Citations:adjective

English citations of adjective

Verb: "to characterize with an adjective"

						1907 1909 1923 1971 1986 1996
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1907, Richard Marsh, The Girl and the Miracle, London: Methuen & Co., page 314:

  “ […] In reply, sir, he called me an adjectival liar; and he kept on adjectiving Mr. Hankey as he helped him up the stairs. If I may make so bold, sir, since his language is so very, what I should call forcible, I shouldn't think his health can be so bad as it seems.”

• 1909, Miriam Michelson, Michael Thwaites's Wife, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., page 139:

  “ […] Nobody knows I 'm the ‘good one’ out yonder; if they did they 'd have nothing to do with me. I 'm useful, I 'm there, I 'm not a ‘quitter’—there 's the extent of adjectiving I get at the Settlement; but I never once have been accused of being good.”

• 1923, Felix A. Levy, “The Uniqueness of Israel—Conference Lecture”, in Isaac E. Marcuson, editor, Central Conference of American Rabbis: Thirty-Fourth Annual Convention [June 27–July 2, 1923,] Cape May, N. J., volume 33, Appendix B, page 125:

  You can no more have American Judaism than you can have Serbian Catholicism or Venezuelan Protestantism and why not a New York or an Illinois Judaism. […] In the domain of the spirit there are no boundaries, and reform Judaism cannot be untrue to the spirit of our whole religion by adjectiving itself, by adopting geographic or linguistic nomenclature.

• 1971, Teachers for Tomorrow‎^[1], page 166:

  […] for instance, the adjectiving of 'mathematics' with 'modern' or 'writing' with 'creative'. These words of description do no more than inform about the narrowness of the forms of facility accessible to a teacher.

  (The quote was only found in the global search results of Google Books, and it cannot be viewed in the preview when searching the book.)

• 1986, Mother India: Monthly Review of Culture, volume 39, page 349:

  Your adjectiving of “Delight” by “Sweet” does not add to the essential meaning, for “Delight” always carries sweetness, but it does serve to emphasise what is implicit […]

• 1996, George Smith, Asking Properly: the Art of Creative Fundraising, London: White Lion Press, page 90; reprinted 2004:

  Full and total support. The doubly adjectived noun is a particularly sinister form of tautology for it has begun to mean the precise opposite of what it says.