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The Hound of the Baskervilles vocabulary
95 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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► definition
Definition:1. A common saying; a proverb; a saying that has a general currency.2. The object of a contemptuous saying.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)---1. A proverb or proverbial expression, common saying; a frequently used word or phrase.2. A characteristic word or expression; a word or phrase associated with a person or group.3. Someone or something that stands as an example (i.e. metonymically) for something else, by having some of that something's characteristic traits.4. An object of notoriety or contempt, scorn or derision.text from Wiktionary, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike---this term seems to have morphed from only having a negative connotation to general use. It is difficult (impossible?) to find older uses of this word that don't imply something negative.
► uses
Uses:
Thou makest us a byword among the heathen.
Ps. xliv. 14
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This, in truth, his neighbours might have pardoned, seeing that saints have never flourished in those parts, but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour which made his name a byword through the West.
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"I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not have made his sister's name a by-word."
Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
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Michael Portillo: George Pullman built this factory in 1880 to manufacture carriages for his Pullman Palace Car Company. In Appleton's day they became a by-word for luxury travel.
BBC. Great American Railroad Journeys: Chicago to Champaign (2017)
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A clever, wide-awake business concern should be able to make three-quarter-length trousers a byword of masculine fashion.
John Kennedy Toole. A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)
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