Double entendre

“ Double entendre is detestable in a woman, especially when perpetrated in the presence of men; no man of taste can respect a woman who is guilty of it: though it may create a laugh, it will inevitably excite also disgust in the minds of all whose good opinions are worth acquiring. ”

“ Some sympathetic converse with our fellow-creatures: some converse that shall not be mere dead words, but the vehicle of living thoughts and feelings—converse in which the eyes and the face shall speak, and the tones of the voice be full of meaning—converse which shall make us feel no longer alone, but shall draw us closer to another, and double our own emotions by adding another's to them. ”

“ Shall I say—to show the extent of the evil—that they are sometimes heard from both parents? Now no serious observer of human life and conduct can doubt that by every species of impure language, whether in the form of hints, innuendoes, double entendres, or plainer speech, impure thoughts are awakened, a licentious imagination inflamed, and licentious purposes formed, which would otherwise never have existed. ”

“ Why, let me see, I have the same face, the same words and accents when I speak what I do think, and when I speak what I do not think, the very same; and dear dissimulation is the only art not to be known from nature. ”

“ But even in such rare moments as these, when we seem to throw off the cold attudinizing of life and speak direct to each other, heart to heart, a double mental process is possible, and we may be unconsciously shaping our wishes in accordance with those too exalted sentiments born of incautious speech. ”

“ But the double tongue talks one way with one person, another with another; it is the way of hypocrisy, the slick tongue, the oily tongue of the two-faced man whose word cannot be depended upon, whose word is not so good as his bond. ”

“ And however our Dennises take offence,
A double meaning shows double sense;
And if proverbs tell truth,
A double tooth
Is Wisdom's adopted dwelling! ”

“ But a word sometimes may be spoken which, if it be well spoken,—if assurance of its truth be given by the tone and by the eye of the speaker,—shall do so much more than any letter, and shall yet only remain with the hearer as the remembrance of the scent of a flower remains! ”

“ Often in the course of years an expressed sentiment, the particular sense of a phrase heard casually, would recall him to my mind so that I have fastened on to him many words heard on other men's lips and belonging to other men's less perfect, less pathetic moods. ”

“ But does not the absence of the spoken word make it easier to give expression to the universal language of the heart? All motives and emotions must be made to appear on the surface. Even sounds must be silently, yet effectively, portrayed. ”

“ In discourse you delight to speak too much.... Your affections are entangled with a love of your own arguments, though they be the weaker.... Secondly, you cloy your auditory: when you would be observed, speech must either be sweet, or short. ”

“ Eloquent speech is not from lip to ear, but rather from heart to heart. ”

“ Thou referrest to the usage of thy conversation, and sayest within thyself, What is a word? What mighty thing is a word? It sounds and passes away; after beating the air, it strikes the ear and is no more. ”

“ True, our converse a stranger is to speech;
Only the practiced ear can catch the surging words
That break and die upon thy pebbled lips.
Thy flow of thought is noiseless as the lapse of thy own waters,
Wafted as is the morning mist up from thy surface,
So that the passive Soul doth breathe it in,
And is infected with the truth thou wouldst express. ”

“ A rare tone in a person's voice, a densely wrathful expression in a pair of slate-colored eyes, a fine, fine shade of comparison and contrast between a word in a conversation and an angleworm pattern in a calico dressing-jacket—these are things that make me conscious of divine emotion. ”

“ The rest of us, meanwhile, by employing speech exclusively to express thought or emotion, and by habitually depending on five senses for all our impressions of the external world, have not only neglected but even lost all memory of the gift that once was ours. ”

“ It may, at times, be convenient to speak of one gesture as merely for emphasis, of another as indicating location, of another as giving illustration, of one as more subjective, expressing a thought that reflects back upon the speaker, or is said more in the way of self-communion, of another as objective, concerned only with outer objects or with ideas more apart from the person or the inward feeling of the speaker. ”

“ The feelings move inwardly, and are embodied in words. When words are insufficient for them, recourse is had to sighs and exclamations. When sighs and exclamations are insufficient for them, recourse is had to the prolonged utterance of song. ”

“ There lies the unspoken thing, present, omnipresent. Every time we converse, we seek to translate it into speech, but whether we hit, or whether we miss, we have the fact. Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever. ”

“ I speak with less confidence as to passion and pathos, since it is an oratory that produces every sensation of admiration, amusement, and delight, without as a rule appealing either to profound emotion or to tears. ”

“ It was my wish in this poem to shew the manner in which such men cleave to the same ideas; and to follow the turns of passion, always different, yet not palpably different, by which their conversation is swayed. ”

“ When the double contrast is contained in two phrases, the first phrase being positive and the other phrase negative, the first member should be given the rising inflection, the second the falling, the third the falling, and the fourth the rising. In this way the contrast will be clearly shown and the negative and positive qualities retained; as,
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal ”

“ In duologue there is only a single refraction of thought; the person conversed with produces it, as the mirror in whom we want to behold our thoughts anew in their finest form. But how is it when there are two or three, or even more persons conversing with one? ”

“ In the actually present speech and rejoinder we have to presuppose that as between man and man the volition and heart, the movement of feeling and decision are more direct, that in short the dialogue passes on without any such recourse to considerable reflection, but at once from soul to soul, as eye to eye, mouth to mouth, and ear to ear. ”

“ When the tongue is well controlled and wisely subdued; when selfish impulses and unworthy thoughts no longer rush to the tongue demanding utterance; when the speech has become harmless, pure, gentle, gracious, and purposeful, and no word is uttered but in sincerity and truth,—then are the five steps in virtuous speech accomplished, then is the second great lesson in Truth learned and mastered. ”

“ It is the tone of voice in which a thought is uttered that gives the thought its power for good or evil, for pleasure or for pain, for success or failure. Words spoken in one manner will be devoid of meaning; spoken in another, they will be illumined with the light of reason. Words that are spoken as words will remain nothing but words, but those that are spoken as thoughts will disappear as words, and the ideas will step forward and be seen in the expressive countenance and heard in the tones of the voice. ”

“ If he show favour and incline to grant the wished-for grace, ’Tis well and good; but, if ye still read anger in his face,
⁠Dissemble then with him and say, “We know her not, not we.”
Quoth I to myself, “Verily, if the owner of this voice be fair, she unites beauty of person and eloquence and sweetness of voice.” ”

“ Conversation, which is the basis of all true Elocution, is regarded as embracing all the germs of speech and action. Prominent attention is therefore given to the cultivation of this the most common form of human expression. ”

“ To apply words, and more especially adjectives, in an unwonted and unusual sense is one of the arts which go a long way to make conversation agreeable. To do this with taste, and without corrupting or annihilating the meaning of the word, demands a certain amount of literary skill. ”

“ And if they succeed in overhearing with strained ears some dialogue which two lovers are holding in the forest-shade, they are still more bewildered, for they hear familiar words in changed sense, and so they swear that these people know nothing of flaming feeling, and the great passion. ”

“ One single simple incident, a pleasantly naïve or even silly word, a blunder, a paradox, a clever remark, personal singularities or habits, nay, a peculiar expression, and whatever else would occur in a gay and bustling life—took the form of a dialogue, a catechism, a passing scene, or a drama,—often in prose, but oftener in verse. ”

“ Understanding they have collectively none, but they have ears and eyes, which must be flattered and seduced; and this can only be done by eloquence, tuneful periods, graceful action, and all the various parts of oratory. ”

“ There is but one defect in literature,—that the talk is all on one side, so that we are listeners, as at a sermon or a lecture, and not sharers in some antique symposium, our own brows crowned with flowers, and our own tongues loosened with wine. The exercise of the tongue is wanting, and to some it is an imperious need, so that they will talk to the most uncongenial [Pg 30] human beings, or even to parrots and dogs. ”

“ Thus we see dialogue fall into its place among the varieties of literary expression, as the most imitative and the least personal, yet not as entirely imitative nor as wholly impersonal. It carries the imitative and impersonal much further than the lyric coming straight from the poet’s own heart, much further than the philosophic poem with its questioning of a man’s own thoughts about the universe, further than narrative with its frankly personal record of how things appear to the narrator, and its unblushing attempt to make them appear in the same light to the reader. ”

“ And the power of the spoken word, especially in public speaking, depends largely upon the fact that certain words and turns of speech are endowed by the hearer with an additional meaning which arouses his feelings—his love, reverence, enthusiasm ”

“ Then, again, we have discovered that often we are made to feel most deeply, not by detailed statement, but by suggestion: in the case of a speaker, perhaps by a momentary gesture, or play of features, by a sudden inflection of the voice, or a pause in speech, and the occasional accent of a word or sentence; in the case of a writer, often as much by what he leaves unsaid, by the thought that is veiled behind the statement, by the choice and emphasis of certain features of his record. Further, we may have learned to find occasional value even in uncertainty or indecision. ”

“ Or to be more explicit, is conversation an art or a gift? The answer must certainly be an art, for nature never gives that which study accomplishes. And by study you can become a master of speech—you can make words a veritable torch, illuminating you and your surroundings. But words alone mean very little. It is the grouping of words, expressions, phrases; the combination of thoughts that make real conversation. ”

“ Just Talk
Following the Intermission the Jumbler unravels the difference between speech and talk and think and thought.
From time an infant draws first breath
And 'gins its virgin squaking,
Each mother proud, not saving one,
Translates all goos as talking. ”

“ there are double words for everything: the word that swells, the word that belittles; ”

“ We do not, it is true, in conversation, connect our language so closely as in an oratorical harangue, but the opposite extreme is equally unnatural. Even in our common discourses, we observe a certain continuity, we give a development both to arguments and objections, and in an instant passion will animate us to fulness of expression, to a flow of eloquence, and even to lyrical sublimity. ”

“ I confess that my belief in the efficacy of spoken words, of words running like an electric spark from the lips of the speaker right into the heart of him who heard them, was stronger far than my trust in written arguments. They must lack a warmth which the others possess; and they enter only on the minds of the studious, whereas the others touch the feelings of the world at large. ”

“ The effect of the emotional tone does not even require fitness in the meaning of the spoken words, for nonsense or an unknown tongue may be made to convey, when spoken with expressive intonation, the feelings which are displayed upon the speaker’s face. ”

“ We speak to one another civilly, hate one another heartily." There is perfect art in this little speech; everything is complete, even to the symmetrical antithesis of words, ideas, sounds: what a fine talker is this same satirical shoemaker! ”

“ The modern listener to this eager talk may perhaps at first feel wearied. Suffocated by words, repelled by frequent crudity and confusion of metaphor, he may even be inclined to call the thought childish and the tone overwrought. ”

“ It enables the speaker, by the change of a single consonant, to make a full and clear discrimination, and relieves the narration from doubts and ambiguity, where doubts and ambiguity would otherwise often exist. ”