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Gait   Listen
noun
Gait  n.  
1.
A going; a walk; a march; a way. "Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor folks pass."
2.
Manner of walking or stepping; bearing or carriage while moving. "'T is Cinna; I do know him by his gait."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gait" Quotes from Famous Books



... from suffering,—age shown by dislike of activity and by an old man's way of thinking about many things,—speaking as though the world were all behind him instead of before; but still with a stalwart outward bearing, very erect in his gait, and a countenance peculiarly expressive and capable of much dignity. I speak of his personal appearance at this time, because it was then only that I became acquainted with him. In 1859 he undertook the last great work ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... the yell seemed to have been successful, for the trunk was drawn back quickly, the elephant trumpeted, there were the footsteps of a man, and the shuffling sound of the gait of the great beast, as, springing up, Peter Pegg ran to the door and climbed up to place his eye where the trunk had been, so that he could see what ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... have learned in this way to master their balance the children have brought the act of walking to a remarkable standard of perfection, and have acquired, in addition to security and composure in their natural gait, an unusually graceful carriage of the body. The exercise on the line can afterwards be made more complicated in various ways. The first application is that of calling forth rhythmic exercise by the sound of a march upon the piano. When the same march ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori

... of the Madagascan he stopped short and put his hand to his head with a gesture of perplexity, striving piteously to place the stranger. He could not succeed. With a half-running, half-stumbling gait he withdrew to a corner of the room and furtively watched ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... smooched with some of the color he had received as a present from Mr. Gilfleur, the French detective, with whom he had been associated on his cruise some months before, he did not appear at all different from most of those who listened to Captain Sullendine. He had laid aside his gentlemanly gait and bearing, and acted as though he had lately joined the ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... costume. Away they went, in the true shipwrecked sailor-begging style—their arms folded, bodies bent, and lifting their feet at every step, as if they were afraid to touch the ground for cold, and which contributed to give them that rocking gait so peculiar to the sons of the ocean—their whole frames, too, shivering as if the frosty breath of Old Winter was stealing through their veins:—the sluggard to whine and cry for melting charity at the foot of Ludgate Hill, and Paddy, in his shirt, to ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown

... off their hats to her. "Little mother Sofya Semyonovna, you are our dear, good little mother," coarse branded criminals said to that frail little creature. She would smile and bow to them and everyone was delighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait and turned round to watch her walking; they admired her too for being so little, and, in fact, did not know what to admire her most for. They even came to her ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. 'Been living there?' he asked. I said, 'Yes.' 'Fine lot these government chaps—are they not?' he went on, speaking ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... Cadet's at nine o'clock at night, both fairly primed, and with the gait of men who have been engaged in ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... on the march is an amusing thing. Taken in little, I have got very familiar with the backs and legs of the four in front, Bann's springy tread, Clay's sturdy tramp, the little stiffness that shows in ancient Corder's gait, and the untiring litheness of Knudsen's swing. Beside me Reardon trudges silently, his hat always flopped a little over his eyes, his head up. Sometimes I make him talk, and have pried out of him much of his family history. Beyond him Pickle goes on springs, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... changed to sullen stupor, and Manoel, whose gait was also unsteady, picked him up and carried him to a spigot, where he carefully unbuttoned the child's waist and soaked his head in cold water. The ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... was a big American horse, full sixteen hand high, trotting in twenty-foot jumps. If I had anything against a person, just short of killing, I'd tie him on the back of a horse trotting like that. It's a great gait to sit out. Howsomever, this man didn't sit it out; what he wanted of a saddle beyond the stirrups was a mystery, for he never touched it. He stood up on his stirrups, bent forward like he was going to bite the horse in the ear, soon's the ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... also saw the capital, and cheered by the sight, they marched at a swifter gait. Soon they turned into the main road, where the bulk of the army had already passed and saw swarms of stragglers ahead of them. Journalists and public men met them, and Dick now learned how the truth about Bull Run had come to ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... breeze, her curls blowing back from her glowing little face. He would have hastened his steps to meet her, but his honest soul always demanded a certain amount of service from himself for the dollar paid him for each trip of this kind. So he went on at his customary gait, stopping at the usual intervals to ring his bell and ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... window. Dolores saw her as distinctly as she had seen the four men. She came noiselessly and stealthily, putting down her foot delicately, like a cat. She was a lady, and she wore a loose cloak that covered all her gown, and on her head a thick veil, drawn fourfold across her face. Her gait told the girl that she was young and graceful—something in the turn of the head made her sure that she was beautiful, too—something in the whole figure and bearing was familiar. The blood sank from Dolores' cheeks, and she felt a chill slowly rising ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... itself upon me, and a very singular face it was. His eyes were faded, and his hair, which he wore long, was flecked with gray. His hair and eyes, if I may say so, were seventy years old, the rest of him not thirty. The youthfulness of his figure, the elasticity of his gait, and the venerable appearance of his head, were incongruities that drew more than one pair of curious eyes towards him. He was evidently an American,—the New England cut of countenance is unmistakable,—evidently a man who had seen something of the world; but strangely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... rippling wave is like her aching brow; The fluttering line of storks, her timid tongue; The foaming spray, her white loose floating vest; And this meandering course the current tracks Her undulating gait. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... weight, while the poor, small horse, upon whom has been devolved the task of making the 11.35 train, Gare St. Lazare, changes his position wearily from one leg to the other. He is evidently thinking out the distance, and has decided upon his gait. ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith

... hesitating gait of these monks, it seemed as if their bodies were no more than automata moving from habit, and that the souls, being elsewhere, gave no ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... slaves by my hospitable ranchero. The "head-money" once paid, no body,—civil, military, foreign, or Spanish—dared interfere with them. Forty-eight hours of rest, ablution, exercise and feeding, served to recruit the gang and steady their gait. Nor had the sailors in charge of the party omitted the performance of their duty as "valets" to the gentlemen and "ladies' maids" to the females; so that when the march towards Sant' Iago began, the procession might have ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... shoulders, and what, in my opinion, is the worst part of her appearance, is the ill grace with which she does everything. She walks like an old woman of eighty. If she were a person not very anxious to please, I should not be surprised at the negligence of her gait; but she likes to be thought pretty. She is fond of dress, and yet she does not understand that a good mien and graceful manners are the most becoming dress, and that where these are wanting all the ornaments ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... hanging across a support which moved with a rocking gait, whose pounding hurt his head, keeping him half dazed. Ross tried to move, but he realized that his arms were behind his back, fastened wrist to wrist, and a warm weight centered in the small of his spine to hold him face down on a horse. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... a phantom-like figure ascending the flight of steps to the veranda. Could that be he? If so, he was bolder in his wooing than Grace had been prepared for. But surely that was a strange costume that he wore; nor did the unconscious harmony of the gait at all resemble the senor's self-conscious strut. And whither was ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... Silvermane pressed himself and watched. The Indian rode around the corral, circling closer and closer, yet appearing not to see the stallion. Many rounds he made; closer he got, and always with the same steady gait. Silvermane left his corner and tried another. The old unwearying round brought Charger and the Navajo close by him. Silvermane pranced out of his thicket of boughs; he whistled; he wheeled with his shiny hoofs lifting. In ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... grove, Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypres lawn Over thy decent shoulders drawn: Come, but keep thy wonted state, With even step, and musing gait, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: There, held in holy passion still, Forget thyself to marble, till With a sad leaden downward cast Thou fix them on the earth as fast: And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, Spare Fast, that ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... looking at his feet," I answered. "I seem to have noticed that peculiar, splay-footed gait in stationmasters, now ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... me tae differ frae him, and it wudna be verra respectfu' o' Saunders tae live aifter this opeenion. But Saunders wes aye thraun an' ill tae drive, an' he's as like as no tae gang his ain gait. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... distance Arnold nodded, and continued to advance, the irregularity of his wavering gait more pronounced than usual. As soon as she could see the expression of his face, Sylvia's heart began to beat fast, with a divination of something momentous. He sat down beside her, took off his hat, and laid it on the bench. "Do ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... the group, and as he did so Colonel Colquhoun noticed that his gait was uncertain, and his face was white and distorted as if with physical pain. His impulse was to offer him a restorative and see him to his rooms, but Mr. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... sidewalk with a magnificent, stately gait. There was something rather magnificent in her whole appearance. Her skirts of old, but rich, black fabric swept about her long, advancing limbs; she held her black-bonneted head high, as if crowned. She pushed the cumbersome ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... in his new purchase another stranger arrived, and took up his abode in the best apartments of the house. The new-comer, a man of about fifty years of age, and evidently, from his dress and gait, a sea-faring person, was as reserved and unsocial as his landlord. His name, or at least that which he chose to be known by, was Wilson. He had one child, a daughter, about thirteen years of age, whom he ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... hurried from the house. He turned instinctively toward Grove Park, remembering that the nearest railway station was there. He was haunted by a terrible fear as he traversed the dark streets with an unsteady gait. Worse than ruin threatened him. He shuddered at the thought of arrest and punishment. He could not doubt that Stephen Foster had written a ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:— And thou wert aye a masker bold! What strange disguise hast now put on, To make believe, that Thou art gone? I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this altered size: But springtide blossoms on thy lips, And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! Life is but thought: so think I will That Youth and ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... fruits to sell, and where they tarried for a few hours at most, leaving the streets still silent, the houses still asleep. It gave him pleasure to watch them as they went by. Rude as they were, with their heavy, hob-nailed shoes, and their awkward gait, they brought a little of a ready with them. He felt that they had lived with Nature, and that she had taught them peace. He envied them all that they ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... landscape-painter, and were altogether surprised and delighted with his pictures. He is a plain, homely Yankee, quite unpolished by his many years' residence in Italy; he talks ungrammatically, and in Yankee idioms; walks with a strange, awkward gait and stooping shoulders; is altogether unpicturesque; but wins one's confidence by his very lack of grace. It is not often that we see an artist so entirely free from affectation in his aspect and deportment. His pictures were views of Swiss and Italian scenery, and were most beautiful ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... indifferent in his interest. The girl was pitifully pale. Double lines of care creased the smoothness of the forehead; the weariness she had plead had been no pretence, but was written plainly in the languid gait, the drooped lids, and the dark patches beneath the eyes. By her side walked Charlemagne, and half a yard behind the three puppies trotted sleepily, Charlot lagging last; even in his anxious preoccupation La Mothe noticed it was Charlot, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... the doctor; and the two chair- bearers changed their pace for a swinging trot. It was needful to hold on now indeed, for this gait jolted the chair a good deal; but it got over the ground, and Daisy found it excessively amusing. They passed the thick-standing tree-stems in quick succession now; the rocks uprising from the side of the path were left behind one after another; they reached the sharp bend in the ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... were explaining a manoeuvre in his once favorite game of football, "we have now to reach the house yonder, and there's a likelihood of our being fired upon when we move forward. When I give the order you'll run slowly, at the gait set by Sergeant Overton, who will be ahead of you. If you hear the command to lie down, drop in your tracks. But let no man lie down until he hears the word. We may have to employ half a dozen rushes in reaching the house. Rise! Sergeant Overton to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock

... get into touch with the unit we were to support in the line, and another amusing incident happened en route. One of the Junior Officers owned a sturdy mare, whose reputation as a charger was apt to be ridiculed by his companions, as she was notorious for her slow gait. When the party had proceeded some distance at the trot, "Halting Hilda" was observed, to the astonishment of everyone, to be gradually taking the lead. This fact called (p. 003) forth the remark ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... not ill become him. He will be all right in the morning, and all the better for this little brush. And anyhow, Ned, you must not watch the boy too closely, nor interfere with him. Let him 'gang his ain gait.' He comes of another breed than ours, I begin to suspect, and our rough fodder and grooming may not suit his higher blood.—Ach, Himmel! Ned," cried he, laughing, "it pleased me, though, to see how adroitly he contrived to twist that new reading out of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... conjectured, the canon of a small arroyo, heavily timbered, and forming a gap or pass that led to the Plan River. It was five miles distant, instead of three. So much the better, and with a quick, crouching gait we were once more upon our way. I had told my comrades enough to make some of them as eager as I. Many of them would have given half a life for a shot at game like that. Not a few of them remembered ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... towards the sanctum he longed to gain, and Madame and Mr. Sagittarius, true to the instinct of imitation that dwells in our monkey race, were in precisely similar attitudes behind him. The hall being rather dark, and the gait of the trio it contained thus tragically surreptitious, it was perhaps not unnatural that Mrs. Fancy should give vent to a piercing cry of terror, and that Mr. Ferdinand should drop the menu and crouch back against the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... ready and donning the finest of dress, adorned herself with the costliest of ornaments and the highest of price and stained her hands with henna. Then she let down her tresses upon her shoulders and went forth, walking with coquettish gait and amorous grace, followed by her slave-girl carrying a parcel, till she came to the young merchant's shop and sitting down under pretext of seeking stuffs, saluted him with the salam and demanded of him somewhat of cloths. So he brought out to her various kinds and she took them ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... sake, Bob, pull yourself together," I urged. "The captain on the bridge there is staring at you wild-eyed, and Katherine will be up here to see what has happened. Now, be a good fellow, and let us talk this thing over in a sensible way. At the gait you are going we can do nothing to help out your friends. Besides, what is there for you and me to take ourselves to task for? We are no wreckers and none of our dollars is stained with Frenzied Finance. My father, as you know, despised ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... there hove in sight, coming from the direction in which lay the prison, a group of three men. It was a jaunty party, evidently under the influence of many libations. They came with arms linked, with dignified but unsteady gait, their hats well back on their heads. In the middle was a very tall man, flanked on one side by a very short fat one, on the other by a slender ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... strong book-mindedness; and over all A healthy sound simplicity should reign, A seemly plainness, name it what you will, 400 Republican or pious. If these thoughts Are a gratuitous emblazonry That mocks the recreant age we live in, then Be Folly and False-seeming free to affect Whatever formal gait of discipline 405 Shall raise them highest in their own esteem— Let them parade among the Schools at will, But spare the House of God. Was ever known The witless shepherd who persists to drive ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... have bin two years since I war at your house, at that time I war on my way to cannadia, and I tould you that I had a wife and had to leave her behind, and you promiest me that you would healp me to gait hir if I ever heaird from hir, and I think my dear frend, that the time is come for me to strick the blow, will you healp me, according to your promis. I recived a letter from a frend in Washington last night and he says that my wife is in the city of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... glittering earbobs, the whimpering and whining of the sempiternal beldame was at an end. She eagerly placed the precious baubles in her ears, and, though as ugly as the Witch of Endor, went off with a sideling gait and coquettish air, as though she had ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... my man at a distance. If I am chatting with the nursery maids around the fountain, I see him upon the broad walk of Washington Square, and detect him by the freshness of his movement his springy gait. Then the white ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... of the next afternoon Lee Bryant was riding southward from camp on the main mesa trail. The road was difficult and his horse Dick made slow time along the snowy path broken by wagons through the drifts, but the rider let the animal choose his own gait, as he had done that hot July day when coming up from the south to buy the Perro Creek ranch. On reaching the ford Lee pulled rein. How different now the creek from on that burning afternoon of ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... valve. Never use a file on this valve if you can get emery paper, and I would advise you to always have some of it with you. It will often come handy. Now if the engine should start off at a lively gait and continue to run still faster, you must stop at once. The trouble this time is surely in the governor. If the belt is all right, examine the jam nuts on the top of the governor valve stem. You will probably find that these nuts have worked loose ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard

... personality (and such impressions are the real origins of the deepest movements of our soul) this conception of her was even inconceivable. But no Prince Charming has ever lived out of a fairy tale. He doesn't walk the worlds of Fashion and Finance—and with a stumbling gait at that. Generosity. Yes. It was her generosity. But this generosity was altogether regal in its splendour, almost absurd in ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... Arthur had begun to run towards her. Darkness was falling rapidly, but she could distinguish his small figure against the snow, and his halting gait. ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... swinging, as he did, from tree to tree on the route, and when no trees were in sight, would shamble along in a peculiar way, as it is difficult for them to walk erect. Their feet are not adapted to promote a graceful gait. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... of the second wife of Cymbeline by a former husband. He is noted for "his unmeaning frown, his shuffling gait, his burst of voice, his bustling insignificance, his fever-and-ague fits of valor, his froward tetchiness, his unprincipled malice, and occasional gleams of good sense." Cloten is the rejected lover of Imogen (the daughter of his father-in-law ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... handsome man, bearded and bronzed as if through long exposure. And in his walk there was a suggestion of that rolling gait which smacks of maritime pursuits. He proceeded aimlessly up Market street, gazing round him, still with that odd, half-doubting and half-troubled manner. In front of the Palace Hotel he paused, seemed about to enter, but went on. He ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... which the appointment was connected. He was likewise aware that he was not altogether deficient in courage and in propriety of behaviour. He knew that his appearance was not particularly against him; his face not being like that of a convicted pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox who has lost his tail; yet he never believed himself adapted for the appointment, being aware that he had no aptitude for the doing of dirty work, if called to do it, nor pliancy which would enable him to submit to scurvy treatment, whether ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... fence; and, putting him at a smart run, jumped a stream with a high insecure bank beyond, and went with a pounding rush up a sharp incline. He followed, but more conservatively; and, at the solid fence she next took, he shouted that she'd have to continue on that gait alone. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... in Colombo is a splendid convenience. The runner's rights are as loyally protected as those of his employer, and he readily covers six miles an hour at a swinging gait. If his vehicle has rubber tires and ball-bearings the labor is not severe. The man might have a harder vocation with ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... and, I suppose, hold long talks; but they could not get up their courage to venture closer to the place where the awful spirit with the flaming eyes and the fiery teeth had looked down upon them and chased them with his terrible limping gait. At last they ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth

... that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... Southwest does not run to extremes. Those brigands might justly have been taken for a little party of peaceable rustics assembled for a fish-fry or pecan gathering. Gentle of manner, slouching of gait, soft-voiced, unpicturesquely clothed; not one of them presented to the eye any witness of the desperate records ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... fearfully, bending the eye and nose To ground, and what the foremost does, that do The others, gath'ring round her, if she stops, Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern; So saw I moving to advance the first, Who of that fortunate crew were at the head, Of modest mien and graceful in their gait. When they before me had beheld the light From my right side fall broken on the ground, So that the shadow reach'd the cave, they stopp'd And somewhat back retir'd: the same did all, Who follow'd, though ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... and not losing sight of her at any time, I followed the tall man. As I neared him my remembrance of him grew stronger. I knew that powerful, slouching gait, that heavy tread. When he turned round I had his ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... on the boy a glance to cast Swept careless by the gorgeous Queen of Gain; More scornful still, the Queen of Fashion passed, With mincing gait ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the lane. The gray day had turned to a light drizzling rain, which freshened the hedgerows and the grassy borders of the by-roads, and hastened the laborers who were loading the last shocks of corn. Raffles, walking with the uneasy gait of a town loiterer obliged to do a bit of country journeying on foot, looked as incongruous amid this moist rural quiet and industry as if he had been a baboon escaped from a menagerie. But there were none to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... first!" reflected Daireh, as he was escorted through the streets, his woe-begone appearance and gingerly gait exciting much mirth and mockery amongst the juvenile population. "I wish I had left the accursed wills alone. And what son of Sheytan is this who has traced them, and had my likeness in his pocket? A detective? No; no English policeman would win upon ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... point by the stage the night before, and now he was waiting for its return to take him back to Folsom. He had been lunching, and was seated on a stone by a small creek. He looked up and saw them, and their gait, and ominous compactness. What he did was not the thing for him to do. He leaped into cover and drew his revolver. This attempt at defence and escape was really for the sake of the gold-dust he had in his pocket. But when he recognized the sheriff's ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... whilst he was leaning from his casement "watching the procession of the moon-lit clouds." He sometimes smokes cigarettelets (a word must be coined to express their size and strength), but he never attempts cigars, and loathes the homely pipe. In gait and manner he affects a mincing delicacy, by which he seeks to impress the thoughtless with a sense of his superior refinement. In later life, he is apt to lose his hair, and to disguise the ravages of time upon his cheeks by the aid of rouge. Yet he deceives ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various

... steadily, and mostly in silence, a large part of the way side by side. The animals they bestrode were fairly mated, quite capable of maintaining their gait for several hours, and needing little urging. The night air was cool, and a rather stiff breeze swept over the wide extent of desert, occasionally hurling spits of loosened sand into their faces, and causing them to ride with lowered heads. The night ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish

... just said that all the methods of charging may be equally good. It must not be understood, however, that impetuosity always gives the advantage in a shock of cavalry against cavalry: the fast trot, on the contrary, seems to me the best gait for charges in line, because every thing depends, in such a case, upon the ensemble and good order of the movement,—things which cannot be obtained in charges at a fast gallop. Galloping is proper against artillery when it ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... the wall, the flooring of the house made a little platform outside, and, as the opening of the door illuminated this, a man came quietly across the threshold with clumsy gait. This man was no ghost. What fear of the supernatural had gathered about Trenholme's mind fell off from it instantly in self-scorn. The stranger was tall and strong, dressed in workman's light-coloured clothes, with a big, somewhat soiled bit of white cotton ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... till he was old. Lamb I recollect coming to see the boys, with a pensive, brown, handsome, and kindly face, and a gait advancing with a motion from side to side, between involuntary consciousness and attempted ease. His brown complexion may have been owing to a visit in the country; his air of uneasiness to a great burden of sorrow. He dressed with a quaker-like plainness. I did not ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... game, whereby it plundered them of hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Horse racing had once been a sport, but nowadays it was a business; a horse could be "doped" and doctored, undertrained or overtrained; it could be made to fall at any moment—or its gait could be broken by lashing it with the whip, which all the spectators would take to be a desperate effort to keep it in the lead. There were scores of such tricks; and sometimes it was the owners who played them and made fortunes, sometimes it was the jockeys and trainers, sometimes it was outsiders, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... "Keep a steady gait," the foreman had said. "Don't stop for any one who doesn't look like a real passenger. Whatever you do, don't stop for ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... the oxen out of the yokes, when a big, raw-boned, red-bearded, blue-eyed, roughly-clad man of about fifty years of age appeared from the house, yawning. I threw my eye over him as he advanced with a peculiar rolling gait, and formed certain conclusions. A drunkard who has once been a gentleman, I reflected to myself, for there was something peculiarly dissolute in his appearance, also one who has had to do with the sea, a diagnosis which ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... quickly to her feet, and with altered gait and changed countenance stood over him. "I am engaged," she said, "to be married—to Mr. Daniel Thwaite." She had told it all, and felt that she had told her own disgrace. He rose also, but stood mute before her. This was the very thing ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... as he stood in the unfamiliar street and gazed at it, his big arms, usually bare, now hampered with his coat sleeves and folded upon his chest—"I wonder ef he footed it all the way ter town at the gait he tuk when he lit ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... stride Venters slipped cartridges into the magazine of his rifle till it was once again full. Card and his companion were now half a mile or more in advance, riding easily down the slope. Venters marked the smooth gait, and understood it when Wrangle galloped out of the sage into the broad cattle trail, down which Venters had once tracked Jane Withersteen's red herd. This hard-packed trail, from years of use, was as clean and ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... in Knolles' cold gray eyes and in his manner of speaking those last words which sent the portly envoy back at a quicker gait than he had come. As he vanished into the gloomy arch of the gateway the drawbridge swung up with creak ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and enjoying a future state of bliss, which shall transcend his mundane experience, is often present to his mind. I remember once walking with rather measured gait along one of the roads of the Reserve, bearing about me, it may be, the idea of supreme reflection, when an Indian stopped me, and asked (though, as my eyes sought the ground at the time, I cannot conceive how his attributing to me thoughts of celestial concernment could have ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... "at 6 p.m., as soon as the two donkeys I took with me to ride were caught and saddled. It was a dreary beginning. The escort who accompanied me were sullen in their manner and walked with heavy gait and downcast countenance. The nature of the track ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... the Colonel, after comfortin' himse'f with about four fingers; 'speakin' of the transmigration of souls, I goes off wrong about Hoppin' Harry that time. I takes it, he used to be one of these yere Eastern toads on account of his gait. But I'm erroneous. Harry, who is little an' spry an' full of p'isen that a- way, used to be a t'rant'ler. Any gent who'll take the trouble to recall one of these hairy, hoppin' t'rant'ler spiders who jumps sideways at you, full of rage ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... we now want is the clear proof. Mr. Keir Hardie should give it. We believe he cannot; nay, we defy him to do so. It is idle to cite the so-called "miracles of healing." They were occasional and special; they had as much effect on the "bodily welfare" of the Jewish people as tickling has on the gait of an elephant; and as for their being a "preparative to spiritual well-being," we may ask the "humanitarian Christians of Christ" to tell us, if they can, how much of this quality was afterwards displayed by the ladies and gentlemen who were ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... man of remarkable appearance, of very broad shoulders and long arms; but with legs so bowed outward as to materially lower his stature, which would have been short at best, and convert his gait into an absurd waddle. His face was disfigured by a scar across one cheek that so drew that corner of his mouth downward as to produce a peculiarly forbidding expression. He also wore a bristling iron-grey beard that grew in form of a fringe ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... met and talked with the shepherds, thus describes Experience in his excellent itinerary: 'Knowledge,' he says, 'I found to be the sage of the company, spare in build, high of forehead, worn in age, and his tranquil gait touched with abstractedness. While Experience was more firmly knit in form and face, with a shrewd kindly eye and a happy readiness in his bearing, and all his hard-earned wisdom evidently on foot within him as a capability for work and for ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... at a most undignified gait, bearing his pack as a labourer. His shoulders, unused to such burden, grew tired. He began to wonder if the passage would never end. He was growing more exhausted than he cared to own, and beside, he apprehended he ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... a drivin' wind that cut our faces tremendous. This bothered us a good deal, for the snow being wet and sticky, would ball up on the horses' feet so that they could hardly stand, and we just poked along our way at a gait not a bit faster than a slow walk. We couldn't get along any faster, and it was no use a-beatin' the poor critters, for they was a-doin' all in their power, and a-strainin' every nerve to ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... 'Twas waxing rather late, And reeling bucks the street began to scour, While guardian watchmen, with a tottering gait, Cried every thing ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... killing the noxious weeds, young chap? Are you making it straight and clean? Are you going straight, At a hustling gait, Do you scatter all that's mean? Do you laugh and sing and whistle shrill, And dance a step or two? The road you hoe leads up a hill; The harvest is up ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various

... may judge of the spirits and disposition of a man by his ordinary gait and mien in walking. He who habitually pursues abstract thought looks down on the ground. He who is accustomed to sudden impulses, or is trying to seize upon some necessary recollection, looks up with a kind of jerk. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... what soldiers often make. 2. Syncopate part of a house, and leave to move. 3. Syncopate speed, and leave anger. 4. Syncopate to soak, and leave a gait. 5. Syncopate a river, and leave a rank. 6. Syncopate a particle, and leave a laugh. 7. Syncopate openings, and leave farming implements. 8. Syncopate baked clay, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... SEA GATE OR GAIT. A long rolling swell: when two ships are thrown aboard one another by its means, they are said to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... found that walking stimulates observation and opens one's eyes to movements and appearances in earth and sky, which ordinarily escape attention. The constant change of landscape which attends even the slow progress of a loitering gait puts one on the alert for discoveries of all kinds, and prompts one to suspect every leafy covert and to peer into every wooded recess with the expectation of surprising Nature as Actaeon surprised Diana—in the moment of uncovered loveliness. ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... been wandering in various tirthas, and beautiful forests and lakes and yet I do meet with him. For this, O Vrikodara, I am miserable. I do not see the long-armed Gudakesa, of dark blue hue, and leonine gait. For this, O Vrikodara, I am miserable. I do not see that foremost of Kurus, accomplished in arms, skilful in fight, and matchless among bowmen. For this, O Vrikodara, I am miserable. Distressed for I am I do not see that son of Pritha, Dhananjaya, born under the influence of the star Phalguni; ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... here is incredible, especially at Court.... The middling and common people are not much richer than Job when he had lost everything but his patience.' Rousseau wrote of the French in 1777:—'Cette nation qui se prtend si gaie montre peu cette gait dans ses jeux. Souvent j'allais jadis aux guinguettes pour y voir danser le menu peuple; mais ses danses taient si maussades, son maintien si dolent, si gauche, que j'en sortais plutot contrist que rjoui.' Les Rveries, IXme. promenade. Baretti (Journey to Genoa, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... on the waste land above the house. His very loose black suit and a peculiar roll of his gait likened him to a mourning boatswain who was jolly. In Lord Levellier's workshop his remarks were to the point. Chillon's powders for guns and blasting interested him, and he proposed to ride over from Barlings to witness a test ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... between the sentinel pines and crossing the moat by the narrow footbridge. She climbed the railing with all the ease of nineteen years and struck a bee-line across the park. She never raised her eyes from the ground, never paused in her swinging gait, until she reached the brown hush of the beechwood which divided the Rectory garden from the southern extremity ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... day coming to me like a new gilt-edged letter, with some unheard-of news awaiting me on the opening of the envelope. And, lest I should lose any fragment of it, I would hurry through my toilet to my chair outside. Every day there was the ebb and flow of the tide on the Ganges; the various gait of so many different boats; the shifting of the shadows of the trees from west to east; and, over the fringe of shade-patches of the woods on the opposite bank, the gush of golden life-blood through the ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... parade as the three walked back up the road at a lock-step gait that was quite fast for unpracticed performers. He would have been glad to give some word of encouragement to Matt for he still remembered the good turn of the day before. But his business was to watch over the horses. It would never do to betray their hiding place to these desperate men who might ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo

... Sassafras, he went home discomforted and even flustered. That hand was too much like the hand of possession. The girl was stealing over him like a light, intangible vapor. He struck ahead with a quicker gait, as if trying to outwalk a creeping fog. One consolation, however: Hortense had come like a puff of wind. Even a second squall from the same quarter would not ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... beings tripped about, as if in defiance of us broad-footed creatures, with tolerable ease, the only difference in their gait being that they waddled like geese; they even ran up and down stairs without the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... city I met my former college professor, now the multi-millionaire United States senator, burdened with many crushing cares, knowing about as much peace and quietness as a toad under a two-forty-gait harrow. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... guests who had been bidden as to a wedding. Hugh looked about him, nodded gloomily to some person in authority, who indicated with his hand in what direction he was to proceed; and clapping Barnaby on the shoulder, passed out with the gait of a lion. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... with his patronage, he endeavoured to be efficacious with his charges, he confirmed children in cold weather as well as in warm, he occasionally preached sermons, and he was beautiful and decorous in his gait of manner, as it behoves a clergyman of the Church of England to be. He liked to be master; but even to be master he would not encounter the abominable nuisance of a quarrel. When first coming to the diocese he had had some little difficulty with our Doctor; but the Bishop ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... those of his tribesmen, and his whole attitude gave the impression of slinking. The high cheek-bones and slightly tilted eyes bore evidence of the Chinese blood that flowed in his veins, and the tribe shuddered at the thought of Sicto as charm boy. He advanced with a shambling gait. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart



Words linked to "Gait" :   limp, lurch, walking, strut, canter, quick time, pace, single-foot, gallop, prance, hobble, travel, waddle, saunter, trot, jog trot, stagger, swagger, stalk, angry walk, rate, lope, walk, rack, hitch, flounce, pacing, stumble, locomotion, roll



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