They are, however, the only genuine representatives of the second person singular, in English; and to displace them from that rank in grammar, or to present you, your, and yours, as being literally singular, though countenanced by several late writers, is a useless and pernicious innovation.

Those who can still remember how many often involuntarily caught his peculiar intonationso distinctively singular, and therefore so attractive in himself and so repulsive in his copyists will understand how the altering fashion of the leader's thoughts was appropriated with the same unconscious fidelity.

Some names of building materials, as brick, stone, plank, joist, though not destitute of regular plurals, as bricks, stones, planks, joists, and not unadapted to ideas distinctly singular, as a brick, a stone, a plank, a joist, are nevertheless sometimes used in a plural sense without the s, and sometimes in a sense which seems hardly to embrace the idea of either number; as, "Let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.

These pronouns are essentially singular, both in form and meaning; and yet they cannot be used with I or thou, with me or thee, or with any verb that is literally singular; as, "I ourself am."

Was not that an exceedingly singular thing?

What gives to Tölz a remarkably singular appearance is, that on a height at a short distance from the town, and hanging abruptly over the river, you perceive several figures in wood, larger than the life, which figures form groups, representing the whole history of the passion of Jesus Christ.

This grammarian here uses need for the third person singular, designedly, and makes a remark for the justification of the practice; but he neither calls the word an auxiliary, nor cites any other than anonymous examples, which are, perhaps, of his own invention.

He is the right kind of man for humble, queer-thinking; determined, sincerely-singular Christians; is just the sort of person you should hear when the "blues" are on you; has much pathos, much fire, much uncurbed virtue in him; is a sort of theological Bailey's Dictionaryrough, ready, outspoken, unconventional, and funny; is a second Gadsby in oddness, and force, and sincerity, but lacks Gadsby's learning.