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Funk   /fəŋk/   Listen
Funk

noun
1.
A state of nervous depression.  Synonym: blue funk.
2.
United States biochemist (born in Poland) who showed that several diseases were caused by dietary deficiencies and who coined the term 'vitamin' for the chemicals involved (1884-1967).  Synonym: Casimir Funk.
3.
An earthy type of jazz combining it with blues and soul; has a heavy bass line that accentuates the first beat in the bar.



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"Funk" Quotes from Famous Books



... spent the next three days in a pale blue funk which he struggled valiantly against, at least to prevent it from ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... but now we'd done it I felt it would be beastly mean to take the old boy's chink after putting him in such a funk. He didn't say anything about bringing us up as his own sons—so I didn't know what to do. I let Pincher go, and was just going to say he was very welcome, and we'd rather not have the money, which ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... against my head, "You...rude...bad...boy," said she slapping me at each word, "I've a good mind to tell your mamma, get into bed this instant," and into bed I got without a word. She blew out the light, and left the room with her sister, leaving me in a dreadful funk. I scarcely knew that I had done wrong, yet had some vague notion, that feeling about her thighs was punishable; the soft hairy place my hand had touched, impressed me with wonder, I kept thinking there was no cock there, and felt a sort ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... strode in through the open door. So I went in too, because I did not care to let King see me hesitate. Curiosity had vanished. I was simply in a blue funk, and rather angry as well at the absurdity of ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... is the governor? If I were he I should be in a most awful funk. I should hardly be able to think of anything but that man who is to come to-morrow with his knives. But he takes it all as ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... You lead right on. Where you can travel I've a notion I'm not likely to funk. But I ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... World's Famous Orations," with the permission of Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York and ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... thy chiding I pray, forego; * Nor drive me to death or injurious blow: How e'er can I hope to bear fray and fight * Who quake at the croak of the corby-crow? I who shiver for fear when I see the mouse * And for very funk I bepiss my clo'! I loveno foin but the poke in bed, * When coynte well knoweth my prickle's prow; This is rightful rede, and none other shows * Righteous as this ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... you funk it with Ashford," said Dick whose temper was somewhat ruffled by misfortune. "I don't. If you two like to stop you can. I'll ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... his own phrase for it, on an earlier train than Eleanor had expected, and marched up to the Hilton House with a jaunty air of perfect ease and assurance. But really, he confided to Eleanor, he was in a "blooming blue funk" ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... to nothin' else. I've lived long in the woods now, and the fact becomes more and more sartin every day. I've know'd chaps, now, as timersome as settlement girls, that were always in such a mortal funk about what was to happen, or might happen, that they were never fit for anything that did happen; always lookin' ahead, and never around them. Of coorse, I don't mean that a man shouldn't look ahead at all, but their great ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... the ordinary sense of the word: there was in him a good deal of what goes to the making of a gentleman; but he confessed to being "in a bit of a funk" when he heard who was below: there was but one thing it could mean, he thought—that Letty had been found out, and here was her cousin come to make a row. But what did it matter, so long as Letty was true to him? The world should ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... I was rather in a funk about him. Hes not exactly what I call approachable; and he was a bit stand-off at first. But when I explained and told him ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... see from the expression on his face that he was in a blue funk. This puzzled her. She could not understand why anyone would be afraid of Martians. They were huge, and ugly, and alien, but they ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... when her two guests entered the shop. Unembarrassed she beamed on both and signed to Macgregor to go 'right in.' So Macgregor conducted his friend, who during the journey had betrayed increasing indications of 'funk,' into the absent owner's living-room, which Christina had contrived to make brighter looking than for ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell

... sister of the degenerate—a degenerate herself of a murdering type . . . or else of the lying type. Comrade Ossipon might have been said to be terrified scientifically in addition to all other kinds of fear. It was an immeasurable and composite funk, which from its very excess gave him in the dark a false appearance of calm and thoughtful deliberation. For he moved and spoke with difficulty, being as if half frozen in his will and mind—and no one could see his ghastly face. He ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... in such a blue funk over the Navy's chances, you'd better keep off the line-up," muttered ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... bought," he sneered. "There is Tom Willing, who made the most part of his money importing Guinea niggers, and now is in a mortal funk lest some of it, like them, shall run away. Two years ago he was a member of the rebel Congress and a partner of that desperate speculator Morris, with a hand thrust deep in the Continental treasury rag-bag. Now he has trimmed ship better than ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... me to-day!" she mourned to Garnet, as they met in the dressing-room before nine o'clock. "If Bunty puts me to construe anywhere on page 21, I'm a gone coon. I'm feeling in a blue funk, I can tell you." ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... I went in and I saw Mr. Blair was dead. And I told Mr. Thorpe so, and he didn't seem surprised, but he was all of a blue funk, and he said, 'Well,—get a doctor—or whatever is the thing to do.' Just like that. He didn't show any grief or any sorrow,—only just ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... deeply regret that his natural and just expectation of some return from its sale on this side of the ocean is not realized; and I hope the sense of justice to a most painstaking author will lead to the choice by many purchasers of the edition which Dr. Young approves—that of Messrs. FUNK & WAGNALLS, with whom Dr. Young cooperates in bringing out here ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... of us being as cool as that, if he knew he had to stand up within an hour and rattle off a speech in Parliament. I'd be in a devil of a funk myself. And yet he is as keen over that book he's reading as though he had nothing before ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... Lyman J. Gage, Dr. Funk and hundreds of others have said that my book should be put at a price which would place it within the reach of every ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... lumber, don't nail hammocks or other things on the trees. The metal is very soon buried and causes no end of difficulty. We will go to the next paper, which is, "Colchicine as a Tool in Nut Breeding," Mr. O. J. Eigsti, Funk Brothers ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... party? If so, they would be slinking about. But during half an hour of their intermittent firing the position of the flashes never changed. That looked like funk holes! And if it was a case of funk holes, by all the nasty little elves of tough luck, we had stumbled right into ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... a state of nerves—if I may use the expression, in such a state of funk—that every passer-by, however innocent, is looked at with suspicion by his neighbour if his avocation happens to take him abroad between the hours of one and three ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... feeble-minded sort of fellow named Troutbeck, who was always in a funk lest he should make enemies; never reflecting that most men would a little rather be his enemies than not. He had once been the ship's cook, but had cooked so poisonously ill that he had been forcibly transferred from galley to quarter-deck by the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... microscopic doses of aconite. The best that could be said of him was that he never really harmed anybody, scalded the poor for nothing, and was willing (and even pressing) to turn over serious cases to the regular practitioner, Dr. Funk. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... what they called 'news,' which was generally that 'Mrs. "Bunny" Bumpkin looked sweet in grey'—or that 'Miss "Toby" Tosspot was among the loveliest of the debutantes at Court.' Sometimes a son of Israel came along, all in a mortal funk, and said he 'didn't want it mentioned' that Mrs. So-and-So had dined with him at a certain public restaurant last night. Generally, he was a shareholder, and his orders had to be obeyed. The shareholders in fact had most to do with the 'society' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... February 20.—A Mr. Funk, a member of the Illinois Senate, a farmer, and a man of sixty-five years, on February 13, made a speech in that body which sounds better than all the rhetories and oratories. It was the sound and genuine utterance of a man from the people, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... not fled. I had brought back the body; I had handed over the property. But how did that help me? It would only suggest that I had yielded to a sudden funk after killing my man, and had no nerve left to clutch at the fruits of the crime; it would suggest, perhaps, that I had not set out to kill but only to threaten, and that when I found that I had done murder the heart went out of me. Turn it which way I would, I could see no hope of ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... he joined at first because of his great knowledge of jewels and because he's been able to revive the lost art of making certain transparent enamels. The Van Vrecks sent for him from England years ago. He buys jewels for the firm now, I believe. No doubt that's why he's in such a funk ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... and Charles Copeman, who had, as already indicated, a passion for digging—caught, perchance, in boyhood from his father's sexton—dug a funk-hole from the enemy shell-fire. McInerney helped him. Now this was not an ordinary funk-hole. It was a very splendid and elaborate hole, and no one was allowed to come near, lest he cause its perfection to crumble away. So, to dry ourselves after the rain, we all dug, and the ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... silences us. Our funk-hole trembles and cracks. It is the barrage—the barrage which those whom we saw have gone to fight, hand to hand. A thunderbolt falls just at the opening, it casts a bright light on all of us, and reveals the last emotion of all, the belief that all was ended! One man is grimacing like a malefactor ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... I'M going. If you funk it you'd better cut along home and ask your nurses to put you to bed.' So then, of course, they agreed to go. Oswald went first with the candle. It was not comfortable; the architect of that dark subterranean passage had not imagined ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... and funk and stinks and more funk all the time. It's lying out all night on the beastly veldt, and going to sleep and getting frozen, and waking up and finding you've got warm again because your neighbour's inside's been fired out on the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... of spray over the gunwale of the gallant little yacht, Warington decided to change his course and run back to Weymouth. The night was getting dark, and the storm increased. To add to the anxieties of the skipper his crew of boys, though showing no funk, began to grow green about the gills, and presently Warington found himself in command of an entirely sea-sick crew. He was unable to leave the helm, and for over thirty-one hours he stood there, giving his orders in a cheerful voice to the groaning youngsters who were more ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... motives, to sympathize with them; but beside all these there is a material and an interested reason why you should sympathize with them. Pounds and pence join with conscience and with honor in this design. [Footnote: The World's Famous Orations, Vol. X, p. 12. Funk and ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... answer at all, for I made sure they was going to do away with me somehow; but, as I couldn't help myself, I was not going to show them what a funk I was in; so I pretended to whistle, quite happy like. I had been whistling away some time, when I thought I heard their footsteps moving off; and so it proved; for when I next sung out to them, no one answered. I called them all ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... guess I was in an awful funk when I found myself alone on the beastly old carpet, and I couldn't manage it at all. I suppose it was because I couldn't speak the language; Shin Shira used Arabic or something, wasn't it? I tried all sorts of things ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow

... the trenches—and there are thousands of them that don't need any kicking and, on the contrary, have been kicked back; but he has become half-petrified in the atmosphere of this place. It's lovely to come to as a sort of funk-hole of peace—but my holy aunt!—What the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... mine engrafted on the innocent offspring of the thoroughbred Funks, evermore to be by them and their heirs handed down to posterity! How I rejoice at that circumstance, and the intelligence I have so happily received about the wretched situation you speak of. Fancy, Funk, fancy the man, your son, in a moment of rashness, I meant to succeed, died of a sore-throat! an infallible disorder attendant upon the duties of those d—d landing-waiterships. What an escape we have had! The place is given to my butler, so there's no fear. Kiss ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... awfully silly," said Montjoie. "I couldn't have believed you were so soft, Bee, with your training, don't you know? And how did you come over her to let you go? She was in a dead funk all the time. It was awfully silly; you might have caught it, or given it to me, or a hundred things, and lost all your fun; but it was awfully plucky," cried Montjoie, "by Jove! I knew you were a plucky one;" and he added, after a moment's ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... that she had grounds for her sagacity. His next thought plunged him into contempt for Kit Ines, on account of the fellow's lapses to sottishness. But there would be no contempt of Kit Ines in a tussle with him. Nor could one funk the tussle and play cur, if Kit's engaged young woman were looking on. We get to our courage or the show of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... months in such a place meant. I believe if I hadn't pulled myself up sharp, I'd have jumped out into the street and run away. It didn't last more than a few seconds, but I don't want any more like them. I was afraid, afraid—there's no use pretending it was anything else. I was in a dumb, silly funk, and I turned sick inside and shook, as I have seen a horse shake when he shies at nothing and sweats and trembles ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... that old stranger has been treated has spread all around, and the camps are up. They are piling in from everywhere, and are going to lynch the P'fessor. Constable Harris is in a dead funk, and has telephoned ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... led to the stake, and I never heard the Spanish Inquisition called healthy for anybody taking part in it. Still, religion flourishes. But your old-fashioned, unscientific, gilt, gingerbread idea of heaven blew up ten years ago—went out. My heaven's just coming in. It's new. Dr. Funk and a lot of clergymen are in already. You'd better get used to it, Batholommey, ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... committed a great error; for he struck Berry slightly across the face with the back of his hand, saying, "You are in a funk." But this was a feeling which Frank Berry did not in the least entertain; for, in reply to Biggs's back-hander, and as quick as thought, and with all his might and main—pong! he delivered a blow upon old Biggs's nose that made ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... done? Of course Percival is behaving badly. He always does. I can't turn him out of the house, and he seems to intend to stick to Gerald till he has got the money. He has taken a cheque from Dolly dated two months hence. I am in an awful funk for fear Gerald should pitch into him. He will, in a minute, if anything rough is said to him. I suppose the straightest thing would be to go to the Duke at once, but Gerald won't hear of it. I hope you won't think me wrong to tell you. If I could help him ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... the battalion fell in to move up to the front line and dig some trenches. Hardly were we formed up when another violent shelling started, and we hurried back to the cover of our funk-holes. ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... "It's not funk," he said, "but, by Jove, this is an exciting business! Each time that I'm on the point of catching him, it takes me like that in the pit of the stomach. A ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... apprehensive by nature; imagine horrid possibilities too keenly; and indeed would far rather hurt myself than think about doing so. I suppose I have a certain amount of courage, for I am usually successful in making myself do what I funk; but I like doing it none the better for that. And up to the present, I have not failed badly in tight corners. On the contrary, I find (like most nervy people) that actual danger, once arrived, is curiously exhilarating; that it makes one cooler ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... of the young man. He is alert and plainly very energetic. He is full of the spirit of comradeship. One glance at him convinces you that he means to be helpful in every possible way to every human being he comes across. He is not going to shirk. He is certainly not going to funk. You feel sure as you look at him that he will keep things going at a sing-song, that a canteen under his management will be efficiently run. He is a very different man indeed from that pre-war curate of Punch's whose egg has become proverbial, or that other who confided to an ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... he's a funk, like Rand-Brown," said Clephane. "Did any of you chaps notice the way he let Paget through that time he scored for them? He simply didn't attempt to tackle him. He could have brought him down like a shot if he'd only gone for him. Paget was running straight along ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... obligation I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes. He burst the door open, made one leap for ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... now I may have only been startled, but this set me in a blue funk. It struck me all at once that this shaky old whisper of a voice was not speaking the Dutch of nowadays. I never before knew the depths, the essence, of that uncertainty which we call fear. In the silence, I thought a drum was beating,—it ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... pushing back his chair. "Come on, you fellows. The Cuthberts will advance from their funk-holes." . . . He led the way towards the door, and ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... girl, not pretty, but animated; and forceful, even then. The Winters were middle-class, respected, moderately well-to-do Chicago citizens—or had been moderately well-to-do before the fire of '71. Horace Winter had been caught in the financial funk that followed this disaster and the Rush Street household, almost ten years later, was rather put to it to supply the wine-coloured silk and the supplementary gowns, linens, and bedding. In those days you married at twenty ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... a man wins the Victoria Cross, his healthy body has done the deed, unprompted by anything higher. Good air, or a muscular life, has strung his nerves strongly so that he can't, even if he would, appreciate danger. On the other hand, when a man shows funk, turns tail and bolts, and is dubbed a coward, it's his beastly body again. Some obscure physical misfortune is the cause of his disgrace, and if he'd only been to you he would have won the Cross too. Isn't it so? How you doctors must laugh at mystics, and at those who are ascetics, save for ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... does drive. He didn't just funk it at that one time; it's his habit. I've always heard him say he hated to drive a car. Too lazy! Anyhow, there was the very dickens to pay. Before leaving the hill for his dash across the river he'd told March to consider himself ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... shuddered. "God!" he exclaimed, "I hope I don't have to face that. I believe I could stand anything but the thought of the fire. I should hate like the devil to go into a funk before the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... when he had learned that I intended crossing the ocean, and when we passed out of sight of land he was in a blue funk. He said that he had never heard of such a thing before in his life, and that always he had understood that those who ventured far from land never returned; for how could they find their way when they could see no ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... he'll work you to death, for he's always in a funk that Tom Mitchell'll get ahead of him. But you cannot do better. I have no house in town, but you can ride the distance between here and Christianstadt night and morning, if my estimable brother-in-law—whom may the gout convince of his sins—is ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... or less idle all day, all resting before the proposed attack on Achi Baba. In the afternoon we had a visit from an enemy aeroplane again, which dropped a bomb 40 yards from my "funk hole," and 4 yards from what had been taken for a pile of ammunition boxes but was really provisions—only damage, a big hole and a ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... in front thinkin' we're all a-bed. Now, mind—don't stand still, boys, but walk along as ye fire, to give 'em the notion there's more of us. An' don't fire at nothin'. They'd think we was in a funk. An' when you hear me whistle get into the house as quick as a cotton-tail rabbit an' as ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... gate Of Heaven. He had a single mate: Behind him, in his shadow, slunk Clay Sheets in a perspiring funk. "Saint Peter, see this season ticket," Said Satan; "pray undo the wicket." The sleepy Saint threw slight regard Upon the proffered bit of card, Signed by some clerical dead-beats: "Admit the bearer and Clay Sheets." Peter expanded all his eyes: "'Clay Sheets?'—well, I'll be damned!" ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... boot-soles within. The unspeakable idiots inside were crowding to the windows, climbing over each other's backs behind the blinds, billiard cues and all. Somebody broke a window pane, and with the sound of falling glass, so suggestive of riot and devastation, Schomberg reeled out after us in a state of funk which had prevented his parting with his brandy and soda. He must have trembled like an aspen leaf. The piece of ice in the long tumbler he held in his hand tinkled with an effect of chattering teeth. "I beg you, gentlemen," he expostulated thickly. "Come! ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad

... was tiring, too tiring to rehearse in detail. Then a vague feeling of neglect and desolation took possession of me, for I missed the cool-handed efficiency of that ever-dependable "special." I almost surrendered to funk, in fact, when both Poppsy and Pee-Wee started up a steady duet of crying. I sat down and began to sniffle myself, but my sense of humor, thank the Lord, came back and saved the day. There was something so utterly ridiculous in that briny circle, soon augmented and completed ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... vote that to begin with we both pretend to be in an awful funk. If they think that we are only two frightened boys, they won't keep as sharp a watch over us as if they thought we were determined fellows, likely to attempt our escape. There is the sea down there ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty

... how gloomy the day might be, one could always find sunshine from that quarter. No matter how grievous the troubles of work, there was always a bit of cheerful optimism from a man who had tasted almost every joy and sorrow that life had to offer. If one were in a blue funk of dejection because of failure in a class, he would lend the sympathy that came from his own rich experience in failures,—not only past but present, for some things that come easy at sixteen come hard ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... Dr. ——— told of Canning, too, how once, before rising to speak in the House of Commons, he bade his friend feel his pulse, which was throbbing terrifically. "I know I shall make one of my best speeches," said Canning, "because I'm in such an awful funk!" President Pierce, who has a great deal of oratorical power, is subject to a similar horror ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... parties, it was a wonderful place in which to hear the birds sing. The larks trilled at every dawn to herald the coming day, and never seemed in the least disturbed by the roar of artillery. In the left-hand corner of the sketch will be noticed the firing platform, over which is the "funk hole," so called from its being the refuge to run to when the shells arrive. The soldier buries his head like the ostrich—only he beats the ostrich by getting his shoulders in as well—and ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey

... to America had its climax in the banquet given for him at Delmonico's. I drove him to it and saw the great man there in a funk. He could think of nothing but the address he was to deliver.[73] I believe he had rarely before spoken in public. His great fear was that he should be unable to say anything that would be of advantage to the American people, who had been the first to appreciate his works. He may have attended many ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... would do but that he should go back and speak to him. He said the boy would be disappointed. The men were visibly uneasy at his going, but that didn't affect him. He ordered them to wait, and back he went, pell-mell, all alone into that horde of fiends. They hadn't got over their funk, luckily, and he saw Blue Arrow and made his party call and got out again all right. He didn't tell that himself, but Sergeant O'Hara made the camp ring with it. He adores Morgan, and claims that he doesn't know what fear is. I believe it's about so. I've seen him in a fight three times ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... night, and I confess it almost unnerved me. Like the boy before the dentist's door, I suddenly discovered a multitude of reasons for being elsewhere. Some hints of the struggle going on within must have shown in my face, for one of my companions said, "Don't funk; you ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... written pamphlets on this subject for popular distribution (see, e.g., Le Progres Medical of September, 1907). In England and the United States very little has yet been done in this direction, but in the United States, at all events, opinion in favor of action is rapidly growing (see, e.g., W.A. Funk, "The Venereal Peril," Medical Record, April 13, 1907). The American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis (based on the parent society founded in Paris in 1900 by Fournier) was established in New York in 1905. There ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... one would think," the young man admitted. "But does it, in fact? It had somehow got stuck in my head that English folk, meeting as strangers, were rather apt to glare. We're most of us in such a funk, you see, lest, if we treat a stranger with civility, he should turn out not to be ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... with a shout he plunged his sword right through the enemy's body that had stolen them! The enemy fell stone dead. My father seized the colours and looked round. He was alone! The other soldiers had been beaten back. But was he in a funk? No; he gave a loud "Hurrah!" picked up his sword, and fought his way back, the enemy hard after him. It was a race for life, and he ran backwards the whole way; he wasn't going to turn his back to the enemy. He pressed on, shouting "Hurrah!" till he got to his own ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... me to take a guide, that's his little dodge. As if I couldn't take care of myself! I've got it all up in the guide-book, and guess I could find the top blindfold. I'll laugh if I get up before the Cambridge fellows. They'll probably funk it, though, or miss the way, and have to get me to give them a leg up. It'll be a good lesson ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... Sabbath in June, when the protracted meeting usually began, approached, and I knew if things did not change it would be a flat failure. For William was in a blue funk spiritually. ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... I reckon, Mr Flinders hed better hev comed an' told me quietly, instead of skearin' everybody into a blue funk!" snapped out Captain Snaggs, dancing about on his spindleshank legs like a pea on a hot griddle, and dodging the smoke as it puffed in his face, while peering forward to see whence it came. "Hev any of yer chaps ben down below to prospect ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... course," continued Brother Copas easily. "Well, so—in a sense—do I. We beat you at the polls; not in Merchester—we shall never carry Merchester—though even in Merchester we put up fight enough to rattle you into a blue funk. But God help the pair of us, Mr. Simeon, if our principles are to be judged by the uses other men make of 'em! I have had enough of my fellow-Liberals to last me for some time. . . . Why are you studying Liddell and ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... as that Z. Z—— Why, he is a European fool! Upon my word, you could not find another like him all over Europe! He lectures—can you imagine?—as though he were sucking a sugar-stick—sue, sue, sue;... he is in a nervous funk; he can hardly decipher his own manuscript; his poor little thoughts crawl along like a bishop on a bicycle, and, what's worse, you can never make out what he is trying to say. The deadly dulness is awful, the very flies expire. It can only ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... musketry, [Footnote: Letter of Commodore Decatur.] and the wounds were mostly inflicted by round shot and were thus apt to be fatal. Hence the loss of the Americans amounted to Lieutenant John Messer Funk (5th of the ship) and six seamen killed or mortally wounded, and only five severely and ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... each day to see her, but a new inexplicable shyness in Billie's attitude toward him made his task still more difficult and he deferred the question of her future in sheer funk. The magnitude of her fortune, too, was a stumbling-block. The girl knew nothing of him save what intuition had taught her. What if she assumed that his object were to gain control of her estate? The thought maddened him into action at length ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... He'll funk at a great big field like this, And the lad won't cure that sloth of his, He stands no chance, and yet Bungay says He's been backed all morning a hundred ways. He was twenty to one, last night, by Heaven: Twenty to one and now he's seven. Well, one of these fools whom fortune loves Has ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield

... better hold your tongue, Liputin; you talk for the sake of talking, as you always do. All men are spies, gentlemen, who funk their duty at the moment of danger. There will always be some fools who'll run in a panic at the last moment and cry out, 'Aie, forgive me, and I'll give them all away!' But let me tell you, gentlemen, no betrayal would win you a pardon now. Even if your sentence ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... "Honest, if I don't bring home that sheet on the day it is out, the wife is in a funk. She runs her home by ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... nigger-catching business in the Solomon Islands. Natives opened fire on us when our boats were aground in a creek, and some of our men got hit. I wasn't a bit scared of a smack from a bullet, but when I got a scratch on my hand from an arrow, I dropped in a blue funk, and acted like a cur. Knew it was poisoned, felt sure I'd die of lockjaw, and began to weep internally. Then the mate called me a rotten young cur, shook me up, and put my Snider into my hand. But I shall always ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... your game; if it was funk I could have understood it; so I tried to get you to own up in the night. I let you see that we didn't mind whether you knew us or not, and yet you persisted in your lie. So then I smelt something deeper. But we had gone out of ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... promised a dog collar or anything like one, she went mad as a tiger cat and took revenge by ringing up the police with a beast of a story that I'd kidnapped her. She got it out before I could make her stop, and for just a minute I was in a blue funk. New York's rampagin' so just now on the subject of kidnappers. But I had wit enough to chuck her into the street and run to the club for help. I thought of Freddy Fortescue (by the way, I must get him to stand by me with a story in case he's questioned. I can count ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... man, and don't funk it like this," said Senor Sperati, who had graciously consented to assist him with his dressing because of the injury to his hand. "The idea of you losing your nerve, you of all men, and because of a little affair like that. You know very well ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... much that he went round and took a look at Binny. The man was pale by that time and in the deuce of a funk. But he wasn't in the least dead. The surgeon felt that it was a hard case, and said he'd take the risk of speaking to the ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham

... Why are you going?' 'Can't you help a fellow to an excuse? I'm not going to give her the reason.' 'Tell me what you want me to say, and I will tell her you told me to say so.' 'I will tell you the truth.' 'Fire away, then.' 'I was in a beastly funk last night. I dare say you think as I did, that a man ought never to be a hair off the cool?' 'That depends,' I replied; 'there are some things, and there may be more, at which any but an idiot might well be scared; but some fools are such fools they ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... with cold politeness when I mounted to the veranda, and the governor dispensed glasses of "Dr. Funk," a drink known to all the South Seas. Its secret is merely the mixing of a stiff drink of absinthe with lemonade or limeade. The learned man who added this death-dealing potion to the pleasures of the thirsty was Stevenson's friend, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... fiords and bays of eastern Newfoundland (the shores of which were still hugged by the winter ice), he and his men were much impressed with the incredible numbers of the sea fowl settled for nesting purposes on the rocky islands, especially on Funk Island.[1] These birds were guillemots, puffins, great auks,[2] gannets (called by Cartier margaulx), and probably gulls and eider duck. To his sailors—always hungry and partly fed on salted provisions, as seamen were down to a few years ago—this inexhaustible supply of fresh ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... the diners were in a bit of a funk, but Pfaff's excellent meats and cool, sparkling wines soon set free in each a scintillant human spirit, and the banquet took on almost ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... sufficiently realised the solemnity of that word "now." It sounded in my ears like a knell, but I swallowed hard, and echoed it. To do myself justice, though, I don't think I was afraid. I was only in a funk that I should do something stupid, and be disgraced forever in the eyes of Molly Winston. However, I reflected, it couldn't be so very bad. Molly herself, and even Jack, had to learn. Winston had explained to me several times the purpose of all the different levers, and, at least, I shouldn't ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... on the look-out. At once a party took to the boats, while others watched along the shore. We were in a great funk about the matter, for if the wild bulls got over to our side it might mean almost ruin for us. So we charged gallantly at them in the water, and strove to head them back to the other side, where the Paparoa men were waiting ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... "Funk? Oh, Lord no. You'll stick it till you drop, till you're paralyzed, till you've lost your voice and memory, till you're an utter wreck. There'll be enough of 'em, poor devils, without ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... with those passenger boys," he kept on repeating. And another time: "Guess those niggers yonder are half mad with funk about something." ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... won't help any, Poll," Lois said, quietly. "If you are going to get in a blue funk, what can you expect ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill

... child, you haven't sense enough to set a trap. But, since there are spring-guns in his neighbourhood, I repeat that you ought to inform him of the fact. I dare say he wouldn't funk a spring-gun on his own account, but he may not want his ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... day," Harry went on, as though pursuing his own train of thought. "He can't last much longer, and when he goes I shall miss him terribly. We have understood each other during this fortnight as we never did in all those early years. Sometimes I funk it utterly—following him with all ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... to get very far away from him; and when I broached the matter of going after help, he even went so far as to argue with me that there was no necessity for either of us leaving the house until daylight. The mere suggestion that he should wait here alone threw him into a blue funk; so I was finally obliged to tell him flatly, that if he did n't go, I would, and that he ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... as he struggled between dignity, greediness, and common funk was so irresistibly funny that ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... follow behind me, keeping step all the time—about three steps behind me. Don't look to right or left. Keep your eyes on the middle of my back. Nobody knows you, so don't go into a funk, my lad. It's life or death for you, mebby. I'll get a word to Briggs, the ringmaster. He'll help you out, too. Just follow me around the ring, three steps behind. Stop when I stop, walk when I do. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... over the top that a seasoned old sergeant noticed a young soldier fresh from home visibly affected by the nearness of the coming fight. His face was pale, his teeth chattering, and his knees tried to touch each other. It was sheer nervousness, but the sergeant thought it was sheer funk. ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... all right," said Haggart again. He was looking carelessly round, and he suddenly caught sight of a frightened face a long way beneath him. "Don't be in such a funk, Harry," he said good-humouredly. "It will all come right in the end! The Doctor's awfully hard sometimes, but ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn

... enemy's attacks; then electrified once more by the most astounding news of all. Alexandria, in Egypt, was the base of a pillar of fire! Fully half of the city was wiped out, and the remainder in a mortal funk, terrorized and riotous. The United States was not ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... must be told that I was now feeling in quite a bit of a funk and should have welcomed any friendship offered me; I even found myself remembering with rather a pensive tolerance the attentions of Mr. Barker, though doubtless back in Red Gap I should have found them as loathsome as ever. My hump was due, I made no doubt, first, to my precarious position ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... bear much," he said with more and more of his parental bitterness, "but I don't know that I'm yet in a funk before my child. Doesn't she want to see me, with any contrition, after the trick she has played me?" And then as his companion's answer failed: "In spite of which trick you suggest that I should leave the country with no ...
— The Outcry • Henry James

... be glad o' my advice in the end. Experience 'elps a lot. Some men wot's goin' to be married gets a sort o' funk at the last minnit and, bless you, they'd wriggle out o' it, yes, even if they was goin' to marry an angel out o' 'eaven. My friend's 'usband was one o' them sort—wanted to stop the 'ole thing with the weddin' cake ordered, an' lodgings taken at Margate for the 'oneymoon. But she 'eld ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... the address of the 'Undergrads.' I never saw a young man in a greater funk—because, I suppose, he had imitated ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... it as a request on the part of his captor that he should remain silent, and to this Mr. Blowter in a blue funk passively agreed. Three men caught him and bound him deftly with native rope, a gag was put into his mouth, and he was dragged cautiously through a hole which the intruders had cut in the walls of Notiki's dwelling ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... sentry. He heard he was surrounded with enemies so he fired at the first man he saw. I frightened him by pretending to drag him before the General, but laughing let him go. The fact was, as he stated, he was in a devil of a funk, and so thinking to make short work did not challenge before firing. I was surprised at finding a sentry on this spot, he had been put there since ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... will be glad to hear you're better," said he. "There's Shoddy I met the other week in a regular blue funk because he thought you'd bolted. He wanted to come down and see the governors here about his little bill, but I managed to pacify him. But he says if you don't give him a call soon he'll wake ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed



Words linked to "Funk" :   jazz, retract, move, recoil, biochemist, shrink back, depression, shrink



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