Do we say epithet or sobriquet
It is far more probable, however, that the word was originally written "Bazainian," and was merely prophetic of the well-known epithet now bestowed by Prussian soldiers on the French troops serving under BAZAINE.
Bacchus cometh the nearest to it, whom I remember Ovid to have honoured with the epithet 'Twice born.'
This was Richard Jackson, some time M.P. for New Romney, to whom Johnson, Boswell tells us, refused the epithet "Omniscient" as blasphemous, changing it to "all knowing."
It is great injustice to brand him with the foul epithet of liar for any little discrepancies, if such there were, in statements made under such circumstances.
Approaching Biarritz, however, the handsome villas and their gardens fully deserve the epithet which cannot in justice be applied to the road.
Cicero himself was of that opinion, and on different occasions applied the epithet splendidus to Caesar, as though in some exclusive sense, or with some peculiar emphasis, due to him.
It is not so easy, with our rates and taxes and need for economy in all directions, to cast away an epithet or remark that turns up cheaply, and to go in expensive search after more genuine substitutes.
There is high Homeric precedent for keeping fast hold of an epithet under all changes of circumstance, and so the precocious author of the 'Comparative Estimate' heard the echoes repeating "Young Ganymede" when an illiterate beholder at a railway station would have given him forty years at least.
One reason of the absurdity is that we are led by a tradition about ourselves, so that long after a man has practically departed from a rule or principle, he continues innocently to state it as a true description of his practicejust as he has a long tradition that he is not an old gentleman, and is startled when he is seventy at overhearing himself called by an epithet which he has only applied to others.
On one occasion he denounced the small boroughs as "the rotten part of the constitution," thus originating the epithet by which they in time came to be generally described; but more usually he disavowed all idea of disfranchising them, propounding rather a scheme for diminishing their importance by a large addition to the county members.
It may, however, be doubted whether the epithet "unconstitutional" could be properly applied to the bill on either ground.
Columella, the writer on agriculture, was born at Cadiz; Quintilian, the great writer on the education of an orator, was born at Calahorra; the poet Martial was a native of Bilbilis; but Cordova could boast the yet higher honour of having given birth to the Senecas, an honour which won for it the epithet of "The Eloquent."
He seems to have acquired both among his friends and among strangers the epithet of "dulcis," "the charming or fascinating Gallio:" "This is more," says the poet Statius, "than to have given Seneca to the world, and to have begotten the sweet Gallio."
We shall refer again to Seneca's wealth; but we may here admit that it was undoubtedly ungraceful and incongruous in a philosopher who was perpetually dwelling on the praises of poverty, and that even in his own age it attracted unfavourable notice, as we may see from the epithet Proedives, "the over-wealthy," which is applied to him alike by a satiric poet and by a grave historian.
Time had drained my poetical vein, and I have not yet been able to indite an epithet on her merits and virtues, for she had an eminent share of both.
It was first heralded as a medical panacea, "the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man," and was seldom mentioned, in the sixteenth century, without some reverential epithet.
Pope only chose the epithet which all the world had applied, when he wrote of the "Words that wise Bacon or grave Raleigh spake.
On approaching a building of this type, we must abandon our conceptions of organic architecture: only the Greek and northern Gothic styles deserve that epithet.
It was a public expression, in various ways, of the general indignation against any transgressor, and commonly resulted either in the profound repentance or the voluntary exile of the person against whom it was directed: it was generally the fixing of any epithet which was proclaimed by each tongue when the sinner appeared,e.g., Foultongue, Lawrence, Snakefang.
The Dod-aers of the Dutch is most probably a vulgar epithet of the Dutch sailors, expressive of its lumpish conformation and inactivity.
"A pure mongrel," was what a gentleman of the British Legation termed Andreas, and this self-contradictory epithet was scarcely out of place.
Do reserve that epithet for Milton, Dante, Tasso, Schiller, and the like inaccessibilities.
They never failed to abuse him on all occasions, and I recollect old ladies in Montrose, devoted to the exiled Prince, with whom the epithet usually applied to the Prelate was that of "Leein' Gibby.
Few would be found now to apply such an epithet to the author of the History of his Own Times, and certainly it would not be applied on the ground of the Jacobite principles to which he was opposed.
Who can resist, for example, the epithet applied by Meg Merrilies to an unsuccessful probationer for admission to the ministry:"a sticket stibbler"?
Why he had been nicknamed Sukey we have never been able to ascertain; but the sobriquet, attached to him in childhood, clung to him all through life.
" Here we ought to say, that captain Willoughby had christened Bess by the sobriquet of Great Smash, on account of her size, which fell little short of two hundred, estimated in pounds, and a certain facility she possessed in destroying crockery, while 'Mony went by the milder appellation of "Little Smash;" not that bowls or plates fared any better in her hands, but because she weighed only one hundred and eighty.
Whatever may have been the original excuse for the sobriquet, the derogatory one exists no more.
He gave the name "Leontium" to Mademoiselle de L'Enclos, and the letter was written to her under that sobriquet.
Misnomer N. misnomer; lucus a non lucendo [Lat.]; Mrs. Malaprop; what d'ye call 'em &c (neologism) 563 [Obs.]; Hoosier. nickname, sobriquet, by-name; assumed name, assumed title; alias; nom de course, nom de theatre, nom de guerre
"The Dook" was the sobriquet of the person he had come to see; and it was by this name that Nick inquired for him, gravely, of the landlord.
The very thought of the little drawling outsider who had delighted in his sobriquet of "the Dook" made Hilliard feel sick, and he opened wide all the windows and doors when the contemptible creature went out of the house.
He was the friend and benefactor of his race, giving them what gold is ever too poor to buythe benefit of a good example and a noble life, and earned for himself the sobriquet by which he was called, "honest Luzerne."
In the mill he was known as one of the girl-men: "Molly Wolfe" was his sobriquet.
It was while in this occupation that he gained the sobriquet of the "Tough 'Un."
The Good Dame was the sobriquet which Lord Francis had invented to concealor to displayhis courteous disdain of the ideals represented by Mrs. Sardis, that pillar long established, that stately dowager, that impeccable doyenne of serious English fiction.
ARTFUL DODGER, the sobriquet of John Dawkins, a young thief, up to every sort of dodge, and a most marvellous adept in villainy.
BELL-THE-CAT, sobriquet of Archibald Douglas, great-earl of Angus, who died in 1514.
When Lauder told this fable to a council of Scotch nobles, met to declaim against one Cochran, Archibald Douglas started up and exclaimed in thunder, "I will;" and hence the sobriquet referred to.
DODGER (The Artful), the sobriquet of Jack Dawkins, an artful thievish young scamp, in the boy crew of Fagin the Jew villain.
This habit earned him a sobriquet pocket Navhind Times.
The people sometimes catch up a remarkable word when uttered on a remarkable occasion by one of their number, and turn the utterer into ridicule, by attaching it to him as a nickname; and it is some consolation to think that this monster was therefore treated with the sobriquet of 'Stumpie,' and of course carried it about with him to his grave.
"Maître Gonin" was a sobriquet applied by the Parisians to the Cardinal de Richelieu.
the humorous poems of Thomas Green Fessenden, published under the sobriquet of Dr. Caustic, or "Christopher Caustic, M. D.," may be seen an other comical example of Sapphics, which extends to eleven stanzas.
His commanding appearance won for him the sobriquet of "Jupiter Carlyle," and Sir Walter Scott spoke of him as "the grandest demi-god I ever saw."
l'Olonais, sobriquet of Sables d'Olone, q.v. Macias, Manuel, governor-general, declares the island in a state of war.
He came back, nothing both, to the society he had left, and was soon known to be in quest of a fair lady, whom he has made immortal by the sobriquet of Saccharissa.
WEEPING PHILOSOPHER, a sobriquet given to HERACLITUS (q. v.) from a melancholy disposition ascribed to him, in contrast with DEMOCRITUS (q. v.), designated the laughing philosopher.
Douglas's usual sobriquet was "the little giant," and it fitted wella man of stalwart proportions oddly "sawed off."
We find, too, naturally enough, an English attaché, whose chief aim is to insult an aged Russian General, whose sobriquet is, "the Hero of Sebastopol."
