and research, combined as it was with all kinds of fantastic hopes of discovering prime matter, the 'Philosopher's stone,' and elixirs of life, bred in the popular superstition a mysterious awe and attached to almost all scientific investigation the epithet 'black,' or diabolic, as opposed to the 'white art' of holding communion with good spirits. Alchemy and astrology (words meaning merely what we call chemistry and astronomy) became words of hellish import, and he who practised these arts was in league with ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... the epithet "empfindsam" for "sentimental" is then the occasion for some discussion, and its source is one of the facts involved in Sterne's German vogue which seem to have fastened themselves on the memory of literature. Bode ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... they ceased to hate old Muley they began to hate his brother. The circumstances of the old king's death, the eagerness to appropriate his treasures, the scandalous neglect of his corpse, and the imprisonment of his sultana and children,—all filled the public mind with gloomy suspicions, and the epithet of Fratricide was sometimes substituted for that of El Zagal in the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... common; it is vulgar, it is atrocious, it is the sum of all villainies!" said Jill, her indignation rising with each succeeding epithet. "A fireplace is a sacred thing. To pretend to have one when you have not is like pretending to be pious when you know you are wicked; it is stealing the livery of a warm, gracious, kindly hospitality to serve you in making a cold, ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... boasting, posturing military and naval officers, with a small sprinkling of civilians who were made to clearly understand that they were there only on sufferance. Jack could not help noticing the scowls with which the soldiery regarded him, and many an insulting epithet and remark reached his ears; but he was not such a fool as to permit himself to be provoked into a quarrel, single- handed, with thousands, and he therefore went calmly and steadily on his way, taking no more notice of the offensive words than if they had not been spoken, and ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... acquaintance with human nature in all its phases, and the human heart in all its changes, is the first requisite of the Dramatic Poet. The power of condensed expression—the faculty of giving vent to "thoughts that breathe in words that burn"—the art of painting, by a line, an epithet, an expression, the inmost and most intense feelings of the heart, is equally indispensable. The skill of the novelist in arranging the incidents of the piece so as to keep the attention of the spectators erect, and their interest undiminished, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... he whom Ganganelli called the "beautiful" Braschi, well deserved that epithet. No nobler or more plastic beauty was to be seen; no face that more reminded one of the divine beauty of ancient sculpture, no form that could be called a better counterfeit of the Belvedere Apollo. And it was this beauty which liberal Nature had imparted to him as its noblest ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... him the town was a veritable Troy—full of heroes and demigods, and honourables and persons of nobility and quality. He used no adjective of praise milder than superb, and on the other hand, Lige Bemis once complained that the least offensive epithet he saw in the Banner tacked after his name for two years was miscreant. As for John Barclay, he once told General Ward that a man could take five dollars in to Brownwell and come out a statesman, a Croesus or a scholar, as the exigencies of the case demanded, and for ten ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... others your own, and your own theirs, and you will then have a clear idea of the whole. Had France acted towards her colonies as you have done, you would have branded her with every epithet of abhorrence; and had you, like her, stepped in to succor a struggling people, all Europe must have echoed with your own applauses. But entangled in the passion of dispute you see it not as you ought, and form opinions ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... ignorance. Mr. LYNCH was annoyed because his question whether the Allies would oppose the foundation of a Greek Republic was dismissed as "hypothetical," but Lord ROBERT assured him that there was "nothing abusive" in the epithet. But is that so? Suppose he were to describe Mr. LYNCH ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various

... [Sun] 1. A printer. 2. A person who wastes paper. This epithet should be interpreted in a broad sense; 'wasting paper' includes the production of {spiffy} but {content-free} documents. Thus, most {suit}s are tree-killers. The negative loading of this term may reflect the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... With flashing tusks)—Ver. 5. "Fulmineus," "lightning-like," is an epithet given by Ovid and Statius also, to the tusks of the wild boar; probably by reason of their sharpness and the impetuosity of the blow inflicted thereby. Scheffer suggests that they were so called ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... Chatham, ten years before, had given the first hint of the desirableness of some alteration of the existing system. On one occasion he denounced the small boroughs as "the rotten part of the constitution," thus originating the epithet by which they in time came to be generally described; but more usually he disavowed all idea of disfranchising them, propounding rather a scheme for diminishing their importance by a large addition to the county members. However, he never ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... P. 54. Trugaios. Epithet of Bacchus, "vintager;" here name of a person in the comedy of "Peace." Story of Simonides. Simonides, the lyric poet, sang an ode to his patron, Scopas, at a feast; and as he had introduced into it the praises of Castor and Pollux, Scopas declared that ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... This epithet, pronounced with a fine distinctness, was ringing in the air when the door opened and Gordon came in. He looked for a moment from Bernard to his wife, and then, approaching the latter, he ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... if the epithet means any thing, you cannot but feel disposed to good humour and indulgence: Instead of rattling you off, as was proposed at our last interview, and whirling you at the rate of twelve miles an hour, exhausted with fatigue, and half dead ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... Hunkers," are thus described:—"Standing midway between this wing of the Democracy and the Whig party, is that portion who have taken upon themselves the comfortable title of 'Old Hunkers.' The etymological origin of this epithet is already lost in obscurity. They embrace a considerable portion of our citizens who are engaged in banking and other active business, but at the same time decided lovers of political place and power. At heart they believe in progress, and are in favour of a liberal prosecution of works ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... one of her tantrums!' the man who had come out answered, applying an epithet to her which I will not set down, but which I carried to his account in the event of our coming face to face presently. 'She is quiet now. She may hammer ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... prose of the earlier and that of the later period, and individual writers show peculiarities. It displays throughout a marked contrast with the poetic style, in its freedom from parallelisms in thought and phrase, from inversions, archaisms, and the almost excessive wealth of metaphor and epithet. In its early stages, there is apparent perhaps a poverty of resource, a lack of flexibility; but this charge cannot be sustained against the best prose of the later period. In the translations from the Latin it shows a certain stiffness, and becomes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... if Balliol was jolly— "Your epithet," sighed he, "means noise. Vile noise! At his age it were folly To revel with Philistine boys." Competition, the century's vulture, Devoured academical fools; For himself, utter pilgrim of Culture, He countenanced ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various

... almost devilishly subtle manner of expressing wordlessly what was passing in his mind. There was not one present but gathered from his utterance of those five words that he did not hold Grey worthy the honour of being called to account for that offensive epithet. He made just an exclamatory protest, such as he might have made had a woman ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... celebrated occasion which more than any other helped to gain for him the epithet of "The Good"—when an entire squadron of the Militia was condemned to death for some supposed mistake in giving the salute. The record, unfortunately, is somewhat involved in obscurity and hard to disentangle; so much is clear, however, that the sentence was duly promulgated and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... which all the elements had been prepared years before. Luther had sown the wind, Calvin came to reap the whirlwind. Not that the latter does not sometimes rise even to wrath, but it is a wrath which savors of labor and which he pursues as a rhymester would a rebellious epithet. Besides, he is good enough to repent for it, as if this wrath burned the face over which it glowed. "I have presented some things," he murmurs, "a little sharply, even roughly said, which, peradventure, may offend the delicate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... is full of details, for he is the most curious man in the world. One might apply to him the word catholicity if it were not far too big and dignified an epithet. The catholicity of his mind is that of the Old Curiosity Shop. The interest of the book is inexhaustible, because to him the whole world was just such a book. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... invitation to be knocked down. 'Gentlemen,' is used in opposition among the old chronicles to 'simple man,' and neither in any very exalted sense. It is on record, that the French Princess, De La Roche Sur Yon, receiving a sharp reply from a Knight, to whom she gave the epithet of 'Gentilhomme,' was told by the King, to whom she complained, that she deserved all she got, for so offending, herself, in the first instance. The lower people in England were commonly 'the Rascality'—equivalent ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... ornament, and then she looked at the glowing bed of anthracite coal in the grate. "Did you ever see anything so hideous as that fire?" she demanded. "Did you ever see anything so—so affreux as—as everything?" She spoke English with perfect purity; but she brought out this French epithet in a manner that indicated that she was accustomed to ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... chastisement if they failed to behave themselves with strict propriety whilst they remained in that house. Before leaving them he kissed his wife; and she, reviving, asked him to look at the baby. He did so, and pensively apostrophized it with a shocking epithet in anticipation of the time when its appetite must be satisfied from the provision shop instead of from its mother's breast. She laughed and cried shame on him; and so they parted cheerfully. When he returned ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... did not influence me to alter or delay; as no signature could change the nature of things, and make falsehood truth, or truth falsehood. Having there declared the insinuation in Oswald's paper of the 7th instant to be false, I now apply the same epithet to your avowal of them; and am sorry, though not surprised, that your violence of temper should have occasioned such a deviation from the line of veracity so essential to the character of ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... me to be the right epithet for Darwin's intellect. He had a clear rapid intelligence, a great memory, a vivid imagination, and what made his greatness was the strict subordination of all these to his ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... reach from Tuticorin to the Himalayas. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the Madras Presidency has been in the fortunate position of having no history. Its northern rivals call it despitefully the "benighted" Presidency. No epithet, however, could be more undeserved, for if its annals for the last hundred years have been unsensational, its record in respect of education, intelligent administration, material prosperity, and all that goes with peaceful continuous ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... The greater part of the Indians of the Western Continent believe themselves descended from, or colonies of, the Lenni Lenapes, and hence give to that tribe the epithet, "grandfather." Several of the tribes have a tradition, that they came ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... chaotic scene at this juncture. All in the cool of a white "sailor suit," he turned aside from the path of duty—which led straight to the house of a maiden aunt—and paused to hop with joy upon the sidewalk. A repeated epithet continuously half panted, half squawked, somewhere in the nest of gladiators, caught his ear, and he took it up excitedly, not ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... and character. As employed everywhere outside of this particular theoretical controversy, the term "unselfishness" refers to the kind of aims and objects which habitually interest a man. And if we make a mental survey of the kind of interests which evoke the use of this epithet, we shall see that they have two intimately associated features. (i) The generous self consciously identifies itself with the full range of relationships implied in its activity, instead of drawing a sharp line between itself and considerations ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... no automaton can do. Many of our readers have, however, seen a young lady in the shop-windows, or entertained her in their own nurseries, who professes to be this hitherto impossible walking automaton, and who calls herself by the Homeric-sounding epithet Autoperipatetikos. The golden-booted legs of this young lady remind us of Miss Kilmansegg, while their size assures us that she is not in any way related to Cinderella. On being wound up, as if she were a piece of machinery, and placed on a level surface, she proceeds to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... then[3] studied the writers of whom he speaks so contemptuously, though he might have profited by so doing. Boileau would at least have taught him that flimsy would have been an apter epithet for the standard than for the mottoes upon it. Dryden was the author of that schism against which Keats so vehemently asserts the claim of the orthodox teaching it had displaced. He was far more just to Boileau, of whom Keats had probably never read a word. "If I ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... still though touched by corruption, a prey to "idees," "idees" imparted from the poisoned mind of her sister, imbibed from the carelessly edited columns of newspapers, from all too laxly censored plays, from "blear-eyed" bookshow he thanked the Archbishop of York for that clever expressive epithet!—from the careless talk of rashly admitted guests, from the very atmosphere of London. And it had grown clearer and clearer to him that his duty to himself and the world and her was to remove her to a purer, simpler air, beyond the range of these infections, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... one knee, trembling from head to foot. Some endearing epithet, uttered in French, which converted the laugh on his lips into a smile, broke as it were, unconsciously from her; and he felt the arm upon his shoulder shiver like the wing of a bird just ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... his text, he has illuminated it. Indeed, I think it would not be extravagant to say that he has given us here the noblest musical incarnation of the Arthurian legend which we have. It is singular, by the way, how frequently one is impelled to use the epithet "noble" in praising MacDowell's work; in reference to the "Sonata Eroica" it has an emphatic aptness, for nobility is the keynote of this music. If the work, as a whole, has not the dynamic power of the "Tragica," the weight and gravity of substance, it is both a ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... call things by their proper names, and in elegant terms where no quaint ones are sacrificed; and if you know better, never let a false epithet pass unchallenged, for I do not see why a refined, but correct, mode of expression should not be as vigorously upheld in this fine art as in speaking of any of its sisters. For surely vulgarity has no right of place in its vocabulary, yet much language that is certainly not elegant, and not ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... relations of Mr Paxton's building, but rather with that sober and leisurely-moving mass—the pendulum. Even in the seventeenth century, old Graunt was shocked when some irreverent babbler spoke of one of its honourable race by the rude epithet of 'a swing-swang;' and he penned an indignant protest on the subject to the Royal Society. Since that time the pendulum has done much more to merit the reverence of the world. Plain and simple as its outward bearing is, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... confidently to decide. But the view mentioned by Varro that Janus was the god of the sky is supported not only by the etymological identity of his name with that of the sky-god Jupiter, but also by the relation in which he appears to have stood to Jupiter's two mates, Juno and Juturna. For the epithet Junonian bestowed on Janus points to a marriage union between the two deities; and according to one account Janus was the husband of the water-nymph Juturna, who according to others was beloved by Jupiter. Moreover, Janus, like Jove, was regularly invoked, and commonly spoken ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... epilepsio. Epileptic epilepsia. Epileptic (person) epilepsiulo. Epilogue epilogo. Epiphany Epifanio. Episcopacy episkopeco. Episode epizodo. Epistle letero. Epistolary letera. Epitaph epitafo. Epithet epiteto. Epitome resumo. Epitomise mallongigi. Epoch epoko. Equable egala. Equal egala. Equality egaleco. Equalise egaligi. Equally egale. Equation ekvacio. Equator ekvatoro. Equilibrium ekvilibro. Equinox tagnoktegaleco. Equipment (milit.) armilaro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... reason are ineradicable elements in the human mind. That which seriously and permanently offends against either cannot be true. For creatures differently constituted from man—either all reason or all pure disembodied emotion—it might be otherwise; but, for man, as he is, the epithet 'true' seems to be excluded from any set of propositions that ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... seem to disobey the letter of the law sometimes, but he is always obedient to the spirit. He never speaks unless he has something to say; and then he says it tersely, sharply, with a freshness of epithet and an individuality of phrase always accurate, however unacademic. His vocabulary is enormous, and it is deficient only in the dead words; his language is alive always, and actually tingling with vitality. He rejoices in the daring noun and in the audacious adjective. His instinct for ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... most sympathetic of my critics tried to account for certain characteristics of my work by the fact of my being, in his own words, "the son of a Revolutionist." No epithet could be more inapplicable to a man with such a strong sense of responsibility in the region of ideas and action and so indifferent to the promptings of personal ambition as my father. Why the description "revolutionary" should have been applied all through Europe ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... Tommy's opprobrious epithet, "I hain't got a day to spend, but, to begin with, there's two churches up ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... no longer softened by the absence of strict party lines, throbbed feverishly with passion and ugly epithet. The strategical advantage lay with Seymour, who made two speeches. Dean Richmond, alarmed at the growing strength of the war spirit, urged him to put more "powder" into his Brooklyn address than he used at the ratification meeting, held in New York City on October ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... views infinitely beyond the short-sighted and selfish vision of the Commissioners, proclaimed a general amnesty to the planters who had fled during the revolutions, earnestly invited their return to the possession of their estates, and, with a delicate regard to their feelings, decreed that the epithet "emigrant" should not be applied to them. Many of the planters accepted the invitation, and returned to the peaceful possession ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... /2/ To instruct a jury that they must find the defendant guilty of gross negligence before he can be charged, is open to the reproach that for such a body the word "gross" is only a vituperative epithet. But it would not be so with a judge sitting in admiralty without a jury. The Roman law and the Supreme Court of the United States agree that the word means something. /3/ Successful or not, it is enough for the present argument that the attempt ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... cheaply copied, and covered with a quaint and dismal cretonne or poorly worked pattern, of which the design is neither new nor artistic, is introduced by the upholsterer as belonging to "High Art furniture." The epithet has succeeded to what was once "fashionable" and "elegant." To get rid of carpets, and put down rugs, to hang up rows of plates instead of family portraits—this also is "high art." Likewise gowns lumped upon the shoulders, with all the folds drawn across, instead of hanging ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... would, I suppose, incline to something as they say, "scientific." You wince under that most offensive epithet—and I am able to give you my intelligent sympathy—though "pseudo-scientific" and "quasi-scientific" are worse by far for the skin. You would begin to talk of scientific languages, of Esperanto, La Langue Bleue, New Latin, Volapuk, and Lord Lytton, of the philosophical language of Archbishop ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... degrees, the child sighed deeply, opened his eyes, which to the human countenance produces the effect of light upon the natural landscape, stretched his arms towards the Lady, and muttered the word "Mother," that epithet, of all others, which is ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Lord'—then men are not on a dead level in His eyes. Though He is so high and we are so low, the country beneath Him that He looks down upon is not flattened to Him, as it is to us from an elevation, but there are greater and smaller men in His sight, too. No epithet is more misused and misapplied than that of 'a great man.' It is flung about indiscriminately as ribbons and orders are by some petty State. Every little man that makes a noise for a while gets it hung round his neck. Think what a set they are that are gathered in the world's Valhalla, and honoured ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... evidence of the whole speech. And of all this there is nothing in the Contention; the scene there opens in bald and flat nakedness of prose, striking at once into the immediate matter of stage business without the decoration of a passing epithet ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... faith of the warlike converts, who were seated on the ruins of the Western empire. This irreconcilable difference of religion was a perpetual source of jealousy and hatred; and the reproach of Barbarian was imbittered by the more odious epithet of Heretic. The heroes of the North, who had submitted, with some reluctance, to believe that all their ancestors were in hell, [86] were astonished and exasperated to learn, that they themselves had only changed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... not the end of it. Malice soon prefixed to her name the epithet scornful; and among her school-girl friends there were some who always passed by on the other side. Poor girl! She wept bitter tears over these sneers and slights, for she had not studied the world enough to learn and despise ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... obtained, in a very remote period, the denomination of the "Golden Horn." The curve which it describes might be compared to the horn of a stag, or as it should seem, with more propriety, to that of an ox. The epithet of golden was expressive of the riches which every wind wafted from the most distant countries into the secure and capacious port of Constantinople. The river Lycus, formed by the conflux of two little streams, pours into the harbor a perpetual supply of fresh ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... was anything more truly Grecian than that triple epithet; and were it possible to introduce it either into the Iliad or Odyssey, I should certainly steal it." This of course was written in jest; and had the translator been disposed to exemplify his own pleasantry, he might have found an opportunity in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... what exaltation we find in this Appendix! Dazed with imagined beauty we pass from one splendid haunt to another. One of them has three golf-courses of its own; several are replete with every comfort (and is not "replete" the perfect epithet?). Here is a seductive one "on the sea-edge," and another whose principal glory is its sanitary certificate. Another stands on the spot where TENNYSON received his inspiration for the Idylls of the King, and leaves it at that. In such a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... of high treason, and instantly executed without the least examination. Perhaps no death in Ava ever produced such universal rejoicings, as that of the Pakan Woon. We never, to this day, hear his name mentioned, but with an epithet of reproach or hatred. Another brother of the king was appointed to the command of the army now in readiness, but with no very sanguine expectations of success. Some weeks after the departure of these troops, two of the Woongyees were sent down for the purpose ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... Edinburgh, there were Lords President of the North and of Wales." (Keightley). blue-haired deities. These must be distinct from the tributary gods who wield their little tridents (line 27), otherwise the thought would ill accord with the complimentary nature of lines 30-36. Regarding the epithet 'blue-haired' Masson asks: "Can there be a recollection of blue as the British colour, inherited from the old times of blue-stained Britons who fought with Caesar? Green-haired is the usual epithet for Neptune and his subordinates": in Spenser, for example, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... of outraged respectability, with here and there an epithet distinguishable like a plum in a pudding. "Ruffian," they called him, "assassin," "robber," and so forth, the innocuous amateur abuse of men who have learned their bad language from their newspapers. It ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... fiery spirits among these young men are to raise before I dare express my real opinions concerning questions about which we older men had to fight, in the teeth of fierce public opposition and obloquy—of something which might almost justify even the grandiloquent epithet of a Reign of Terror—before our excellent ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... Finland, and mentioned the name of her father's man-servant, Thibaut. It entered several times into the narrative, and always with an approving epithet, the ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... the epithet recalled a sudden vision of the maid Fitzwalter and her queer little toss of her curls as she had christened him. Ford must have been near to have overheard it. So was there ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... (but monotheism of a pantheistic type) appears, the supreme position is given to none of the old deities but to a new figure, Prajapati. This word, meaning Lord of living creatures, occurs in the Rig Veda as an epithet of the sun and is also occasionally used as the name of the Being by whom all gods and worlds were generated and by whose power they continue to exist. In the Brahmanas and later ritual literature he is definitely recognized as the supreme deity, the Creator, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... membership with a sort of aristocratic monotony of that Knickerbockerism, which has since, to use the words of Mr. Fairfield again, "in solemn and silent Second Avenue (the Faubourg St. Germain of the city), earned the epithet of the Bourbons of New York." Solemn and silent Second Avenue is solemn and silent no more. Long since gone are the social glories of that thoroughfare that once boldly stepped forward to challenge the supremacy ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... a fair epithet; and it remindeth me that my nose—suffered in the fall which I received just now. Yet ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... chances, a single servant who could speak Russian, and had it not been for a German physician (Dr. Renner) who in the most handsome manner volunteered his services as our interpreter as far as Moscow, we should have justly merited the epithet of deaf and dumb, applied by the Russians to persons unacquainted with their language. Well! even in this state, our journey would have been quite safe and easy, so great is the hospitality of the nobles and the people ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... lime, or mulberry calculus, is generally of a very dark brown colour, approaching to black. Its surface is very rough and tuberculated (hence the epithet of mulberry.) It is usually hard, and when cut through exhibits an imperfectly laminated texture. This species of calculus seldom surpasses the medium size, and is rather common. There is a variety of it remarkably smooth, and pale coloured. These are always of small size; and from their colour ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... conductor, to whom, during his journey, he had related the passage of the Porte de Fer; full of indulgence, moreover, for the distractions of his auditor, who often interrupted the recital by some oath or epithet addressed to the off mare. When the diligence stopped he threw on the sidewalk his old valise, covered with railway placards as numerous as the changes of garrison that its proprietor had made, and the idlers of the neighborhood were astonished to see a man with a decoration—a ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee

... chapel have been built on that spot. He knew it now, and he knew that he must apologise. Noblesse oblige. The old lord was very stupid, very wrong-headed, and sometimes very arrogant; but he would not do a wrong if he knew it, and nothing on earth would make him tell a wilful lie. The epithet indeed might have been omitted; for a lie is not a lie unless ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... the still more marked gregarious instincts of the llama; but the social animal into whose psychology I am conscious of having penetrated most thoroughly is the ox of the wild parts of western South Africa. It is necessary to insist upon the epithet "wild," because an ox of tamed parentage has different natural instincts; for instance, an English ox is far less gregarious than those I am about to describe, and affords a proportionately less valuable illustration to my argument. The oxen of which I speak belonged to the ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... They leave you, they take you up again; they try to sound your sentiments about manners, about piety, about the world, about religion, about the monastic life, about everything. The result of all these repeated experiments is an epithet that stamps your character, and is always added by way of surname to the name that you already bear. I was called Sister ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... talks of the dukkering dook or of penning a dukkerin.' 'Borrow's genders are perversely incorrect'; and 'Romany'—a word which can never get out of our language, let philologists say what they will—should have been 'Romani.' '"Haarstraeubend" is the fitting epithet,' says Mr. Sampson, 'which an Oriental scholar, Professor Richard Pischel of Berlin, finds to describe Borrow's etymologies.' But all this is very unimportant, and the book remains in the whole of its forty-seven chapters not one whit less a joy to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... indistinguishable epithet, and the next instant there came a crash as the offending timepiece was hurled violently against the wall. In silence Glass shoved his unsteady victim ahead of him out into the dawn. In the east the sun was rising amid a riotous splendor. At any other time, under any other conditions, ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... speech on this occasion, the king began with lamenting his own unhappiness, that, having so long valued himself on the epithet of the pacific monarch, he should now, in his old age, be obliged to exchange the blessings of peace for the inevitable calamities of war. He represented to them the immense and continued expense ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... the diocese of Namur: monasteries which were just founded. He appointed St. Cadroe, who had accompanied him from Ireland, provost of the latter in 946, and died in 978. Ferrarius, Saussaye, and Wilson, falsely place this monastery of St. Michael's at Virdun, mistaking the epithet Vir Dni, which is given him in the chronicle of Flodoard, for the name of that town. Though he is styled saint in the catalogue of the abbots of Vasour, and by several martyrologists on this day, he never was honored in any public office even in either of his monasteries, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... great epic was called by him a comedy because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible to English readers in the metrical translations of Carey, Longfellow, Norton, and others, and in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... all this time the wicked Enchantress Kalyb had been well aware who it was who had come to her cavern and blown so furiously on her magic horn. Every word the Knight had uttered, and every opprobrious epithet which he had so lavishly bestowed, had been heard by her. She nourished, in consequence, in her evil heart, a spirit of revenge, which she waited a convenient opportunity to gratify. Oh, anger! oh, loss of temper! how blind art thou! How dost thou make wise men become like the most ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... Augustus belong to the customary titulature. Constantine I, for example, is called on one stone invictus et perpetuus ... semper Augustus, on another perpetuus imperator, semper Augustus. That Philip should have been the first to have applied to him, even once, the direct epithet, is probably a mere accident. One might have wished to connect it with his Secular Games, celebrated in 248. But by that time his son was no longer Caesar but full Augustus (since 246), and our stone must fall ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield

... matter much. The stranger sat there calmly, proudly unconscious of all that was said about her. Pretty!—the epithet was well within the mark. Beautiful, rather—magnificently, splendidly beautiful, with a noble presence and almost queenly air. Her small, exquisitely-proportioned head, crowned with a coronet of deep chestnut hair, was well poised upon a long, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... if his generosity had ended in only satisfying the fine tendencies of his nature, would it have acquired the right to be called virtuous? We do not think so. For generosity, to merit that sacred epithet, must express sentiments rarer and more elevated, arrive at the highest triumph of moral strength, at the greatest self-abnegation; it must succeed in overcoming appetite, in forgetting the most just resentments, in returning good for evil. Then, alone, can generosity ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... shade of meaning not easily accounted for. The word, as appears from its etymology, must have originally denoted physical contact or physical contact resumeable at pleasure; but, as actually used without any qualifying epithet, it signifies not simply physical detention, but physical detention coupled with the intention to hold the thing detained as one's own. Savigny, following Niebuhr, perceived that for this anomaly there could only be a historical origin. He pointed out that the Patrician burghers of Rome, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... is all I know or can recollect of my noble and beautiful compatriot; but I remember that when some writer in 'Fraser's Magazine' styled me 'that Irish she wolf-dog,' I felt complimented by the epithet, since to attack the enemies of Ireland, and to worry when they could not destroy them, was the peculiar attribute of ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... worldly interpretations on things which, with her, it was both an impulse and a principle to defy. He was too simple—too Mississippian—for that; she was almost disappointed. She certainly had not hoped that she might have struck him as making unwomanly overtures (Miss Chancellor hated this epithet almost as much as she hated its opposite); but she had a presentiment that he would be too good-natured, primitive to that degree. Of all things in the world, contention was most sweet to her (though why it is hard to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... indignation. One of the speakers who followed referred to him as the Prodigal Son of the German Fatherland, who had deserted his father's house. Bismarck repudiated the epithet. "I am not a prodigal son," he said; "my father's house is Prussia and I have never left it." He could not more clearly repudiate the title German. The others were moved by enthusiasm for an idea, he by loyalty to ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... said of Ernest Renan that he was toniours seminariste, and there is a flavour of the pulpit in these beautiful sentences. Beautiful indeed they are, and not more beautiful than true. The implacable Mary, whose ghastly epithet clings to her for all time, like the shirt of Nessus, found in Pole an apt and zealous pupil in persecution. Both are excellent specimens of their Church, because according to that Church they are absolutely blameless. Punctilious in the discharge ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... cheeks and bright blue eyes told of a constitution against which nervous prostration fulminated in vain. Nor were the bang or bangle of a former generation visible in her composition. But here a deceptive phrase deserves an explanation. "Composition" is an epithet which, least of all, is applicable. Miss Windsor's perfections of whatever ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... almost wished it, such was the insufferable annoyance, the chagrin, this announcement gave me; and I waited with eager impatience for the din and clamour to subside, to disclaim every syllable of the priest's announcement, and take the consequences of my baptismal epithet, cost what it might. To this I was impelled by many and important reasons. Situated as I was with respect to the Callonby family, my assumption of their name at such a moment might get abroad, and the consequences to me, be inevitable ruin; and independent ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... doudo. But it may be that the name was given on account of the peculiar form of the bird, and not in illusion to its mental capacity; and, consequently, even dodoor may not be the true origin. We more than suspect that it is really derived from a vulgar, compound epithet, used by Dutch seamen to denote an awkward, clumsily-formed, inactive person. This inquiry, however, is beyond our humble powers, and should be prosecuted by some learned professor—such, for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various

... not as exact as usual when he applies the epithet "painted" to the autumn beeches, as the foliage of the beech is the least painty of all our trees; nor when ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... after the salutation of strangers, he seated himself upon the parapet by my side, and joined in conversation and anecdote of the scenes around. He agreed with me that Clyde was a lovely stream; but added, it was a bloody one. I felt shocked at such an epithet being applied to the object of my present admiration, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... flowery—I should say florid—never mind a false epithet or two in a page, they will never be observed. A great deal depends upon the first two pages—you must not limp at starting; we will, therefore, be ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... together with an exhaustless fund of funny sayings; and, lastly, an overflowing stream, without beginning, or middle, or end, of astonishing reminiscences of the ancient Mississippi, which, taken together, form a 'tout ensemble' which is sufficient excuse for the tender epithet which is, by common consent, applied to him by all those ancient dames aforesaid, of "che-arming creature!"). As the Sergeant has been longer on the river, and is better acquainted with it than any other "cub" extant, his remarks are ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... deemed both the votes to be political and given from policy. So they probably were.... Van Buren never deserved to be called a 'Northern man with Southern principles.' But this vote came nearer to an excuse for the epithet than did any other act of his career."—Edward M. Shepard, Life of Martin Van Buren, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... men was turning very favorably to the cavalry service, our camps at Hall's Hill were the scenes of daily arrivals of fine specimens of patriots, whose hands were warmly grasped by us; and gladly we initiated them into the mysteries of this new science. We were not a little elated at the epithet of "Veteran," which these recruits ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... with a tray and her eye sought wildly for Virginia but when she glimpsed Wiley moving swiftly towards the door she set down his dinner with a bang. The disrespectful epithet which he had applied to her had been lost in the clatter of plates, but the moment the Widow came into the room she sensed the ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... down, and in the dark and wild confusion I was borne away, and did not see him again in life, though I spared no effort to find him, in the hope that he might be only wounded. As one of the correspondents wrote of him, he was a man of God, and a man among men—a fitting epithet. Not to mention other warm friends, in my own mess (General Wauchope's) there were seven of us on December 18; when next we sat down there were only two. We were a sad, a very sad, brigade, for though we tried to ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers

... Republican party. Lincoln and his friends were now only trying to secure what Trumbull had cheated them out of in 1855, when the senatorship fell to Trumbull. Under this savage attack the crowd grew restive. As Douglas repeated the epithet "Black" Republican, he was interrupted by indignant cries of "White," "White." But Douglas shouted back defiantly, "I wish to remind you that while Mr. Lincoln was speaking there was not a Democrat ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... knowing the unknowable. His clear and fearless utterances upon these points place him in the rank of intellectual heroes. But his own soul, compact of human faith and love, was far too religious and too sanguine to merit either epithet as vulgarly applied. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... was that he had written to her! The very tips of her ears tingled with heat as she read it again to herself. None of the ordinary courtesies of epistle-craft had been preserved either in the beginning or in the end. It was worse even than if he had called her Madam without an epithet. "The Duke understands—" "The Duke thinks—" "The Duke feels—" feels that he should not be troubled with either letters or conversation; the upshot of it all being that the Duke declared her to have shown herself ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... absurd. He was among the "far-off hills." How far, pray? Twenty miles? If so, then without a silver ear-trumpet he could not have heard the huzzas. If the far-off hills were so near Nineveh as to allow the lion to hear the huzzas even in his sleep, the epithet "far-off" should be altered, and the lion himself brought from the interior. But we cannot believe that lions were permitted to live in dens within ear-shot of Nineveh. Nimrod had taught them "never to come there no more"—and Semiramis looked sharp after the suburbs. But, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson



Words linked to "Epithet" :   calumniation, characterization, name, defamation, obloquy, hatchet job, picture, calumny, characterisation, delineation, word picture, traducement, depiction, word-painting, smear word



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com