"Ungainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been ministering to the ungainly externals of Jack Tier. She now wore a cap, thus concealing the short, gray bristles of hair, and lending to her countenance a little of that softness which is a requisite of female character. Some attention had also been paid to the rest of her attire; and Jack was, altogether, less repulsive ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... a long, loosely-limbed youth of two-and-twenty, with broad shoulders, a heavy overhanging brow, dark gray serious eyes, and a mouth scarcely curved, and so fast shut as to disclose hardly any lip. The hair was dark and lank; the air was of ungainly force, that had not yet found its purpose, and therefore was not at ease; and but for the educated cast of countenance he would have had a peasant look, in the brown, homely undress garb, which to most youths of his age ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when he first came up to Parliament. Almost as much acuteness would have been needed to enable any one to see the future Prime-minister of England and master of the House of Commons in the plain, unpromising form, the homely, almost stolid countenance, the ungainly movements and gestures of Walpole. Walpole was as much of a rustic as Lord Althorp in times nearer to our own acknowledged himself to be. Althorp said he ought to have been a grazier, and that it was an odd chance which made him Prime-minister. But ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... he said, unfolding his ungainly length as he rose to help them in. Long Sam, it was generally agreed, had the longest length for the narrowest width of any man in the county. He grinned at Dolly and taking her hands helped her into the boat, ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... position in a printing office, but was rejected because he was too young. Four years later, he heard that a boy was wanted in an office at East Poultney, and he hastened to apply for the position. He was a lank, ungainly and dull-appearing boy, and the owner of the office did not think he could ever learn to be a printer, but finally put him to work, with the understanding that he was to receive nothing but his board and clothes for the first six months, and after that ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door— Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... assisting at a miscarriage of justice. During the speech for the plaintiff, however, he began to see the matter in another light. Not so much thanks to the speaker, as in spite of him. Plaintiff's counsel was a common little fellow of ungainly appearance: a double toll of fat bulged over the neck of his gown, and his wig, hastily re-donned after a breathing-space, sat askew. Nor was he anything of an orator: he stumbled over his sentences, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... been married? I should not have thought that possible; and your husband desarted you, too. Well, such things do happen." Jack now felt a severe pang. She could not but see that her ungainly—we had almost said her unearthly appearance—prevented the captain from even yet suspecting the truth; and the meaning of his language was not easily to be mistaken. That any one should have married her, seemed to her husband as improbable as it was probable he would run ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... of green velvet, quilted so full as to be dagger- proof—which gave him the appearance of clumsy and ungainly protuberance; while its being buttoned awry, communicated to his figure an air of distortion. Over his green doublet he wore a sad- coloured nightgown, out of the pocket of which peeped his hunting- ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Chapel, and the cracks in Raphael's frescos. He condemns everything as rubbish which has not an external perfection; forgetting that, as in human nature, the most precious treasures are sometimes allied with an ungainly exterior. Yet in this he only echoes the impressions of thousands of others who have gone to the Vatican and returned disconsolate, because amid a perplexing multitude of objects they knew not where to look for consummate art. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... the odd man was strutting in stiff, ungainly attitudes, cricking his neck and elbows, and tossing up his toes. How foolish he seemed to them in their innocent wisdom! They knew he was nothing to them, for he had no heart; he was nothing but a trick on springs. Yet they wished he would ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... brought out two curious, dwarfish figures of men, whose awkward misshapen limbs resembled the contorted branches of wind-blown trees, and whose coarse and repulsive countenances betokened that malignant delight in evil-doing which only demons are supposed to know. These ungainly servitors possessed themselves of the Laureate's chafing steeds, and led them and the chariot away into some unseen courtyard; while the Laureate himself, still saying no word, kept fast hold of his companion's arm, and hurried him along a dark avenue overshadowed with thick boughs that drooped ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... one describe her to the unfortunates who have never beheld her in the flesh? It is for most girls an awkward age, an age of angles, of ungainly bulk, of awkward ways, self-conscious speech, crass ignorance, and sublime conceit. Clemence had passed through this stage with much suffering of spirits on her own part and that of her relations; Lavender, the third daughter, showed at thirteen preliminary symptoms of appalling violence; but ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Grange! Why can't you keep your feet to yourself, you ungainly Triton, and give us ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... were prescribed by the fairy godmothers of our childhood to stay the stature of those gawky youngsters who were shooting up into an ungainly development like "ill weeds ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... a Lecture or a View of the Map taught me. By this means I improved in my Study, but became unpleasant in Conversation. By conversing generally with the Dead, I grew almost unfit for the Society of the Living; so by a long Confinement I contracted an ungainly Aversion to Conversation, and ever discoursed with Pain to my self, and little Entertainment to others. At last I was in some measure made sensible of my failing, and the Mortification of never being spoke to, or speaking, unless the Discourse ran upon Books, put me upon forcing my self ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... white light, blue skies, and shadows of great clouds slow-sailing over the young green corn and over the daisied meadows in which the cows lay half-asleep. And when he looked beyond that low green hill, where there were one or two hares hopping about on their ungainly high haunches, and past that great stretch of receding country in which strips of red-and-white villages peeped here and there from the woods, behold! a horizon as of the sea, faint and blue and far, rising and ever rising in various hues and tones, until it was lost in a quivering ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... had a docile bear, A bear of manners pleasant, And all the love she had to spare She lavished on the peasant: She proved her deep affection plainly (The method was a bit ungainly). ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... he felt slightly dizzy, Dundee's thoughts raced around the new discovery. This changed everything, of course. Any one of half a dozen persons could have arrived with the gun and silencer—not screwed together, of course, because of the ungainly length—and seized the opportunity presented by Nita's being alone in her bedroom to shoot her. What easier, then, than to hide the weapon on this secret shelf, the "door" of which yielded to the ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... much-knotted piece of string, and he seemed to possess the power of moving any joint in his body independently of the rest. He cracked his fingers persistently when he talked after a fashion that would have been intolerable in anyone but Capper. His hands were always in some ungainly attitude, and yet they were wonderful hands, strong and sensitive, the colour of ivory. His eyes were small and green, sharp as the eyes of a lizard. They seemed to take ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... he started forward Nanette tripped over the glass railing around the square. Carruthers moved quickly. Yet his movements were slow and ungainly as compared to the speed of the light ray. He saw the figure of Nanette decrease in size before his eyes, heard the muffled expression of alarm and fear in Danzig's voice; then the room suddenly began to extend itself upward with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... then in his eighth year, has been described as a tall, ungainly, fast-growing, long-legged lad, clad in the garb of the frontier. This consisted of a shirt of linsey-woolsey, a coarse homespun material made of linen and wool, a pair of home-made moccasins, deerskin leggings or breeches, and a hunting shirt of the same material. This costume was completed ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... had died when she was a very little girl. He was a man of remarkable character. He had great strength of will and immense determination; and Maggie, his only child, took after him. She resembled him in appearance also, for he was very plain of face and rather ungainly of figure. Maggie's mother, on the other hand, was a delicate, pretty, blue-eyed woman, who could as little manage her headstrong young daughter as a lamb could manage a young lion. Mrs. Howland was intensely amiable. Maggie was very good to her mother, as she expressed it; and ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... this collection of domestic portraits, and subsequently, from time to time, had taken up the album to look at one photograph which interested him. Among an assemblage of types excelling in ugliness of feature and hideousness of costume—types of toil-worn age, of ungainly middle life, and of youth lacking every grace, such as are exhibited in the albums of the poor—there was discoverable one female portrait in which, the longer he gazed at it, Hilliard found an ever-increasing suggestiveness of those qualities he desired in woman. ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... entered with Cesare Orsi. The window was deserted, and the women trailed gracefully toward the bubbling minor note of the alcohol lamp. Both Sanviano and Orsi were big men—the former, like Bembo, wore English clothes; but Orsi's ungainly body had been tightly garbed by a Southern military tailor, making him—Lavinia thought—appear absolutely ridiculous. His collar was both too tight and too high, although perspiration promised relief ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... visitors to Washington early in 1834 was Charles Sumner, then a tall, slim, ungainly young man, twenty-three years of age, who was a student at law in Boston, but not admitted to practice. He was introduced by his friend, Mr. Justice Story, to Chief Justice Marshall and Justices Thompson, Duval, and McLean, and was invited to dine with them. It is not known whether Justice Story ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Borinage coal field exceeds twenty million tons a year. Its ungainly features of shafts, chimneys, and mounds of debris are relieved in places by woodlands, an appearance of a hilly country is presented where the pit mounds have been planted with fir trees. Apart from its mining aspect, Mons is a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... running the risk of a scolding from her aunt. She had none of saucy Cherry's scorn of the big boorish fellow with the red face and hairy hands. She looked below the surface, and knew that a kindly heart beat beneath the ungainly habit; and being but plain herself, Keziah would have taken shame to herself for thinking scorn of another for a ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Jacqueline, but we had always called her Jack, for brevity, and because, with her cropped head and rough ways, she resembled a boy more than a girl; her hair was growing now, and hung about her neck in short ungainly lengths, but I doubt whether in its present stage it was any improvement. I am not at all sure strangers considered Jack a prepossessing child, she was so awkward and overgrown, but I liked her droll face immensely. Fred was always finding ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... important to explore all the sources of danger. Special ills should have special assailants, at whatever risk of exaggeration. As water-cures and vegetarian boarding-houses are the necessary defence of humanity against dirt and over-eating, so is the most ungainly Bloomer that ever drifted on bare poles across the continent a providential protest against the fashion-plates. It is probable, that, on the whole, there is a gradual amelioration in female costume. These hooded water-proof cloaks, equalizing all womankind,—these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... unconcerned nakedness. Here and there were men of brawn, whose skins shone clear and ruddy. They took splendid poses, standing massively like chiefs. When they had dressed in their ungainly garments there was an extraordinary change. They then showed bumps and deficiencies of ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... moose flounders in its rush. It is the ungainly roll of a rudderless ship. It stumbles. A second, and its mad rush ends. With a curious gasping sigh it plunges ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... a big, ungainly, beak-nosed boy, whose sleeves were much too short, and trousers-legs likewise, to hide Nature's abundant gift to him in the matter of bone and knuckle. He was freckled and wore a grin that was ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... the river, rows of brilliant red flamingos were standing in the shallow water, fishing, and here and there a pelican with his ungainly beak. Our Chinese crew were having their meal of rice when we walked forward, and the national chopsticks were hard at work. We talked to several of them. They could all speak a little ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... adorable neck and throat, of a milky whiteness, had the exquisite softness and smoothness of white satin. For a long time, at the ungraceful age between twelve and eighteen, she had looked awkwardly tall, climbing trees like a boy. Then, from the ungainly hoyden had been evolved this charming, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... thrilling tracts on Apostolic Succession. It was after dinner, and the Bishop had settled himself for a pleasant season of contemplation, when the bell must needs ring, and there must burst in upon the Bishop a letter and a thin, ungainly Negro. Bishop Onderdonk read the letter hastily and frowned. Fortunately, his mind was already clear on this point; and he cleared his brow and looked at Crummell. Then he said, slowly and impressively: "I will ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... interests, to try and shake the poor German Hodge out of his thousand years' sleep in his hole? What good did I get by it? Hodge opened his eyes, only to shut them again immediately; he yawned, only to begin snoring again the next minute louder than ever; he stretched his stiff ungainly limbs, only to sink down again directly afterwards, and lie like a dead man in the old bed of his accustomed habits. I must have rest; but where am I to find a resting-place? In Germany ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... provided by Tony, was towed to the shore, where an abundance of rocks were to be had. It was their intention to load it with "lighthouse material," and tow it to the island. It required all their skill to accomplish this object, for the raft was a most ungainly thing to manage. The Zephyr was so long that they could not row round so as to bring the raft alongside the bank, and when they attempted to push it in, the paint, and even the planks of the boat, ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... them in sight of the melancholy songster. Seated in a corner of the cave, with his massive head on his fore-paws, the picture of dejection, was the most enormous creature they had ever seen or dreamed about. He was rather like an elephant, but much more immense and without a trunk: a huge, ungainly, slate-coloured animal. ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... change horses one had time to wonder how the people living there managed to be such a stolid, dirty, thriftless-looking set. Mountaineers should be intelligent, active, and hardy; but these men were a most ungainly crew, and Lavinia's theories ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the traveller stepped at length into the little square, before a most ungainly Cathedral. "Chiefly built in the XII century," it may have been, but so bedizened by the Renaissance that its heavy old Provencal walls and massive pillars seem to exist merely as supports for additions ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here in a corner of my library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,—it is such a rough, ungainly thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that show a master's hand. Sometimes,—to-night, for instance,—the curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... down the stairs with boyish impetuosity, looking so fine that Uncle Ith hardly knew him. It was difficult to realize that the ungainly, ignorant boy of a few years back, had become this nice-looking, graceful young gentleman. Thus readily does the rough diamond of a good heart and brain, under the guiding hands of Ambition and Love, take its polish from contact with the world ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... done? One could forgive their being dirty and stupid and noisy and rude; one could forgive their ugliness, the ineffable banality of their faces, their goggle-eyes, their protruding teeth, their ungainly motions; but the trait one can't forgive is their venality. They're so mercenary. They're always thinking how much they can get out of you—everlastingly touching their hats and expecting you to put your hand in your pocket. Oh, no, believe me, there's no health in the People. Ground ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... the crouching form. He seemed to awake, his mind returning as it were from a far distance. He turned his head, and Stella saw that he was not blind. For his eyes took her in, for the moment appraised her. Then with ungainly, tortoiselike movements, he arose. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... in these reflections, and continued eating with an abstracted air, Reine Vincart was rapidly examining the reserved, almost ungainly, young man, who did not dare address any conversation to her, and who was equally stiff and constrained with those sitting near him. She made a mental comparison of him with Claudet, the bold huntsman, alert, resolute, full of dash and spirit, and a feeling of charitable compassion ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale, that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault that thou art thus ungainly: but wherefore so blind? wherefore so conceited of thyself! I tell thee, Poinsinet, that over every fresh instance of thy vanity the hostile enchanters rejoice and triumph. As long as thou art blindly satisfied with thyself; as long as thou ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the old geographies. The reindeer were there, but they were not the ideal reindeer of early fancy, and I felt a vague sense of personal injury and unjustifiable deception at the substitution of these awkward, ungainly beasts for the spirited and fleet-footed animals of my boyish imagination. Their trot was awkward and heavy, they carried their heads low, and their panting breaths and gaping mouths were constantly ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... likened to A desert ship. (This is not new.) He is a most ungainly craft, With frowning turrets fore and aft We little realize on earth, How much we owe to his great girth, For should he ever shrink so small As through the needle's eye to crawl, Rich men might climb the golden stairs And so ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... that lay dreaming in this way was the soul of a heavy-limbed, ungracious woman. She lay now on the floor in ungainly attitude, and all the things that were about her in the darkness were of that commonest type with which ignorance with limited resource has essayed to imitate some false ideal of finery, and produced such ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... here, it seems! How strange! Look at the woman here with the new soul, Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Fox, 'gave us a note to George Borrow, so on him we called—a tall, ungainly man, with great physical strength, quick, penetrating eye, a confident manner, and a disagreeable tone and pronunciation.' We gather from the same lady that it was Joseph John Gurney who recommended George Borrow to the Committee of the Bible Society. 'So he stalked up to London, and ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... drawing-room. With what straining eyes and breathless anxiety he scrutinized them! Now he saw a lady of noble carriage walking to and fro,—that might be Lady Langdon; by and by he caught sight of a gaunt, ungainly figure, and recognized Lady Vivian. Who would have believed that a glimpse of that angular, unsymmetrical form could ever have called such radiance to the eyes of a young and handsome man?—could have kindled such a glow upon his cheeks?—could ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... where everybody knows everybody, he was made a common sport and jest for the keener, crueler wits of the neighborhood. Now that he was grown to the ripeness of manhood he was still looked upon as being—to use a quaint expression—"slack," or "not jest right." He was heavy, awkward, ungainly and loose-jointed, and enormously, prodigiously strong. He had a lumpish, thick-featured face, with lips heavy and loosely hanging, that gave him an air of stupidity, half droll, half pathetic. His little ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... of George II. and Queen Caroline, Anne, the eldest, was married at St. James's to the Prince of Orange, November, 1733, urged to the alliance by her desire for power, and answering to her parents, when they reminded her of the hideous and ungainly appearance of the bridegroom, "I would marry him, even if he were a baboon!" The marriage, however, was a happy one, and a pleasant contrast to that of her younger sister Mary, the king's fourth daughter, who was married here to the brutal ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... amphitheatre. Above and below, the stream could be crossed on stepping-stones. And around and around, up and down and across the stones, raced Claverhouse and Bellona. I could never have believed that such an ungainly man could run so fast. But run he did, Bellona hot-footed after him, and gaining. And then, just as she caught up, he in full stride, and she leaping with nose at his knee, there was a sudden flash, a burst of smoke, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... rotter of a boat Past service to the labouring, tumbling flote, Lay stranded in mid-stream; With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line, That made me think of legs and a broken spine; Soon, all too soon, Ungainly and forlorn to lie Full in the eye Of the cynical, discomfortable moon That, as I looked, stared from the fading sky, A clown's face flour'd for work. And by and by The wide-winged sunset wanned and waned; The lean night-wind crept westward, chilling and sighing; The poor old hulk ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... girl liked her mankind to do honor to Kenmuir on these occasions. So she brushed up Andrew, tied his scarf, saw his boots and hands were clean, and titivated him generally till she had converted the ungainly hobbledehoy into a thoroughly ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... pension of two thousand francs. Later, when appointed with Racine to write a history of the reign,—that unfortunate history which was accidentally burned,—we find him an unwilling follower on royal expeditions, his ungainly horsemanship the mock of high-bred courtiers. In fact, he was bourgeois through and through, and not at ease with the aristocrats. He was thrifty bourgeois too; so often called miserly as well as malicious that it is pleasant to remember certain illustrations of his nobler side. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the day!" cried Molly, "and here's my gift." She had in her arms a large and rather ungainly bundle, loosely wrapped ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... stalwart and water-tight timbers it presented a scene of varied beauty. Grasshoppers disported gayly upon its rugged surface, occasionally leaping inadvertently into the surrounding surf and kicking their ungainly ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... rude lips I speak, ungainly is the manner of my speech as one leaping among furrows, as one advancing unevenly; for all this I fear to raise thine anger, and to provoke instead of appeasing thee; nevertheless, thou wilt do unto me as may please thee. O Lord, thou hast held it good to forsake us in these ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... in my house," answered the other, busying himself again at his furnace: "nobody will recognize gold under this ungainly form. Besides there are means after all for keeping off thieves and house-breakers, which none of you have ever yet dreamt of. If however you still doubt me, bring me a dollar next time, make a secret mark on it, and I will give it you back turned into gold. But the matter must ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... wishing to say something pleasant to Miss Lydia, but could only manage to tell her that she had changed wonderfully and that she had a great advantage over me in that I was the same ungainly boy she had known ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... laws of nature by forcing two objects into the space that one will fill—which is the cardinal principle of the college girl's June packing—and Betty strolled slowly along under the elm-trees, in no haste to finish her errand. On Main Street, Emily Davis, carrying an ungainly bundle, overtook her. ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... an American who looked to be a well-informed fellow identified it as New York. I was much annoyed now at the behaviour of Cousin Egbert, who burst into silly cheers at the slightest excuse, a passing steamer, a green hill, or a rusty statue of quite ungainly height which seemed to be made of crude iron. Do as I would, I could not restrain him from these unseemly shouts. I could not help contrasting his boisterousness with the fine reserve which, for example, the Honourable George would have maintained ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... this, the actuality of it struck Bud all of a heap. He paced up and down the cage for the full space of an hour, hanging his ungainly head between his shoulders ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... ship with every stitch of plain sail, from the royals down. Forbes was not satisfied even with that, and would have gone on to studding-sails; but I considered enough to be as good as a feast. Studding-sails are rather ungainly things to handle in a quickly freshening breeze, if one happens to be at all short-handed. I therefore determined to have nothing to do with them—the more resolutely that, as we drew away from the island, the breeze strengthened until we ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... however, no sign of life; and not a sound broke the awful silence of the desert, as we breasted the rise. Then a vulture flapped lazily up in front of us, and another and another and a tiger- wolf (hyena) lurched its gorged and ungainly ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... to sweep the border of the river jungle with his glasses. A herd of fat ungainly hippopotami, on the bar out beyond the mangroves of the river mouth, fixed his gaze. But a moment afterwards one of the sailors in the bows pointed upwards and yelled excitedly: "Hi! hi!—there aloft! ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... him, and tortured him in the thousand ingenious ways known to their species. He had no schooling to speak of; but, for all that, was haunted, like Joseph, by dreams foreshadowing his future greatness. Guided by this premonition he started, at the age of fourteen, for Copenhagen, a tall, ugly, and ungainly lad, but resolved, somehow or other, to conquer fame and honor. He tried himself as a dancer, singer, actor, and failed lamentably in all his debuts. He could not himself estimate the extent of his ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... am far from considering them so formidable as they are usually supposed to be. They are evidently not wantonly destructive; they act only under the influence of hunger, and even then their motions on land are awkward and ungainly, their action timid, and their whole demeanour devoid of the sagacity and courage which characterise other animals ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... ungainly figure troubled him in no slight degree as they moved off together, they seemed to express in some indescribable fashion so much of dull and patient pain, and they were so much at variance with the free grandeur of the scene surrounding them. It ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a while and uses words not familiar to his boy readers, he hopes they will forgive him and put all such slips down as the result of leaving boys' company once in a while and associating with men. The reader knows that men dearly love big, ungainly words and that just as soon as boys do something worth while the men get busy hunting up some top-heavy ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... applause at the finish, which excited the envy of the Camel and made him desire to win the favour of the assembly by the same means. So he got up from his place and began dancing, but he cut such a ridiculous figure as he plunged about, and made such a grotesque exhibition of his ungainly person, that the beasts all fell upon him with ridicule and ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... feed in his vessels at home, had been induced by a large representations to take charge of the craft and run her in the Pedee trade, bringing rice to Charleston. On being told the craft was all ready for sea, he repaired on board, and, to his chagrin, found two black men for a crew, and a most ungainly old wench, seven shades blacker than Egyptian darkness, for a cook. This was imposition enough to arouse his feelings, for but one of the men knew any thing about a vessel; but on examining the stores, the reader may ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... able to tell his rock from any other. The heavy body, its ungainly movement and thin bones would explain everything. Besides, there was no motive for killing the Martian and what penalty could there be? ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... were all seated, and the Confession was being repeated, when a tall, slender man, with peculiarly broad shoulders and a peculiarly small waist, came with an ungainly gait up the aisle, holding in his hand a limp felt hat as if it were glued fast ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... herring; cod; ling; turbot; flounders; eels of various kinds; whiting; and the lump fish. The remaining four cases of this room are devoted to a series of fishes including, in cases 23, 24, the globe fish with a parrot's beak; and the ungainly sea horses. The two last cases (25, 26) include the file fish; the coffin fishes with their hard case of octagonal plates; and the European and American sturgeons. Having examined the varieties of osseous fishes, the visitor ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... in undress. Nothing is more distressing to a sensitive person, or more ridiculous to one gifted with an esprit moquer [a disposition to "make fun"], than to see a lady laboring under the consciousness of a fine gown; or a gentleman who is stiff, awkward, and ungainly in a ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... hosts at least, who had not learned that bananas are sustenance for men as well as "food for gods," were famished. As we ate "clem pie" or "dined with Duke Humphrey," two water buffaloes, dark gray ungainly forms, with little more hair than elephants, recurved horns, and muzzles like deer, watched us closely, until a Tartar drove them off. Such beasts, which stand in the water and plaster themselves with mud like elephants, are ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... on which the pistils sit well formed and capable of being developed into a perfect berry, or do they look ungainly in shape? Are the petals pure white or slightly crimson? Are there many runners, or few, or none? Do the new runners bear blossoms and fruit? If so, when do they commence to bud and bloom? When do the berries begin to ripen? Notice the size and shape of the fruit, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... repulsive, uncouth, clumsy, ghastly, hideous, shocking, ungainly, deformed, grim, horrid, ugly, unlovely, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... sincera. Unfilial nefila. Unfold (open) malfaldi, malvolvi. Unfold (disclose) malkovri, malkasxi. Unfold (relate, tell) rakontadi. Unforeseen neantauxvidita. Unfortunate malfelicxa. Unfrequently malofte. Unfruitful senfrukta. Unfurl malfaldi, malvolvi. Unfurnish senmebligi. Ungainly mallerta. Ungodly malpia. Ungrateful nedanka, nedankema. Unguent sxmirajxo. Unhandy mallerta. Unhappy malfelicxa. Unhappiness malfelicxeco. Unhealthy malsana. Unheeded nezorgita. Unhook malkrocxi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... espied a man in the distance at work with a huge buffalo, and exclaiming, "Hi-yah! belly good walkee now," rushed off in that direction. He soon returned with the buffalo and his owner, and indicated that we could cross on the back of the former. The huge, ungainly beast threw up his head and snorted when he caught sight of the "fanquis," or foreign devils, but a pull at the ring through his nose soon ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... can be hoped from a girl, not a coquette, who is besieged on the one side by an awkward and ungainly admirer, when directly opposite to her is the handsome hero for whose love her secret heart, unknown to herself, is crying, and who has withdrawn himself for the time from smiles and benevolence? Leam somehow felt as if every compliment paid to her by Alick was an offence to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... his stature. His boxing, rowing, and other athletic exercises had done wonders towards bringing his naturally vigorous, upright frame to the perfection of healthy muscular condition. Tall and strong as he was, there was nothing stiff or ungainly in his movements, He trod easily and lightly, with a certain youthful suppleness and hardy grace in all his actions, which set off his fine bodily formation to the best advantage. He had keen, quick, mischievous grey eyes—a thoroughly English red and white complexion—admirably bright and regular ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... brings the wagonette to a stand. The artillery is practising in the Quadrilateral, it appears; passage along the Route Ronde formally interdicted for the moment. There is nothing for it but to draw up at the glaring cross-roads and get down to make fun with the notorious Cocardon, the most ungainly and ill-bred dog of all the ungainly and ill-bred dogs of Barbizon, or clamber about the sandy banks. And meanwhile the doctor, with sun umbrella, wide Panama, and patriarchal beard, is busy wheedling and (for aught the rest of us know) bribing the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it does grow, it is only at the extreme point of the chin. The Borneo Malay women are as plain as the men, although at Sincapore, Mauritius, and the Sooloos, they are well favoured; and they wind their serang, or robe, so tight round their bodies, that they walk in a very constrained and ungainly fashion. Many of these tribes are intermixed with the natives of the Celebes, such as ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... It was a novelty in the way of excursions—its like had not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a gigantic scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam ferry—boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves out with a long summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression that it was fun, were to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... about by the sides of their mothers are so curious and so top heavy, and yet they are strong even when small. Carabao sometimes go crazy, and when they do, they tread down everything in their way. Notwithstanding their ungainly bulk they can run as well as a good horse, and can endure long journeys quite as well. They are urged to greater speed by the driver taking the tail and giving it a twist or kicking ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... herself delighted in these preparations. She was never happier than when curled up on the sofa, a box of chocolates by her side, her work-basket frothing over, like a great dish of oeufs a la neige, with lawn or mull or what-not, and (I verily believe to complete her content) my ungainly figure and hatchet-face within her purview. She would eat and sew industriously. Sometimes she would press too hard on a sweetmeat and with a little cry would hold up a sticky ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... every one of which was fitted either to excite fancy, or suggest thought, or to satisfy the eye by its nice adaptation. And if pride had had the ordering of them, all these might have been but a costly museum, a literary alphabet that its possessor could not put together, an ungainly confession of ignorance on the part of the intellect that could do nothing with this rich heap of material. But pride was not the genius of the place. A most refined taste and curious fastidiousness had arranged and harmonized all the heterogeneous ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... years' wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my little pretensions to wisdom—I have met with few who understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn, ungainly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; consequently, I was born a very poor man's son. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was gardener to a worthy gentleman of small estate in the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... discussed a thousand times, and at last so far brought to bear that Marie was made acquainted with it—having been called in to sit in presence with La Mere Bauche and her future proposed husband. The poor girl manifested no disgust to the stiff ungainly lover whom they assigned to her,—who through his whole frame was in appearance almost as wooden as his own leg. On the whole, indeed, Marie liked the capitaine, and felt that he was her friend; and in her country such marriages were not uncommon. The capitaine ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... dear," she said, taking his rough, ungainly hand in both of hers, "but I think there is bound to be money in it. Mr. Larkin himself says that in the end the cattle will have to give way before ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... were immediately liked and speedily loved by Brinnaria. Meffia, a month older than herself and looking six years younger, was a small, awkward, ungainly girl, with pale blue eyes, pale yellow hair and babyish pink complexion. She had never had an ill hour in her life, yet she always appeared ailing, shrank from any effort, hated exercise and exertion and at every necessity for movement asserted that she was tired, often that ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... writer. Like Dr. Johnson, he was a great converser rather than the author of great books. If we turn to his writings, we are at some loss to understand the secret of his reputation. They are too often declamatory, ill-compacted, broken by frequent apostrophes, ungainly, dislocated, and rambling. He has been described by a consummate judge as the most German of all the French. And his style is deeply marked by that want of feeling for the exquisite, that dulness of edge, that bluntness of stroke, which is the common note of all German literature, save a little of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... said, and in silence led the way to a pleached alley out of sight of the windows. There they stood still. It was a strange meeting of two who had not seen each other for fourteen years, when the one was a tall, ungainly youth, the other well-nigh a child. And now Giles was a fine, soldierly man in the prime of life, with a short, curled beard, and powerful, alert bearing, and Aldonza, though the first flower of her youth had gone by, yet, having lived ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... he was scarce human in his appearance. The neck was drawn out like a plucked chicken's, making the rest of him seem the more obese and unnatural by the contrast. He was clad only in his long night-dress, and his swollen ankles and ungainly feet protruded starkly from beneath it. Beside him stood a smart-looking police-inspector, who was ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... attire, ungainly as were his movements, there was in his withdrawal a touch of dignity, even a hint of the sublime; and Molly ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... very little—he remembered, though she had not attended many dances. He recalled suddenly that a Christmas tree or a Fourth of July picnic had usually been the occasions when Mary Hope, with her skirts just hitting her shoe tops in front and sagging in an ungainly fashion behind, had teetered solemnly through a "square" dance with him. Mother Douglas herself had always sat very straight and prim on a bench, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes blinking disapprovingly at the ungodly ones who let out an exultant little ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... ferocious lunges of her big fist back to the centre field, where a dainty little freshman with soft, appealing brown eyes, half hidden under a mist of yellow hair, occasionally managed to foil T. Reed's pursuit and sent them pounding back into the outstretched arms of a tall, ungainly home who tossed or dropped them—it was hard to tell which—into the freshman basket. It was a shame to let her play, the sophomores grumbled. She was a giantess, not a girl. But as the score piled up in their favor, they ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... creatures they are! How beautiful their large limpid eyes! I could have declared on oath that both shots had been a success, but they sheered off with the stately movements of a clipper about to tack. When they ran they had an ungainly, dislocated motion, somewhat like the contortions of an Indian nautch or a Theban danseuse—a dreamy, undulating movement, which even the tail, with its long fringe of black ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... thought of himself as one who had come into a kind of paradise. For a time the two older people talked of sending him to the town school, but the woman objected. She had begun to feel so close to Hugh that he seemed a part of her own flesh and blood and the thought of him, so huge and ungainly, sitting in a school room with the children of the town, annoyed and irritated her. In imagination she saw him being laughed at by other boys and could not bear the thought. She did not like the people of the town and did not want Hugh ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... as Mark had pictured him. Instead of the lithe enthusiast with flaming eyes he saw a heavily built man with blunted features, wearing powerful horn spectacles, his expression morose, his movements ungainly. He had, however, a mellow and strangely sympathetic voice, in which Mark fancied that he perceived the power he was reputed to wield over the soldiers for whose well-being he fought so hard. Mark would have liked to ask him about life in the Aldershot priory; perhaps if Brother Anselm ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... of all the petrels, and measure about seven feet from tip to tip when on the wing. The colour ranges through various shades from almost pure white to a dark greyish-brown; some even appearing almost black. Very large and ungainly when on the ground, they become most graceful when in the air, and soar about without the slightest effort even on the stormiest days. I have seen them flying into a forty-mile wind with absolute ease, never moving a wing, but occasionally ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... one of the first to offer his services, and although still very young, every man in the neighborhood urged that he be made the captain of the military company in which they were to serve. It was a sign of the esteem in which the ungainly young man was held that those older than himself should unanimously propose him for ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... heard her cry, before I came in sight of her. She was sitting at the root of a crooked, dead tree. In front of her she held, one hand grasping each leg, what seemed to me to be an ungainly and wingless goose. All about her the ground was soft and boggy. Her clothes were muddy, her face was red, and the creature ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... offensive to any man and apparently acceptable enough to some ladies. He was a big, burly man, near to fifty, as I suppose, somewhat awkward in his gait, and somewhat loud in his laugh. But though nigh to fifty, and thus ungainly, he liked to be smiled on by pretty women, and liked, as some said, to be flattered by them also. If so he should have been happy, for the ladies at Rome at that time ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... the morning Dora sowed her seed, the "good seed" for an immortal harvest; and soon the tender blade began to appear—a most ungainly thing in the eyes of her mother; for the first fruit of Dora's good seed, as shown by little Emma, was a great love of truth—a love which as yet she knew not how to regulate or apply. She was a beautiful child; and for a time her ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... ye make ten stitches in going round that hole; ye could just as easy have done it in four," and Si sniffed as he pointed to great, ungainly stitches an inch long. "I call ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... terrible how little everybody writes, and how much of that little disappears in the capacious maw of the Post Office. Many letters, both from and to me, I now know to have been lost in transit: my eye is on the Sydney Post Office, a large ungainly structure with a tower, as being not a hundred miles from the scene of disappearance; but then I have no proof. The Tragic Muse you announced to me as coming; I had already ordered it from a Sydney bookseller: about two months ago he advised me that his copy was in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the earth. What he had expected, it would be hard to say; but it is certain that his disappointment deepened when, after three strokes from the engineer's bell, the hoisting engine suddenly started into life, and, out from the darkness of the shaft, there slowly emerged into view an ungainly contrivance of four great timbers, arranged in a hollow square and hung on a cable, which passed freely through openings in the upper and lower timbers, to carry a huge bucket fastened to its end, while a black-faced miner stood in the bucket, much in the attitude of a jack-in-the-box ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... silence was in no way conspicuous, for the whole air throbbed with the rising and falling shriek of the saws, the trampling of the falls, and the obscurely rhythmic rush of the torrent around the island base. They were presently joined by Susan, shambling on her ungainly legs, wagging her big ears, and stretching out her long, ugly, flexible, overhanging nose to sniff inquiringly at the Boy's jacket. A comparatively new member of MacPhairrson's family, she was still full of curiosity about every one and everything, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... then went back to our hut. Finding that the king, in spite of the lateness of the hour, was ready to receive us, taking our two black friends, Aboh to act as interpreter, we carried with us the leopard skin, some venison, and three strings of beads of various colours. His majesty was a tall, ungainly looking man, with as hideous a countenance as can well be imagined. His appearance was not improved by the glare of the torchlight and the terror under which he was suffering. Having presented the leopard skin and venison, Charley, who acted as spokesman, threw the string ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... at every step, Inspector Weymouth ascended, ungainly, that frail and moving stair. Arrived beside me, he wiped the perspiration from his face ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... that his personal appearance, as much as anything, was displeasing to her fastidiousness. He was so big, so awkward; his hands and feet were so clumsy. A little more and he would have been ungainly; perhaps she considered him ungainly as it was. He had tried to negative his defects by spending a great deal of money on his clothes and being as particular as a girl about his nails; but he felt that with all his efforts he was but a bumpkin compared with certain other men—Rodney Temple, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... ungainly creature, who lived with Lucie Manette, and dearly loved her. Miss Pross, although eccentric, was most faithful ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... leading from his bedchamber, and was apparently suffering great pain. An extraordinary change had taken place in him since I had formerly known him. His person was emaciated almost to a skeleton, showing his angular and ungainly form at a distressing disadvantage. His face had withered away to a narrow point under the large bones of his head, which looked larger than ever, with his great shock hair starting out from it on all sides. The skin of his face had become crimped and yellow; but the most remarkable change ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... become a "study," yet of a sort to provoke a smile, as her gaze roved from his handiwork, over the length of his ungainly person, to rest upon his bare and not too cleanly feet; then travelled slowly upward again, trying to settle once for all his rightful position in the social scale. Her thought ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... put it out of their power, for that night at least, to torture our fastidious ears. Being of a melancholy temperament, we are unfortunately, at times, subject to most ludicrous fancies; and as these ungainly instruments loom on our disgusted eye, we cannot, for the life of us, help imagining them moulds for a couple of enormous gooseberry puddings; and we verily pant at the idea of the sea of melted butter, or yellow cream, requisite to mollify their acidity—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... but after Silence spake A Vessel of a more ungainly Make: "They sneer at me for leaning all awry; What! did the Hand then of ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... conversation; Henry feeling a repugnance to his guest, that he was vainly endeavoring to conquer, and the stranger himself drawing forth occasional sighs and groans, that threatened a dissolution of the unequal connection between his sublimated soul and its ungainly tenement. During this, deathlike preparation, Mr. Wharton, with a feeling nearly allied to that of his son, led Sarah from the apartment. His retreat was noticed by the divine, in a kind of scornful disdain, who began to hum the air of a popular psalm tune, giving it ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... remember her speaking of my smile, telling me it was my one adornment, and taking it from me, so to speak, for a moment to let me see how she looked in it; she delighted to make sport of me when she was in a wayward mood, and to show me all my ungainly tricks of voice and gesture, exaggerated and glorified in her entrancing self, like a star calling to the earth: "See, I will show you how you hobble round," and always there was a challenge to me in her eyes to stop her if I dared, and upon them, when she was ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... one after the other, with his teeth, and carry them along the deck. Nobody gave him the opportunity, but I dare say he could have done it; for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man, even in the Cappuccino dress, which is the ugliest and most ungainly that ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... concierge, who, in all German houses, attends at the common door, and who, in this case, lived in a couple of musty little closets opening into the lower hall, and eked out his official salary by cobbling shoes. He was an odd, grotesque humorist, of most ungainly exterior, black haired and bearded, with a squint, a squab nose, and a short but very powerful figure. Dirty he was beyond belief, and he was abominably fragrant of vile tobacco. For my part, I could not endure this fellow; but Paton, who had much ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne |
