book-language

The more learned and able among the Hobbits had some knowledge of ‘book-language’, as it was termed in the Shire; and they were quick to note and adopt the style of those whom they met.

The Lord of the Rings Tolkien, J. R. R. 1954

Nowadays _Muttersprache_ is found everywhere in the German book-language, but Dr. Lübben, in 1881, declared that he had never heard it from the mouth of the Low German folk, with whom the word was always

The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day Alexander F. Chamberlain

Everywhere the conventionalized book-language is spoken by the few.

Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation 1897

The book-language, as cultivated by the best writers, is to be freely understood only by those who have stocked their minds well with the extensive phraseology which has been gradually created by eminent men during the past twenty-five centuries, and with historical and biographical allusions and references of all sorts and things.

The Civilization of China Herbert Allen Giles 1890

These readers do not read the actual words of the book, which no coolie would understand, but transpose the book-language into the colloquial as they go along.

China and the Chinese Herbert Allen Giles 1890

His majesty cautions Prince Henry against the use of any "corrupt leide, as _book-language_, and _pen-and-inkhorn termes_, and, least of all, nignard and effeminate ones."

Literary Character of Men of Genius Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions Isaac Disraeli 1807

Roman writers, and belonged to an age when a book-language had hardly yet an existence, and when every phrase was caught up fresh from the life.

Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature August Wilhelm Schlegel 1806

There is also the public story-reader, who for his own sake will choose a convenient spot near to some busy thoroughfare; and there, to an assembled crowd, he will read out, not in the difficult book-language, but in the colloquial dialect of the place, stories of war and heroism, soldiers led to night-attacks with wooden bits in their mouths to prevent them from talking in the ranks, the victory of the loyal and the rout and slaughter of the rebel.

The Civilization of China Herbert Allen Giles 1890

Had Shakespeare been born fifty years earlier, he would have been cramped by a book-language not yet flexible enough for the demands of rhythmic emotion, not yet sufficiently popularized for the natural and familiar expression of supreme thought, not yet so rich in metaphysical phrase as to render possible that ideal representation of the great passions which is the aim and end of Art, not yet subdued by practice and general consent to a definiteness of accentuation essential to ease and congruity of metrical arrangement.

Among My Books First Series James Russell Lowell 1855