"Innuendo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Corner and Barbican; and if I could not be admitted to the mysterious conversation of a captain's table, I should have been told in a clear and decided manner to depart, without the needless puzzle of an innuendo, which I did not and ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... business nowadays," she returned, not perceiving the innuendo. "I am sure Papa ought to know all about it from the amount of money he ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... that the constraint shown by his mother and sister was partly due to their having but a dim and confused view of what had happened. In their vocabulary the word "divorce" was wrapped in such a dark veil of innuendo as no ladylike hand would care to lift. They had not reached the point of differentiating divorces, but classed them indistinctively as disgraceful incidents, in which the woman was always to blame, but the ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the Poem that I think are libellous, and the severe tenor of the whole would induce a jury to find them to be so. The question only remains, to whom it is applicable. It certainly does not itself name the person. But the legal pleadings charge that innuendo must mean such a person. How far evidence extrinsic to the work might be brought or received to show that the author meant a particular person, I will not pretend to affirm. Some cases have gone so far on this point that I should not think it safe to ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... looking fixedly at Mr. Craggs as he spoke, "there were other men in high station, whom, in time, he would not be afraid to name, who were no less guilty than the directors." Mr. Craggs arose in great wrath, and said, that if the innuendo were directed against him, he was ready to give satisfaction to any man who questioned him, either in the House or out of it. Loud cries of order immediately arose on every side. In the midst of the uproar Lord Molesworth got up, and expressed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... beginning to be called the Throckmartin Mystery and to kill the innuendo and scandalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the reputations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his youthful wife, and equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever since a tardy despatch from Melbourne, Australia, reported the disappearance ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... showed perplexity she tossed back his innuendo with defiance. "And by the time we meet again I shall have ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the book was one long and powerful innuendo against the Church, would not have been enough to secure its vast popularity. Attacks on the Church had become cheap by this time. The eighteenth century, as it is one of the chief aims of these studies to show, had ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... repletion, conducive to generosity and humor, the boys presented Sundown with a pair of large-rowelled Mexican spurs, silver-mounted and altogether formidable. Like many an historic adventurer, he had won his spurs by a tour-de-force that swept his compatriots off their feet; innuendo if you will—but the average cowboy is ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... fact after another, sparing Hazleton nothing, Kennedy poured forth the story, how by hint and innuendo Maudsley had been working on Millicent, undermining her, little knowing that he had attacked in her a very tower of strength, how Veronica, infatuated by him, had infatuated him, had led him ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... bit his lip, and he looked exceedingly vexed. Although he had himself blindly imbibed the notion that America would gladly receive the devil himself if he came with a full pocket, he was shocked with the coarseness that would throw such an innuendo into the very faces of the people of the country. On the other hand, his pride as an officer was hurt at the menace of Captain Truck, and all the former harmony of the scene was threatened with a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... at this, and her cheek lost color; but she parried the innuendo skilfully. "Taking my perquisites on the sly,—that is not so very far ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... ease" in the Lectures, a "something high bred." Motley describes their style as "hovering," and their method as "the perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. Congreve had captivating manners—of course ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... zest to the pleasures of the little voyage. He could not only give an account of the various public buildings and noblemen's houses which they passed in ascending the Thames, but knew how to season his information with abundance of anecdote, political innuendo, and personal scandal; if he had not very much wit, he was at least completely master of the fashionable tone, which in that time, as in ours, more than amply supplies ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... stick it out, as you do, on this island," I forced myself to observe, seeking safety in the commonplace, while my eyes, as if fascinated, watched his fingers toying with the ends of the scarf. I was forced to accept the innuendo beneath his enigmatic utterances. His utter baseness and depravity, born perhaps of a diseased mind, I could understand. I had led him to bait a trap with the fiction of his own death, but he could not know that it had been already sprung upon his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Roberts a hesitation which, in his troubled and depressed condition, might have brought about a coldness between them, if not a rupture of their relations. But Hutchings, feeling that he was in the wrong, had contented himself with depreciating Roberts by sneer and innuendo, and so had aroused her generous partisanship. The proceedings of the Faculty naturally increased her sympathy with her lover, and her enthusiastic support did much to revive his confidence in himself. When they parted in the evening he had already ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... profoundly it will influence future world affairs because of the Great War. Often it disguises itself as justice, the principle of the thing, in those who will not admit revenge as a motive; and the eclipsed and beaten take revenge in slander, innuendo and double-edged praise. To some revenge is a devil to be fought out of their hearts; to others it is a god that guides every act. We may define nobility of character as the withdrawal from revenge as a motive and the substitution ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... said in a good-humored tone. "Mr. Lennox meant no innuendo. He merely stated a fact to prove ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... and I never knew you to miss a chance to take your disappointments out on Paul. You're not wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you that Paul is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of being a woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of. Who the hell are you that a person like Paul should have to ask your PERMISSION to go with me? You act like you were a combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can't you see how people snicker at you, and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... George, appearing to take no notice of Hanky's innuendo, "that you will swear to the facts as you have above ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... straight at the ottoman before me, "because people so often appear to disadvantage at first," but my arrow fell flat to the ground. Miss Merivale had not enough acumen to detect anything personal in the innuendo; resuming her ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... behaving exactly like her sisters. He made them promise that they would soon come with their father and mother to visit him in Venice. When they had gone, he spoke with less restraint, but continued to avoid any unsuitable innuendo or display of vanity. His audience might have imagined themselves listening to the story of a Parsifal rather than to that of a Casanova, the dangerous ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... with Armand de Chateaumesnil, the grand seigneur had not been merged in the soldier: the brusquerie of the camp had not overlaid the manner of the courtly school in which he and all his race had been trained; the school of those who would stab their enemy to the heart with sarcasm or innuendo, but scorned to stun him with blatant abuse—of those who would never have dreamt of listening to a woman with covered head, though they might be deaf as the nether millstone to her entreaties or her tears. It was with the Revolution ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the lines over twice, to convince himself that he was not mistaken, and that it was Prince Zilah who was designated with the skilfully veiled innuendo of an expert journalist. There was no chance for doubt; the indistinct nationality of the great lord spoken of thinly veiled the Magyar characteristics of Andras, and the paragraph which preceded the "Little Parisian Romance" was very skilfully arranged to let the public guess ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... his affianced wife. It is not such a tragic admission, is it? I would scarce have given it another thought were it not for your manner this morning and your words last night. I paid no heed at the time to the innuendo that I had come on deck to find him—to waylay him, as I have heard men say when speaking of a type of woman I despise. So I resolved to straighten out a stupid little tangle. It would be ridiculous, in our present state of ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... and forgiveness is all upon the other side, as you will some day know, Dick, my lad," said I, hovering, as a coward always will, upon the innuendo-edge of the confession ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... his early Punch work. Mr. Frith tells of Mulready's indignation at Leech's drawing—not at the caricature itself, but at the leech in a bottle, by which the Academician took it for granted that the draughtsman meant to designate him by innuendo as a "blood-sucker;" and of Leech's surprise and pain at being so suspected, and how the two men became fast friends ever after. Once a regular Punch man, Leech immediately expanded, and as quickly hit the taste and fancy of the public; and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... continued to shake Leigh's hand with an apparent cordiality that contrasted strongly with his final innuendo, but now their hands fell apart with mutual repulsion. Leigh had been prejudiced against the lawyer beforehand, and his first remarks at their introduction contained a grisly jest and an implied slight. But these things only paved the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... to have a lot of people running about his book, without any invitation from him at all. However, since Woggs is there, we must make the best of her. I fancy that she was a year or two younger than Wiggs and of rather inferior education. Witness her low innuendo about the Lady Belvane, and the fact that she ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... YOU, pretty well, eh?" and he asked the next moment if there were anything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in the American manner. They talked about the Varieties—Strether confessing to a knowledge which produced again on Pocock's part a play of innuendo as vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side; and they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes. Strether waited to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim had seen Chad as different; and he could scarce have ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... know, published it merely as an accident—which it really was. But they might have made it, by innuendo, a horror for me. However, they put it so simply and so unsuspiciously that Jose Querida might have been any nice man ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... rendered an object of suspicion and alarm. There was much more to the same effect. There was no distinct charge—nothing tangible, or of which I could defy them to the proof. All was dark doubt and murderous innuendo. There was nothing for which I could claim relief from the laws of my country—more than enough to complete my ruin. I burned with anger and indignation; forgot every thing but the cold-blooded designs of the minister; and, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... in undertone and with an accent of innuendo, accompanied by a smile which the invalid pleasantly interprets, Don Prospero also retires, leaving his patient alone with ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... late in the day I come with a different story, a truer but different story. What will they do? Reader, the future is dark, uncertain and long; I dare not trust myself to it if I offend History. Clio and Sir Bartimeus will make hay of my reputation; an innuendo here, a foolish fact there, they know how to do it, and not a soul will suspect the goddess of personal malice or the great historian of pique. Rodriguez gazed then through the deep blue window, forgetful of all around, on battles that had not all the elegance ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough, and threw a stone with a "hoigh!" as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and feelings ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... that nowhere has there been a denial of Whiston's charge that the reading of messianic prophecy in a typical or allegorical or secondary sense is "weak and enthusiastical." On the contrary, the reader finds only the damning innuendo that the two methods—the allegorical and the literal—differ from one another not in kind but in degree of absurdity. After being protected for a long time by all the twists and turns of his creator's irony, the persona finally reveals himself for what he is, a man ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... that Reginald and Willie had been industriously circulating the episode of the morning, with such additions as they thought would add point and piquancy, among the rest of the boys, and there was no end of innuendo and witticism indulged in, that caused the young gentlemen to retire in groups and laugh; and we could hear such remarks as, "Dick, there was a whale hooked on this coast this afternoon, did you know it?" Or, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... high office, and whom the government had declined to assist in an unwarrantable arrangement of the duties and salary of the judicial post he at present occupied. The learned Recorder, justly indignant at this depreciating innuendo, resolved to make an opportunity on the following Monday for his vindication and retort. He rose, therefore, immediately after the skilful and winning appeal of the secretary, and pronounced an invective against the right honourable gentleman which was neither ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... been so used that there is need neither to resent an innuendo nor to prove an "alibi," yet, substantially, the incidents narrated occurred within the time stated, and nearly all the actors are still upon ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... been ignorant that there has been a studied effort— ascribed by me to the common tactics of political warfare—to create the impression, by vague innuendo, that I have used my official position to make money for myself. I know that this charge or imputation is without the slightest foundation, and I now repeat that I never was pecuniarily interested in any question, bill or matter before Congress; that I never received anything ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Laura's morbid self-communing was renewed. At night the day's contribution of detraction, innuendo and malicious conjecture would be canvassed in her mind, and then she would drift into a course of thinking. As her thoughts ran on, the indignant tears would spring to her eyes, and she would spit out fierce little ejaculations at intervals. But finally she would grow ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... becomes as lively as it is interesting, and this husband, a very superior man, is quite astonished to discover the wit of his wife, in other respects, an accomplished woman; the right word occurs to her with wonderful readiness; her tact and keenness enable her to meet an innuendo with charming originality. She is no longer the same woman. She notices the effect she produces upon her husband, and both to avenge herself for his neglect and to win his admiration for the lover from ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... wooing, seeing that I have been more hotly woo'd than most men. I have been woo'd by maid, widow, and wife. I have been woo'd boldly, timidly, tearfully, shyly— by direct assault, by suggestion, by implication, by inference, and by innuendo. But this wooing is not of the common order; it is the wooing of one who must needs me, if she die ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... meanwhile unburdening himself of lengthy solo tirades with great gusto;[2] and all this dished up with a sauce of humor often too racy and piquant for our delicate twentieth-century palate, which has acquired a refined taste for suggestive innuendo, but never relishes calling a spade by its ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... had taken great risks for him. Of all the women he had known, she had most truly and unselfishly loved him. And for her years of service he had given her contempt. He reflected, too, that he had, perhaps, made an enemy where he needed a friend. How easy, by innuendo and suggestion, to turn Hedwig against him, Hedwig who already fancied ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... consumed long after curfew-time; round marks like fairy rings on a greensward, which indicated the standpoint of extinct jam pots—where are those jam pots now? But, while the outside of the book spoke thus, as it were, by innuendo and suggestion, the inside seemed to shout with joyous laughter or chuckle with irreverent mirth; or murmured, in tones lower perhaps, but certainly not less distinct, of things which ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... had made his entree to New York via the Police Court, and who wore his hair long in imitation of a Biblical character of the same name. The supper at the Wigwam Inn was mentioned, and the character of the place intimated. Horton felt this objectionable innuendo was directly traceable to Adrienne's ill-judged friendship for the mountaineer, and he bitterly blamed the mountaineer. And, while he had been brooding on these matters, a man acting as Farbish's ambassador had dropped into his room, since Farbish himself knew that Horton ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... nothing but what I have heard our good Dean of St. Paul's speak before princes and prelates in the pulpit," answered Brother Emmanuel, not pretending to misunderstand the innuendo conveyed. "Methinks it would profit many of our brothers in country places to hear what is being thought and taught in Oxford and London, in all the great centres of the country. The reverend father knows well what I hold and ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Don't you remember, some French blighter said that when an innocent man was being made a political scapegoat?... Of course, the mother is a Eurasian, and he has met her. A nice dish he served up! A salad of easily ascertainable facts with a dressing of lying innuendo. Name of a pipe! If Master Hilton hadn't been ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... judged, violating, or even to any large degree suppressing facts, does equal credit to the clear-sightedness of his policy and to his extraordinary literary power. From first to last there is not a word either of self-laudation or of innuendo; yet at the end we find that, by the use of the simplest and most lucid narration, in which hardly a fact or a detail can be controverted, Caesar has cleared his motives and justified his conduct with a success the more complete because his tone is so temperate ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... an innocent remark into treason or sacrilege, and therefore, long before Lyly's time, it was customary for a playwright to defend himself in the prologue against such treatment, by denying any ambiguity in his dialogue. In an audience thus susceptible to innuendo Lyly saw his opportunity. He was a courtier writing for the Court, he was also, let us add, anxious to obtain a certain coveted post at the Revels' Office. He was an artist not entirely without ideals, yet ever ready ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... between the Jocularity of the Gentleman and that of the Vulgarian; and again, between that of the educated and uneducated man. This you may see from a comparison of the Old and New Comedy: in the former obscene talk made the fun; in the latter it is rather innuendo: and this is no slight ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... any little jealousy her lovely presence might occasion was usually summed up in the terse innuendo, "Fine feathers make ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... our divination, a preference for French models, Balzac, De Musset, Feuillet, Taine, Gautier, Merimee, Sainte-Beuve, especially the three latter. He emulates successfully their suavity, their urbanity, their clever knack of conveying a fuller meaning by innuendo than by direct bluntness of statement. If not the best school for substance, it is an admirable one for method, and for so much of style as is attainable by example. It is the same school in which the writers of what used to be called our ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... circumstances of the case, in order that Jack might be subjected to no further annoyance from the unfortunate blunder that had somehow been made. But no doubt the true explanation of his refusal was to be found in the fact that his exceedingly sensitive pride was hurt by Jack's innuendo, and by the fact that he had been placed in a false and somewhat ridiculous position. It was bad enough to be made to appear ridiculous in the eyes of one's own people; but to be humiliated before one of those arrogant, overbearing Englishmen! Caramba! The two Spaniards therefore took ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... (taciturnity) 585; concealment &c. 528; more than meets the eye, more than meets the ear; Delphic oracle; le dessous des cartes[Fr], undercurrent. implication, logical implication; logical consequence; entailment. allusion, insinuation; innuendo &c. 527; adumbration; "something rotten in the state of Denmark" [Hamlet]. snake in the grass &c. (pitfall) 667; secret &c. 533. darkness, invisibility, imperceptibility. V. be latent &c. adj.; lurk, smolder, underlie, make no sign; escape observation, escape detection, escape recognition; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... clever cooks infuse bitter sauces and sharp seasoning to prevent sweet things from cloying, so these flatterers do not use a genuine or serviceable freedom of speech, but merely a winking and tickling innuendo. He is therefore difficult to detect, like those creatures which naturally change their colour and take that of the material or place near them.[366] But since he deceives and conceals his true character by his imitations, it is our duty to unmask him and detect him by the differences ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... patient self-denial of her sex. To be welcome to Griffith she had to speak to him of her rival, and to speak well of her. She tried talking of herself and her attachment; he yawned in her face: she tried smooth detraction and innuendo; he fired up directly, and defended her of whose conduct he had been complaining the very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... afford to play picquet for a sovereign a hundred, or anything like it; but after his adversary's innuendo it was impossible for a young gentleman of spirit to admit ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... American warning—assuming it was conveyed to Palmerston, which seems highly probable—was not the only diplomatic innuendo of the autumn of 1862 that has escaped the pages of history. Slidell at Paris, putting together the statements of the British Ambassador and those of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, found in them contradictions as ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... strength were embodied in the Emperor. Mme. de Remusat was tired of his ill-breeding: it shocked her to observe his coarse familiarity, to see him sit on a favorite's knee, or twist a bystander's ear till it was afire; to hear him sow dissension among families by coarse innuendo, and to see him crush society that he might rule it. But such things would not have shocked the masses of plain burgher Frenchmen at all. When the querulous lady opened her troubles to the sympathetic Talleyrand, and bemoaned the sad fate ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... matter laid or charged in said indictment or information, comprehending the criminal intention of the defendant, and the evil tendency of the libel charged, as well as the mere fact of the publication thereof, and the application by innuendo of blanks, initial letters, pictures, and other devices; any opinion, question, ambiguity, or doubt to the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... favourite in any case must have brought aversion upon him. Tarleton, as he half acted, half improvised, is said to have shuffled a pack of cards, and pointed at him, standing behind the Queen's chair, an insolent innuendo: 'See, the knave commands the Queen.' The comedian, if the story be true, could reckon upon the support of a vast body of popular malevolence. Still, as a favourite, Ralegh only shared the lot of his class. The same privileged player is alleged ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the machinery of modern wealth. There were the elaborate meals, the drinking, the card-playing, the motors, the innumerable servants, and the sickening atmosphere of inane sentimentalism between the sexes. Everybody seemed to be having "an affair," and the talk was redolent of innuendo. Adelle had occasion to observe the potency of her lamp in this society. She worked it first upon the waiting-woman assigned to her, to whom she gave a large fee and who coached her devotedly in the ways of the house and ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... many Americans, of course, sauerkraut does not appeal. Prejudiced against the dish by ridicule and innuendo, they are unable to differentiate between good and bad, and so it's useless to send them to this or that ausschank. Well, let them then go to the Pschorrbraeu and order bifstek from the grill, at M. 1.20 the ration. There may be tenderer and more savoury bifsteks in the world, bifsteks ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... was set. "You will remember, also, Professor Kennedy," she said, with a great effort controlling her voice, "that I said that Mr. Lockwood was not there to defend himself and I would not have him attacked by innuendo. I meant it to the Senora—I ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... Osburgh's engagement was still officially a secret, it was one of which the innumerable intimate friends of the family were already possessed; and the trainful of returning guests buzzed with allusions and anticipations. Lily was acutely aware of her own part in this drama of innuendo: she knew the exact quality of the amusement the situation evoked. The crude forms in which her friends took their pleasure included a loud enjoyment of such complications: the zest of surprising destiny in the act of playing a ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the very last person to exercise a mollifying influence upon Sawyer in his existing angry humour. The latter recounted and enlarged upon the insults he had just now suffered. His hearer fanned the flame of indignation with comment and innuendo—recognized Faircloth from the description, and proceeded to wash his hands in scandalous insinuation ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... long before his own name began to slip into the case by innuendo. Once he was in, he could not decently abandon his Kedzie, though he had to prove his devotion by denying it and threatening to shoot anybody who implied that his interest in Mrs. Dyckman ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... state, in passages sometimes sounding ludicrously hollow, sometimes conveying the most biting mockery and satire, and again in words hardly to be distinguished from the heartfelt language of devotion. They became skillful at hinting, and masters of the art of innuendo. They attacked Christianity under the name of Mahometanism, and if they had occasion to blame French ministers of state, would seem to be satirizing the viziers of Turkey. Politics and theology are subjects of unceasing and vivid interest, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... in the midst of a luxurious and dissipated age, they preserved two houses in the capital, where the conversation was always moral at least, if not entertaining! Dang. Now, egad, I think the worst alteration is in the nicety of the audience!—No double-entendre, no smart innuendo admitted; even Vanbrugh and Congreve obliged to undergo a bungling reformation! Sneer. Yes, and our prudery in this respect is just on a par with the artificial bashfulness of a courtesan, who increases the blush upon her cheek in an exact proportion to the diminution of her modesty. Dang. Sneer ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... very delicate, or they would only love their husbands because they were their husbands. Perhaps, you may add, that the remark need not be confined to so small a part of the world; and, entre nous, I am of the same opinion. You must not term this innuendo saucy, for ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... before he left the Hall, when Lucy, innocently talking of Bice's English parentage, had suddenly roused him to the question—Who was Bice, and who her parents, English or otherwise? The suggestion was very sudden and very simple, conveying in it no intended hint or innuendo. But it came upon Sir Tom like a sudden thunderbolt, or rather like the firing of some train that had been laid and prepared for explosion. The tenor of his fears and suspicions has already been indicated. Nor has it ever been concealed from the reader of this history that there ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... a fool, sir; and he's still less of a knave," said Radley, angry and caring only to repudiate Fillet's innuendo. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... high wind, and a heavy surf rolling in close along the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disaster. A ship beating to windward on the horizon, and a huge truncheon of wreck half buried in the sands at my feet, completed the innuendo of the scene. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... welcomed war for reasons personal as well as professional, for money and for glory, can readily be believed; but his measures in this case give no ground for such an innuendo as Sandwich conveyed. Therefore, after making full allowance for the panic of ministers ready to fear the worst, and to throw blame on anybody, it is the more significant that he should have been suspected of an unworthy personal motive ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... is! To insinuate a nasty suggestion—to imply an innuendo without uttering it! If she were my wife, she would do ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the Alcalde and Miss Chubb, Mrs. Brimmer's words fell on unheeding ears, and Miss Keene did not prejudice the triumph of her own superior attractions by seeming to notice Mrs. Brimmer's innuendo. She answered briefly, and entered into lively conversation with Crosby and the Secretary, holding the hand of Dona Isabel in her own, as if to assure her that she was guiltless of any design against her ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Church. Gibbon apparently had not the courage to admit that he agreed with his friend Hume in rejecting miracles altogether. He conceals his drift in a cloud of words, suggesting indirectly with innuendo and sneer his real opinion. But this does not account for the stress he lays on the ascription of miracles. He seems to think that the claim of supernatural gifts somehow had the same efficacy as the gifts themselves would have had, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... Island would necessarily be ill-balanced and deformed, he advanced a project that I should accompany him to a spot where, as far as I was competent to grasp the idiom, he was in the habit of sitting (doubtless in an abstruse reverie), in the country; and having assured myself by means of discreet innuendo that the seat referred to would be adequate for this person also, and that the occasion did not in any way involve a payment of money, I at once expressed my willingness towards ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... quick to take the high ground of a tactful consideration of circumstances which Donna apparently had overlooked; circumstances which, while savoring slightly of girlish indiscretion, might, nevertheless, be construed as a distinct slip from virtue. An attack, whether by innuendo or direct assertion, on a sister's virtue is ever the first weapon of a mean and disappointed woman, and having no other charms to speak of, Miss Pickett chose to assume that of superior virtue; so, with the subtle sting of her species, she sunk her ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... plate. And partly because of her previous entire ignorance, partly because of her extreme receptiveness, she soon outstripped her comrades, and before long, was one of the most skilful improvisers of the group: a dexterous theorist: a wicked little adept at innuendo. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... of forgiveness, she never referred to it; there was never the slightest innuendo, teasing, reproach. Yes, by Jove! Edith was wonderful! And so Bruce meant ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... the sense in which it is applied to the use of money, be bringing him into discredit, then was the plaintiff's declaration sufficient; if not, it was insufficient, being wanting in what is called an 'innuendo.' The dictionaries, and men in general, understand by 'shaving,' 'extortion,' and nothing else. To call a man a 'shaver' is to say he is an 'extortioner,' without going into details. But, in Wall street, and among money-dealers, certain transactions that, in their eyes, and ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... struck home, still further humiliating him in the eyes of the woman he loved, Luisa Valverde. But he now knew she loved not him, and had made up his mind to humble her in a way hitherto untried. Stung by the innuendo, and dropping his clumsy pretence ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... litigation it seems to me as if the lawyers spend most of their time trying to make the judge and jury believe the witnesses are all criminals. Everything a man says on the stand or has ever done in his life is made the subject of a false inference—an innuendo. The law isn't constructive—it's destructive; and that's why I want my boy to be ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... zealots in the United States. And even in the house of its friends, coffee was being stabbed in the back. The coffee merchants themselves presented the spectacle of "knocking" it by inference and innuendo. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the bond-servant, leaving the sting of innuendo behind him, had turned all eyes toward the traveller, and Bagby but voiced the curiosity of the roomful when he inquired, "What did Fownes call ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... The innuendo contained in this epistle has made the Professor, who, as I have already hinted, is not by nature of a meek disposition, extremely angry. Indeed, notwithstanding all that I could do, he left his London house under an hour ago with a whip of hippopotamus hide such as the Egyptians ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... Brown, Q.C., had to rely upon his innuendo—"meaning thereby Joe Smith was a rogue"—and was very eloquent as to slander unspoken but expressed by signs and tone. After an exhausting speech he sat down and buried his head in his bandana, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... fathomless past. I was no longer a hunted vagabond; I was breathing the free clean air of a new environment, and in the narrow pit beside me a fortune was waiting to be dug out; a fortune for the ex-convict no less than for the two who had never by hint or innuendo sought to inquire into their partner's past. It was too good to be true; and yet it was true, contingent, as I saw it, only upon our fortitude, discretion ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... married yet," continued Mrs. Tucker, oblivious of the innuendo. "Ah Cal," she added archly, "I am afraid you are as fickle as ever. What poor girl in Vineville ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... childless and impoverished second-cousin, discreetly advanced in her forties, was entitled to keep house for the colonel in his bereavement, as a jointly beneficial arrangement, without provoking scandal's tongue to more than a jocose innuendo or two when people met for "auction"—that new-fangled perplexing variant of bridge, just introduced, wherein you bid on the suits.... And, besides, Cousin Lucy Fentnor (as befitted any one born an Allardyce) was to all accounts ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... there alone too," for Erle's truthful nature scorned subterfuge. The crisis he had dreaded had come on him at last; but Percy should not see that he was afraid. He might be weak and vacillating, but he was a gentleman, and a lie was abhorrent to him. Percy's innuendo might work deadly mischief, but all the same he would not shelter ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... you that it was not libelous, because it was without malice. In fact, if you want to know the ear marks of a handy man's "story," look out for the smart gentlemen in veiled references without any facts which can be transfixed by either a pin or a handspike. When you find the innuendo without the handhold of fact, lick your lips if you are keen on carrion; for I promise that you have come on ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... children, are the parties about to be united?" said he, addressing Roberts and Lady Emily, with a bow that had in it a strong professional innuendo, but of what nature was ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the most, is the result of ingenuousness and illusion on their part: they will always add what they have of personal, if they be truly historians, though it be without knowing it, or they will believe that they have escaped doing so, only because they have referred to it by innuendo, which is the most insinuating ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... suppose he would be content with one, and that is more than we shall humour him to grant. However, I hope he will allow it possible to have grace, without either eloquence or Latin, which is all I shall say to his malicious innuendo. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... into Volney's eyes. He understood it for no chance remark, but as an innuendo tossed forth as a challenge. Of all men Sir Robert Volney rode on the crest of fortune's wave, and there were not lacking those who whispered that his invariable luck was due to something more than chance and honest skill. For me, ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... smiling into his brown eyes. She was rather fond of Hillard; a gentleman always, and one of excellent taste. There was never any wearisome innuendo in his wit nor suggestion in ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... spoken at such a place and such a time, and with a strongly sardonic ring, set all Paris gossiping. It was a thinly veiled innuendo that the father of the child was not the King of France. Those about the court immediately began to look at Fersen with significant smiles. The queen would gladly have kept him near her; but Fersen cared even more for her ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the narrow street, from one side or the other, Conall Ragnor was greeted. Good wishes and good advice, with now and then a careful innuendo, were freely given and cheerfully taken; and certainly the recipient of so much friendly notice was well pleased with its freedom and good will. He came into his own house with the smiling amiability of a man who has had all the wrinkles of the day's ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... her way toward the launch, where her friends were already assembling. She was angry and suspicious. Her pride was hurt because she had not been able to feel superior to the other woman. Instead, she had descended to the weak resource of innuendo, while Cherry had been simple and direct. She had expected to recognize instantly the type of person with whom she had to deal, but she found herself baffled. Who was this woman? What was she doing here? Why had Boyd never told ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... long abroad. To be sure, his presence at home would have served no purpose whatsoever, but Mirabelle was firm in her opinion. More than that, she succeeded in making Henry feel that by his conduct he had hurried his uncle into an untimely grave; she didn't say this flatly, nor yet by innuendo, but she managed to ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... him of "a great intrigue going on" of which he ought to be informed. This gentleman had then proceeded to explain that Mr. Clay's friends were afraid that if General Jackson should be elected President, "Mr. Adams would be continued Secretary of State (innuendo, there would be no room for Kentucky); that if I would say, or permit any of my confidential friends to say, that in case I were elected President, Mr. Adams should not be continued Secretary of State, by a complete union of Mr. Clay and his friends they would put an end to the Presidential ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... certain extent he was a judge of human nature, and he realized that no explanation to such a man was safer than the most adroit and elaborate one, so he elected to ignore the obvious innuendo. Chatting with him a few ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... happened that summer, and it was not until the following spring that the T-Bar-T outfit gave any hint of their real intent. The anonymous letter was a vile screed—because it was anonymous and also because it threatened, in innuendo, to burn out a homestead held by one ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... and most of them the dregs of the South Seas, casting their evil glances at this exquisite creature and trying to smirch with innuendo the crystal clearness of her mind. Perhaps there were experiences she would never confide to any man. Sudden indignation boiled up in him. The father was a madman. It did not matter that he wore the cloth; something was wrong with him. He ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... ceremonious courtesy. As a matter of fact, my captor, by this crude reference to the origin of his ruler, was merely proving himself a crude fellow, guilty of a vulgarity rather than of a treasonable or disrespectful remark. An officer of higher rank and better breeding, would have managed a clever innuendo, ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan |
