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Boor   /bʊr/   Listen
Boor

noun
1.
A crude uncouth ill-bred person lacking culture or refinement.  Synonyms: barbarian, churl, Goth, peasant, tike, tyke.






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"Boor" Quotes from Famous Books



... heart, they blind the sense, they concentrate the thousand links between man and man, into the two basest of earthly ties—servility, and pride. Methinks the devils laugh out when they hear us tell the boor that his soul is as glorious and eternal as our own; and yet when in the grinding drudgery of his life, not a spark of that soul can be called forth; when it sleeps, walled around in its lumpish clay, from the cradle to the grave, without a dream ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... big jaw dropping. Stupid boor that he was, he could not have explained the terrifying effect which this wild music and those tense, uplifting faces had upon him, but he would have given anything to be back in his mother's kitchen, with the lamp lit and the dark, unfamiliar night ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... manners of an old spinster. Thus the excitement in the house was an 'old' excitement, and, like Constance's desire to look smart, it had its ridiculous side, which was also its tragic side, the side that would have made a boor guffaw, and a hysterical fool cry, and a wise man meditate sadly upon the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... the Spartans led to fight, And made them conquer in the muse's right; So would our poet lead you on this day, Showing your tortured fathers in his play. To one well-born the affront is worse, and more, When he's abused, and baffled by a boor: With an ill grace the Dutch their mischiefs do, They've both ill-nature and ill-manners too. Well may they boast themselves an ancient nation, For they were bred ere manners were in fashion; And their new ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... plague of suitors,' Dorothy continued, 'and there is nought against George. If he is somewhat of a boor in manners, I can cure him, and, come what may, I dare to say he will be a better husband in the long run than Humphrey. What do ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... represented a large body of consequent sympathy. In like manner, people were slow to believe in the possibility of Lincoln's competence for his post; because he rose from the populace to his great elevation, they inferred that he was a boor and a bungler, not (as might have seemed equally fair and rather more logical) that he was a capable man; and, with a foregone conclusion, they were quite ready to construe as blundering and grotesque that line of policy and conduct on his part, which, after a war of no immoderate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... mob (Whose hearts for Polyeucte ne'er cease to throb), Usurps her place, and, spurning curb and rein, The felon crowns, and all our work is vain. My sceptre trembles, and all insecure Totters my crown,—a prey for every boor. Then, swift, Severus hears the welcome news, The jaundiced mind of Decius to abuse. Shall I, the rabble's lord, ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... The sad moon only could remark. List! the snow crunches—he draws nigh! The girl on tiptoe forward bounds And her voice sweeter than the sounds Of clarinet or flute doth cry: "What is your name?" The boor looked dazed, And ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... and his household were going to Church, and they beheld a knight who had raised the signal for combat. "Verily," said Arthur, "by the valour of men, I will not go hence until I have my horse and my arms to overthrow yonder boor." Then went the attendants to fetch Arthur's horse and arms. And Peredur met the attendants as they were going back, and he took the horse and arms from them, and proceeded to the meadow; and all those who saw him arise and go to do battle with the knight, went upon ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... English reader, do not suppose that I mean any disrespect to Mynheer Von Bloom, by calling him a "boor." In our good Cape colony a "boor" is a farmer. It is no reproach to be called a farmer. Von Bloom was one—a Dutch ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... I didn't tell you, did I, that the mob set on them as they haled us here and pulled four wounded men and those who carried them to bits? Oh! yes, they have paid a price, a very good price for a Frisian boor and a ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... Liucho was proclaimed emperor, but he proved to be a boor with low tastes, whose sole idea of power was the license to indulge in coarse amusements. The chief minister, Ho Kwang, took upon himself the responsibility of deposing him, and also of placing on the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... are even shorter than before: you wonder why on earth all the single men in the world do not rush tumultuously to the Altar; you look upon them all as a travelled man will look upon some conceited Dutch boor who has never been beyond the limits of his cabbage-garden. Married men, on the contrary, you regard as fellow-voyagers; and look upon their wives—ugly as they ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... infatuated with the naughty, tricksy young beauty of Wuthering Heights. Her violent temper did not frighten him, although his own character was singularly sweet, placid and feeble; her compromising friendship with such a mere boor as young Heathcliff was only a trifling annoyance easily to be excused. And when his own father and mother died of a fever caught in nursing her he did not love her less for the sorrow she brought. A fever she had wilfully taken in despair, and a sudden sickness of life. One evening ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... up his hat. "I don't care what Rosenthal said. He always was a boor. The point with me is that I've lost my temper in the classroom for the last ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... very angry that Sir Dagonet should have been so served. Wherefore he said, "Where did this befall thee?" And Sir Dagonet said, "Over yonder ways." Then Sir Kay said: "I will avenge thee for the affront that hath been put upon thee. For no boor shall serve a knight of King Arthur's court in such a fashion!" So therewith Sir Kay arose and put on his armor and mounted his horse and rode away; and after a while he came to that place ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... street, and when his turn came to throw, a loaded waggon was passing. He at first ordered the driver to stop his team because his throw was to take place directly in the path of the waggon. Then as the boor who was driving would not stop, the other children made way; but Alkibiades flung himself down on his face directly in front of the horses, and bade him drive on at his peril. The man, in alarm, now stopped his horses, and the others were terrified and ran ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... dwellers in the towns looked down upon him as one belonging to an inferior race. In all lands, in all ages, the countryman has been considered a proper butt by the most loutish townsman. The starving proletarian of the city pavement scoffed at the farmer as a boor. Voiceless, there was none to speak for him, and his rude, inarticulate complaints were met with jeers. Baalam was not more astonished when the ass he was riding rebuked him than the ruling classes of America seem to have been ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... a moment, puzzled and a little angry, and he guessed her thoughts. He was behaving like a boor; but it was better that she should ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... Noche Triste—the sorrowful night—which stands forth so unforgetably in the history of the Conquest. Disorder everywhere; piles of gold and valuables upon the floor, each Spaniard, whether cavalier or boor, loading himself with what he thought he could carry. "Pocket what you can," Cortes said, "but recollect that gold is heavy and we have to travel swiftly"—grave advice, the neglect of which cost some their ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... the old Clay homestead, which had been the birthplace of a General, a Governor and an Ambassador, Rosamond, reading near an upper window, saw Mose, the stable man, take his horse. She thought: "Here comes that conceited boor, Caleb Saylor, to see me again; I shall send word I am not at home; * * * but it is dreadfully dull this afternoon, no one else seems to be coming, this book is the worst ever, he might prove entertaining; I'm twenty-nine and can't be so particular; ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... youthful friend, abjure These tricks that smack of Cleon and the tanners; And let the Dutch instruct a German Boor In manners. ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... ce sel i a now si zed the weep on and all though the boor ly vil ly an re tain ed his vy gor ous hold she drew the blade through his fin gers and hoorl ed it far be hind her dryp ping ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... Bianca. "Oh, pardon me," he said. "I did not dream you stood so near. Else no such harsh sounds should have offended your fair ears. As for Messer d'Anguissola..." He shrugged as who would say, "Have pity on such a boor!" ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... to his descriptions, but his accent and intonation cannot be written. He seemed to take interest and pride in his exhibition; yet when the utter and ludicrous miserability thereof made us laugh, he joined in the joke very readily. When the last picture had been shown, he caused a country boor, who stood gaping beside the machine, to put his head within it, and thrust out his tongue. The head becoming gigantic, a ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... as he was on duty he was bound to obey, and tied up the ribbon of the sock. Then Kotsuke no Suke, turning from him, petulantly exclaimed: "Why, how clumsy you are! You cannot so much as tie up the ribbon of a sock properly! Any one can see that you are a boor from the country, and know nothing of the manners of Yedo." And with a scornful laugh he moved towards an ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... always a boor," said Rob's brother lightly, "and, upon my word, he is a boor still! He did remarkably well at Oxford, as no doubt you heard, and then went travelling about for a couple of years through a number of uncomfortable ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... believe that a man of young Cardigan's evident intelligence and advantages could be such a boor, Shirley. However, I, for one, am not surprised. You will recall that I warned you he might be his father's son. The best course to pursue now is to forget that you ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... and goodwill 'twixt rich and poor! Goodwill and peace 'twixt class and class! Let old with new, let Prince with boor Send round the bowl, and ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... confide all her sorrows to him and the recital made his heart bleed for one so young and beautiful mated to a selfish wretch who was as blind to her suffering as he was to her charm. The younger man's chivalry was up in arms, and he felt that such a boor did not deserve so bright a jewel. At times Frank was tempted to confront the callous husband and force him to open his dulled eyes to the bravely-borne misery of his neglected wife and realise how fortunate he ought to consider himself in being the owner of ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... a boor at Hatfield, and he had three daughters: one hight Deorwyn, the other Deorswith, the third Golde. And Wulflaf at Hatfield has Deorwyn to wife. AElfstan, at Tatchingworth, has Deorswith to wife: and Ealhstan, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... Donato hearing himself censured where he had expected praise, and more hurt than he was perhaps willing to admit, replied, 'If it were as easy to execute a work as to judge it, my figure would appear to thee to be Christ and not a boor; but take wood, and try to make one thyself.' Filippo, without saying anything more, returned home, and set to work on a crucifix, wherein he labored to surpass Donato, that he might not be condemned by his own judgment; but he suffered no one to know what he was doing. At the end of some ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... it was in a good-tempered fashion, and I felt as if I should like the captain in spite of a whisper from Walters which sounded like "boor." ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... answered the boor; "I hae some guess of that, and I trow thou be'st a bird of the same feather.—Howsomever, Madge, I redd thee keep hand off her, or I'se lend thee ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... abruptly, the next time he got speech of her,—it was at the Assembly and she had only vouchsafed him two dances,—"Dorothy, what do you like about that boor?" ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... For such prodigals going home there is no fatted calf slain. No fathers see them afar off and run to place the ring upon their fingers. They renounce precarious gayety for persistent slavery. The keen wit of the student is exchanged for the pipe and mug and dull oath of the boor. I wish every such girl back again to so sallow a fate, and pity ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... cloth of state With interchangeable embroidery wove, Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom. As ofttimes a light skiff, moor'd to the shore, Stands part in water, part upon the land; Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor, The beaver settles watching for his prey; So on the rim, that fenc'd the sand with rock, Sat perch'd the fiend of evil. In the void Glancing, his tail upturn'd its venomous fork, With sting like scorpion's arm'd. Then thus my guide: "Now need our way must turn few steps ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... his Tirai hat on the table, and seeing no other, sat in the Bombay chair; looked about him; idly examined the brand on the box of cigars and smiled. "Makes himself mighty comfortable," he remarked to himself. "Pity he appears such a boor." He glanced at the book on the armchair. Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie von Prof. Dr. Paul Deussen. "And a philosopher, eh!" Having little German he turned away and lighted his pipe. After a while he began to fidget, wondering how long he ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... self-respect. She now knew that he was familiar with standards of comparison at the North of which she need not be ashamed. Even her mother and sister had remarked, in effect, "It is evident that Captain Lane has been accustomed to the best society." His esteem was not the gaping admiration of a boor to whom she ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... question of money, nowadays impertinently thrust forth, was never hinted at in the olden time. It was considered bad form, and the luckless boaster of "how poor he was" would have been properly stared at as a boor ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... province far away Went plodding home a weary boor: A streak of light before him lay, Fall'n through a half-shut stable door Across his path. He passed—for naught Told what was going on within; How keen the stars! his only thought; The air how calm and cold and thin, In ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... to me like a pestilence. The neighbours turned their faces from me, my former friends fled from me, the timid greeted me from afar and turned aside; even a mere peasant boor or a Jew, though he bowed, would, as he passed by, smite me with a sneering laugh. The word 'traitor' rang in my ears and echoed through my house and over my fields; that word from morn till dark hovered before me like a spot ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... frusschen to gidere fulle fiercely; and thei breken here speres so rudely, that the tronchouns flen in sprotes and peces alle aboute the halle. And than thei make to come in huntyng, for the hert and for the boor, with houndes rennynge with open mouthe. And many other thinges thei don, be craft of hire enchauntementes; that it is marveyle for to see. And suche pleyes of desport thei make, til the takynge ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... description, as may be guessed, was greeted with shouts of laughter, and then another brigadier took up the word: "Well, Cyrus," said he, "our friend here has certainly met with an absolute boor: my own experience is somewhat different. You remember the admonitions you gave us when you dismissed the regiments, and how you bade each of us instruct his own men in the lessons we had learnt from you. Well, I, like the rest of us, went off at once and set about instructing one of the companies ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... hours that day consuming tea and innumerable cigarettes, I was no nearer the solution of the problem at sunset than at dawn. And had I but known it, all the time I was vainly urging this stolid boor to reconsider his decision, help was arriving from a totally unexpected quarter. I discussed a cheerless and silent meal with my companions, and we were turning in that night when Stepan strolled in, cool and imperturbable as usual. He even divested himself of ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... companion on the road downstairs was the private secretary, who tried good-naturedly to point out the family portraits on the staircase wall. But Fenwick scarcely replied. He stalked on, his great black eyes glancing restlessly from side to side; and the private secretary thought him a boor. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... considered he had been supplanted in Nance's regards, though Nance had never regarded him as anything but a nuisance and a boor. And Julie considered herself scorned and slighted, though Gard had never considered her save as ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... ruffians left, at a cottage on the roadside, the man whose face was blackened with powder, apparently because he was unable to bear transportation. He died in about half an hour after. On examining the corpse, it proved to be that of a profligate boor in the neighbourhood, a person notorious as a poacher and—smuggler. We I received many messages of congratulation from the neighbouring families, and it was generally allowed that a few such instances of spirited resistance would greatly check the presumption of these ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... recommend a tour to these parts. Several curiosities have been lately dug up near the wall, as well as at the ancient station of Habitancum. Talking of the latter, I suppose you have long since heard the news, that a sulky churlish boor has destroyed the ancient statue, or rather bas-relief, popularly called Robin of Redesdale. It seems Robin's fame attracted more visitants than was consistent with the growth of the heather, upon a moor worth a shilling an ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... "I should be worse than a boor did I not accept it. Here is my hand in token of my renewed friendship ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... thief!" muttard my master, as he was laying on his sophy, after being so very ill; "I've poisoned myself with his infernal tobacco, and he has foiled me. The cursed swindling boor! he thinks he'll ruin this poor Cheese-monger, does he? I'll ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... exclaimed; "Your rustic garb is much too poor; How comes it, you are not ashamed In such a place to play the boor? From company like this withdraw! Obey the mandate ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... temples of the Gods must bleed. 15 Hence of such Godhead, (traveller!) stand in awe, Best it befits thee off to keep thy hands. Thy cross is ready, shaped as artless yard; "I'm willing, 'faith" (thou say'st) but 'faith here comes The boor, and plucking forth with bended arm 20 Makes of this tool a club ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... "I will not have her, I have a wife already, and she is one too many for me; when I go home, it is just as bad as if I had a wife standing in every corner." Then the King grew angry, and said, "Thou art a boor." "Ah, Lord King," replied the peasant, "what can you expect from an ox, but beef?" "Stop," answered the King, "thou shalt have another reward. Be off now, but come back in three days, and then thou shalt have five hundred counted ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... "Boor!" thought George. But he could not actively resent the slight. He glanced round at the walls; he was in a prison. He was at the mercy of a tyrant invested ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... will be nothing difficult to do in this case. Gorgibus is a simpleton, a boor, who will readily believe everything you say, provided you speak to him of Hippocrates, of Galen, and that you have ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere

... ungentle boor: he spoke them fair and graciously. "Tell me, child," he said, "what is your name? No harm shall come to you at ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... habit and prejudiced of mind. He looks down upon the townsman as a huckster in private and a shuffler in public life, and this feeling of contemptuous enmity is fully returned by the cit, who regards the free proprietor in the light of a boor and a bully. Moreover, it rankles in the Houseman's breast that no Stockader pays a farthing of head-money to the treasure-chest of the Doomsmen. Now and then some well-to-do proprietor may suffer loss from ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... resource: she began to cry—wisely confining herself to the simple eloquence of tears and sobs. Mr. Sewell sat as awkwardly as if he had trodden on a kitten's toe, or brushed down a china cup, feeling as if he were a great, horrid, clumsy boor, and his ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... her peasant sketches was naturally over-estimated by those who, never having studied the class, could not conceive of a peasant except conventionally, as a drunken boor. The very just portrait of Cecilia Boccaferri, the conscientious but obscure artist in Le Chateau des Desertes, might seem over-flattered to such as imagine that all opera-singers must be persons of riotous living. The types she ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... is wholly dismissed, and the evil moral conditions of him who is called by this name alone remain; so that the name would now in this its final stage be applied as freely to peer, if he deserved it, as to peasant. 'Boor' has had exactly the same history; being first the cultivator of the soil; then secondly, the cultivator of the soil who, it is assumed, will be coarse, rude, and unmannerly; and then thirdly, any one who is coarse, rude, and unmannerly{221}. So too 'pagan'; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... Edith," said Mrs. Blake, sweeping indignantly from the room; "the boy is a perfect boor. I trust he may show more honour to his father than he ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... legislators. A civil war in America will end in shaking the world; and that war may be caused by the vote of some ignorant prize-fighter or crazed fanatic in a city or in a Congress, or of some stupid boor in an obscure country parish. The electricity of universal sympathy, of action and reaction, pervades everything, the planets and the motes in the sunbeam. FAUST, with his types, or LUTHER, with his sermons, worked greater results than Alexander or Hannibal. A single thought sometimes suffices ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... removed from the modern ideal; the knight may be considered to stand half-way between the boor and the gentleman: he is polite, at least, to some women, while the gentleman is polite to all, kind, gentle, sympathetic, without being any the less manly. Nevertheless there was an advantage in having some conception ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... He scorns to take it out of him that way. That is why the task of misgoverning him has been so easy and has come so naturally to the Englishman. One of the chief grievances of the Irishman in the middle ages was that the man who robbed him was such a boor. Insult was added to injury in that the oppressor was no knight in shining armour, but a very churl of men; to the courteous and cultured Irishman a "bodach Sassenach," a man of low blood, of low cunning, caring only ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... am not, Dionysodorus, he replied; for I love you and am giving you friendly advice, and, if I could, would persuade you not like a boor to say in my presence that I desire my beloved, whom I value above all men, ...
— Euthydemus • Plato

... most impure,... thou wrinkled beast, thou mangy beast, thou beast of all beasts the most beastly,... thou mad spirit,... thou bestial and foolish drunkard,... most greedy wolf,... most abominable whisperer,... thou sooty spirit from Tartarus!... I cast thee down, O Tartarean boor, into the infernal kitchen!... Loathsome cobbler,... dingy collier,... filthy sow (scrofa stercorata),... perfidious boar,... envious crocodile,... malodorous drudge,... wounded basilisk,... rust-coloured ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... stars; and she knew it—she knew it very well. That I saw in her face. And she was Madama Flavia, and I was Pipistrello the juggler. What could I say to her? I could have fallen at her feet and kissed her or killed her, but I could not speak. No doubt I looked but a poor boor to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... monsieur, even Mardi Gras does not excuse a boor." And Lerouge somewhat roughly elbowed him to ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... society; and, above all, let no one deem them unworthy of a wise man's attention. They are precisely the trifles which do most to make social intercourse agreeable, and a knowledge of which distinguishes the gentleman from the boor. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... farewells, she moved on, her train after her, thinking with herself what a boor the young fellow was—the young—baronet?—Yes, he must be a baronet; he was too young to have been knighted already. But where ever could ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... what is a king here, Or what is a boor? Here all starve together, All dwarfed and poor; Here Death's hand knocketh At door after door, He thins the dancers From the ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... you suffer that this peasant boor Appelmann should kiss the noble Sidonia as she lay there faint and insensible? Yet I saw him do this. So help me, relieve me, that I may brand this low-born knave ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... to have gained admission to the society of men and women of high intelligence, in whom the religious sentiment was living and powerful; and he appears to estimate the full weight of testimony such persons offered in sending their loved ones to Virginia to fall beneath the rifle of some Southern boor. It is this silent public opinion of the North which our foreign critics have generally failed to comprehend. They have been so long accustomed to parody the rhetorical elation of our third-rate political speakers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Gosling. Boor! what's that to you? With Love's soft sorrows what hast thou to do? 'Tis here for consolation I must look. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... this information, which was corroborated by divers evidences, selected from the mob at the gate, the tables were turned upon farmer Prickle, who was given to understand, that he must either find bail, or be forthwith imprisoned. This honest boor, who was in opulent circumstances, had made such popular use of the benefits he possessed, that there was not a housekeeper in the parish who would not have rejoiced to see him hanged. His dealings and connexions, however, were such, that none of the other four would have refused to bail ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... by directoired dabblers who, you feel after three minutes have elapsed, don't know a thing about the subject. If politeness consists in letting them suppose that I take any stock in what they say, then I plead guilty to being a boor." ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... the Tea-Cups" are full of the same shrewd sense and wise comment and tender thought. The kindly mentor takes the reader by the button or lays his hand upon his shoulder, not with the rude familiarity of the bully or the boor, but with the courtesy of Montaigne, the friendliness of John Aubrey, or the wise cheer of Selden. The reader glows with the pleasure of an individual greeting, and a wide diocese of those whom the Autocrat never saw plume themselves proudly ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... other Gaucho chiefs. Rosas, the incarnation of the spirit which was then distracting the entire Confederation, was made Commandant General by Dorrego, who, however, frequently threatened to shoot "the insolent boor," but who, unfortunately for his country, never fulfilled the threat. As for himself, he, indeed, met with that fate at the hands of Lavalle, who landed with an army from the opposite coast of Uruguay, defeated Dorrego and Rosas in a pitched battle at the gates of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... in days of yore have been More merciless a tyrant than him we here have seen? Before the seat of justice had time his warmth to feel He threatened us with torture, the gallows, and the wheel. Nay, never shall we tremble beneath a boor's dictates Or set a plowman over us, as oft in ancient states—For if we sought to pattern us on follies such as those, Each history of ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... "I know the rudiments of manners. I can recognize a conge, but consider me a persistent boor. Come, Miss Falconer, why mayn't I call? Because we are strangers? If that's it, you can assure yourself at the embassy that I am perfectly respectable; and you see I don't eat with my knife or tuck my napkin under my chin or spill ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... which is on the verge of autumn; and that hour of late sunset which is on the verge of night. Under its rich glow lies the sleeping Iphigenia, draped in folds upon folds of white, and her attendants; while Cymon, who is as unlike the boor of tradition as Spenser's Colin Clout is unlike an ordinary Cumbrian herdsman, stands hard-by, wondering, pensively wrapt in so exquisite a vision. Altogether, a great presentment of an immortal idyll; so treated, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... observing the hare come bleeding past him, "was in great wrath," said Thomson, "and cursed me, and said little hindered him from throwing me into the Nith; and he was able enough to do it, though I was both young and strong." The boor of Nithside did not use the hare worse than the critical Dr. Gregory, of Edinburgh, used the Poem: when Burns read his remarks he said, "Gregory is a good man, but he ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... never exhibited in the slightest degree that reticence which is or is supposed to be the peculiar characteristic of aristocracy. But few would now be found to deny that his indignation was both natural and just, and that the act of Lord Nugent was the act of a boor and not of a gentleman. It was certainly unreasonable to expect that a society which could rejoice in this method of rebuking republican pretension could itself be agreeable to a republican. Cooper could not but be offended by the prejudices he ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... affection towards my person as you feel. It is not me but France they wish to see. I remember that when very young I received a visit from the czar Peter the Great, Peter the First I mean to say. He was not deficient in sense, but yet behaved like a boor: he passed his time in running over the academies, libraries, and manufactories: I never saw such an ill-bred man. Imagine him embracing me at our first interview, and carrying me in his arms as one of my valets would have done. He was dirty, coarse, and ill-dressed. Well, all the Frenchmen ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... disfranchisement, the enormous infamy of his offence. We wonder that the English press treats us as a nation of boors and fools, and yet permit a representative on the floor of the Senate to set forth in his own person the worst of which a boor or fool is capable, and accept as full ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Foureau and Marescot, but, as the notary stuck to his office, Foureau was chosen—a boor, an idiot. The doctor waxed indignant. Rejected in the competition, he regretted Paris, and the consciousness of his wasted life gave him a morose air. A more distinguished career was about to open for him—what a revenge! He drew up a profession ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... help his vengeance. He lets things take their course. He lets Catherine marry Edgar Linton and remain married to him. He lets Isabella's passion satisfy itself. He lets Hindley Earnshaw drink himself to death. He lets Hareton sink to the level of a boor. He lets Linton die. His most overt and violent action is the capture of the younger Catherine. And even there he takes advantage of the accident that brings her to the door of Wuthering Heights. He watches and bides his time ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... little gypsy!" she exclaimed, suddenly resuming her old wild manner, "why did you not prize it yourself? He has told me all about the romantic scenes of the academy,—he says you transformed him from a rough boor into a feeling, tender-hearted man,—that you stole into his very inmost being, like the breath of heaven, and made the barren wilderness blossom like the rose. Ah! you ought to hear how beautifully he talks of you. But I am not jealous ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... "You boor!" she hissed. "You base underbred clod! Is this your care and your hospitality? I would rather wed a branded serf from my father's fields. Leave go, I say——Ah! good youth, Heaven has sent you. Make him loose me! By the honor of your mother, I pray you to stand ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... pompous and mean—sometimes inflated and serious to bombast—sometimes ludicrous, even to puerility; that he makes none of his personages speak in any distinct character, so that in his scenes the son cannot be known from the father—the citizen from the boor—the hero from the shopkeeper, or the divine ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... winning the love of Madame De Stael as any man ever did. He was politician, scholar, writer, orator, courtier. But with it all he was a boor, for when he had won the favor of Madame De Stael he wrote a long letter to Madame Charriere, with whom he had lived for several years in the greatest intimacy, giving reasons why he had forsaken her, and ending with an ecstacy in praise of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... was ready: "A boor of a fellow," said I, "one day trod so rudely on my shadow that he tore a large hole in it. I sent it to be repaired— for gold can do wonders—and yesterday I expected it ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... the stranger's conduct something in the light of an intentional affront, of course the idea of lunacy was virtually vacated. But if not a lunatic, what then? Under the circumstances, would a gentleman, nay, any honest boor, act the part now acted by his host? The man was an impostor. Some low-born adventurer, masquerading as an oceanic grandee; yet so ignorant of the first requisites of mere gentlemanhood as to be betrayed into the present remarkable ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... 1528, contains the rudiments of a plot, two lovers bent on suicide being persuaded by a miraculous voice to become reconciled with the world and life. Poetic justice befalls the two nymphs in an eclogue by Luca di Lorenzo, printed in 1530, the disdainful Diversa being condemned to love the boor Fantasia, while Euridice's loving disposition is rewarded ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... the maiden who sat in the stern? I knew her a hundred yards off. I stood irresolute, not knowing whether to fly or wait. If I waited and she knew me not, 'twould be more than I could bear. Yet, if I fled, I were a paltroon and a boor. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... watching her, smiling fatuously until it was borne in on him that he was staring like a boor and grinning like an idiot. Convinced, he blushed for himself; something which served to make him ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... promised to marry a sporting boor, and I can't yet make up my mind to sink to it. Don't let's talk of it! I only hope he'll vote straight in the next few months. But the thought of being kept through August drives him desperate already. Ah! here they ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... who had lately been a weaver in the neighbouring village, had rudely declined to wipe the minister's shoes, as requested by Mrs Gardner, when the enraged matron, snatching a culinary utensil, administered a hearty drubbing to the shoulders of the impudent boor, and compelled him to execute her orders. The minister witnessing the proceeding from the window, was highly diverted, and gave the air he had just completed the title of "Jenny Dang the Weaver." This incident is said to have occurred ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... these latter days, during which the scales had been dropping from his eyes in spite of prejudice, he had been forced into a grudging admiration of the man's capability. Brayley could read little and spell less; he was a clown and a boor in the matter of the finer, exacting social traditions; but he could run a cattle-range, and he read his men as other men read books. Conniston realized suddenly, shocked with the realization, that in Brayley there was that ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... boor!" cried the prince, half amused, half angry. "Go on, now; we don't need any sermon ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... dry wind stirred the dust here and there; the moon shone through a rift in the clouds and lighted the spot where the man slept. So I found myself tete-a-tete with this boor, who, not suspecting my presence, was sleeping on that stone bench as peacefully as if in ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... Boor mans! you zeem as bad as neffer can be. You doomble off dem vagon, und dread on your vace ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... tame.—And after marriage, the weeks are even shorter than before; you wonder why on earth all the single men in the world do not rush tumultuously to the altar; you look upon them all, as a travelled man will look upon some conceited Dutch boor, who has never been beyond the limits of his cabbage-garden. Married men, on the contrary, you regard as fellow-voyagers; and look upon their wives—ugly as they may ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... luxuries. For here, according to our scheme of things, was everything one had no right to expect, and nothing that one had. My European belongings looked very gross littering the mats; and I seemed to myself a boor beside the unconscious breeding of those about me. Yet it was only a poor village inn, and its people were but peasants, after ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... feast, Than claims the boor from scythe released, On these scorched fields were known! Death hovered o'er the maddening rout, And, in the thrilling battle-shout, Sent for the bloody banquet out A summons of his own. Through rolling smoke the Demon's eye Could well each destined guest espy, Well could his ear ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... this form it is no dictionary word, but under the root "D'r" I find in the Muhit: "wa 'l-'amatu takulu fulanun da'irun ya'ni ghalizun jafin" the common people say such a one is "daiir," i.e., rude, churlish. "Mad'ur" may be a synonym and rendered accordingly: as though thou wert a boor or clown.—ST] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... attention of any individual. The return of the huntsmen and hounds relieved me from my embarrassment, and with some difficulty I got one clown to relieve me of the charge of the horses, and another stupid boor to guide me to the presence of Sir Hildebrand. This service he performed with much such grace and good-will, as a peasant who is compelled to act as guide to a hostile patrol; and in the same manner I was obliged to guard against his deserting me in the labyrinth ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... from mentioning real names and calls himself Corydon and the boy Alexis. But Aemilianus, whose rusticity far surpasses that of the shepherds and cowherds of Vergil, who is, in fact, and always has been a boor and a barbarian, though he thinks himself far more austere than Serranus, Curius, or Fabricius, those heroes of the days of old, denies that such verses are worthy of a philosopher who is a follower of Plato. Will you persist in this attitude, Aemilianus, if I can show that my verses ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... this policy can only be fully appreciated when standing by the side of the solitary settler's hut in the West, where even an Eastern man has degenerated to a boor in manners, where his children have grown up uneducated, and where the Sabbath has become an unknown day, and religion and its obligations have ceased to exercise control upon the ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... labours of a servile state, Stemmed the rude storm, and triumphed over Fate: 780 Then why no more? if Phoebus smiled on you, BLOOMFIELD! why not on brother Nathan too? [123] Him too the Mania, not the Muse, has seized; Not inspiration, but a mind diseased: And now no Boor can seek his last abode, No common be inclosed without an ode. Oh! since increased refinement deigns to smile On Britain's sons, and bless our genial Isle, Let Poesy go forth, pervade the whole, Alike the rustic, and mechanic soul! ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... to him. The etiquette of shopping in Germany seems to us rather topsy-turvy at first. In a small shop the proprietor is as likely as not to conduct business with a cigar in his mouth, even if you are a lady, but if you are a man he will think you a boor if you omit to remove your hat as you cross his threshold. Whether you are a man, woman, or child, you will wish him good-morning or good-evening before you ask for what you want, and he will answer you before he asks what your commands are. If you are a woman, about ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... rainbows. The country of the Fertile Plain of Sweet Flags was transformed. It suddenly became the land wherein gods grew not singly but in whole forests. Like the Shulamite, when introduced among the jewelled ladies of Solomon's harem, so stood the boor amid the sheen and gold of the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... demanded, looking sternly in his daughter's agitated and flushed countenance as he uttered the words. 'Perhaps,' he sarcastically continued, without giving her time to reply—'perhaps you deem yourself marriageable at the matron-like' age of nineteen, and have selected some country boor for my son-in-law?' ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... available among ourselves. The conquerors of the world introduced their baths wherever they established their power; but we have repudiated the blessings of water in such a form, and now the Russian boor and the Finnish peasant, the Turk, the Egyptian, the basest of people, and the barbarians of Africa, shame even the inhabitants of England's metropolis; for every where but in our land, though the duty of cleanliness may not be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... This is a very boor blace for zo famous a bainter. I do not understand it! But I have certainly done ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris

... now," he continued, "why I should hide like a wounded beast. I fear 'tis but for a visionary point of honor. Why should not a gentleman,"—this he said sarcastically—"occupy the workhouse as well as a boor. In the eyes of One, we are all equal. Ah, it might do this ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... inherited from his father, he was still (despite many a secret, hypocritical vice, at war with the character of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk; and the boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged in eulogistic comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he diverged into some compliments on the young gentleman himself. Randal drew his hat over his brows. There is a wonderful tact ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... my dear fellow," said the old man, more graciously. "I'm sorry to be such a boor, but I thought you meant some begad tonic." The General was getting on for seventy; to be exact, he was sixty-nine—he married at forty-six—and when the medicine came he took it, "because, after all, it was begad decent of Whitehouse to have ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... drugs sweated through the bat's handle in the Arabian story. I tell you he is at home wherever he smells the invigorating fragrance of Russia leather. No self-made man feels so. One may, it is true, have all the antecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor or a shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them change places. Our social arrangement has this great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as they change specific ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... had always thought that clumsiness was inexcusable. He had a guilty sense that while Beth was still the little lady to her finger tips, born to a natural nobility, he, the Grand Duke Peter, had been the boor, the vulgar proletarian. The look in her eyes had shamed him as the look in his own eyes had shamed her. She had known what his wooing meant, and it hadn't been what she wanted. The mention of love on lips that kissed as his ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... rang in my marriage morn, I have dozed away life like a lump of clay, vegetating like a peasant, sleeping like a German boor. The whole world around me seems asleep in my own image. What a monotonous existence! I have visited relations, gone to shops, seen physicians, and when a child was born to me, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... against whom these powerful leaders were directing all their energies was still counted an amateur in politics, irascible and indiscreet. He was laughed at in the cities as a boor and condemned in New England as an ignoramus, though Harvard College, under some strange inspiration, was soon to award him the doctorate of laws. Having come to power by means of a combination of South and West, Jackson had found his followers divided and somewhat unmanageable. ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... Lord, then hear my prayer, Suffer not ladies the scarlet to wear; And, Sir, you must grant me this boon beside, Let no boor's son a good courser ride." ...
— Queen Berngerd, The Bard and the Dreams - and other ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... which is, mentioning any particular quality as absolutely essential to either man or woman, and exploding all those who want it. This renders every one uneasy who is in the least self-conscious of the defect. I have heard a boor of fashion declare in the presence of women remarkably plain, that beauty was the chief perfection of that sex, and an essential without which no woman was worth regarding; a certain method of putting all those in the room, who are but suspicious ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... at, and winked at, when, if it were not for my fortune, I very much doubt whether one of these, my exceeding good friends, would give me a dinner to save me from starvation. Why I had rather be the veriest boor that holds a plough, or a cobbler at his last, than to be, as Shakspeare says, 'the thing I am.' I am heartily sick of it, and could almost turn my back upon the world, and lead a hermit's life. To be always a mark for managing mothers, with great grown-up daughters; aimed at, like a target, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... any one who is looking out of his window or door, both improper practices, especially the latter.' When a gentleman speaks to one much older than himself, or to a lady, he not only raises his hat quite off his head—for none 'but an ignorant boor or a fier Anglais' ever does otherwise—but holds it in his hand until requested to replace it. When you ask your way, even of a street-porter or an apple-woman, it is necessary slightly to half-raise the hat, and address them as Monsieur or Madame, 'which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... by the mere act of consulting their own consciousness, the fact now in dispute appears to some persons self-evident. But in matters of such high abstraction as this, even the evidence of self-evidence must not be relied upon too implicitly. To the country boor it appears self-evident that wood is annihilated by combustion; and even to the mind of the greatest philosophers of antiquity it seemed impossible to doubt that the sun moved over a stationary earth. Much more, therefore, may ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... inherited their wealth, or made it in some high pursuit to which gain was only an incident, or they are exceptional cases. But of course Bagley isn't even a fair type of the regular money-grinder—he's a speculator in anything, and a boor compared with even ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Quaker Meeting, (16) face By face in Flemish detail, we may trace How loose-mouthed boor and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... arms a noble knight? Am I not blithe as bird the live-long day? It pleases me to bear what you call pain, Therefore to me 'tis pleasure: joy and grief Are the will's creatures; martyrs kiss the stake— The moorland colt enjoys the thorny furze— The dullest boor will seek a fight, and count His pleasure by his wounds; you must forget, love, Eve's curse lays suffering, as their natural lot, On womankind, till custom makes it light. I know the use of pain: bar not the leech Because his cure is bitter—'Tis ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... Chinese cook came up from Gold City, and the old man and the "H'english gentleman," as Tony called him with a contemptuous chuckle, mounted horses and went riding over the ranch and down to the mine. It took all the grace Job had to see the arrogant boor, with his two hundred and fifty avoirdupois, get Tony to help him mount Bess, and, poking her in the ribs, call out, "What a bloomin' 'orse! Cawn't h'it go!" and ride off toward ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... desired to retain the same in his hands until that time. Witness my hand Henry Fielding. Signed and acknowledged as his last will and testament by the within named testator in the presence of Margaret Collier, Richd. Boor, Isabella Ash." ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... probably excite remark. But as you walk in the street, or sit in the corner of the compartment behind a pipe, or "strap-hang" on the Subterranean, who is to know that you are engaged in the most important of daily acts? What asinine boor can laugh at you? ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett

... night when Hogarth broke into the presence of Loveday at Cheyne Gardens with a glad face, crying: "Forgive me, my friend, for being a boor!" ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... far in front as possible, that I might communicate with scouts, contrabands, and citizens. Many odd personages were revealed to me at the farm-houses on the way, and I studied, with curious interest, the native Virginian character. They appeared to be compounds of the cavalier and the boor. There was no old gentleman who owned a thousand barren acres, spotted with scrub timber; who lived in a weather-beaten barn, with a multiplicity of porch and a quantity of chimney; whose means bore no proportion to his pride, and neither to his indolence,—that did not talk of his ancestry, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... a man behave in a rude and uncivil manner to his father or mother, his brothers or sisters, his wife or children; or fail to exercise the common courtesies of life at his own table and around his own fireside, you may at once set him down as a boor, whatever pretensions he may ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... see is to be found in all societies, and it is in vain to seek for any spot where those ingredients are not mixed. I therefore rest satisfied, and thank God that my lot is to be an American farmer, instead of a Russian boor, or an Hungarian peasant. I thank you kindly for the idea, however dreadful, which you have given me of their lot and condition; your observations have confirmed me in the justness of my ideas, and I am happier now than I thought myself before. It is strange that ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... province far away Went plodding home a weary boor; A streak of light before him lay, Fallen through a half-shut stable-door Across his path. He passed—for naught Told what was going on within; How keen the stars, his only thought; The air how calm and cold and thin, In ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... shame to those that sneer at the clergyman who sacrifices and tortures all that is sensitive and sacred in himself, in the effort to wheedle from the wealthy boor the money to save God's poor and God's souls! Is it pleasant for him to fawn and to be patronised? Others do it, I know. But for themselves. The clergyman must do it in his Master's name and for ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... my poor oxen!" cried the boor, and then he related all that had happened to him, entreating them to go with him to the place. ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous

... irreverently;" and then unto Master Silas: "Silas! to the business on hand. Taste the fat upon yon boor's table, which the constable hath brought hither, good Master Silas! And declare upon oath, being sworn in my presence, first, whether said fat do proceed of venison; secondly, whether said venison be of ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... flashed. Strive as he would, he could not disguise his inward contempt for this petty jack-in-office,—and his keen glance was, to the perverse nature of the ill-conditioned boor he addressed, like the lash of a whip on the back ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... servant I had found apparently asleep, and, unless he acted a part with supreme skill, he was a stupid and ignorant boor, and as innocent of the murder as myself. There was still the Russian princess whom he had expected to find, or had pretended to expect to find, in the same room with the murdered man. I judged that she must now be either upstairs ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... I said good-bye to her that day, or just walked out of the room, like the forgetful boor I sometimes am, with the words ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... meat by dropping red-hot stones into a water-vessel made of hide; and Linnaeus found the Both land people brewing beer in this way—"and to this day the rude Carinthian boor drinks such stone-beer, as it is called." ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... suggestion of the way it strikes a vulgar contemporary. Without this average man and his commentary the story of the death of Kjartan would lose much. There is first of all the comic value of the meanness and envy in the mind of the boor, his complacency at the quarrels and mutual destruction of the magnificent people. His intrusion on the scene, his judgment of the situation, is proof of the variety of the life from which the Saga is drawn. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... nights, he thinks and thinks and thinks how to do everything just right. And what's the result? He gives the public the best operetta, the very best pantomime, excellent artists. But do they want it? Have they the least appreciation of it? The public is rude. The public is a great boor. The public wants a circus, a lot of nonsense, a lot of stuff. And there's the weather. Look! Rain almost every evening. It began to rain on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up through the whole of June. It's simply awful. I can't get any audiences, and ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... students had discovered in their search. But when any other student in his search after truth was compelled to cross that hitherto so exemplary student, he immediately became as insolent as if he had been the greatest boor in the country. Till, as he spat out scorn at all who differed from him we always remembered this in A Kempis—'Surely, an humble husbandman that serveth God is better than a proud philosopher that, neglecting himself, laboureth ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... to time on his way over the meadow to make sure that she did not need his support. In spite of the utter unreasonableness of the affair, in some unaccountable way his sympathies were on the side of the miller. The fellow was a boor, of course, but, by Jove! he was a magnificent boor. It had been long since Gay had seen such an outburst of primitive feeling—long since he had come so close to the good red earth on which we walk and of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... Orth, kindly. This American woman thought him the ideal gentleman, although the mistress of the estate on which she visited called him a boor and a snob. ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... "No boor of the woods shall laugh at me!" He exclaimed, his eyes aflame with passion, "be the cause love or war. What mean all these sly tricks of speech and action?—this hurried message to the ear of Mademoiselle? ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... man, with sudden energy, catching her hand. "I'm an unmannerly boor. But I'll risk everything and tell you the trouble. I don't care a—I don't care whether you ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, "not very much. You've been very kind to me and I should be an awful boor if I wasn't grateful. Of course, I don't care whether you're married or not, it's nothing to do ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... the same, I suppose your grand relations would consider me a presumptuous boor for daring to lift my eyes to you. And yet, if I could make you love me, it wouldn't count for a blade of grass that your father was born in a castle and mine in a crofter's cabin.... Only—you ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... the coarse Calabrian boor, who pressed His store of pears upon a sated guest, Have you bestowed your favours. "Eat them, pray." "I've done." "Then carry all you please away." "I thank you, no." "Your boys won't like you less For taking home a sack of them, I ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... everything you wanted; and you can have it again, and more. What's the matter with me? I ask you a plain question: What is it?" Unconscious of the pathos in that enquiry, he went on passionately: "I'm not lame, I'm not loathsome, I'm not a boor, I'm not a fool. What is it? What's the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... What a boor she must have thought me, to misconstrue her simple act of kindness! I loathed myself with a hatred that sent me groveling to my blanket in the pantry, and that kept me, once there, awake through all the early part of the ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... advance of the age, and were probably as much honoured in the breach as otherwise. But the common folk did then much as many of them do now, and granted themselves a dispensation both from knife and fork, and soap and water. The country boor still eats his bacon or his herring with his fingers, just as Charles XII. of Sweden buttered his bread with his ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... destroyer was humiliated in the dust. Had she heard of the fire at the Castle Inn? How could she have done otherwise than hear of it in such a place as Mount Stanning? But had she heard that he had been in danger, and that he had distinguished himself by the rescue of a drunken boor? I fear that, even sitting by that desolate hearth, and beneath the roof whose noble was an exile from his own house, Robert Audley was weak enough to think of these things—weak enough to let his fancy wander away to the dismal fir-trees under the cold March sky, and the dark-brown eyes that were ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... The gallant caitiff, Noticing the swain is poor (Courtesy with him is native, Not like you, suburban boor), Bows, and says in accents sunny, 'Pass along, Sir—make good speed; I'm convinced you've got no money And I do not want ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various

... similar. The memory of her face and of the choke in her voice as she said she had been almost happy haunted me. My reason told me that, so far as principle and precedent went, I had acted rightly; but my conscience, which was quite unreasonable, told me I had acted like a boor. I stood it as long as I could, then I shouted at "Pet," who was jogging on, apparently ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... answered he; "I can bear your insolence no longer, an you come to that. Blood! it is almost enough of itself to make my daughter undervalue my sense, when she hears you telling me every minute you despise me."—"It is impossible, it is impossible," cries the aunt; "no one can undervalue such a boor."—"Boar," answered the squire, "I am no boar; no, nor ass; no, nor rat neither, madam. Remember that—I am no rat. I am a true Englishman, and not of your Hanover breed, that have eat up the nation."—"Thou art one of those wise ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... their part walked rapidly away, looking round from time to time, and keeping their ears open. They were very much mortified at having been forced to let a mere boor dictate to them, and anxious, especially de Jars, as to the result ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere



Words linked to "Boor" :   disagreeable person, unpleasant person



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