"Offhand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... painful, it can be moved if taken between the fingers, showing it is not attached to the deep structures, and when it is so moved it is not tender or sore. Any little lump which ulcerates located on the genitals must be regarded with suspicion. Boys and men should not be satisfied with any offhand statement that, "it is nothing." It may be a chancre, and it may be exceedingly serious if not ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... have related it himself. He has confided so much in me that at times it seems as though he must come in presently and tell the story in his own words, in his careless yet feeling voice, with his offhand manner, a little puzzled, a little bothered, a little hurt, but now and then by a word or a phrase giving one of these glimpses of his very own self that were never any good for purposes of orientation. It's difficult to believe he will never come. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... state through which so many men have to pass when the woman they love will have none of them. If Marie Deland had happened to turn up then, he would have asked for forgiveness and have married her offhand and regretted it the next day; and now, as he looked at June, he wondered if he had been a fool not to properly appreciate her. He felt a vague twinge of jealousy, realising that the days were gone for ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... impatiently that it was high time for Persis Dale to have a husband. His elation over all that was implied by her consulting him on so personal a matter, was almost lost in his feeling of annoyance. This made it plain that he must lose no time, but marry her offhand. What with her penchant for orphans and for foolish investments, she would make ducks and drakes of her fortune unless a man peremptorily ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... and then it was either unintentional or to brighten a story or to exaggerate a fact. I recall one interview in respect to courts of arbitration and the universal labor question. My opinions were expressed offhand, and, although not taken down at the time by the interviewer, my words uttered during a half hour's interview were quoted with great exactness. I know this is not the common opinion in respect to the interviewer, and in some cases gross misrepresentations are made, but in the very few instances ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... cohesion when they were no longer fighting units, and when the motives of conquest and defence were no longer in operation, is a question on which I should not like to dogmatize either way. Certainly we have no right to assume offhand that the unifying process which has given the nations the mass cohesion and efficiency they require for holding their own against enemy States would still remain in full power when there were no longer any ...
— Progress and History • Various
... a great surprise in store for her. He's going to tell a good one on Marthy. At just the proper moment he's going to lean over—Lord, he hopes he can keep his face straight—and say, kind of offhand: ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... filled with surprise at this second unexpected return of Dick; but the latter relieved his mind by explaining, in an offhand way, that he had met a man who had told him the Mountain Fort was all safe, and that his comrades also were safe, and wandering about in that part of the country in search of him. After a good deal of desultory conversation, Dick turned to his guest with a sad, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the party: he was a slow, sour old man, with fishy eyes; greeted Tommy offhand, and (as was afterwards remembered) exchanged winks ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... so easily settled. Putting aside the flippancy of the passage, it involves something very like a petitio principii to ask offhand: "Does the man mean a living union of heart to Christ, a spiritual fellowship or converse with the Father, when he talks of the union of the believer with God—participation in the Divine nature?" For first, what we want to know is, the meaning of the words—what ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... has pricked the garter offhand," the merry man answered cheerfully. "You see before you the renowned Pierre Paladin VOILA!—and Philibert Le Grand! of ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... breeding-season, defending her from enemies and giving her a share of their game. But from this admitted fact to the inference that it is "affection" that makes the husband defend his wife, there is a tremendous logical skip not warranted by the situation. Instead of making such an assumption offhand, the scientific method requires us to ask if there is not some other way of accounting for the facts more in accordance with the selfish disposition and habits of savages. The solution of the problem is easily found. A savage's wife is his property, which he has acquired ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... vivacity. She never seemed tired or bored. She was, in one hackneyed word, attractive. And Vaness, the connoisseur, was quite obviously attracted. Of men who professionally admire beauty one can never tell offhand whether they definitely design to add a pretty woman to their collection, or whether their dalliance is just matter of habit. But he stood and sat about her, he drove and rode, listened to music, and played cards with her; he did all but dance with her, and even at times trembled on the brink ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... in whose eyes but ours has the Party System lost credit? I say in nearly everybody's. If this were a free country, I could mention offhand a score of men within a stone's throw; an innkeeper, a doctor, a shopkeeper, a lawyer, a civil servant. As it is, I may put it this way. In a large debating society I proposed to attack the Party System, and for a long time I could not get an opposer. At last, I got one. He defended ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... man was released offhand; but he looked nothing the less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of magistrate or constable to rase out the written troubles in his brain, for they concerned another, whom he regarded with ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... It's part of my profession to have made a study of human nature, and Mac Alarney's type is an open book to me. Added to that, I've known the man himself for years, in an offhand way. I've got his confidence, and now that he realizes he is in a hole, he's a child in my hands, even if he thinks for the moment that as a detective I'm about the poorest specimen in captivity. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... else can know, his own conditions and requirements, and should be able to form very exact ideas of just what he wants, and the doing so is, in my opinion, one of the most important requisites for satisfactory tomato growing. I also believe that it is as impossible for a man to answer offhand the question, "What is the best variety of tomato?" as for a wise physician to answer the question, ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... was forty yards "ef ye shot from a chunk." Twenty-seven yards, or about two-thirds the distance, if the shot was offhand. "A chunk" was any rest for the rifle—a bowed limb cut from a tree, the fork of a limb driven firmly into the ground, a part of a log—anything that was the height to give the needed low level to the rifle-barrel when the shooter lay sprawled behind the gun. The permission to shoot from ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... ayah in Rangoon," explained Lily with an offhand air, "she understands Miss Sahibs, she will pack and unpack, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... was snared again, this time by an immense advertising placard propped on the counter. It hymned the virtues of the Ajax Invigorator. To the left sagged a tormented male victim of many ailments meticulously catalogued below, but in too fine print for offhand reading by one in a hurry. The frame of the sufferer was bent, upheld by a cane, one hand poignantly resting on his back. The face was drawn with pain and despair. "For twenty years I suffered untold agonies," this person was made to confess in large print. It was heartrending. But ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... distressfully. "'Tis somebody else that I have married! I was so desperate—so afraid of being forced to anything else—so afraid of revelations that would quench his love for me, that I resolved to do it offhand, come what might, and purchase a week of happiness ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... amorphous aerial regions, to which such definite words as "worlds" and "planets" seem inapplicable. And artificial constructions that I have called "super-constructions": one of them about the size of Brooklyn, I should say, offhand. And one or more of them wheel-shaped things a goodly number of square miles ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... type of 'Man About Town' in New York," he answered. "The term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called upon to define the character before. It would be difficult to point you out an exact specimen. I would say, offhand, that it is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the business ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... go further than this and to give offhand a definition of humor, or of that elusive quality, a sense of humor, he might find himself confronted with a difficulty. Yet certain things about it would be patent at the outset: Women haven't it; Englishmen haven't it; it is the chiefest ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... epical stateliness of phrase, and whose self-respect even in youth was so profound that it resembles the reverence paid by other men to a far-off and idealized character,—that he should be treated in this offhand familiar fashion by his biographer seems to us a kind of desecration, a violation of good manners no less than of the laws of biographic art. Milton is the last man in the world to be slapped on the back with impunity. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... it right offhand!" She gave a soft, cheerful laugh. "Oh, do you suppose I shall ever ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Majesty the Sun of the tropics is not to be claimed offhand. The imperious luminary does not grant his letters-patent to all. Very few does he permit to wanton in his presence without exacting probation. He is a rare respecter of persons. Though there are faces, like King Henry V.'s, which the sun will not condescend ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... see me this morning,—a brisk, gentlemanly, offhand, but not rough, unaffected and sensible man, looking not so elderly as he ought, on account of a very well made wig. He is now on his return from a cruise in the East Indian seas, and goes home by the Baltic, with a prospect of being very well received on account of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... offhand, Cap, that there never was such a thing as a witch. Well, right here are the figgers to show that between 1482 and 1784 more than three hundred thousand wimmen were put to death in Europe for bein' witches. There's the facts under 'Witches' in ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... changed to Second Class Avenue, Abe," Morris declared, "on account this is a time of great ups and downs in the reputations of politicians, not to say statesmen, Abe, which six months from now nobody would be able to say offhand whether the name was Bela Hanson or Old Kun except the immediate family in Budapest or Seattle, as ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... or would not perceive it, and he sailed without showing me any preference. In six months he returned, and whether it was that he was told of by others, or at last perceived, my feelings towards him, he joined the crowd of suitors, made a proposal in his offhand manner, as if he was indifferent as to my reply, and was accepted. My father, to whom he communicated the intelligence as carelessly as if he were talking about freight, did not approve of the match. 'Very well,' replied he, 'I shall say no more; as long as a man has a ship he does not ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... natives—he had seen them when ITA's expedition had cleaned out the burrows beneath the Dome and sealed them up—were midgets, the tallest not more than two feet in height. Whatever he was, why was the stranger trying to destroy the Dome? Apparently Thomas himself was not to be killed offhand: the jolting journey was continuing interminably. With enforced patience the Earthman resigned himself to wait for the next scene in ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... nothing. We were talking chiefly of—of club matters," he answered, in a fair imitation of his usual offhand manner. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... tools of Nature's own providing, both hands and your teeth. An hour passed—busy, yet pleasant—and we were both gorged to the gills and had reared back with our cigars lit to enjoy a third jorum of black coffee apiece, when Johnny, speaking in an offhand way to Bill, who was still hiding away biscuits inside of himself like a ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... Oberon Overture and a Mozart concerto. These performances were interesting; a personality like his is so curious that it is quite amusing to find it coming out in the works he conducts. But how Mozart's features took on an offhand and impatient air; and how the rhythms were accentuated at the expense of the melodic grace. In this case, however, Strauss was dealing with a concerto, where a certain liberty of interpretation is allowed. But Mahler, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... connected with the golf course mystery. Jack had obeyed the colonel's instructions to the letter. He had played many rounds on the links and had gotten to a certain degree of friendship with Jean Forette. He had even formed a liking for Bruce Garrigan, who, offhand, informed him that the amount of India ink used in tattooing sailors during the past year was less by fifteen hundred ounces than the total output of radium salts for 1916, while the wheat crop of Minnesota for the same period was 66,255 bushels. All of which information, ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... Kolosov's carelessly offhand expressions offended me, perhaps, the more because they were applied to the woman with whom I was secretly in love.... I fired up. 'Stop,' I said to him; 'stop! I know why you have given ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... a tonic it is for the memory! Only think of the implications of the annual price-catalogue! Soon after the issue of this work, every collector worthy the name has almost unconsciously filed away in his mind the current market values of thousands of stamps. And he can tell you offhand, not only their worth in the normal perforated and canceled condition, but also how their values vary if they are uncanceled, unperforated, embossed, rouletted, surcharged with all manner of initials, printed ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... touch to make up her mind here, whether she realized it or not; and this touch the girl Corinne had given her. Now, too, impulse met convenient opportunity. For two weeks she had been thinking that if she did ever happen to go to the Works, she would make a point of going in some offhand, incidental sort of way, thus proving to herself and the public that she had not the slightest responsibility for whatever might be going on there. (How could she possibly have, no matter what Mr. V.V. thought, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... his foolish blackguardism. I was all pity. I had not thought him great, but I had not suspected how small he was. His friends, the best, were confounded. One of them said to me the next day, 'It was not amazement that I felt, but consternation.' I spoke offhand and the report is horrible. Conkling's speech was carefully written out, and therefore you do not get all the venom, and no one can imagine the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... daylight, sir, upon my word it didn't! The people about the Emperor, of course, showed a good deal of agitation and uneasiness. The colonel of dragoons comes running up again to ask if I can give them an idea whence the fire proceeds. I answer him offhand: 'It is at Beaumont; there is not the slightest doubt about it.' He returns to the Emperor, on whose knees an aide-de-camp was unfolding a map. The Emperor was evidently of opinion that the fighting was not at Beaumont, for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... Perhaps the best offhand description of Washington in these later days is that given by an English actor, Bernard, who happened to be driving near Mount Vernon when a carriage containing a man and a woman was upset. Bernard dismounted to give help, ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... Barton,' he said, stammering, speaking like one in a dream, 'you take me by surprise. I did not expect this; you certainly are too kind. In proposing this marriage to me, you do me an honour I did not anticipate, but you know it is difficult offhand, for I am bound to say . . . at least I am not prepared to say that I am in love with your daughter. . . . She is, of course, very beautiful, and no one admires her ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... in anticipation; unexpectedly &c 508. suddenly &c (instantaneously) 113; before one can say 'Jack Robinson', at short notice, extempore; on the spur of the moment, on the spur of the occasion [Bacon]; at once; on the spot, on the instant; at sight; offhand, out of hand; a' vue d'oeil [Fr.]; straight, straightway, straightforth^; forthwith, incontinently, summarily, immediately, briefly, shortly, quickly, speedily, apace, before the ink is dry, almost immediately, presently at the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... may be the culprit. Yet you tell me Millard did not contest her divorce and that it would have been very easy for him to file a counter-suit because everyone knew of her relationship with Manton. That, offhand, shows no ill-will on his part. And now we find this note from him, which at ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... and comes slowly down the stairs, giving some very audible and offhand orders in the hall respecting his particular belongings. A close observer might notice that he speaks and laughs a little too readily. The little, pale woman, sitting motionless in the room, hears him, and in her heart of hearts hears what he ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... they generally delight to call him. Now, a true lover of Shakespeare never calls him the bard of Avon, or a bard of anything; and he reads him o' nights and ponders over him o' days while he is walking, or smoking, or at night again while he is waking in his bed. If he is too poor to buy a copy offhand, he saves up his pennies till he can get one, and he does not trouble himself about the commentators or the mulberry tree. He would not give two pence to sit in a chair made of it; for he knows that he ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Trenton came in to breakfast, he found his friend Mason waiting for him. That genial gentleman was evidently ill at ease, but he said in an offhand way— ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... be answered offhand. Mr. Grey, advancing, laid a finger on the man's shoulder. "Come," said he, "we will have our conversation in ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... it was the best thing he could do, and 'e asked 'im in a offhand sort o' way 'ow long the ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... then round the bushes came the tall form of Alexander Roddice, striding romantically like a Meredith hero who remembers Disraeli. He was cordial with everybody, he was at once a host, with an easy, offhand hospitality that he had learned for Hermione's friends. He had just come down from London, from the House. At once the atmosphere of the House of Commons made itself felt over the lawn: the Home Secretary had ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the information in a very offhand way, but I saw that he cocked his eye at me to see if I had followed ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... so far in advance of them but that the others could hear quite distinctly his offhand introduction of their party on the threshold, and the somewhat lukewarm response of the inmates. "We thought we'd just drop in and be sociable until the coach was ready to start again," he continued, as the other passengers entered. "This yer gentleman is Ned Brice, Adams ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... been fiddling with his hat and staring hard at a pile of old ties just outside the window. He raised his head, and regarded her steadily. It was beginning to occur to him that there was a good deal to this Miss Georgie, under that offhand, breezy exterior. He felt himself drawn to her as a person ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... exactly what you would desire. If for no other reason, through sheer stress of numbers there will be collisions, and much damage done by kicks through mutual entanglement; whereas a pick of horse and men will be able to escape offhand, (15) especially if you have invention to create a scare in the minds of the pursuers by help of the moiety of troops who are out of action. (16) For this purpose false ambuscades will be ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... after Mr. Johnson had gone to the station, Mr. Polly wheeled his bicycle out into the road, went up to his bedroom, packed his long white nightdress, a comb, and a toothbrush in a manner that was as offhand as he could make it, informed Mrs. Johnson, who was manifestly curious, that he was "off for a day or two to clear his head," and fled forthright into the road, and mounting turned his wheel towards the tropics and the equator ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... the universal envy of comrades, and unspoiled in teeth by the parental sugar-plums. People of older growth attach childish importance to the trade one plies. Nobs and nabobs (at least on the stage) disinherit daughters offhand for marrying grocers, and groan over sons who take to high art. The smug and prudent citizen shudders at the career of the filibuster, while the adventurer would commit suicide rather than achieve a modest livelihood in tape and needles. The mother of Sainte Beuve was sorely ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... year upon a lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture just once—never delivered it again. I put too much work on it. But this had no work on it—thrown together perfectly at random, spoken offhand without any special preparation, and it succeeds when the thing we study, work over, adjust to a plan, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Mitchell and Dr. Harvey Wiley and several German scientists have investigated it since then. It is well known that it contains half a dozen alkaloids and resins of curious and little-investigated nature. I can't recall even the names of them offhand, but I have them in ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... appearing a second time among her favorite haunts hinted of more than the fortuitous. Daylight was made to feel that she suspected him, and he, remembering that he had seen a big rock quarry near Blair Park, stated offhand that he was thinking of buying it. His one-time investment in a brickyard had put the idea into his head—an idea that he decided was a good one, for it enabled him to suggest that she ride along with ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... played tragedy or real Italian opera. I had to work hard at first; and they wont fill my place, very readily: thats one comfort. My cleverness was my ruin. Ned was not half so quick. It used to take him months to learn things that I picked up offhand, and yet you see how much better he has ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... heard Dulcinea del Toboso named, I was struck with surprise and amazement, for it occurred to me at once that these pamphlets contained the history of Don Quixote. With this idea I pressed him to read the beginning, and doing so, turning the Arabic offhand into Castilian, he told me it meant, "History of Don Quixote of La Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian." It required great caution to hide the joy I felt when the title of the book reached my ears, and snatching ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... achieving our intention—this is action, this is effectuation in the only shape in which, by a pure experience-philosophy, the whereabouts of it anywhere can be discussed. Here is creation in its first intention, here is causality at work.[1] To treat this offhand as the bare illusory ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... give the plans here! give me the surveyor's plans, the Judas's plans here!" "But what is your claim, then?" "Oh, you think I'm a fool! Indeed! do you suppose I am going to lay bare my claim to you offhand? No, let me have the plans here—that's what I want!" And he himself is banging his fist on the plans all the time. Then he mortally offended Marfa Dmitrievna. She shrieks out, "How dare you asperse my reputation?" "Your reputation," says he; "I shouldn't like my chestnut mare ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... disadvantage of ignorance. He did not know precisely how things stood, much less could he explain this sudden attack. Yet if the tall, lean man, serious and growing grey, represented one form of strength, the shorter, stouter man, with the mobile face and the quick brain, stood for another. Offhand he could think of no weak spot on his side; and if he must ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... "Father of all the Yankees," Benjamin Franklin. No student of Franklin's life fails to be impressed by its happy casualness, its cheerful flavor of the rogue-romance. Gil Blas himself never drifted into and out of an adventure with a more offhand and imperturbable adroitness. Franklin went through life with the joyous inventiveness of the amateur. He had the amateur's enthusiasm, coupled with a clairvoyant penetration into technical problems such as few amateurs have possessed. With all of his wonderful patience ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... nimbly forth upon the pavement, feeling in his overcoat pocket for the fare; and then he realised he was not in West Eighty-fifth Street at all; he was not in any street that he remembered ever having seen before in the course of his life. Offhand, though, he guessed he was somewhere in that mystic maze of brick and mortar known as Old Greenwich Village; and, for a further guess, in that particular part of it where business during these last few years ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... endured this state of affairs for some time simply because the woman did the essential work in her offhand, slapdash style, and left him unmolested to his brooding as long as he did not interfere with her ideas of domestic economy. But his impatience and the sense of being wronged were producing a feeling akin to desperation. Every week there was less and less ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... have been a remarkable achievement if he had planned to do so and had learned up his speech; but the fact was that he was compelled to speak offhand on the spur of the moment. He describes the situation in a letter of February 6, 1894, to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... one's eyes. Davy Lindsay had yet to play many a spring before King James, and some that were not gay. But the gentle stripling with the infant on his shoulder, the pertinacity of the little babbling cry, the "homely springs" played offhand that it was pity to hear, but which the lad enjoyed almost as much in laughing at their dashing incorrectness as the baby who knew only that it was a pleasant sound—how bright and vivid is the picture! Thus while the lords and his mother stormed ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... expressly and solely to accompany the preceding text in which the distinctions of synonyms have been carefully pointed out. It is not expected, intended, or desired that the questions should be answered or the blanks in the examples supplied offhand. In such study nothing can be worse than guesswork. Hence, leading questions have been avoided, and the order of synonyms given in Part I. has frequently been departed from ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... can't see the connection offhand, but it may well be that there is one. Can anybody think of any connection between King James and Balaklava ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... avoided when the place was swarming with old women. And, after all, what had they got against Mrs. Tailleur except that she was better looking by a long chalk, and better turned-out, than any of 'em? Of course, he couldn't undertake to say—offhand—whether she was or wasn't any better than she should be. But, in the absence of complaints, he didn't consider the question a profitable one for a manager to go into ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... would probably find it far easier to quote instances offhand of friends who had missed their proper vocation in life than of those who were placed exactly in the position best suited to their taste and capacity. The failures in life are so obviously in excess of those who may be said to have succeeded ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... offhand way. The fencers must not measure weapons, because how then could the unbated point escape discovery? It is quite like Hamlet to take even Osricke's ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... keep to the hard road of fact," he said. "What you really mean is that Mr. Grant has never made love to you. But I must be candid, young lady. There is no earthly reason why he shouldn't, though I could name offhand half a dozen why he should.... Well, well, I must not pay compliments. My friend, Mr. Furneaux, can manage that with much greater facility, being half a Frenchman. And now I'm going to say an unpleasant thing. I ask your forgiveness in advance. Both Mr. Furneaux and I agree ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... atrocity tales which I heard during four months spent in England, Belgium, Germany, and Holland. It will serve as an example, not only because it has the earmarks of truth,—having been told in an offhand way merely as an explanation of the private's insanity,—but because it is typical of the kind of incident which in the telling is, nine times out of ten, twisted into ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... days such a drug is renown, We've "Immortals" as rife as M.P.s about town; And not a Blue's rout but can offhand supply Some invalid bard who's insured "not to die." Still let England but once try our authors, she'll find How fast they'll leave even these Immortals behind; And how truly the toils of Alcides were light, Compared ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... must know who has ever considered the subject deeply and with a sense of responsibility towards the country, is one of the most profound and difficult questions that can be brought before the house. It is all very well to treat it in an easy, offhand manner; but how are you to reconcile the case of North Cheshire, of North Durham, of West Kent, and many other counties, where you find four or six great towns, with a population, perhaps, of 100,000, returning six members ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... understand him. So he resorted to a mixed system of his own, sometimes using Latin words and making the changes which regularly would have occurred, and when words failed, making signs, and in extreme cases drawing pictures of what he wanted. This versatility with the pencil, for many of his offhand sketches had humorous touches that almost carried them into the cartoon class, interested officers and passengers, so that the young student had the freedom of the ship and a ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... manners and customs of its people, the picturesque scenery and traditions of his own native land, the scandals of the court and the cloister, the petty struggle for the primacy of Wales, and the great tragedy of the fall of the Angevin Empire - is all alike dealt with in the bold, dashing, offhand style of a modern newspaper or magazine article. His first important work, the 'Topography of Ireland,' is, with due allowance for the difference between the tastes of the twelfth century and those of the nineteenth, just such a series of sketches as a special correspondent in ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... against this offhand assumption of confidence. He made a supplemental effort on his own account. "Why don't ye tell yer name, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... himself at this insolent and offhand definition. He was astonished and hurt at the tone of his friend. However, presently, he resolved to go through with it, and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... method in her skipping. She now talked of the day's journey, of the weather, of Mary's good cooking, of a dozen minor matters. After a long time, when he might naturally be supposed to have forgotten what they had started with, she said offhand: ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... of the genesis of homosexuality put forward by Freud need not be dismissed offhand. Freud has often manifested the insight of genius, and he refrains from molding his conceptions in those inflexible shapes which have sometimes been adopted by the more dogmatic psychoanalysts who have followed him. Nor need we be unduly shocked ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the peculiar systems that he knows. They don't just cover HIS world. One will be too dapper, another too pedantic, a third too much of a job-lot of opinions, a fourth too morbid, and a fifth too artificial, or what not. At any rate he and we know offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb and out of key and out of 'whack,' and have no business to speak up in the universe's name. Plato, Locke, Spinoza, Mill, Caird, Hegel—I prudently avoid names nearer home!—I am sure that to many of you, my hearers, these names are little more than reminders ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... apologetically. "You must excuse me, Mr. Medderbrook. I ain't no expert onto gold-mines' names and, offhand, them two names seem about the same to me. But my remark was to be that the indebtedness of the liability I now owe you is only thirteen thousand ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... country has been commonly thought of, and referred to by writers on the history of the West, as a "wilderness"; and offhand, one might suppose that the settlers were obliged literally to hew their way through densely grown vegetation to the spots which they selected for their homes. In point of fact, there were great areas of upland—not alone in the prairie ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... that had been put to the trial.' 'Why?' 'Because then you would have known your friends from your foes.' 'A reason,' says old Aubrey, 'never forgotten or forgiven.' Aubrey is no great authority; but the speech smacks so of Raleigh's offhand daring that one cannot but believe it; as one does also the other story of his having advised the lords to keep out James and erect a republic. Not that he could have been silly enough to propose such a thing seriously at that ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... wavering expressively on the threshold as if in rebuke of such offhand acquiescence; then her retreating steps sounded down the passage, and Mary, pushing away her papers, crossed the hall, and went to the library door. It was still closed, and she wavered in her turn, disliking to disturb her husband, yet anxious that he should ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... clumsy male intellect, which works in accordance with the stupid laws of inductive logic, has a queer habit of requiring something or other, in the way of definite evidence, before it commits itself offhand to the distinct conclusion. But Elma Clifford was a woman; and therefore she knew a more excellent way. HER habit was, rather to look things once fairly and squarely in the face, and then, with the unerring intuition of her sex, to make up her mind about them firmly, at once and ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Mrs. Hills, "there's nothing in it. My land, he's as offhand about 'em as if they were circulars, and I don't believe he ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... good deal about women and their goings on, don't you know?' said Mr. Tom, with a sort of shrug. 'They're always changing and chopping and twisting about. The best way is to marry them offhand, and take the nonsense out ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... of anybody I know," said the veteran, "and I can't, offhand, recall anybody whose initials are S.T. But Tim Mellick, who keeps the store over at Palmo, has paper bags of the same ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... replied Clem in the offhand, impertinent tone wherewith she always signified to strangers her ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... superannuated, which had become useless and soulless, extended much farther. He found society, and especially religious life, full of practices, ceremonies, traditions and conceptions, from which the spirit seemed to have departed. He does not reject them offhand and altogether: what revolts him is that they are so often performed without understanding and right feeling. But to his mind, highly susceptible to the foolish and ridiculous things, and with a delicate need of high decorum and inward dignity, all that sphere of ceremony ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... to find that we are of some account in the world,' says Mr Desmond, in his offhand Irish way; 'but if you please, Miss O'Regan, we are as hungry as hounds, and as thirsty as hippopotami, and I'm sure you'll say a good word to get us something ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the progress of the works of nature. When we read in Bouchet the miracles of St. Hilary's relics, away with them: his authority is not sufficient to deprive us of the liberty of contradicting him; but generally and offhand to condemn all suchlike stories, seems to me a singular impudence. That great St. Augustin' testifies to have seen a blind child recover sight upon the relics of St. Gervasius and St. Protasius at Milan; a woman at Carthage cured of a cancer, by the sign of the cross made ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... they were a couple of lumbermen," remarked the corporal, in an offhand way. "They occasionally come here, I suppose, to get a stick of timber." And not thinking it of any importance, he dismissed the matter ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... the menu, hurriedly. The Exclusive Room was ostentatious to the point of menus and waiters. "What'll you have, Nadine?" He still wasn't quite at ease with her first name. Offhand, he could never remember having been on a first name basis with a Mid-Upper, certainly not one ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Bird, at all events. Offhand I would say that a huge cavern had been washed in the earth and ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... was surprised at the apt wit and the subtlety with which these gentlemen formulated their replies, he felt bewildered with epigram and repartee, and, most of all, by their offhand way of talking and their ease of manner. The material luxury of Paris had alarmed him that morning; at night he saw the same lavish expenditure of intellect. By what mysterious means, he asked himself, did ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... pat. I had seen several of the men snip the head from a rattlesnake with a single offhand shot—yes, they all carried their weapons easily and wontedly. But the target of an immobile can lacked in stimulation to concord ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... of the hotel. They were French, or Austrian, or Russian, or German, or English, or Danish, or Dutch, as the case might be. There were also some Americans. The great national types were more or less easy to discern—except the Americans. That is, Chip Walker could see no one whom he could recognize offhand as a fellow-countryman. Three gentlemanly, jovial Englishmen were easily made out, because, in Walker's phrase, they "flocked by themselves" and in the intervals of sitting in the Bundespalast complained that Berne had no golf-links. They also dressed ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... was to make a few grief-saturated remarks. So was Perkins. Every one was confidently expecting Perkins to make the effort of his life and swamp the chapel in sorrow. He was in the secret and he afterward said that he would rather try to write a Shakespearean tragedy offhand than to write another funeral oration about a man who he knew was at that moment sitting in a pair of pajamas in an upper room half a mile away and ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... he thought he had. Offhand, he couldn't remember where. Looking at the girl, Malone was ready to write brand-new definitions for every anatomical term. Even a term like "hands." Malone had never seen anything especially arousing in the human hand before—anyway, not when the hand was just ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... moment Bonbright felt curiously calm, curiously cold, curiously detached from the scene. He regarded the other man.... This man was his father. His FATHER! The laws of life and of humanity demanded that he regard this man with veneration. Yet, offhand, without investigation, this man could jump to a vile conclusion regarding him. Not only that, but could accuse him, not of guilt, but of failing to conceal guilt!... Respectability! He knew he was watching a manifestation of the family tradition. It was wrong to commit ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... fierce excitement that they had taken off the 5.30 from Larne Harbour, or that the 7.30 from Galashiels was stopping that month at Shankend. He knew all the connections; he knew all the restaurant trains; and, if you mentioned the 6.15 to Little Buxton, he could tell you offhand whether it was a Saturdays Only ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... Tartarin would sponge his brow, smile on the ladies, wink to the sterner sex, and withdraw upon his triumph to go remark at the club with a trifling, offhand air: ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... He was tall and athletic-looking, but with a slight stoop, that impressed the reporter as a physical assumption of humility which the handsome face, with its faintly sneering lines and bold eyes, contradicted. But he acknowledged Brander's offhand "How d'ye do?" in a properly deferential manner, and listened respectfully to a ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... having a second key of Glenthorpe's room. Many hotel-keepers and innkeepers keep duplicate keys of bedrooms. The significance of this discovery is that Benson kept silence about the existence of this key. Undoubtedly he should have told us about it, but I am not prepared to accept, offhand, that his silence was the silence of a guilty man. He may have kept silence regarding it through a foolish fear of directing suspicion to himself. That theory seems to me quite as probable as Mr. Colwyn's theory. There remains the recovery of the money in the pit. ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... constitutional party; to-day it again stands for internationalism in the more advanced countries of Europe, but are we justified as yet in calling this more than a phase in the development of democratic doctrine? It is a very difficult question, which it would be presumptuous to try to answer offhand; all we have tried to show here is that, on the whole, the assumption as to the peaceful tendencies of a democratic foreign policy is a doubtful one, on which we must to some ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... be supposed that in the darkness the Comanches below would grasp the situation offhand, and, before they could do so, Dinah scurried over the peak of the roof to the scuttle, which of course was still open, and descended. In her haste, she stepped upon the back of the chair, which tripped over, and she went down with a crash ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... peculiar and somewhat weird ability to "guess" correctly, a faculty which has frequently enabled him to take short cuts to lines of investigation whose outcome has verified in a most remarkable degree statements apparently made offhand and without calculation. Mr. Upton says: "One of the main impressions left upon me, after knowing Mr. Edison for many years, is the marvellous accuracy of his guesses. He will see the general nature of a result long ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... it'd been better not to tell you so offhand like," replied Roy, contritely. "Don't feel bad, now. All I need is a peek at Old Baldy. Then I'll have my bearin'. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... my mother's! He knows you for the very best woman I shall ever have the chance of marrying. Shall I tell you the sort of woman my mother would like me to marry? Oh, I know the sort! First, she must be tall and handsome, with red, fashionable hair, and cool, offhand manners. She must never look shy or put out, or as if she did not know what to say. On the contrary, she must know who's who, and what's what, and never wear a dowdy bonnet, but always a stunning hat. And she must have a father who can ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... famous in his childish circle for having written a tragedy called Misnar, the Sultan of India, founded (and very literally founded, no doubt) on one of the Tales of the Genii. Nor was this his only distinction. He told a story offhand so well, and sang small comic songs so especially well, that he used to be elevated on chairs and tables, both at home and abroad, for more effective display of these talents; and when he first told me of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... an interesting sample of it yesterday." The stranger was offhand in his reply, but his eyes twinkled ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... touched the only weak spot in Selina's resistance to his proposal—the good of the boy. To promote that there were other men she might have married offhand without loving them if they had asked her to; but though she had known the worthy speaker from her youth, she could not for the moment fancy herself happy as ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... laid his hand on Gilbert's shoulder and whispered to him in a pleasant, offhand way, "Get through and come in the office, I want ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Monica with a smile, "but one can't do these things offhand—that is worse than doing nothing. I'll tell you what to do NOW. Why not go and stay with Aunt Anne? She would like to see you, I know, and I have always thought it rather lazy of you not to go there—she is rather ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Offhand as the words were, there was unmistakable satisfaction, happiness, even triumph in his voice, and he returned Aleck's hand-clasp with a vise-like grip. His masculinity ignored Agatha, or pretended to; but she had followed him to the door. As the old man clasped hands with Aleck, he ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... to end in the deprivation, not merely of the good name, but of the skin of the offender. The adherents of modern theological systems dismiss these objects of the love and fear of a hundred generations of their equals, offhand, as "gods of the heathen," mere creations of a wicked and idolatrous imagination; and, along with them, they disown, as senseless, the crude theology, with its gross anthropomorphism and its low ethical conception of the divinity, which satisfied ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of any sort. Some weeds grew in soil that had lodged upon the deck; in a couple of places they sprang as high as the rail. Weeds grew on shore; in fact, it would have taken a better nautical authority than Cleggett to tell offhand just exactly where the land ended and the Jasper B. began. She seemed to be possessed of an odd stability; although the tide was receding the Jasper B. was not perceptibly agitated by the motion of the water. Of anchor, or mooring ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis |
