English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horsefull carriage or a strapfull gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would actually hurt a fly?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
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Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.
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To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.
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Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.
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Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.
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But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.
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We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
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...In one such dark place, I felt conscious of a singular accession of fright, as if some subtle and bodiless emanation from the abyss were engulfing my spirit; but the blackness was too great for me to percieve the source of my alarm...
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My mental hands were empty, and I felt I must do something as a counterirritant or antibody to my hysterical alarm at getting married at the age of 43
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Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.
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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
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On this subject I do not which to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No No Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest I will not equivocate I will not retreat a single inch and I will be heard.
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Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a case like the present.
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If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.
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Anagrams:
Dormitory = Dirty Room Evangelist = Evil's Agent Desperation = A Rope Ends It The Morse Code = Here Come Dots Slot Machines = Cash Lots in 'em Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler Snooze Alarm = Alas! No More Z's A Decimal Point = I'm a Dot in Place Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one
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Organizations like those who have set up these protection initiatives are trying to sound the alarm. We want the country prepared to bring these elections systems under heightened scrutiny.
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Throw out an alarming alarm clock. If the ring is loud and strident, you're waking up to instant stress. You shouldn't be bullied out of bed, just reminded that it's time to start your day.
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Many of us have heard opportunity knocking at our door, but by the time we unhooked the chain, pushed back the bolt, turned two locks, and shuts off the burglar alarm - it was gone.
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Many of us have heard opportunity knocking at our door, but by the time we unhooked the chain, pushed back the bolt, turned two locks, and shuts off the burglar alarm -- it was gone.
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An alarm clock is a device that makes you rise and whine.
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There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.
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Joel 2:1:
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming. It is close at hand –
(NIV)
BLOW THE trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on My holy Mount [Zion]. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of [the judgment of] the Lord is coming; it is close at hand--[Ezek. 7:2-4; Amos 5:16-20.](AMP)
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand;
(KJV)
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Nowadays, when opportunity knocks, you have to unlock both deadbolts, remove the chain, and turn off the burglar alarm...
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In case of fire, do your utmost to alarm the hotel porter.
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We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
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SLEEP: That fleeting moment just before the alarm goes off.
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Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.
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Luke 12:32:
'Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.'
(NIV)
Do not be seized with alarm and struck with fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom!
(AMP)
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
(KJV)
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