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Stoop   Listen
noun
Stoop  n.  
1.
The act of stooping, or bending the body forward; inclination forward; also, an habitual bend of the back and shoulders.
2.
Descent, as from dignity or superiority; condescension; an act or position of humiliation. "Can any loyal subject see With patience such a stoop from sovereignty?"
3.
The fall of a bird on its prey; a swoop.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stoop" Quotes from Famous Books



... that my statement was insulting. The man snarled and shook his head. I have since thought that he was the owner of the Northern Pacific system in disguise. I suggested that the personage might look about. The personage couldn't stoop to that; but a clerk who overheard my insulting remark (he had not yet become the owner of a vast transportation system) condescended to make a desultory search. He succeeded in digging up a spark-coil—and that is all I ever saw ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... our way, too," cried Frank, opening the throttle and pressing down the clutch, as more bullets whistled overhead. "Give 'em a shot, Jack, and everybody stoop down." ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... not in a position to dictate terms, so I promised. The door closed, the bolt shot into the socket, and Egeria's voice came so faintly through the keyhole that I had to stoop to ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... It is a leading question; one he had not expected; but he will not stoop to the faintest equivocation. Still, he wants ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... powerful grey straining close beside her. Nevertheless Tippoo was so entirely in earnest that it was some little time—it seemed a very long one—before the grey could get so close to the brown and so far up with him that Mr. Carlisle could lay his hand upon the thick brown mane of Tippoo and stoop forward to speak to him. As soon as that was done once or twice, Tippoo's speed gradually relaxed; and a perseverance in his master's appeals to his reason and sense of duty, brought the wild creature back to ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you ...
— Jesus of Nazareth - A Biography • John Mark

... capable of some deep affection or some great self-sacrifice, and I respect and admire them, and think they are like that all through. And the day comes when they are not quite straightforward, or are guilty of some petty meanness, which a man who is not fit to black their boots would never stoop to." ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... said Pen, taking her hand, and with his voice of sad good-humor; "at least I stoop ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... demoralized,—tends to create evil tendencies and to confirm such as exist. No worse originally than the average of men, they are made baser and more savage by their circumstances. And no man able to hold his own in the free life and competition of the outside world, would stoop to accept a position as guard ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... against him, surrounded by influences like evil spirits, the earth dry and famished under his foot, and the heavens black with thunder above his head. He has no experience, little physical strength, only ordinary talent; but he has nerve and will: he can plod when necessary; he can stoop or climb as the time demands; he can cut a new path when he loses the old one; and so, step by step, he goes on—this gallant Crusoe—till he has conquered circumstances and reached a secure shelter. Another man: but here we must speak ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... abstraction had increased, until now it was nothing remarkable for him to go days without speaking to any one unless he were first spoken to. His hair was white as snow, and made him look years older than he really was; while the habit he had of always walking with his head down, and a stoop in his shoulders, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... your ladyship could never stoop to own Acquaintance with a libertine, to drunkenness so prone; A gormandizer too you see, as full as any sack," And here he gave poor Joe a kick, and turn'd him on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... on, and in another minute were at the office door. There they sat down on the stoop to rest and talk; but only a few minutes had passed when they heard the sound of approaching footsteps; and a small but very erect figure appeared, carrying an old-fashioned musket of the vintage ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... Lackey!"—Trajan being a man unready with speech; and disliking trouble with the people whom he paid for keeping his boots in polish. O my winged Voltaire, to what dunghill Bubbly-Jocks (COQS D'INDE) you do stoop with homage, constrained by their appearance ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... Martin," quoth Sir Richard, speaking quick and incisive, a grim and warlike figure in his armour, for all his stoop and limping gait, "here's the way on't: let the Indians shoot their arrows as they may (poor souls!) but we wait until the enemy be a-throng upon the stair yonder, then we open on them with our cannon here,—'tis crammed to the muzzle with musket balls; ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... to be some mishap at the gate into the orchard. Apparently Roger squeezed his finger in the hinge; but he was very brave. The two women stood at the window and watched him hop about, shaking the injured hand, while his shadow parodied him, and Richard waited with a stoop of the shoulders that meant patience and hatred. Then again the silver ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... superfluous flesh, not so aggressively erect. One felt that the older Hallams would have walked straight up to the object of their ambition and demanded it, or, if necessary, fought for it. One was equally sure that Antony had the ability to stoop, to bow, to slide past obstacles, to attain his object ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... moving eloquence, To bend his stubborn soul to gentleness.— Where is thy virtue? Where thy princely lustre? Ah! wilt thou meanly stoop to do a wrong, And stain thy honour with so foul a blot? Thou who shouldst be a guard to innocence. Leave force to brutes—for pleasure is not found Where still the soul's averse; horror and guilt, Distraction, desperation chace her hence. Some happier gentle Fair one you may ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... every vale exalted high, Sink every mountain low; The proud must stoop, and humble souls ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... by side, she laughing and talking and I hearkening to her childish prattle with marvellous great pleasure. Presently I ventured to touch her soft cheek, to stroke her curls, and finding she took this not amiss, summoned courage to stoop ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... crushed me. But I liked you. I found you pleasanter than other men, and I even fancied that I loved you. Had I not known this story, I might have married you, and been the most miserable woman alive, for a man who could play the villain to a hapless girl, who could stoop to so mean and dastardly an action as to cripple a rival yacht, is a creature so mean, so detestable, that wretched indeed would be the fate of the ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... only so far as to marvel at his humanity because of his divinity, how he could stoop, how he could condescend, how he could lay it all aside and be delightful as we saw him—"Like a boy, Mr. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... so faintly that the Commander of the French Armies had to stoop over him, "I should not have lived if it had not been for my companion. He is brave, that boy—oh, braver than I can make you understand. But, mon General," and a wistful look came into the deep-sunk eyes, "they have taken my Cross of the Legion and ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... of that deed. Age makes us judge more kindly. To me your faith is nothing and your God a sham, yet I know now that to worship Him is not worthy of death—at least not for that cause would I bring any to their death to-day, or even to stripes and bonds. I will go further; I will stoop even to borrow from His creed. Do not His teachings bid you to forgive those ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... than ever. My feet are upon the rock. When I look over my life, how blotted it appears! am lost in astonishment, that God, who made all things, and upholds all things by the word of his power, should stoop to such a wretch as I. O the depth of the riches of His mercy to me!—I have received a letter from Cousin Ann, in which she boldly confesses the cleansing blood. Hope it will prove a lasting blessing to me; feel ashamed that I have not more openly acknowledged what the Lord has done ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... to stoop as the roof of the tunnel dipped lower and she could scarcely see in the increasing darkness, clearly enough to avoid ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... as described, lay thereon a complete bed of mortar, well mixed with cut straw, set the still thereon, levelling her so that she will nearly empty her self by the stoop towards the cock; then fill up all round her with mortar to the lower rivets, carefully preventing any stone or brick from touching her, (as they would tend to burn her) ... then build the fender or fenders; ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry

... what showers they come floating down! The ground is all party-colored with them. But they still live in the soil, whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from it. They stoop to rise, to mount higher in coming years, by subtle chemistry, climbing by the sap in the trees, and the sapling's first fruits thus shed, transmuted at last, may adorn its crown, when, in after-years, it has become the monarch of ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... habitations I have ever seen: a little low stone hut, built so close to the edge of the cliff one would think a violent storm must blow it over—no windows—a primitive chimney, hardly more than a hole in the roof—a little low door that one had to stoop to pass through, one room, dark and cold—the floor of beaten earth, damp and uneven, almost in ruts. There were two beds, a table, two chairs, and a stove—nondescript garments hanging on the walls—a ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... you can think and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with triumph and disaster, And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can stand to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by Knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the work you've given your life to broken, And stoop and build it ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... be cut off from all the sympathy and kind interest of my friends—to have no word from home—to feel that none cares for me. I know that I have offended both my father and grandfather past forgiveness, and my mind is made up to seek for no reconciliation with them. I cannot stoop to that. I have too much of the blood of the Loftons in ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur

... methinks—that God will not despise a gift because men cast it at His feet as having no value for them. I say not, He will not despise such givers: verily, they shall have their reward. But if the gift be a living thing that can feel and smart under the manner of its usage, then methinks He shall stoop to lift it with very tender hands, so as to let it feel that it hath value in His eyes—its own value, that nought save itself can have. My children, we are not mere figures to Him—so many dwellers in so many houses. Before Him we are living men and real ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... want some onion soup To whip me up till that rehearsal's over. You know it's odd how some women can stoop! Fraeulein Gebnitz has taken on a lover, A Jew named Goldstein. No one can discover If it's his money. But she lives alone Practically. Gebnitz ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... king may doom to me a thousand tortures, Ply me with fire, and rack me like Philotas, Ere I will stoop to idolize his pride. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... way up the front stoop of the tenement and knocked at the first door on the left-hand side. There ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... in which the whole establishment, from the highest to the lowest, thought it necessary to demean themselves toward his Grace's confidential secretary; there was no meanness to which they would not stoop to curry favor with me: I could scarcely believe they were Spaniards. I left no stone unturned to be of service to them, without being taken ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... not seem to him that Father O'Grady would stoop to such meanness, but there seemed to be no other explanation, and he fell to thinking of what manner of man was Father O'Grady—an old man he knew him to be, and from the tone of his letters he had judged him ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... Peter used the rope, Or what the bruise that made the stripling stoop; None could the ridges on his back behold, None sought him shiv'ring in the winter's cold. * * * * * The pitying women raised a clamour round." ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... many dwellings of this kind have we not ourselves penetrated—especially in the counties of Kerry, Mayo, and Donegal—more than once obliged to stoop down to the ground, in order to penetrate into these cabins, the entrance to which is so low that they look more like the burrows of beasts than dwellings made ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and gather a tuft of grass from the grave and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... Joy escaped the Youth, he let his Zither fall, and with extended arms he called out the name of the enigmatical Being, who seemed to stoop lovingly to him and beckon to him in a friendly manner; indeed, if his ear did not deceive him, she called his name with unutterable sweet Whispers, proper to love. Beside himself with delight the youth lost his Senses and sank senseless ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... like a silver wire, And from beyond the noon a fire Is pour'd upon the hills, and nigher The skies stoop down in their desire; And, isled in sudden seas of light, My heart, pierced thro' with fierce delight, Bursts ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... quarter contains the old synagogue, a square building begrimed with the dirt of ages, and so covered with dirt and moss that the stone of which it is built is scarcely visible. The building, which is as mournful as a prison, has only narrow loopholes by way of windows, and a door so low that one must stoop to enter it. A dark passage leads to the interior, into which air and light can scarcely penetrate. A few lamps contend with the darkness, and lighted fires serve to modify a little the icy temperature of this cellar. Here and there pillars ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... hospitable haven of Groot Schuurr I one day met Mr. Merriman at lunch as the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Solomon.[14] Considerably above the average height, with a slight stoop and grey hair, Mr. Merriman was a man whose appearance from the first claimed interest. It was a few days after his Budget speech, which, from various innovations, had aroused a storm of criticism, as Budgets are wont to do. Whatever his private feelings were about ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... his wife mainly left their obeisance, made it so tentative that if it should meet no response he could feel that it had been nothing more than a forward stoop, such as was natural in sitting down. He need not really have taken this precaution; those whose eyes he caught more or less ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... and throngs of people standing on the sidewalks; but the people were of ordinary size and the only remarkable thing about them was the fact that they were dreadfully lean and thin. Between their skin and their bones there seemed to be little or no flesh, and they were mostly stoop-shouldered and weary looking, ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... Fletcher, you stupid fellow? Come over here. I shall have to beat you. Now then, where's my cane gone! Oh, then I shall have to use some rubber tubing—stoop down, stoop down!" ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, and the narrow fanaticism of another; these events are within the power of human beings, and I did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever stoop to ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... butterfly—her speculation was attracted to a thin, high-shouldered figure limping on a stick, away from the house, down one of the paths among the apple-trees. He wavered, not knowing, it seemed, his way. And Nedda thought: 'Poor old man, how lame he is!' She saw him stoop, screened, as he evidently thought, from sight, and take something very small from his pocket. He gazed, rubbed it, put it back; what it was she could not see. Then pressing his hand down, he smoothed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... she took sang out a sharp "Meddler-gossip! meddler-gossip!" A delivery horse went past, drumming an irritating "Busybody! busybody! busybody!" What had she or hers ever done to Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene that she should stoop to so base a means of attack? An anonymous letter! War raged in Patty's heart; but there was something warmer and clearer coursing ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... near Ayr, the s. of William Burness or Burns, a small farmer, and a man of considerable force of character and self-culture. His youth was passed in poverty, hardship, and a degree of severe manual labour which left its traces in a premature stoop and weakened constitution. He had little regular schooling, and got much of what education he had from his father, who taught his children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history, and also wrote for ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... you," she heard Mr. Rand say, "these gypsy fellows will stoop to anything. And as for revenge—they say once a gypsy always a gypsy. Which means they will ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose

... him, of his lips to hers. The spectacle of Rita's fluffy gowns, her enticing costumes, was in her eyes. Rita should not have him; she should not have anything connected with him, nor, for that matter, Antoinette Nowak, either—the wretched upstart, the hireling. To think he should stoop to an office stenographer! Once on that thought, she decided that he should not be allowed to have a woman as an assistant any more. He owed it to her to love her after all she had done for him, the coward, and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... friends than ever. There! I think we have quite enough berries. If you will just take them in to Evangeline, I'll see about Frieda's flowers. You'll find a pitcher of shrub on the ice, and goblets on the tray all ready to bring out. We'll arrange the flowers on the back stoop, I think, and you might bring us some ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett

... was all on honour bent, He could not stoop to love; No lady in the land had power His frozen ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... once, down on the ground beside her, a tiny figure became visible, so small that Toinette had to kneel and stoop her head to see it plainly. The figure was that of an odd little man. He wore a garb of green bright and glancing as the scales of a beetle. In his mite of a hand was a cap, out of which stuck a long pointed feather. Two specks of tears stood on his cheeks and he fixed on ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... if there were any flowers to be seen. She was too short to do this without climbing, and it ended in her struggling successfully to the top. There were violets on the other side, and Amabel let down one big foot to a convenient hole, whence she hoped to be able to stoop and catch at the violets without actually treading in Bogy's domain. But once more she slipped and rolled over,—this time into the wood. Bogy lingered, and she got on to her feet; but the wall was deeper on this side than the other, and she saw with ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... wielded by the giant hunter, descended on his head, cracking his skull as if it were an eggshell. The savage sank to the earth without even a moan. Another savage naked and powerful, slipped in. He had to stoop to get through. He raised himself, and seeing Wetzel, he tried to dodge the lightning sweep of the axe. It missed his head, at which it had been aimed, but struck just over the shoulders, and buried itself in flesh and bone. The Indian uttered an agonizing yell which ended in a choking, gurgling ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... the shuffling of many feet on the front stoop preluded the arrival of Sol Klinger, Mrs. Klinger, Moe Klein and Mrs. Klein, who were immediately succeeded by the firm of Kleiman & Elenbogen, H. Rashkin, the ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... her and Mrs. Bell the next evening. It was after tea. The sun had gone down, and the evening was beautiful. Mrs. Bell was sitting in a low rocking-chair, on a little covered platform, near the door, which they called the stoop. There were two seats, one on each side of the stoop, and there was a vine climbing over it. Mrs. Bell was knitting. Mary Bell, who was then about six years old, was playing about the yard, watching the butterflies, and ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott

... Boreland had shot the first ducks, Loll insisted on running up to the beach line to look over and see whether there were any more birds feeding there. Jean, waiting for him, watched him make his way through the short grass to the narrow, sandy lake-shore, and then stoop to look at something. . . . All at once he raised his head, and with a strange, blanched look on his little face, glanced quickly, fearfully behind him into the tall alder thicket toward the hill. Then, wide-eyed, he sprang toward her ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... the cabin through a low doorway that caused Jim to stoop his proud crest as it were. The interior was snug and cozy with brown-hued walls and wooden beams that gave the room the appearance of a ship's cabin. A large lamp swung from the center of the ceiling gave a tempered light through ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... desert. From time to time news of devastators cut to pieces brought a fierce joy to his heart; from time to time he dreamt he saw the eagles of the Republic hovering upon the heights above, ready to stoop and strike and save the allied lands from trials greater than they could bear; but of Marcia, scarce a waking thought. Surely the man he now was had never reclined in peaceful halls where women plied the distaff and talked about love, and of how Rabuleius, the perfume-maker of the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... the greatest glut of low and gross gratification. Oh, if reason, virtue, and true religion, were only as earnest and vigorous in extending their own cause, as ignorance, persecution, and bigotry, how soon would society present a different aspect! But, unfortunately, they cannot stoop to call in the aid of tyranny, and cruelty, and bloodshed, nor of the thousand other atrocious allies of falsehood and dishonesty, of which ignorance, craft, and cruelty, never fail to avail themselves, and without which they ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... go not Shaking y'r Arms [stamping, or shuffling; nor pull up your stockings in the street. Walk] not upon the toes, nor in a Dancing [or skipping manner, nor yet with measured steps. Strike not the heels together, nor stoop when there ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway

... time to shorten our courses and turn her head, when the tempest struck us from the south-west, lashing up the sea at our stern, and making our cranky masts stoop forward and creak like things ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... of the fighting Suffrage Women. Or if she wasn't a tool, she was a machine; her brain was a rapid, docile, mechanical apparatus for turning out bad imitations of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and the two Blathwaites. Her air of casual command, half-swagger, half-slouch, her stoop and the thrusting forward of her face, were copied sedulously from ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... like that she needs something to cheer her up. You'll never hear ME condemning a woman for her dress. I'm only too thankful when her husband isn't too mean and miserly to allow it. Not that I bother much with dress myself. Women just dress to please the men, and I'd never stoop to THAT. I have had a real placid, comfortable life, dearie, and it's just because I never cared a cent what ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the Jewish quarter. This is entered by a low wooden door, at which we had to knock and then stoop to get in. The Jews are no longer forced to have this door, but they retain it voluntarily. Having got in, we were in a street so dark that we could not see a foot before us, but we kept moving, and soon came to a slightly better place, where the sun crept through in fitful gleams. The oldest ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... error of seamen to stoop, with a view of raising the carriage higher. The lift is greatest when the end of the handle is at ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... sisters twin, In feature, form, an' claes; Their visage wither'd, lang an' thin, An' sour as ony slaes: [sloes] The third cam up, hap-stap-an'-lowp, [hop-step-and-jump] As light as ony lambie, An' wi' a curchie low did stoop, [curtsey] As soon as e'er she saw ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... him,—oh so gently,—and with her head still hanging, creeping towards his shoulder, thinking perhaps that the motion should have been his, but still obeying him, and then, leaning against him, seemed as though she would stoop with her lips to his hand. But this he did not endure. Seizing her quickly in his arms he drew her up, till her not unwilling face was close to his, and there he kept her till she was almost frightened by his violence. "And now, Mary, what do ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... front stoop all night.... Forgive me if I sound flippant; but I mean it." Snow was in the air, and I considered it a great sacrifice on my part to sit on a cold stone in the small morning hours. It looks flippant in print, too, but I honestly meant it. "I am sorry. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... any one, it is only in the pains which she herself takes to improve herself. As for me, I wanted to achieve simplicity and I looked for it as one looks for a spot that is difficult to reach and easy to miss. For a long time, I wandered beyond it. Rather than stoop to false customs, to lying conventions, I followed the strangest fancies.... Now ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... Mansoul, wast once famous for innocency, but now thou art degenerated into lies and deceit (Rom 3:3,10-23, 16:17,18). Thou hast heard what my brother the Captain Boanerges hath said; and it is your wisdom, and will be your happiness, to stoop to, and accept of, conditions of peace and mercy when offered; especially when offered by one against whom thou hast rebelled, and one who is of power to tear thee in pieces, for so is Shaddai our King; nor, when he is angry, can ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... certainly are—more insolent than even their fellow-robbers, the crows. A kite will drop five miles to filch a tai out of a fish-seller's bucket, or a fried-cake out of a child's hand, and shoot back to the clouds before the victim of the theft has time to stoop for a stone. Hence the saying, 'to look as surprised as if one's aburage [37] had been snatched from one's hand by a kite.' There is, moreover, no telling what a kite may think proper to steal. For example, my neighbour's ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... more: the moon may draw the sea; The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; But O too fond, when have I answered ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... one of the boys would be overcome by an irresistible temptation to stoop, gather up enough of the soft clinging snow to make a hard ball, which was thrown with more or less success at ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... Butterfly to his wife, who was crying, 'I dare you to do it! I dare you to do it! Stamp! Stamp now! Stamp!' Balkis saw the four vast Djinns stoop down to the four corners of the gardens with the Palace in the middle, and she clapped her hands softly and said, 'At last Suleiman-bin-Daoud will do for the sake of a Butterfly what he ought to have done long ago for his own sake, and the quarrelsome ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... Loulia, has a gentle, seductive, cooing sound—drifts broadside to the current with furled sails, or glides smoothly on before an amiable north wind with sails unfurled. Upon the bloomy banks, rich brown in color, the brown men stoop and straighten themselves, and stoop again, and sing. The sun gleams on their copper skins, which look polished and metallic. Crouched in his net behind the drowsy oxen, the little boy circles the livelong day ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... flash when they dislike what people say: and, more than that, it is all nonsense from beginning to end, about not wanting to be seen. I don't know any more tiresome flower in the borders than your especially "modest" snowdrop; which one always has to stoop down and take all sorts of tiresome trouble with, and nearly break its poor little head off, before you can see it; and then, half of it is not worth seeing. Girls should be like daisies, nice and white, with an ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... presented with a small and peculiar plant, brought from Wales. All the way home she was asking the Lord to release her from this relentless creditor, and all the way home a man, without her knowledge, was following her. Arrived at her own stoop, he suddenly confronted her, bowed, apologized for the liberty, but said he had not had a sight of that dear old plant since he left home; and if she would sell it to him, he would gladly give her ten dollars for it. As that was half ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... his thoughts as he sat looking at the sleeping pair in the railway carriage, and Mr. Slope is not the man to trouble himself with such thoughts for nothing. He is possessed of more than average abilities, and is of good courage. Though he can stoop to fawn, and stoop low indeed, if need be, he has still within him the power to assume the tyrant;—and with the power he has certainly the wish. His acquirements are not of the highest order, but such as they are, they are completely under control, and he knows the use of them. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... any opposition leader to form a new ministry: "no advantage to this country nor personal danger to himself" would, he wrote to North, induce him to do so; he would rather "lose his crown". "No consideration in life," he wrote again, "shall make me stoop to the opposition;" he would not give himself up "to bondage". His determination has been pronounced equally criminal with the acts which brought Charles I. to the scaffold.[137] According to our present ideas he should certainly have been guided by the assurance of his first minister ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... Stamboul, Mecca, Erzeroum, and towns in their own Koordistan, which they recognize joyfully as I call them by name. They are profoundly impressed at the " extent of my knowledge," and some of the more deeply impressed stoop down and reverently kiss Stamboul and Mecca, as I point them out. While thus pleasantly engaged, an aged sheikh comes to the tent and straightway begins "kicking up a blooming row" about me. It seems that the others have been guilty ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... fellow-passengers. I had given up the hope of selecting the person of note when another look from my friend directed my attention to a gentlemen seated in the corner of the omnibus. He was a tall man with strongly marked features, hair dark and coarse. There was a slight stoop of the shoulder—that bend which is almost always a characteristic of studious men. But he wore upon his countenance a forbidding and disdainful frown, that seemed to tell one that he thought himself better than those about him. His dress did ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... that it was sunk perpendicularly, with the greatest accuracy, was, I suppose, in shape an exact cylinder. Its breadth must have been moderate, so that a person, standing upon the brink, might safely stoop enough over it to bring his eye into the axis of the cylinder, where it would be perpendicularly over the centre of the circular surface of the water. The water must have stood at a moderate, height below the mouth of the well, far enough below the mouth to be sheltered from the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... talked the man kept describing imaginary geometrical figures with the end of his walking-stick; he very seldom raised his eyes from the ground, and the stoop in his shoulders grew more and more pronounced, until at a little distance one might have taken him for a hunchback. At one point Jasper made a pause to speak of the pleasant wooded prospect that lay before ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... green water and the dark seaweed washed to and fro on the rocks; at Olginka, the quietest little bay imaginable, where the sea was so clear that one could count the stones below it, the rippling water so crystalline that it tempted one to stoop down and drink—a dainty spot—even the stones, on long curves of the shore, seemed to have been nicely arranged by the sea the night before, and far as I swam out to sea I saw the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... the sunset's sheen, the peak of Kara Dagh. Vice versa, the foam of the rivulet now blushed to red, and, seemingly, assuaged its vehemence—flowed with a deeper, a more pensive, note; while similarly the forest hushed its voice, and appeared to stoop towards the water while emitting ever more powerful, intoxicating odours to mingle with the resinous, cloyingly sweet perfume of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... of repetition! And what a vision of Meshach their utterance conjured up! At sixty-four, stereotyped by age, fixed and confirmed in singularity, Meshach's figure answered better than ever to his name. He was slight of bone and spare in flesh, with a hardly perceptible stoop. He had a red, seamed face. Under the small, pale blue eyes, genial and yet frigid, there showed a thick, raw, red selvedge of skin, and below that the skin was loose and baggy; the wrinkled eyelids, instead of being shaped to the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... sounds that would denote the approach of danger. The beasts of prey are the terror of the weaker species, which cannot even assuage their thirst in the hottest season without halting upon the margin of the stream and scrutinising the country right and left before they dare stoop their heads to drink. Even then the herd will not drink together, but a portion will act as watchers, to give notice of an enemy should it be discerned while their comrades ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... would have encountered giants, or gigantic difficulties, "when a lady was in the case," had but little idea of adding to her happiness, by supplying her with the comforts and elegancies of life. And, had she asked him to stoop, and ease her of a part of that domestic slavery which, almost in every country, falls to the lot of women, he would ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... room, into the hallway, out of the door, and down the stoop to Fortieth Street. He looked about uncertainly, then espied across the way a tailor shop, where the light of the late workman still burned. Monty hurried thither and asked the use of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... from his horse and the wrangler swooped down to haze the animal in with the remuda as Alden joined Harris and the girl. He was a tall, gaunt man with a slight stoop. His keen gray eyes peered forth from a maze of sun-wrinkles surmounted by bushy eyebrows, the drooping gray mustache accentuating rather than detracting from the hawk-like strength of countenance. He dropped a hand on the girl's shoulder and ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... upon my looking grave, it desisted—the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... and then he sat down. His next movement was to take from his pocket a small, thick book of blank paper, to produce a pencil, and to begin to write in a cramp, compact hand. Come near, by all means, reader. Do not be shy. Stoop over his shoulder fearlessly, and read ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... the Van Ariens' house soon after seven o'clock. It was not quite dark, and Jacob Van Ariens stood on the stoop, smoking his pipe and talking to a man who had the appearance of a workman; and who was, in fact, the foreman of his ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... turns back an' leets abaat two dozzen an' sends 'em in to th' middle o'th' raam. "Nah, lads! for God's sake show a bit o' sense," says th' landlord, "dooant begin sich like wark as that i' this raam, nah dooant." He mud as weel ha' just whistled jigs to a mile-stoop; aat coom iverybody's stock, an' i' less nor hauf a minit ther wor sich a hullabaloo i' that shop as aw niver heeared afoor. To mak matters war, somdy had shut th' door an' fesened it, an' th' place wor full o' rick, an iverybody ommost chooak'd. Aw gate under th' seat, ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley

... in a few minutes there floated at her feet, a perfect white sea! an ocean of cream—smooth, delicious, and tempting. It was so conveniently close to the window-sill, too, that by planting her fore-paws on the rim of the bowl, she could stoop down and lap so comfortably! At least she thought so at first; but somehow, when she came to try, the china was so thin and so slippery, that she found she could get very little hold. It was very provoking. But she tried a second ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin

... across the fields, gasping out in reply to the inarticulate remonstrances which burst from her as he stumbled and reeled at every hillock, "Your weight is increasing at the rate of a stone a second, my love. If you stoop you will break my back. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... it is beautiful! It is beautiful! What words to say in dying! And what did the poor thief ask, that Dixmas of whom the church has made a saint for that one appeal: 'Remember me, Lord, in Thy kingdom!' But we have arrived. Stoop, that you may not spoil your hat. Now, what do you want with me? You know the motto of the Montfanons: 'Excelsior et firmior'—Always higher and always firmer.... One can never do too many good deeds. If it be possible, 'present', as we ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... Maintenon, who, by her animated and unflagging talk, had the very profitable secret of keeping him amused. Although equally clever, I venture to flatter myself, in the art of manipulating speech, I could not stoop to such condescensions. You cannot easily divert when you have a heart and are sincere—a man who deserts you, who does not even take the trouble to acknowledge it and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... ye are old again," said Dr. Heidegger, "and, lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it—no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... work, is unable to say. The interior of the edifice is equally elaborate and complete, and several of the apartments are now occupied by the County Clerk, the Supreme Court, and as other offices. The portico and stoop, now being completed, on Chambers street, will, it is said, be the finest piece of work of the kind ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... he said, interrupting her unceremoniously; "it's because I have something special to say to you. If you'll stoop down a moment I'll say it—I don't want any one ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... to station of command, Rises by open means; and there will stand On honourable terms, or else retire, And in himself possess his own desire; Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim; And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state: Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall, Like showers of manna, if ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... jumped to their feet and ran in the direction where an elderly gentleman, with a stoop, gray hair hanging over his shoulders, and a large pair of tortoise-shell spectacles ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... Governor of Virginia should display so open a disregard of the ordinary rules of courtesy and hospitality. To drag in their political differences at such a time, when he had come beneath the other's roof merely to render him an unavoidable service! To stoop to the pettifogging sophistry of the agitator simply because his opponent had ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... little door in a dark corner. It was so low that he had to stoop to get in, but once inside the ceiling ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn

... upon the dignity or the capacity of Clarendon if we are compelled to admit that the schoolboy baiting to which he was exposed found no little encouragement from his own bluntness and his stubborn resolution to stoop to none of the arts of courtiership. There was a limit even to the patience with which Charles could listen to the oft-repeated catalogue of his own moral defects; and perhaps Clarendon's lessons might have been none the less effective had they ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... these haughty Mohammedans, from the bare-legged, barefooted, cringing, crouching creatures you see farther south. It would seem impossible for these men to stoop for any purpose, but the Bengalese, the Hindustani and the rest of the population of the southern provinces, do everything on the ground. They never use chairs or benches, but always squat upon the floor, and all their work is ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... together, but this I know, with thanks to God Almighty, that I am now as well as ever I can wish or desire to be, having now and then little grudgings of wind, that brings me a little pain, but it is over presently, only I do find that my backe grows very weak, that I cannot stoop to write or tell money without sitting but I have pain for a good while after it. Yet a week or two ago I had one day's great pain; but it was upon my getting a bruise on one of my testicles, and then I did void two small stones, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... Professor himself was a noteworthy person. A tall, thin, spectacled man, about forty years old, with a student's stoop in his shoulders, and wearing uncommonly scanty pantaloons, exhibiting an undue proportion of his boots. In early life he had been a cadet in the military academy of West Point; but, becoming very weak-sighted, and thereby in a good manner disqualified for active service ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... as the Indian fired, he lay still as if dead, and supposing the scalping knife would be next applied to his head, determined on seizing the savage by the legs as he would stoop over him, and endeavor to bring him to the ground; when he hoped to be able to gain the mastery over him. Seeing him pass on in pursuit of his father, he arose and took to flight also. On his way he overtook a younger brother, who had become alarmed, and was hobbling slowly away on a ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... cannot find a dupe ready to defend against the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself inexorably severe when he discovers the lightest inclination to falter in one whose conduct has hitherto been above reproach, will stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote his life to the attempt to restore lustre to the unclean thing dulled by the touch of many fingers. In her days of prosperity ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... violent. Gradually he worked Jim back into an angle of the ropes from which there was no escape, and then, when he had him fairly penned, he sprang upon him like a tiger. What happened was so quick that I cannot set its sequence down in words, but I saw Jim make a quick stoop under the swinging arms, and at the same instant I heard a sharp, ringing smack, and there was Jim dancing about in the middle of the ring, and Berks lying upon his side on the floor, with his hand to ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... consult the scroll. "Yet, out of a keen regard for your virtues, Thang, let me point a warning that it is antagonistic to our strict rule to remember these ancient scars too well. Further, in accordance with that same esteem, do not stoop too closely nor too long to identify the mark. By our pure and exacting standard no high attainment in the past can justify defection. The pains and penalties of ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah



Words linked to "Stoop" :   swoop, pitch, squinch, cower, incline, inclination, hold, bend, crouch, flex, huddle, change posture, stooper, act, condescend, bow, carry, inclining, porch, slope, move, basin, stoep, stoop to, bear, pounce, lower oneself



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