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Verbal   /vˈərbəl/   Listen
Verbal

adjective
1.
Communicated in the form of words.  "A verbal protest"
2.
Of or relating to or formed from words in general.
3.
Of or relating to or formed from a verb.
4.
Relating to or having facility in the use of words.  "A merely verbal writer who sacrifices content to sound" , "Verbal aptitude"
5.
Expressed in spoken words.
6.
Prolix.



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"Verbal" Quotes from Famous Books



... of business and a mistress of intrigue. She would not, she said, dare attempt to deliver a note. It would be simpler, less dangerous for all concerned, to be at work in a corridor through which the English senorita must pass; to murmur a few words which would attract her attention; to receive a verbal message in return; and to bring it to me when she could—not to-day; that would be impossible; but to-morrow evening about nine, at which time she had already ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... dipped her head in the quaint bird-like perk. "But we can have a lovely time here even alone—I mean without you. Oh, no, not without you——" And the burst of laughter that applauded her confusion was like a full colored illustration of a verbal mistake. "Now, you all know what I ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... an hour a day, and well nigh maddens me with his crack-jaw words; but I don't seem to make much progress. If I am sent with an order, and the officer to whom I take it does not understand French, I am floored. Of course I hand the order, if it is a written one, to him. If it is not, but just some verbal message, asking him to call on the marshal at such and such a time, I generally make a horrible mess of it. He gets in a rage with me, because he cannot understand me. I get in a rage with him, for his dulness; and were it not that he generally manages to find some other officer, who does ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... of the Committee on Rules, which had already been submitted by General Garfield, was now taken up. The proposed rules embraced simply verbal changes from those of 1876, and only one change of substance. This was an addition to rule eight, relating to cases where the vote of a State is divided. The old rule prescribed that where the vote was divided the chairman of the delegation ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... these capital felonies, the president and council were authorized to hear and determine all crimes and misdemeanors, and all civil cases, without the intervention of a jury. These judicial proceedings were to be summary and verbal, and the judgment only was to be briefly registered in a book kept ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... his first entrance upon the study of Latin, the English system of pronunciation; to get him thoroughly habituated to this false method, and then by lodging in his brain some verbal rules of quantity and prosody, at war often with each other and commonly with his pronunciation, to attempt to make him appreciate and observe the rhythm of Latin poetry, is like keeping a child in a rude society where all the laws of a pure and finished language ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck

... best expressed in the concept "co-existence." God and the world co-exist. God is, and the world is; their relation is expressed by an "and." "God and the world" is the truth, all that man can and need know. This solution is verbal. It leaves the problem more or less as it finds it. The two principles remain ultimates; neither is reduced to the other. God still stands outside the world and the world outside God. Neither can explain the other. This dualism is the lowest stage ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce

... the least," one of the men said, "it is all one whether he was shot by a bullet of the Versaillais, or hung, or killed by a blow of an Englishman's fist. Monsieur le Commissaire, will you draw up a proces-verbal ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... or Confederate States as null and void, and that they would not submit to measures taken on the high seas in pursuance of such decree."... "Mr. Seward thanked me for the consideration I had shown; and begged me to confine myself for the present to the verbal announcement I had just made. He said it would be difficult for me to draw up a written communication which would not have the air of a threat." ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... invitation to a lecture, concert, or other entertainment, may be either verbal or written, but should always be made at least twenty-four hours before ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... understand, equivalent to pretty well, or so so. The word Lamiger, which signifies an invalid, I have no doubt you have met with. When any one forbodes bad weather, or any disaster, it is very common to say Don't ye housenee. Here you have the verbal termination, which you remarked was so common in the West, and which I cannot help thinking might have been originally vised as a sort of diminutive, and that to milkee, signified to ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

... write a suitable reply to Mademoiselle Mouret. His own pocket-book had been destroyed. Not a particle of paper could he find in the place, not even the fly-leaf of a book. The other two officers had no paper of any sort. He was able, therefore, only to return a verbal answer to the ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston

... without thought or stay Invades her son; her old disgrace is cast Into the bill, when Mars and she made fast In their embraces were expos'd to all The scene of gods, stark naked in their fall. Nor serves a verbal penance, but with haste From her fair brow—O happy flow'rs so plac'd!— She tears a rosy garland, and with this Whips the untoward boy; they gently kiss His snowy skin, but she with angry haste Doubles her strength, until bedew'd at last With a thin bloody sweat, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... me by hand—or unlock my wrists while I eat?" Jason asked. Mikah stood over him with the tray, undecided. Jason gave a light verbal prod, very gently, because whatever else he was, Mikah was not stupid. "I would prefer you to feed me of course, you'd make ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... guttural, harsh laugh of idiocy. Others, in fine, were almost in a state of annihilation, only opening their eyes at the moment of repast, remaining inert, inactive, deaf, dumb, blind—not a cry, not a gesture announcing their vitality. The complete absence of verbal or intellectual communication is one of the most gloomy characteristics of a company of idiots, Lunatics, notwithstanding the incoherency of their words and thoughts, at least speak, know each other, and seek each other; but among idiots there reigns a stupid ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... 1016) King Olaf Haraldson calls out an army from the Throndhjem land, and makes ready to proceed eastward. Some of the Iceland traders were then ready to sail from Norway. With them King Olaf sent word and token to Hjalte Skeggjason, and summoned him to come to him, and at the same time sent a verbal message to Skapte the lagman, and other men who principally took part in the lawgiving of Iceland, to take out of the law whatever appeared contrary to Christianity. He sent, besides, a message of friendship to the people in general. The king then proceeded southwards himself ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... J. Hammond Trumbull has pointed out that in Algonkin the words for father, osh, mother, okas, and earth, ohke (Narraganset dialect), can all be derived, according to the regular rules of Algonkin grammar, from the same verbal root, signifying "to come out of, or from." (Note to Roger Williams' Key into the Language of America, p. 56). Thus the earth was, in their language, the parent of the race, and what more natural than that it should become ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... point, similarly enclosed. This serves as a court of justice, round which the curious may stand, or upon which listening spectators may gaze from the ends of the galleries above. Meanwhile up and down the open space of the nave all kinds of verbal business may be transacted by appointment, exactly as such business used to be carried on in old St. Paul's Cathedral in London or in churches elsewhere. In what may be called the inner side-aisle are situated offices of various kinds, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... enemies tossed their heads slightly as they sought their respective bonnets and shawls, but left all verbal contention to Mrs Jiniwin, who finding herself in the position of champion, made a faint ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... South, pro-slavery and anti-slavery. Never was any matter more harried and ransacked by disputation. Now to all the speaking and writing of the Republicans Lincoln's condensed speeches were what a syllabus is to an elaborate discourse, what a lawyer's brief is to his verbal argument. Perhaps they may better be likened to an anti-slavery gospel; as the New Testament is supposed to cover the whole ground of Christian doctrines and Christian ethics, so that theologians and preachers innumerable have only been able to make ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... venena. Vent ellaso. Vent-hole ellastruo. Ventilate ventoli. Ventilator ventolilo. Ventriloquist ventroparolisto. Venture riski. Venture risko. Venturous riska. Veracious verema. Veracity vereco. Verandah balkono. Verb verbo. Verbal parola. Verbena verbeno. Verbatim (adv.) lauxvorte. Verbiage babilajxo. Verbose parolegema. Verbosity parolegeco. Verdant verdanta. Verdict jugxo. Verdigris verdigro. Verdure verdajxo. Verger pedelo. Verify verigi, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... Jean Grenier imagined himself to be a wolf, because the Greek word for wolf sounded like the word for light, and thus gave rise to the story of a light-deity who became a wolf, seems to me quite inadmissible. Yet as far as such verbal equivocations may have prevailed, they doubtless helped ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... the exact limits of the new. The result was that at the commission-board at Lambeth the Primates created their own tests of doctrine with an utter indifference to those created by law. In one instance Parker deprived a vicar of his benefice for a denial of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Nor did the successive Archbishops care greatly if the test was a varying or a conflicting one. Whitgift strove to force on the Church the Calvinistic supralapsarianism of his Lambeth Articles. Bancroft, who followed him, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... of the Wandering Koraks, and we had not yet been able to think of any plan of crossing these inhospitable wastes before the winter's snows should make them passable on reindeer-sledges. It is difficult for one who has had no experience of northern life to get from a mere verbal description a clear idea of a Siberian moss steppe, or to appreciate fully the nature and extent of the obstacles which it presents to summer travel. It is by no means easy to cross, even in winter, when it is frozen and covered with snow; but in summer it becomes practically impassable. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... Liu, pray compose your mind! You've come from far off with a pure heart and honest purpose, and how can I ever not show you the way how to see this living Buddha? Properly speaking, when people come and guests arrive, and verbal messages have to be given, these matters are not any of my business, as we all here have each one kind of duties to carry out. My husband has the special charge of the rents of land coming in, during the two seasons of spring and autumn, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... palace that she was afraid that the bishop was dying. As for him, he hardly left his own sitting-room in these days, except when he joined the family at breakfast and at dinner. And in his study he did little or nothing. He would smile when his chaplain went to him, and give some trifling verbal directions; but for days he scarcely ever took a pen in his hands, and though he took up many books he read hardly a page. How often he told his wife in those days that he was broken-hearted, no one but his ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... it was like sleeping in the attic, while the servants slept in the kitchen, for the drivers and the three Zulus made themselves snug under the waggon, Dinny joining them very unwillingly, after a verbal encounter with Dick, who, however much he might be wanting in bodily strength, was ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... embrace this opportunity of introducing two verbal remarks, which have not conveniently offered themselves to my notice. 1. As often as I use the definitions of beyond the Alps, the Rhine, the Danube, &c., I generally suppose myself at Rome, and afterwards at Constantinople; without observing whether this relative geography ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... with. When you first read one of the aphorisms, it strikes you as a sentiment of extraordinary wisdom. But look more closely at it; try to apply it; and you will find that it is merely a trick of words. What flashed upon you as a profound distinction in morals, turns out to be nothing but a verbal antithesis. What was paraded, as a kind of transcendental analogy between things not before suspected of resemblance, discovered by the "spiritual insight" of the moral seer, is in fact no more than a grave clench,—a solemn quibble,—a conceit; arising not from the perfection ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... street or road by which she could come. But, to make more sure, and prevent her leaving her residence at the Almas gardens, five miles from the palace, the Resident sent off one of his chobdars, Khoda Buksh, with two troopers and a verbal message, enjoining her to remain quietly at her palace. These men found her with her equipage in the midst of a large mass of armed followers, ready to set out for the palace. They delivered their message from ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... of this criticism have been embodied in the Revised Version, published in 1881. The English of the Revised Version is not so musical as that of the Authorised Version, and it seems probable that a deeper knowledge of the ancient versions will before long enable us to advance even beyond the verbal accuracy attained in 1881. But at the same time we know that both our modern English versions give us a noble and trustworthy interpretation of the Greek. And criticism has made it certain that the earliest Greek manuscripts are essentially the same as the original books written ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... have spared myself the trouble. Long afterwards, I learned that I was detained while Captain Barlow spoke to a magistrate about me, asking if I might be "questioned," that is, put to the thumbscrews, till it could be learned whether I carried a verbal message to my uncle, Mr. Blick. The magistrate to whom he first applied was one of the Monmouth faction as it happened, so my thumbs escaped; but I had a narrow escape later, as you shall hear. About an hour after the ship came to anchor, the cabin-door was opened by a sailor, who flung in an armful ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... churches, and thus remove a principal obstacle to the obtaining of military help from the West. He went to Italy, attended by the patriarch and many bishops. After long debates and conferences on the abstruse points of doctrinal difference, a verbal agreement was reached between the two parties (1439). But the result was received with so much disfavor and indignation in Constantinople, that the effort to bring the sundered churches together ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... recovery, and whatsoever next presents itself, his heavy conceit seizeth upon, and goeth along with, however heterogeneal to his matter in hand. His jests are either old fled proverbs, or lean-starved hackney apophthegms, or poor verbal quips, outworn by serving-men, tapsters, and milkmaids, even laid aside by balladers. He assents to all men that bring any shadow of reason, and you may make him when he speaks most dogmatically even with one breath, to aver poor contradictions. His compositions differ ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... you think Antonia and I had better try to reform the customs of the world, and do away with all verbal expression of our attachment, on the ground that it is unnecessary and only a ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... laughing and enjoying the verbal engagement that had sprung up like a squall in the tropics, "don't you begin ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... are acquainted with the manner in which persons are received into Congregational churches, by relating a verbal account of their experience, will recognize in this narrative a resemblance to that practice. Christiana, a grave matron, appears to have felt no difficulty in complying with the requisition; but Mercy, young and inexperienced, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the life of the thought. Then you have genuine religious utterance. The conditions change and the thought is outworn: if the phrase that clothed the old thought remains and is used glibly as a verbal counter, then you have Cant, and the longer the phrase is parrotted by an unbeliever, the more venomous does the virus of cant become. To the fishers—childlike men—many of the old Methodist turns of speech are vital; to a cultured man the husk of words ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... supposed I was sleeping, I have had an interview with Gabriel Nietzel, my mother's court painter. Ah! now start back and be amazed. Yes, Gabriel Nietzel sat by my bed for more than an hour, and brought me a verbal message from my mother. She had also intrusted him with a letter for me, but on his journey here he has been robbed and the letter taken from him. Oh, I imagine the robbers took much more interest in the letters than in the effects of the painter, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... Well, that is a verbal puzzle, and I answer, yes! The finite can contain the Infinite, if you are talking about two hearts that love, one of them God's and one of them mine. We have got to keep very clear and distinct before our minds ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... (where the present form has descended from an ancestor that was originally "directly" created), and conventional creation (as when a man "creates a fortune," meaning that he produces a complex state or arrangement out of simpler materials). That is perfectly true, so far; but it is only a verbal definition, and still does not go inside, into the idea involved. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... January Mr. Trumbull reported the bill from the Judiciary Committee, to whom it had been referred, with some amendments of a verbal character. On the following day these amendments were considered by the Senate, in Committee of the Whole, and adopted. The consideration of the bill as amended was deferred to a ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... Excepting that they possessed the art of writing, and an alphabet of their own, they do not appear to have differed in any way from the Dayaks of Borneo as described by Mr. Boyle in his recent book of adventures amongst that people. Indeed there is almost a coincidence of verbal expressions in the descriptions he and De Morga give of the social customs, habits, and superstitions of the two peoples they are describing; though many of these coincidences are such as are incidental to life in similar circumstances, there are enough to lead one to suppose a community of origin ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... carry you but a little way, let me recommend a practice that may be equivalent, and will perhaps more efficaciously contribute to your advancement, than even the verbal corrections of those masters themselves, could they be obtained. What I would propose is, that you should enter into a kind of competition, by painting a similar subject, and making a companion to any picture that you consider ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... had kept to himself and to his studies and his literary tasks, and lacked the verbal facility of his comrades. He smiled good-naturedly ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... forgotten Jim, the gawky, overgrown boy who had a verbal contract with Mrs. Friestone which bound him to go to the store each weekday morning and set out on the front porch the score or more samples of the goods that were on sale within. The same agreement required him to come around at ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... of Benares have appeared in illustrated newspapers, in periodicals and books, and give a more vivid and correct impression than can be conveyed by a verbal description. These pictures can, however, be better understood when those who look at them are furnished with information which no picture ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... his head in chancery, and bruise it. It would be a relief to serve him with subpoenas, or present him long bills and demand immediate payment. Was my name providentially ordered to be Green, that he might pass verbal contumely upon it? Does he suppose that a man can live thirty-five years in this state of probation, without becoming slightly calloused to a pun on his own name? Yet he continues to pun on mine as if the process were highly amusing. Then again he interrupts any little attempts at pleasing ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... justify us in concluding that some new vital energy was developing itself under the conditions of modern bodily health; and not that any interference with the laws of Nature had taken place. Yet the generally obstinate refusal of men of science to receive any verbal witness of such facts is a proof that they believe them contrary to a code of law which is more or less complete in their experience, and altogether complete in their conception; and I think it is therefore their province to lay down for us the true principle by which ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... idolized, and the light within more or less patronized. If the truth, for the sake of which all symbols exist, were indeed the delight of those who claim it, the sectarianism of the church would vanish. But men on all sides call that the truth which is but its form or outward sign—material or verbal, true or arbitrary, it matters not which—and hence come ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... straightway for Liege, with this missive; and had duly presented it there, I guess on the 7th,—with notice that he would wait forty-eight hours, and then return with what answer or no-answer there might be. Getting no written answer, or distinct verbal one; getting only some vague mumblement as good as none, Rambonet had disappeared from Liege on the 9th; and was home at Moyland when Voltaire arrived that Sunday evening,—just walking about to come to heat again, after reporting progress to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... appointed to take possession of both Provinces. But as the military command of General Jackson was to cease on the 1st of June, General Gaines, the officer next in command, then here, who was first designated to take possession of East Florida, received from me a verbal direction to give such effect to any requisition from the governor for military aid to enforce his authority as the circumstances might require. It was not foreseen that the command in both the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... used the words she had far more than prima-facie appearances for believing. Neigh's own conduct towards her, though peculiar rather than devoted, found in these words alone a reasonable key. But, supposing the estate to be such a verbal hallucination as, for instance, hers had been at Arrowthorne, when her poor, unprogressive, hopelessly impracticable Christopher came there to visit her, and was so wonderfully undeceived about her social ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... every whit as irritating, for all that. Perhaps a bit more so, since Fred Starratt found it hard to put a finger on its precise quality. He had another taste of it later when the inevitable strike gossip intruded itself. It was Helen who opened up, repeating her verbal passage with ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... among other things in these questions, the theory that any verbal expression of faith, such as was demanded by the Church, and the departure from which was reckoned as heresy, could never fully cover the exact religious ideas of a believer, and that therefore the demand for an expression of faith in certain words was ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... of the war, she kept herself locked in her room, joining the family only when summoned to the dining room. With tightly puckered mouth and an absent-minded air, she would then seat herself at the table, pretending not to hear Don Marcelo's verbal outpourings of enthusiasm. He enjoyed describing the departure of the troops, the moving scenes in the streets and at the stations, commenting on events with an optimism sure of the first news of the war. Two things were beyond all discussion. The bayonet was the secret ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... senses. In the one use it refers to the content of the writing, to its intellectual and moral import, its spiritual significance; in the other use it refers to the writing itself considered as showing more or less of literary power,—that is, of power in the ordering and verbal ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... Library in Madrid an authentic and exact transcript of it, made by order of Ferdinand VI. His edition is, therefore, far better than any of its predecessors; but it is possible that even now there may still remain some verbal errors for future editors to correct. The most conscientious diligence is not a safeguard against mistakes. F. Bouix says that in ch. xxxiv. section 12, the reading of the original differs from that of the printed editions; yet Don Vicente ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... caused a deep if temporary estrangement between Wilson and Richards. Although constantly chaffing each other, and engaged in verbal strife, they had hitherto been firm friends. Their rivalry in the matter of horseflesh had not aroused angry feelings, even their mutual adoration of Isobel Hannay had not affected a breach in their friendship; but upon the subject ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... was apparently verbal, is confirmed by Courthorne, the entire sum rightfully belongs to the man he made his tenant," said Barrington, and Macdonald smiled gravely ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... with actual inspection, not with verbal descriptions of things. From such inspection it is that certain knowledge comes. What is actually seen remains faster in the memory than description or enumeration a hundred times ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... to be presumed that the aide who bore the despatch, and reached Sedgwick later than the telegram, gave some verbal explanation of this sudden change of Hooker's purpose; but the order itself was of a nature to excite considerable surprise, if not to create a feeling ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... mature youth who some time since 'gave his friends the slip, chose land-travel or seafaring,' and has not returned to build the town house with proper library. They who observed him closely thought that he resembled Heber in certain ways. Perhaps this fact alone would justify an attempt at a verbal portrait. But the additional circumstance that, in days when people with the slightest excuse therefor have themselves regularly photographed, this old-fashioned youth refused to allow his 'likeness' to be taken,—this circumstance must do what it can ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... won the day, they found that many companies were decimated, some nearly annihilated; numbers of their officers were dead in the breach, "Those who are not mortally wounded rejoice at this great success," said an officer to the Duke; and it was a significant sentence. [Footnote: Verbal report of Colonel Combes to the Duke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it reached it. My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished their claims "noticed." At least half of it was given me by persons who had no thought of such a thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal "thank you;" and you were not even obliged by law to furnish that. If you are coming up the street with a couple of baskets of apples in your hands, and you meet a friend, you naturally invite him to take a few. That describes the condition of things in Virginia in the "flush times." Every ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... thought, they had reached a deadlock. Somebody had to trust somebody. This could go on all night—parry and riposte, question and evasive answer, each of them throwing back the other's questions in a verbal fencing-match. Raynor One wasn't giving away any information. And, considering what was probably at stake, Bart ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... being par excellence the most judicious verbal critic of the day, it will scarcely be thought egotistical to claim for myself the priority for one of his emendations—"Avoid thee, friend," in the Few Notes, p. 31., a reading I had mentioned in print before ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... Mitchell ever gave me." The original sketch of the junction having been lost, Sturt, who was nearly blind at the time of the publication of his work, got the assistance of a friend, who drew it from his verbal description.] ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... alphabet of Cadmus, though so vastly superior to any system of symbolical hieroglyphics, for all purposes where any thing like verbal accuracy was desired, was still very slow in coming into general use. It was of course, at first, very difficult to write it, and very difficult to read it when written. There was a very great practical obstacle, too, in the way of ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... persistently appeared to be rummaging among his papers and to be contemptuously oblivious of him. "Allow me to explain that I have been living with her for nearly three years and at first... at first... for why should I not confess it, at the very beginning I promised to marry her daughter, it was a verbal promise, freely given... she was a girl... indeed, I liked her, though I was not in love with her... a youthful affair in fact... that is, I mean to say, that my landlady gave me credit freely in those days, and I led a life of... ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... thing, as are sculptor, painter, architect. Of detail criticism ("dry-as-dust" criticism, to use Carlyle's term) there is much, though none too much, which work requires scholarship and painstaking, and is necessary. Malone is a requirement of Shakespearean study. But, candidly, is verbal, textual criticism the largest, truest criticism? Dust is not man, though man is dust. No geologist's biography of the marble from Carrara, nor a biographer's sketch of the sculptor, will explain the statue, nor do justice to the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... there was none of this verbal quibbling. The language of the House of Commons was adopted by the whole country. The City of London led the way. Within thirty-six hours after the Association had been published under the direction of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to receive another minister plenipotentiary from the United States until after the redress of grievances demanded of the American government, which the French republic had a right to expect from it." This message was succeeded, first by indecorous verbal communications, calculated to force the American minister out of France, and afterward, by a written mandate to quit the territories ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... about political affairs, could, without exciting any suspicion, hold with the English aristocracy an intercourse which, if he had been a noted master of state craft, would have been jealously watched. Zulestein, after a short absence, returned to his country charged with letters and verbal messages not less important than those which had been entrusted to his predecessor. A regular correspondence was from this time established between the Prince and the opposition. Agents of various ranks passed and repassed between the Thames and the Hague. Among ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of the cells of a great art beehive called "Raphael's Rooms," and devoted their shining hours to modelling fancy heads, gossiping the while; for the poor things found the road to fame rather dull and dusty without such verbal sprinklings. ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... had come to witness the execution of his "Akakia," which had been published in Leyden, and scattered abroad throughout Berlin. Voltaire had broken his written and verbal promise, his word of honor; and the king, exasperated to the utmost by this dishonorable conduct, had determined to punish him openly. And now, amidst the breathless silence of the crowd, a functionary of the king read the sentence—that sentence which condemned the "Akakia," that malicious ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... of it and never came to church, enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs' pettitoes, well calculated to dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical character. Neighbours who had nothing but verbal consolation to give showed a disposition not only to greet Silas and discuss his misfortune at some length when they encountered him in the village, but also to take the trouble of calling at his cottage and getting him to repeat all the details on the very spot; and then they would ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... has divined, no doubt, that Thenardier's pursuer was no other than Javert. Javert, after his unlooked-for escape from the barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture of police, had rendered a verbal account to the Prefect in person in a brief audience, had then immediately gone on duty again, which implied—the note, the reader will recollect, which had been captured on his person—a certain surveillance of the shore on the right bank of the Seine near the Champs-Elysees, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... recognize him, but the proffer of Benton's cigar-case proved a sufficient credential, and a discussion of the weather appeared a satisfactory reason for remaining. It was only a verbal and logical step from weather to crops, and in ten minutes the visitor was being shown over the place. When the round of cribs and stables was completed it was time for the host to feed his stock, and, saying good-by at the barn, he left Benton to make his way alone to the cabin. Passing ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... upon the changes in opinions and the changes in the condition of the people in the more than half-century from 1835 to 1899. At the first period there was not a clergyman of any of the Protestant denominations who questioned the plenary and verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, including the Old and New Testaments. The suggestion could not have safely been made in any New England pulpit that there were errors of translation, and yet the Christian world, outside the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... I find verbal evidences of human sacrifices in those regions only that are near to the territory of the Bagbos and the Mandyas. This leads me to think that the custom is either of Bagbo ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... as a ship out of soundings, Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings, Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle, Deaf to even the definite article— No verbal message was worth a pin, Though you hired an earwig ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... said, "I wish to tell you that although it is not usual for a captain to acknowledge in official despatches that he acted on the ideas of a young midshipman, Captain Marker has done full justice to you in his verbal report to me. Your idea showed great ingenuity, and although the surprise was so complete that even had the attack been made by ships' boats only it would probably have been successful, this detracts in no ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... who had taken up fresh places on European farms under verbal contracts, which needed no registration, actually founded new homes in spite of the law, neither the white farmer nor the native tenant being aware of the serious penalties they were exposed ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... a world of discords ever. I even touched her arm, suddenly, impulsively. "Helena!" But she, not knowing that I meant to give her liberty, though over a dead heart, shrank as though I had added physical insult to my verbal taunts. Anyway I turned, I was fast in the net of circumstance, fanged by the springs of misapprehension.... Well, then, but one thing remained. She had said it was a man's place to fight, and so now it would be! I ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... the door, and wished to see him, he ordered him to be shown up into his chamber. After apologizing for the unseasonableness of the hour, he briefly stated the urgency of the case, and asked for a verbal order to put the captain and cook in prison to await their trial the next morning. The magistrate replied, "It is a matter of too much importance to be disposed of in that way. I will come down and hear the case." A large hickory log, which had been covered with ashes in the parlor fire-place, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... the auxiliary verb "to be," all evidently varieties of one common type, while it is equally clear that no one of the six affords the original form from which the others could have been borrowed. So also in none of the six languages do we find the elements of which these verbal and other forms could have been composed; they must have been handed down as relics from a former period, they must have existed in some antecedent language, which we know ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... "And the apology? A verbal one will suffice on this occasion, accompanied by the sum of one shilling for the purchase ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... deny that those literatures have lost something of the relative value they once possessed, and which made it a literary necessity to study Greek and Latin for their sakes. The literary necessity is in a measure superseded by translations, which, though they may fail to communicate the aroma and the verbal felicities of the original, reproduce its form and substance. It is furthermore superseded by the rise of new literatures, and by introduction to those of other and elder lands. The Greeks were masters of literary form, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... It was half after ten o'clock. In a few minutes the door was thronged by mounted officers, who, upon receiving a verbal message from him, sped away fast ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... all kinds of things which did not belong to him," but Napoleon also in later years repeated that Bismarck had promised him all kinds of recompenses. No written agreement was made; that was reserved for later negotiations, but there was a verbal understanding, which both parties felt was binding. This was the pendant to the interview of Plombieres. But Bismarck had improved on Cavour's example; he did not want so much, he asked only for neutrality: the King of Prussia would ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... all law and police practices nothing is verbal, but any circumstance, however trifling, is reduced to writing, the labor, as well as the number of papers that thus accumulate, is enormous. In a police-office, consequently, we find copying-clerks among many other scribes of various denominations, ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... of the Audiencia, in order that the local Spanish magistrates might be guided by the customs of the natives in deciding matters of law or justice among the Indians. The first part, omitted here, is the same, with a few verbal changes, as the relation published in Vol. VII. pp. 173-185; but it is dated, "Narcan, October twenty-four, one thousand five hundred and eighty-nine" (but this may have been an error of the clerk of the Audiencia). The second part (Vol. VII, pp. 185-196) is not found in the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... by Sbaralea, Bull., t. iv., p. 156, note h. This act was drawn up July 9, 1274, at a time when the son of Orlando as well as the Brothers Minor desired to authenticate the donation, which until then had been verbal. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... pen and ink, and wrote down my submission nearly as I have exprest it, to which I signed my name. My son was employed to carry the letter to Mr Thornhill, who was then at his seat in the country. He went, and in about six hours returned with a verbal answer. He had some difficulty, he said, to get a sight of his landlord, as the servants were insolent and suspicious; but he accidentally saw him as he was going out upon business, preparing for his marriage, which was to be in three days. He continued to inform us, that he stept up ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... is a very natural instinct which made the disciples say, 'Teach us to pray,' and I do not think that ecclesiastical systems do teach people to pray—at least the examples they give are too intellectual, too much concerned with good taste. A prayer need not be a verbal thing—the best prayers are not. It is the mute glance of an eye, the holding out of a hand. And if you ask me what can make people different, I say it is not will, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... ought always to be free from the nine verbal faults and the nine faults of judgment. It should also, while setting forth the meaning with perspicuity, be possessed of the eighteen well-known merits.[1688] Ambiguity, ascertainment of the faults and merits of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... back to the Rue de la Paix, my dear Peyrade. I will go upstairs with you to your rooms and see for myself. A verbal report will no doubt be enough ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... d'Arthur is a very close and in many parts a verbal rendering of the same tale in sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, iii. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... and the cowpuncher looked at each other without verbal comment. A message better not put into words flashed from one to the other. This looked like the haunt of rustlers. Here they could pursue their nefarious calling unmolested. Not once a year would anybody except one of themselves enter this valley, and if a stranger did so ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... most friendly, sometimes voluble, and she ever dealt with us in a lady-like manner. Again we noted that many a society woman would give much for her well modulated voice and powers of verbal expression. Without any suggestion of melodrama she would rise to strong passages in giving vent to her feelings of indignation and ambition. At this time we were still wondering where she could have obtained her education; it was not until later that we ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... I have chronicled in the June "Atlantic." We had marched from Annapolis, while "rumors to right of us, rumors to left of us, volleyed and thundered." We had not expected that the attack upon us would be merely verbal. The truculent citizens of Maryland notified us that we were to find every barn a Concord and every hedge a Lexington. Our Southern brethren at present repudiate their debts; but we fancied they would keep their warlike promises. At least, everybody thought, "They will fire over our heads, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... followed her son's thought and did not seek to elicit verbal explanation of the certainty which justified so large a venture. "Oh, I hope not," she said. "Sarah's threatening to leave, anyway; and she gets so cross if there's extra ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... of his own person, his invective against 'commodity, tickling commodity', and his expression of contempt for the Archduke of Austria, who had killed his father, which begins in jest but ends in serious earnest. His conduct at the siege of Angiers shows that his resources were not confined to verbal retorts.—The same exposure of the policy of courts and camps, of kings, nobles, priests, and cardinals, takes place here as in the other plays we have gone through, and we shall not ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... evidence of his having been guilty of any dishonesty within the reach of the Law, until he ran away with a mare from a man in town, as to which he excused himself by saying that she had formerly been his own, and that there having nothing more than a verbal contract between them, he thought fit to carry her off and sell her again. Sometime afterwards, going down to Newcastle Fair (for he still continued to carry on some dealing in horse-flesh) he fell ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... chapter 11. [W. H. S.] Sale's version, with trifling verbal differences. The 'mufti's' reasoning has been ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... any true gentleman to preserve an equanimity of expression under the hint—either visual or verbal—that (to use the language of the poet) you are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... my boy——! When you reach General Sherman, you will deliver to him a verbal message—I'll give you a sign that will identify you. This is the big thing I'm sending you to do. I could telegraph my order direct to Sherman, but it would have to be filed in the War Office, and might offend General Grant. As an officer, you ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... the constitution enfranchising the women of this State? After the November election 80 members of the House of Representatives for 1919 were favorably pledged in writing on both questions and 40 had given verbal pledges—16 more than the constitutional majority required. From the Senate 13 written and 18 verbal pledges had been secured, 5 more than necessary. There was practically no organized opposition to the referendum and probably many of the men who pledged ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... whispering, "Before you judge me too harshly, Paul, please listen to what I have to say. I feel I have the right to make this explanation, and you have the right to hear it. Under the French law, I am legally bound to the Count de Roannes. Fearing that I might not remain true to a mere verbal pledge—you knew we were engaged, Paul, for I told you that, last summer—the Count asked that the betrothal papers be executed before his unavoidable return to Paris. Knowing no real reason for delay, ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... His verbal enthusiasm in no way imparted itself to young Conniston. So Roger puffed complacently at his cigarette in thoughtful silence, rather more than usually well ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... address prayers to the Prophet. As it was merely a repetition of the same ceremony over and over again, in a short time no notice was taken of it. The Turks, perceiving this negligence, substituted for their prayers and hymns cries of revolt, and by this sort of verbal telegraph, insurrectionary excitement was transmitted to the northern and southern extremities of Egypt. By this means, and by the aid of secret emissaries, who eluded our feeble police, and circulated real or forged firmans of the Sultan disavowing the concord between France and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... matters with Spain, it was thought proper to prepare our representative at that Court to avail us of it. A confidential person was therefore dispatched to be the bearer of instructions to him, and to supply, by verbal communications, any additional information of which he might find himself in need. The Government of France was at the same time applied to for its aid and influence in this negotiation. Events, however, took a turn which did not ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... but I ask permission to hint that your conduct will acquire a certain graceful rotundity, if you will remit to me in current funds the munificent sum of money which the whole-souled and gentlemanly proprietors—pardon the verbal habits of my humble calling!—have without doubt already remitted to you. Pecunia prima quaerenda, virtus post nummos. Mind you, I do not expect to be as well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... the information of the more critical reader, that the verbal alterations in this edition of "Prometheus" are made from a list of errata written ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... but humble scavengers of the language, whose business it is to pick up what might offend or injure, and remove it, hugging and feeding on it as they go! I don't want to speak too slightingly of these verbal critics;—how can I, who am so fond of talking about errors and vulgarisms of speech? Only there is a difference between those clerical blunders which almost every man commits, knowing better, and that habitual grossness or meanness of speech which is unendurable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... to believe that Count Guido had been working towards this end. Pompilia's verbal communications with Caponsacchi had been supplemented by letters, now brought to him in her name, now thrown or let down from her window as he passed the house. They were written, as he said, on the subject of the flight, and as he also said, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... that he gets his results in accordance with the skill exercised in preparing his verbal displays. He must make people stop and pause. His copy has ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman

... to the period of preparation immediately preceding the reaction; for, from the moment the chronoscope is started until the stimulus is given a current is necessarily passing through the instrument. At a verbal signal from the operator the assistant started the chronoscope; the stimulus was then given by the operator, and the instrument recorded the time from the breaking of the circuit, effected by the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... which was written probably about a century and a half before the birth of Christ, and is explicitly quoted in the Epistle of Jude contains a minute account of the final judgment, including in its scope this whole scenery and all these agents, and closely anticipating both the doctrinal and verbal details of the same subject as recorded in the New Testament itself. There is not, with one exception, a single essential feature of the now current Christian belief, in regard to the day of judgment at the end of the world, which is not distinctly ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... Winthrop?" he said in way of preliminary. You may hand a card case full of your name to a lawyer, and still he will insist upon a verbal admission. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... in a whole day, however assiduously they may devote themselves to it, for a single word from God awakens that secret instinct which animates and fires them, so that love closes both their mouth and their eyes. They cannot utter verbal prayers, being unable to pronounce them. A heart which is unaccustomed to this does not know what it means; for it has never experienced anything like it before, and it does not understand why it cannot pray, and yet it cannot resist the power which overcomes it. ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... merit, during the four years' reign of that weak, bigoted, and ill-advised prince, as well as at the time of the Revolution, will easily be computed, by a recourse to a great number of histories, pamphlets, and public papers, printed in those times, and some afterwards; beside the verbal testimonies of many persons yet alive, who are old enough to have known and observed the Dissenters' conduct in that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift



Words linked to "Verbal" :   spoken, communicatory, verbal expression, verbal noun, archaicism, verbal description, archaism, communicative, verbal intelligence, verb, word, prolix, numerical



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