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Sleek   Listen
noun
Sleek  n.  
1.
That which makes smooth; varnish. (R.)
2.
A slick.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sleek" Quotes from Famous Books



... was a perfect mine of information. He began to talk in low tones to Venia, and the heart of Mr. Blundell sank within him as he noted her interest. Their voices fell to a gentle murmur, and the sergeant's sleek, well-brushed head bent closer to that of his listener. Relieved from his attentions, Mr. Turnbull fell asleep ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... has the prettiest tricks Of words and words and words. Her talk comes out as smooth and sleek As breasts of ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... a damp hand over his brow. The dog, strangely undemonstrative, advanced and placed a sleek head against Gregg's knee, its pointed muzzle down, its tail hanging dispiritedly. Vaguely wondering what the trader's favorite lead-dog was doing among the boulders on the Point, Harlan patted the animal's broad back and turned ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... glittered a long green-house, and on the other stood a barn, with a sleek cow ruminating in the yard, and an inquiring horse poking his head out of his stall to view the world. Many comfortable gray hens were clucking and scratching about the hay-strewn floor, and a flock of doves sat ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... with the 'tips' to match, But not the answers; 'doubteth there be none, Only Guides, Helps, Analyses, such as that: Also this Beast, that groweth sleek thereon, And snow-white bands that round the neck ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Academy, the "ready" line of space destroyers and scouts, and the hundreds of maintenance noncoms of the enlisted Solar Guard, their scarlet uniforms spotted with grime, were all reflected back to the Polaris unit as they eyed the sleek ship from the needlelike nose of her bow to the stubby opening of her rocket exhausts. Not a seam or rivet could be seen in her hull. At the top of the ship, near her nose, a large blister made of six-inch clear crystal indicated the radar bridge. Twelve feet below ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... Those eyes belonged to a solitary horseman, who stood on the edge of the wild precipice that overhung the pass. The hunter, for such his leathern dress bespoke him, stood beside his horse, his right arm over its arched neck, and his right hand patting its sleek shoulder. From the position which he occupied he could see without being seen. His magnificent steed seemed to be aware that danger was at hand, for it stood like a statue, absolutely motionless, with the exception of ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... with her eyes. Her father's face was apoplectic; he was leaning forward, trying to speak, but he was too choked for utterance. Nathaniel Puntz looked as though a wet sponge had been dashed upon his sleek countenance. The other directors stared, dumfounded. This case had no precedent in their experience. They were at a loss how ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... half-hour that Tom began to wonder whether he should have to sit in this way till the bank closed,—there seemed so little tendency toward a conclusion in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek, prosperous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in the bank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, writing there forever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He preferred some other way of getting rich. But at last there ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... cavalcade, with diminished chance of overtaking it. Through the dusk I saw what I fancied was something moving on a mound ahead of me which arose out of the surrounding swamp. I spurred on, but only to find the putrid carcase of a buffalo, with a wolf supping on it. The brute was gorged, and looked as sleek as "die schone Frau Giermund"; but, unlike Isegrim's spouse, she was free to escape, for she wasn't worth a bullet. I was so famished, that I examined the carcase with the hope of finding a cut that would last for a day or two; my nose wouldn't have it. I plodded on, the water up to the saddle- ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... carbolic. He only caught a passing glimpse of the bright red lamp-shade and the violoncello case, and glancing in the direction where the clock was ticking he noticed a stuffed wolf as substantial and sleek-looking as ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... two ministers who often drank tea with my mother; both of whom, as they played some small part in the drama of my after-life, I may as well describe here. The elder was a little, sleek, silver-haired old man, with a blank, weak face, just like a white rabbit. He loved me, and I loved him too, for there were always lollipops in his pocket for me and Susan. Had his head been equal to his heart!—but ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... is this advancing on his Bucephalus? I thought your piazza was free from those furred and scarlet-robed lackeys of death. This man looks as if he had had some such night adventure as Boccaccio's Maestro Simone, and had his bonnet and mantle pickled a little in the gutter; though he himself is as sleek ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... a pen containing a couple of fat pigs and emptied it into their wooden trough. Going into a little corn-crib adjoining the stable and wagon-shed, she brought out a bucketful of wheat-bran and fed it to the cow, which stood trying to lick the back of a sleek young calf over the low fence in another lot. "I'll milk you after breakfast," she said, as she stroked the cow's back. "The calf will have to wait; I can't attend to all humanity and the brute creation at the same time. You'll ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... with new-comers passing the crowded corridor. His face was puffy and red; so were his lips; and there seemed to be a shiny quality to hair and skin prophetic of future coarsening toward a type, individuals of which swarmed like sleek flies around ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... a cat or snake—round my neck and face. It then rose above me, and, after circling furiously round and round and creating a miniature maelstrom in the air, descended gradually over my head. Lower and lower it stole, like some sleek, caressing slug. Now past the tips of my ears, now my nose, now my chin, until with a tiny thud it landed on my shoulders, when, with a fierce snap, it suddenly tightened. I endeavoured to tear it off, but every time I raised my hands, a strong, magnetic force drew them to my side ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, And kiss thy fair ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... lapidarian. V. smooth, smoothen^; plane; file; mow, shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender^, glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c v.; leiodermatous^, slick, velutinous^; even; level &c 213; plane &c (flat) 251; sleek, glossy; silken, silky; lanate^, downy, velvety; glabrous, slippery, glassy, lubricous, oily, soft, unwrinkled^; smooth as glass, smooth as ice, smooth as monumental alabaster, smooth as velvet, smooth as oil; slippery as an ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... morning of the third day they reached their old camp where their things were buried. Here they went into camp again while the Seminole scoured the woods for their ponies. He returned triumphant the second day riding one of the horses and driving the others. The animals were sleek and fat from ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... gaudy and sleek bird of Paradise had been donated by Miss Caron, of the adjoining chateau. There was also a newly-patented bird- trap, sent by a New York firm, in the days of Boss Tweed, Conolly, Field and other birds of prey I noticed boxes for sparrows to build in, designed by Col W Rhodes. On the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... when at home, in the lower chamber, which was now dry and clean enough for his luxurious tastes. Their small mother, however, was assiduous in her care; and in an exceedingly short time the youngsters, very sleek and dark in their first fur, were investigating the wonderful, great world beyond their water-gate. They had prodigious appetites, and they grew prodigiously. One, on their very first outing, got snapped up by a greedy black duck. The attention of the little mother was just then ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... intelligence of mankind in those countries, having clearly adopted it, whom the others were sure to follow. In all ranks of men; only not in the highest rank, which was pleased rather to continue Official and Papal. Highest rank had its Thirty-Years War, "its sleek Fathers Lummerlein and Hyacinth in Jesuit serge, its terrible Fathers Wallenstein in chain-armor;" and, by working late and early then and afterwards, did manage at length to trample out Protestantism,—they ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... dipped to the stream, and all its feathery tassels were sprinkled with tiny flecks of crimson and wondrous green. Great oaks dotted the meadows, each one perfect in symmetry. It seemed that the men who held this land cared for single trees. The sleek, tame cattle that rubbed their necks on the level hedge-top and gazed at him ruminatively were very different from the wild, long-horned creatures whose furious stampede he had now and then headed off, riding hard while the roar of hoofs rang ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... Schuneman, staring from the eager face to the sleek yellow bird. "I haven't had a canary since I was a girl ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... re-established in his own good opinion, marches on cheerfully in the smooth path toward the temple of his own immortality. Yet even here, you see, I am indirectly lauding my own worship for not being persuaded to laud my own worship. How sleek, smooth-tongued, paradisaical a deluder art thou, sweet Self-conceit! Let great men give their own thoughts on their own thoughts: from such we can learn much; but let the small deer hold jaw, and remember what the philosopher says, 'Fleas are not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... this time a shoal of jolly porpoises came rolling and tumbling by, turning up their sleek sides to the sun and spouting up the briny element in sparkling showers. No sooner did the sage Oloffe mark this than he was greatly rejoiced. "This," exclaimed he, "if I mistake not, augurs well; the porpoise is a fat, well-conditioned fish, a burgomaster among fishes; his looks betoken ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Fairholme did not join him, Talbot raced towards the carriage he had seen approaching. It was a smart vehicle, with a sleek, well-groomed horse, and he guessed that it must be a private conveyance. Gazing anxiously around, he could not see another carriage anywhere in the vicinity. There was nothing for it but the method of the brutal Saxon. Explanations would need precious ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... together upon his knee, his face paler than usual but perfectly calm, his head bent a little to one side and his smooth hair, which had been slightly ruffled in the encounter in the park, as smooth as ever. It was a very distinctive feature of him; it was part of the sleek and spotless neatness which Mrs. Ambrose so ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford

... over the more uncomfortable portions of the service, the seventh commandment for instance, with a studied regard for the taste and feeling of his auditors, only to be equalled by that displayed by the sleek divine who succeeds him, who murmurs, in a voice kept down by rich feeding, most comfortable doctrines for exactly twelve minutes, and then arrives at the anxiously expected 'Now to God,' which is the signal for the dismissal of the congregation. ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... shoal of jolly porpoises came rolling and tumbling by, turning up their sleek sides to the sun, and spouting up the briny element in sparkling showers. No sooner did the sage Oloffe mark this than he was greatly rejoiced. "This," exclaimed he, "if I mistake not, augurs well—the porpoise ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... eagle feather was thrust through his scalp lock; over his naked breast, that was neither painted nor pricked into strange figures, hung a triple row of pearls; his mantle was woven of bluebird feathers, as soft and sleek as satin. The face of this barbarian was dark, cold, and impassive as death. Behind that changeless mask, as in a safe retreat, the supersubtle devil that was the man might plot destruction and plan the laying of dreadful mines. He had dignity and courage,—no ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... flashed his electric torch into the blackness of the pit beneath him. One or two long tendrils of the climbing plants which grew higher up dangled like pendulous snakes, but the vegetable growth ceased at that point. Beneath him the naked sides of the pit gleamed sleek and wet in the rays ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... but as a fixture—No! "Tolerate" is too harsh a word; but another might be too weak. The truth is, men do not care half so much what they get, as how they get it. The wolf in Aesop's fable keenly wanted a share of the bones which made his friend the mastiff so sleek; but the hint that the bones and the collar went together drove him hungry but free back to his desert. It is of no avail to give a man all he asks for; he resents having to ask you for it, and wants to know by ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... bronze; the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat. The long, sloping promontory projecting into the sea at the west turned dim and leaden and spectral, then became suffused with pink—dissolved itself in a pink dream, so to speak, it seemed so airy and unreal. Presently the cloud-rack was flooded with fiery ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... readers know. Both Colonel and General attended him thenceforth, still by a circuitous route, to Konigsberg, to assist in the solemnities there. By Gumbinnen, by Trakehnen,—the Stud of Trakehnen: that also his Majesty saw, and made review of; not without emotion, we can fancy, as the sleek colts were trotted out on those new terms! At Trakehnen, Katte and the Colonel would be his Majesty's guests, for the night they stayed. This is their extreme point eastward; Konigsberg now lies a good way west of them. But at Trakehnen ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... away. The next morning it returned. To be short, though it went away every night, it became our own cat, and one of our family. I gave it something which cured it of its eruption, and through good treatment it soon lost its other ailments and began to look sleek ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association were in excellent condition for this evening's labor. They were not pale and thin, underfed and overworked, as were their prisoners; they were sleek and rosy, and ashine with health. It was as if long years ago their fathers had foreseen the Red menace, and the steps that would have to be taken to preserve 100% Americanism; the fathers had imported a game ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... have the boys pick out some horses for you, too," cried Genevieve, smoothing Pepito's sleek coat in response to his welcoming whinny of delight. "I'm sure they can find something all right ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... Gross, with protruding ears, Sleek hair, brisk glance, fleshy and yet alert, Red, full, and satisfied, Cased in obtuseness confident not ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... colts are pasturin', bold an' lusty, Sleek they are with their coats aglow, Ripe to break, but the bits grow rusty And the saddles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various

... in these glad days than the game or the storehouse, or the piles of caplin which they cached under the sand on the shore, were the wandering herds of caribou,—splendid old stags with massive antlers, and long-legged, inquisitive fawns trotting after the sleek cows, whose heads carried small pointed horns, more deadly by far than the stags' cumbersome antlers. Wherever the wolves went they crossed the trails of these wanderers swarming out of the thickets, sometimes by twos and threes, and again in straggling, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... were like a look through an open window. Outside of classified projects in "harmless" fields of research the work of science went on, papers were published, reputations were made, freedom still existed. He remembered Gordon's sleek smile and advice to relax and read in other fields. This stupid useless advice still rankled. Of course, he probably was stale, but to read junk ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon

... bottle, made of burnished brass, and ran back to the wood, and to the dell, where Elfin was sitting among his sleek black pigs, waiting ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... a strip of linen about the lank jaws; combed back the grizzled hair from the forehead into sleek respectability; crossed the hands at the wrists, as only dead hands are ever laid; straightened the limbs, and was in the act of spreading a clean sheet over her ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... emaciated appearance and sun-burnt faces, the marks of misery and labor; the other, a little group, an insignificant faction, presented in its rich attire embroidered with gold and silver, and in its sleek and ruddy faces, the signs of ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... congenial errand to do, and striking a "bee line" across the prairie, over a river, through a grove, halted before a cosy cottage that would remind one of New England. The acres and acres of tilled land stretched away from the dwelling, enclosed in the most substantial manner, and sleek cattle, that fed in the rich pasture, bespoke competency and enterprise. He stopped not to knock at the door, but entering, asked of ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... Marquise d'Arlanges, but a marquise out of Watteau or of Fragonard, say. Stella in this gown seemed out of place save upon a high-backed stone bench, set in an allee of lime-trees, of course, and under a violet sky,—with a sleek abbe or two for company, and with beribboned gentlemen tinkling on their ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... intersects the old trail pauses to look up its green ascent, or on across the placid stream it forded, does he not almost catch sight of the goodly forms of those young men, quaintly clad in doublet and hose and the wide hats or the close barret caps of the day, led by the sleek slender savage who patiently stood by, while Winslow turned and pointed out the beauties of sea and shore ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... I was in the city guarded by its pillar of cloud by day, of fire by night. I had reason to know it, when, yet unfed, unrested, faint, smirched and smeared with blood and travel, loaded with chains, I was brought to a tribunal where sat the sleek ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... meek, with his form so sleek, Was the heartiest of them all, And would take his place, with a smiling face, When the refection bell would call; And they sung and laughed, And the rich wine quaffed, Till they shook the ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin

... abundant. As we approached Calabozo, we saw herds of roebucks browsing peacefully in the midst of horses and oxen. They are called matacani; their flesh is good; they are a little larger than our roes, and resemble deer with a very sleek skin, of a fawn-colour, spotted with white. Their horns appear to me to have single points. They had little fear of the presence of man: and in herds of thirty or forty we observed several that were entirely white. This variety, common enough ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... n'est rien," returned the man, puffing, and giving another lusty sweep, by which he succeeded in forcing the punt fully twenty feet from the shore. "Edouard! cher Edouard!" "Laisse-moi m'amuser,—je m'amuse, je m'amuse," cried the husband in a tone of indignant remonstrance. But Edouard, a tight, sleek little epicier, of about five-and-thirty, had never heard that an oar on each side was necessary in a boat, and the harder he pulled the less likely was he to regain the shore. Of this he began to be convinced, as he whirled more into the centre of the current; and his efforts now really ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... as sleek and crisp as though cooking were an expensive sort of beauty treatment. "Supper will be ready in five minutes," she said. "If you tigers will wash ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang

... cooler than Catherwood. He looked and acted no more like the exquisite on the steamboat than did Tom Gordon himself. He was the sleek, cunning, hypocritical villain he had always been, stealing, not because he was in need of money, but because it was ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... deny himself the poor luxury of a centime light. Possibly it was a little shopman, as the abbe had suggested, struggling with fortune—not scrupulous in honesty, and shunning observation; or it might be (who could tell) a sleek-faced villain, stealing about in the dusk, and far into the night, making the dim chamber his home only when more honest lodgers were ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... and told that if they were ill they should be on a hospital ship or if not ill they ought to be at the Front. These men have no intention themselves of going nearer the Front, they are all fat and sleek and live on the fat of the land, are faultlessly dressed, and strut about with their monocles, looking with contempt on all the poor devils who are doing the dirty work. Every one is now up in ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... before, almost a different man. Though his features were stonily calm as the features of a mask, Mary felt that he was intensely excited, and completely absorbed in the game about to begin. He had a notebook over which his sleek brown head and Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna's short black curls were bent eagerly. It was evident that they had some plan of play which they ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... vain that Thyrsis tried at any time to work at things that were interesting to other people. Perhaps he could have worked better at them, if there had not been so many things that were interesting to him. He would find himself confronted with the image of the society clergyman, or of the sleek editor in his club, or some other memory out of the world of luxury and pride. And each day came the newspaper, with its burden of callousness and scorn; and perhaps also a letter from Corydon, with something to goad him to new tilts with ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... his reputation as a debater, and he became marked out as the Western candidate for the Republican nomination to the Presidency. A committee favourable to his claims sent to him to make a speech at New York. He arrived "in a sleek and shining suit of new black, covered with very apparent creases and wrinkles acquired by being packed too closely and too long in his little valise." Some of his supporters must have moralized on the strange apparition which their summons had raised. His speech, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... fluttered all day long; a little aged chapel with a conical red roof; and great barns covered with ivy and thick creepers, red and purple, and lichens that were yellow in the sun. All around it were the broad, flowering meadows, with the sleek cattle of Normandy fattening in them, and the sweet dim forests where the young men and maidens went on every holy day and feast-day in the summer-time to seek for wood-anemones, and lilies of the pools, and the wild campanula, and the ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... our station in sight visually, and in a matter of hours later, it was edging its sleek sixty feet of length into a side gantry ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell

... overhead, Like ghost she gloats, her lean hand laid On alabaster balustrade, And gazes on and on Down on that wondrous to and fro Till finger and foot are cold as snow, And half the night is gone; And dazzled eyes are sore bestead; Nods drowsily the sleek-locked head; And, vague and far, spins, fading out, That rainbow-coloured, reeling rout, And, with faint sighs, her spirit flies ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... nature-folk who ate nothing but vegetables and fruits, raw. They insisted that all the ills of flesh came to humanity with the cooking of food, that the sun was enough of a chef. If appearances prove anything, theirs was the theory nearest right. They were like two fine, sleek animals. A fire of health shone in their eyes. As they swam off the dam they looked like two ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... Arab, "the master's work is now done. Be careful of him," he went on, handing over his sleek Arab charger. "He is Naoum's favourite steed, and will never fail you. I regret that he ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... of the little old lady in her strange costume and ringlets, passing through the vestibule, on the arm of the young giant, followed by the sleek-looking, well-groomed pair of cousins, who chatted to each other with an air of the utmost unconcern towards the curious glances now levelled at them ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... a commotion at the gate attracted the attention of all. A small detachment of soldiers was advancing, at a leisurely pace, headed by a young officer whose arms blazed with gold and silver. No Hannibalian veterans these. As they came near, even Marcia could note the sleek, soft look of the men, and their listless, muscleless gait; while their leader's hair and person literally reeked with perfumes. His eyes turned slowly from the huge Gaul to the woman; then a flash of animation lent ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... always before his eyes. It was a fascinating roll of fat. A man could get his hand upon it and tear away one side of the neck; or he could place the muzzle of a rifle on it and blow away all the head in a flash. Losson had no right to be sleek and contented and well-to-do, when he, Simmons, was the butt of the room. Some day, perhaps, he would show those who laughed at the "Simmons, ye so-oor" joke, that he was as good as the rest, and held a man's life in the crook of his ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... sandalled monks, black-habited clerics, black canons, secular and regular, black in face too, some of them, heresy hunters from the neighboring abbey of St. Victor, mingled with the crowd of young and old, grave and gay, beggars and nobles, sleek ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... been all around the cattle pens. I never saw such stock before. Owing to their habit of staying out in the country the year round, they have a firm, sleek, animated look which the best guaranteed city stock fails to attain. One cow, from her impartial method of hoisting visitors out of her pasture, was labelled "The ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various

... glad at the time, and vicious after, was that on his way he fell in with a draft of prisoners, and, among them, with Abe Cummins, who, so to say, had reached the same place by walking a tenth part of the distance. And, what's more, though a man couldn't very well get sleek in Jivvy, Abe had kept his bones filled out somehow, and knew enough navigation by this time to set a course to the Channel Fleet. 'Deed, that's what he began talking about on the first day's journey he and Billy ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... we amused ourselves. Although my beloved Helen was not there, having been exchanged for the day in favour of Master Mouse, a shaggy pony, whose paces were as rough as its coat, I begged a red blanket from Mr. K——, and covered up Helen's stable companion, whose sleek skin spoke of a milder temperature than that on Lake Ida's "gloomy shore." Our simple arrangements were soon made. Mr. K—— left directions to his mate to prepare a repast consisting of tea, bread, and mutton ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... up Big Shanty Brook a chipmunk skitted along a fallen hemlock in the drizzle of an October rain. Suddenly he stopped and listened, his heart, thumping against his sleek coat. He could hear the muffled roar of the torrent below him at the bottom of the ravine, talking and grumbling to itself, as it emptied its volume of water swollen by the heavy rains and sent it swirling out into the long green ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... saw the famous horse fairs that took place in Smithfield every Friday, which he described so graphically. Thither flocked earls, barons, knights, and citizens to look on or buy. The monk admired the nags with their sleek and shining coats, smoothly ambling along, the young blood colts not yet accustomed to the bridle, the horses for burden, strong and stout-limbed, and the valuable chargers of elegant shape and noble height, with nimbly moving ears, erect necks, and plump haunches. He waxes eloquent over the ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... hogs and kill all the fleas on them. The oil also remains on the hogs for several days, and all the fleas that jump on the hogs from the ground stick fast and never jump off again. In about three weeks the fleas all disappear and the hogs look fine and sleek from ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... be retraced by the awe-stricken observer, noting with a deep interest impossible hitherto all the environment: the stark chimney of the vanished house, monumental in the weed-grown waste; the dripping forest; the roof of the barn, sleek and shining, and with rain pouring down the slant of its clapboards and splashing from its eaves; the groups of horses hitched to the scraggy apple-trees of the deserted homestead; and here and there the white canvas cover of an ox-wagon, with ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... cuffed about by the public and half starved, he presented a pitiable contrast to his wife, neat little lady, who, after her husband had lost his situation, left him and joined a respectable circle of cows and spent her time with them, fat, sleek, eminently respectable, and as regular as clockwork in taking them out to pasture and bringing them home. The moral point that I wish to make is this—if you give a woman half a chance she will be a lady; if you give a man half ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... Rich was thy hap; sweet dainty cap, There to be placed; Where thy smooth black, sleek white may smack, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... master's clothes. Besides, like most woodsmen, he was superstitious. Gaston was kind with him, keeping, however, a firm hand till his manner had become informed by the new duties. Jacques's greatest pleasure was his early morning visits to the stables. Here were Saracen and Jim the broncho-sleek, savage, playful. But he touched the highest point of his London experience when ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... must let this annual election go on undisturbed. Smile and keep your counsel. Let this sleek ferret Ferris, go on and marry the girl, for I, alone, can aid you. Worthington fears me. I know too ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... not long left in doubt. With crude, dramatic effect Little Black Fox suddenly appeared from the adjacent woods. He rode into the ring on his black pony, sitting the sleek beast in that haughty manner which is given to the Indian alone, and which comes from the fact that he uses no saddle, and sits with the natural pose of a lithe figure that is always ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... good Courtiers, and such as are assiduous at the Levees of Great Men. These Worthies are got into an Habit of being servile with an Air, and enjoy a certain Vanity in being known for understanding how the World passes. In the Pleasure of this they can rise early, go abroad sleek and well-dressed, with no other Hope or Purpose, but to make a Bow to a Man in Court-Favour, and be thought, by some insignificant Smile of his, not a little engaged in his Interests and Fortunes. It is wondrous, that a Man can get over the natural Existence ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... One can almost fancy himself suddenly transported by some good genii to a quiet farming community in an Eastern State. Instead of untamed bronchos and wild-eyed cattle, roaming at their own free will over unlimited territory, are seen staid work-horses ploughing in the field, and the sleek milch-cow peacefully cropping tame grass in enclosed meadows. Birds are singing merrily in the willow hedges and the shade-trees; green fields of alfalfa and ripening grain line the road and spread themselves over the surrounding country in alternate squares, like those of a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... man I had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved majestically but which was sleek and decorous to the point of worldliness, was poised on his neck and shoulders with a singularly strong line that showed through a silk soft collar, held together by an exquisitely worldly amethyst silk scarf which, it was a shock to see, matched glints from eyes back under ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... wings That blows from off each beaked promontory: They knew not of his story; And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd; The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd. It was that fatal and perfidious bark Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... I say of the bright and many-coloured garments? what of the sleek and well-fed cattle offered at such a price as ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... night and day. Find out where he lives and what he does; and ransack his room if possible. He is either an innocent man or a sleek rascal. Report to me this time ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... and Sal were out with Dad, Joe came home with a four-foot black snake in his hand. It was a beauty. So sleek and lithe and lively! He carried it by the tail, its head swinging close to his bare leg, and the thing yearning for a grab at him. But Joe understood ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... young woman," about 23 years of age, neatly dressed, not black, but slightly coloured. The auctioneer was a sleek-looking fellow, with a face that indicated frequent and familiar intercourse with the brandy-bottle. He stood upon a platform, about four feet high. Behind him was a table, at which a clerk sat to record the sales. High above was a semi-circular board, on which were written in large letters ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... thou a spy Watching the women? Hence—get thee abroad Glad of such fare as thou hast found, or soon With torches beaten we will thrust thee forth. To whom Ulysses, frowning stern, replied. Petulant woman! wherefore thus incensed Inveigh'st thou against me? is it because I am not sleek? because my garb is mean? Because I beg? thanks to necessity— 90 I would not else. But such as I appear, Such all who beg and all who wander are. I also lived the happy owner once Of such a stately mansion, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... Charles acquired a great reputation amongst them for the clever trickeries which he continually conceived, and which his troop undertook to carry out. A chronicler of the time says, that by means of certain herbs which he gave to a half-starved horse, he made him into a fat and sleek animal; the horse was then sold at one of the neighbouring fairs or markets, but the purchaser detected the fraud within a week, for the horse soon became thin again, and usually sickened ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... better than a piece of wire filed off to a point, and he vented his misery in piteous squeaks as the sympathetic Varley confided him tenderly to the care of his mother. How Fan managed to cure him no one can tell, but cure him she did, for, in the course of a few weeks, Crusoe was as well, and sleek, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... with a magenta parasol studiously lowered in our direction throughout her slow progress, as if that were the magnetic needle and we the fixed pole. Seaton at once lost all nerve in his riding. At the next lurch of the old mare's heels he toppled over into the grass, and I slid off the sleek broad back to join him where he stood, rubbing his shoulder and sourly watching the rather pompous figure till it was ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... gray with the dust that had settled on his sleek, glossy coat, forged ahead in a noble sprint with head on a level with its back, nose ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin

... a rich pastoral country; very beautiful in running brooks, smooth meadows, and majestic parks; where the fat sleek cattle so celebrated in the London markets, graze knee-deep in luxuriant pastures, and the fallow deer browse and gambol beneath the shadow of majestic oaks through the long bright summer days. She had never seen a mountain before her visit to the North, in her life; had never risen higher in ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... another, and finding them all beyond his power. He had lost in the fierce battle of greed, and so was doomed to be exterminated; and all society was busied to see that he did not escape the sentence. Everywhere that he turned were prison bars, and hostile eyes following him; the well-fed, sleek policemen, from whose glances he shrank, and who seemed to grip their clubs more tightly when they saw him; the saloon-keepers, who never ceased to watch him while he was in their places, who were jealous of every moment he lingered after he had paid his money; the hurrying ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... competition which is hurtful to so many institutions. The Church of Rome had been suppressed for the time in this country, and the most urgent means had been employed to keep the Dissenters down; therefore the Church of England had grown contented, sleek, inert, and was no longer equal to its work. This fact began after a while to impress itself more and more on the minds of the little band who worked with John Wesley. They resisted the idea to the very last; they hoped and believed and dreamed that they might still be part of the Church ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... that Prometheus, who is a hero to us, should have been regarded so differently his contemporaries. Some thought of him as merely a sort of social settlement-worker, living among men to improve them, in a sleek, earnest spirit. Some thought him a common adventurer. Others ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... with me," said the Queen to the clown, "and let me stroke your dear cheeks, and stick musk-roses in your smooth, sleek head, and kiss your fair ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... thee, Nymph; and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles Such as hang on HEBE's cheek And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... all tricked out with flowers and what not, till no one would know them in their fanciful dress. And here is a country bearing a well-known name, wherein no chill mists press upon our spirits, and no rain falls but what rolls off our backs like April showers off the backs of sleek drakes; where flowers bloom forever and birds are always singing; where every fellow hath a merry catch as he travels the roads, and ale and beer and wine (such as muddle no wits) flow like ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... ladies fair Hear the dull summons and gather there: No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail, Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale; No knight whispers love in the chatelaine's ear, His next-door neighbor this five-hundred year; No monk has a sleek benedicite For the great lord shadowy now as he; 50 Nor needeth any to hold his breath, Lest he lose the least ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... a physician alighted from his carriage, and entering the shop of a medical bookseller, inquired of its sleek-faced master, "whether he had a copy of Heberden's Commentaries?" "No, sir," replied the man of letters, "but we have Caesar's Commentaries, and they are by far ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various

... could furnish us. The fever had quite gone from me the night before, and on Christmas morning, though exceedingly weak, I was up and dressed, and lecturing Ferajji, the cook, upon the importance of this day to white men, and endeavouring to instil into the mind of the sleek and pampered animal some cunning secrets of the culinary art. Fat broad-tailed sheep, goats, zogga and pombe, eggs, fresh milk, plantains, singwe, fine cornflour, fish, onions, sweet potatoes, &c., &c., were procured in the Ujiji market, and from good old Moeni Kheri. But, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... the outriders rolled a comfortable, four-wheeled, covered carriage,[5] ornamented with handsome embossed plate-work of bronze. Two sleek, jet-black steeds were whirling it swiftly onward. Behind, a couple of equally speedy grey mules were drawing an open wagon loaded with baggage, and containing two smart-looking slave-boys. But all ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... an ale-house bench, Whereon I sit so jolly; A smiling rosy country wench My saint and patron holy. I kiss her cheek so red and sleek, I press her ringlets wavy; And in her willing ear I speak A ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... returned his greeting and pointed to a chair. "Yes, I sent for you. I told you I would when I wanted to see you," he said, sitting down across the table from the sleek little man. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... was, and he said, with a sort of rapture in his voice and bearing, "A kitten, a nice, little, sleek playful kitten, that I can play with, and teach, and feed, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... would swap whispered confidences, is a strip of sky. Below are smells of age and dampness. And there is a rich, nutritious garlicky smell too; and against a jog in the wall a frowsy but picturesque rag-picker is asleep on a pile of sacks, with a big sleek cat asleep on his breast. I do not guarantee the rag-picker. He and his cat may have moved since I was there and saw them, although they had the look about them ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... orioles and thrushes and bluebirds, big chattering jays, sleek brown sparrows, and red-capped woodpeckers; but not a bird in the garden was so gay and sweet and loving as the mocking bird, who could sing everybody's song ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay

... kept five or six friars of his order," says Gonzalo de Oviedo, "in his palace with him, and as many asses in his stables; but the latter all grew sleek and fat, for the archbishop would not ride himself, nor allow his brethren to ride ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... The American bird, who is bigger and stands on a bigger rock, is sleek enough except about the head which is a bit ruffled. But he is more of a raven than an eagle in his sable plumes of professional cut, and he is obviously not at ease. He does not look the other in the face. He stares straight in front of him at nothing with a forced, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... too much to say that Gib was another creature. That once dilapidated-looking object, under Ermine's fostering care, had developed into a sleek, civilised, respectable cat; and as he sat on her lap, purring and blinking at the wood-fire, he suggested no ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... at Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza. They were now staring about them in all their perfection of stare: small Charley in a sleek slate-colored suit, as neat as any little barber; Bohm, massive, portentous, his strong shoes and gloves the chief note in his dress, and about his whole firm frame a heavy mechanical strength, a look as of something that ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister



Words linked to "Sleek" :   smooth, sleekness, streamlined, aerodynamic, shine, satiny, polish, smoothen, silken, silky, bright, slick, silklike, flowing, sleek over



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