Linguistics in Literature


Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy
... for rather than any good action should walk through the world like
an unappropriated adjective in an illarranged sentence, he is always
willing to stand noun substantive to it himself.

Michael Innes, The Journeying Boy (p. 139)

Could Miss Liberty, like a deponent verb, be a wolf in sheep's
clothing? The idea was patently absurd. 

Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
In fact, trolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three ...
many, and people assume this means they can have no grasp of 
higher numbers.  They don't realize that many can be a number.
As in:  one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, 
many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, 
many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, 
many-many-many-three, LOTS.

Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (p. 77)
It was much like an ordinary pocket calculator, except that the LCD
screen was a little larger than usual, in order to accommodate the
abridged judgements of King Wen on each of the sixty-four hexagrams,
and also the commentaries of his son, the Duke of Chou, on each of the
lines of each hexagram.  These were unusual texts to see marching
across the display of a pocket calculator, particularly as they had
been translated from the Chinese via the Japanese and seemed to have
enjoyed many adventures on the way. 

Rex Stout, The Doorbell Rang (A Nero Wolfe Mystery), p. 14
The talk had covered the state of the Union, the state of the feminine
mind, whether any cooked oyster can be fit to eat, structural
linguistics, and the prices of books.  It had got hot only on the
feminine mind, and Lon had done that purposely to see how sharp Wolfe
could get.