" Linnaeus was a naturalist in this wide sense, and his "Systema Naturae" was a work upon natural history, in the broadest acceptation of the term; in it, that great methodising spirit embodied all that was known in his time of the distinctive characters of minerals, animals, and plants.

The saying is a little too much like Rochefoucauld, and too true to be pleasant; but it was one of those keen remarks which Johnson appreciated because they prick a bubble of commonplace moralizing without demanding too literal an acceptation.

It was a dastardly action; but his presence had grown unbearable; yes, unbearable in the fullest acceptation of the word, and in ridding myself of him I felt as if a world of misery were being lifted from me.

There are certain fundamental laws of the Institution, concerning which there never has been any dispute, and which have come down to us with all the sanctions of antiquity, and universal acceptation.

At the same time, he saw in the exaggerated amiability of his smile a desire to conciliate them, to bring sweetly before them something which he considered of doubtful acceptation.

To that, doubtless, it may be said that in its etymological acceptation, entomology is that part of the natural sciences which includes all the articulates.

At length, however, I have sufficiently disengaged myself from these onerous pursuits to accomplish this necessary revision; and I now offer the work to the public, with the confidence that it will be found better deserving of the favorable acceptation and high praise it has already received.

A "précieuse in the most flattering and most exact acceptation" of the term, she promoted a similar turn of mind in Marivaux.

With regard to my newspaper, and that telegram relative to the mandarin our train is "conveying" in the funereal acceptation of the word?

The working cowboy is seldom rich, even in the most generous acceptation of the term.

She has neither husband, children, relatives, nor friends (in the genuine acceptation of the word);she has, above all, before all, always and invariably, her salon.

The original sense of words is often driven out of use by their metaphorical acceptations, yet must be inserted for the sake of a regular origination.

When words are used equivocally, I receive them in either sense; when they are metaphorical, I adopt them in their primitive acceptation.

The college-treasury that never had in bank above a Harry-groat, shut up there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep possession, had as good evidence to show for his title as he for an historian; so, if he will needs be an historian, he is not cited in the sterling acceptation, but after the rate of bluecaps' reckoning, an historian Scot.

Owing to the indispensable nature of this work, it makes no positive claim to the character of an original composition, in the strict acceptation of that term; and he, therefore, who has undertaken the care of its collection and arrangement, assumes no higher title than that of Editor.

But the traditional acceptation of the terms sufficiently fixes their meaning to enable them to serve as a guide to moral conduct and moral feeling, especially when modified by the experience and reflexion of men who have given habitual attention to the working of their own motives and the results of their own practice.

Language suffers violence by harsh or by daring figures, by transposition, by unusual acceptations of words, and by any licence, which would be avoided by a writer of prose.

But in France, in war time, in a country all vibrant with emotionalism, this restraint of manner and speech and utter disregard of all "problems" and mysteries of life, and quiet, cheerful acceptation of the job in hand, startled the imagination of Englishmen who had been long enough away from home to stand aloof and to study those officers with a fresh vision.

To be brief, Providence blessed my efforts and increased my means; I became a wholesale dealer in every thing, from barrels of gunpowder down to pickled herrings; in the civic acceptation of the word I was a merchant, amongst the vulgar I am called a dry-salter.

I had long been growing tired of society, in the conventional acceptation of the word, and all the stereotyped pleasures of a commercial man's life.