Careful Words

fellow (n.)

fellow (adj.)

  I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow, who used to say, "Take care of the pence, for the pounds will take care of themselves."

Earl Of Chesterfield (1694-1773): Letter, Nov. 6, 1747.

I find the medicine worse than the malady.

John Fletcher (1576-1625): Love's Cure. Act iii. Sc. 2.

  Hail fellow, well met.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): My Lady's Lamentation.

  Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in those days.

William Congreve (1670-1729): The Old Bachelor. Act ii. Sc. 2.

  I may justly say, with the hook-nosed fellow of Rome, "I came, saw, and overcame."

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act iv. Sc. 3.

A fellow in a market town,

Most musical, cried razors up and down.

John Wolcot (1738-1819): Farewell Odes. Ode iii.

Art thou there, truepenny?

Come on—you hear this fellow in the cellarage.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 5.

But I am constant as the northern star,

Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act iii. Sc. 1.

  A mad fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I 'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat: nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like an herald's coat without sleeves.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act iv. Sc. 2.

And telling me, the sovereign'st thing on earth

Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;

And that it was great pity, so it was,

This villanous saltpetre should be digg'd

Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,

Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd

So cowardly; and but for these vile guns,

He would himself have been a soldier.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act i. Sc. 3.

  Has this fellow no feeling of his business?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.

  That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): Life of Johnson (Boswell). Vol. iii. Chap. v. 1770.

  If the history of England be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage,—and both qualities are equally requisite for the undertaking,—the world will be more astonished than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr.

Benjamin Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield) (1805-1881): Sybil. Book i. Chap. iii.

  Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now; your gambols, your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.

A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act iii. Sc. 2.

In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,

I shot his fellow of the selfsame flight

The selfsame way, with more advised watch,

To find the other forth; and by adventuring both,

I oft found both.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 1.

  A fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome about him.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing. Act iv. Sc. 2.

  A fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome about him.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing. Act iv. Sc. 2.

  Magna Charta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.

Sir Edward Coke (1549-1634): Debate in the Commons, May 17, 1628.

And though mine arm should conquer twenty worlds,

There's a lean fellow beats all conquerors.

Thomas Dekker (1572-1632): Old Fortunatus.

In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,

Thou 'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,

Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee,

There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Spectator. No. 68.

  I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than that they should say, "Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow."

Plutarch (46(?)-120(?) a d): Of Superstition.

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;

The rest is all but leather or prunello.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 203.

  If he be not fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good fellows.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry V. Act v. Sc. 2.

  Every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow-fault came to match it.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act iii. Sc. 2.

  I would help others, out of a fellow-feeling.

Robert Burton (1576-1640): Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.

Their cause I plead,—plead it in heart and mind;

A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.

David Garrick (1716-1779): Prologue on Quitting the Stage in 1776.

Write me as one who loves his fellow-men.

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859): Abou Ben Adhem.