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Grinning   /grˈɪnɪŋ/   Listen
Grinning

noun
1.
A facial expression characterized by turning up the corners of the mouth; usually shows pleasure or amusement.  Synonyms: grin, smile, smiling.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Grinning" Quotes from Famous Books



... as I'm alive!" uttered Travers Gladwin. "Me old college chum, and as per usual—making love. Yis, me grinning chauffeur frind, here's where we make a pinch an' test Mme. Flynn's ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie

... large and dark, with a smooth, slippery floor, and was panelled in dark oak; oak settles and large carved antique cabinets were ranged round the walls. The great fireplace was filled with green boughs, and a tiger skin, with a huge grinning head and eyes, lay before it. The quiet little country girl had never seen such ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... was incessant, the popular feeling intense. There was old Milsom waving a feeble arm: John Allwood gaunt, but radiant; Mary Sharland, white still as the ribbons on her bonnet, egging on her flushed and cheering husband; and the club boys grinning and shouting, partly for love of Elsmere, mostly because to the young human animal mere noise is heaven. In front was an old hedger and ditcher, who came round the parish periodically, and never failed to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Grinning from the high shelves were the Greek masks, Comedy and Tragedy. The light from the candle gave a sickly human tint to the marble. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... ridiculous yet delightful moment, that moment of mingled anguish and joy, when it becomes necessary, without any preliminary rehearsal, to play the most difficult of parts, and to avoid the ridicule which is grinning at you from the folds of the curtains; to be at one and the same time a diplomatist, a barrister, and a man of action, and by skill, tact, and eloquence render the sternest of realities acceptable without banishing ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... of the partition wall which fell in at the great shock." "Have you had an earthquake?" blazed up my uncle, now fairly in a rage. "No, not an earthquake, worshipful Herr Justitiarius," replied the old man, grinning all over his face, "but three days ago the heavy wainscot ceiling of the justice-hall fell in with a tremendous crash." "Then may the"—— My uncle was about to rip out a terrific oath in his violent passionate ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... English way of the creature she condemned. Annabel loved to drag my poor master in flowery chains before his relative. She would make wreaths of crimson leaves for his bald head, and exhibit him grinning like a weak-eyed Bacchus. Once he sat doting beside her at twilight on a bench of the wide gallery while his sister, near by, kept guard over their talk. I passed them, coming back from my tramp, with a glowing branch in my hand. For having set my teeth ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... with translucid green. The little path lay neatly raked and the yellow daffodils stood, like brass trumpets, closely ranked on their stalks; under the shrubs bright violets peeped out with raised eyebrows, like the grinning faces of little old wives. The whole garden was filled with a scent of fresh jasmine and a cool fragrance ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... The grinning face snapped off the screen, but the cackling laughter continued to reverberate in the control room until the radio shack finally ...
— A Matter of Magnitude • Al Sevcik

... the slightest hint of dawn showed in the sky the lamps were lighted in the corridors, maids were scuttling about, bringing in breakfast, and Jones, the gardener, assisted by his eldest boy, a sturdy grinning urchin of twelve, was beginning the process of carrying down piles of hand-bags and hold-alls, and stacking them on a cart which was waiting in ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... the agent grinning. "That's why we brought the tractor out to-day. We wanted to have a good chance when your uncle wasn't home. When he gets back with his bride, we're going to show him what power can ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... meantime the women and children gathered round us, the latter especially treating us with scant respect; the urchins, like so many imps, grinning from ear to ear at us, pulled at our clothes and pinched our arms and legs; while several of them, pious, I have no doubt, according to their notions, spit at us to show their hatred of the Nazarenes. We knew that it would be of no use to run after the little ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd; All murder'd: for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antick sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks, Infusing him with self and vain conceit As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus, Comes at the last, and with ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... That fopp'ry, grinning, and grimace, And fertile store of common-place; That oaths as false as dicers swear, And Wry teeth, and scented hair; That trinkets, and the pride of dress, Can only give your ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... with you?" She spoke in a whisper and was addressing herself. She'd gone short on sleep lately—the only way, really, to get a few hours with Pete. Pete was an interne at General Hospital, and the kind of a homely grinning carrot-top a girl like Lorry could put into dreams as the center of a ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber

... morning the black pilot made his appearance, grinning as he thrust his dark muzzle over the gunwale. He was greeted with answering smiles, for we were "homeward bound," and all hands cheerfully commenced heaving up the anchor and making sail. With a favorable breeze and an ebb tide we soon passed ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... caused to be cleaned and varnished, and placed it on a chest of drawers in his chamber, immediately opposite his bed; where I have seen it, grinning most dismally. It was an object of great awe and horror to the superstitious housemaids; and Scott used to amuse himself with their apprehensions. Sometimes, in changing his dress, he would leave his neck-cloth coiled round it like a turban, and none of the "lasses" dared ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... looked up as the boys approached. All of them seemed to be grinning, as though amused. But while the big man really looked somewhat as a mastiff might appear to a little terrier, his two companions had a sneer on their dark, evil faces that gave Thad ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... his signaller, "what are you grinning at?" The submarine has hung on to ask if the destroyer will "kiss her and whisper good-night." A breaking sea smacks her tower in the middle of the insult. She closes like an oyster, but—just too late. Habet! There must be a quarter of a ton of ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... then turns jester in a bitter way, and stoops to ironies and grinning sarcasm. Often it gives with the right hand only to take with the left, and blinded ones are set to chop and saw and plane those trees which in the end make gallows for their hopes. The story ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... "Grinning mugs would be nearer the mark, Mater," said Clarence; "never saw such a chuckle-headed lot of bumpkins in ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... sha'n't get the credit of that. Tit-Bits would publish my name and address if I win. What are you grinning at? They would." ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... narrow, pieces of his flesh were torn off by the approaching walls; at last, breathless, naked and bleeding, he reached his goal; but his mother glided farther away, and it was all to begin over again. The phantoms pursued him, grinning and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... didn't stay poar long. Not he. He jest married a right rich girl! He! he!" And the old woman grinned at Ralph, and then at Mirandy, and then at the rest, until Ralph shuddered. Nothing was so frightful to him as to be fawned on by this grinning ogre, whose few lonesome, blackish teeth seemed ready to devour him. "He didn't stay poar, you bet a hoss!" and with this the coal was deposited on the pipe, and the lips began to crack like parchment as each puff of smoke escaped. ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... Hideous visions passed before the aching eyes that I dared not close, but which gazed ever into the dumb darkness where It lay—my dread companion through the watches of the night. I pictured It in every abhorrent form which an excited fancy could summon up: now as a skeleton; with hollow eye-holes and grinning, fleshless jaws; now as a vampire, with livid face and bloated form, and dripping mouth wet with blood. Would it never be light! And yet, when day should dawn I should be forced to see It face to face. I had heard that specter and fiend were compelled ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... season and out of season, among the mists, across the streets, under the porches of the church, to the drowsy chant of his orations, to the whistle of his satires, ever and ever again, he conjures up before our eyes the hideous grinning face of "Fals-Semblant," the insincere. Fals-Semblant is never named by name; he assumes all names and shapes; he is the king who reigns contrary to conscience, the knight perverted by Lady Meed, the heartless man of law, the merchant ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... torches closely, the shape of a human body was discernible in white ashes, into which the entire mortality of a man or woman had resolved itself. Among all this extinct dust, there might perchance be a thigh-bone, which crumbled at a touch; or possibly a skull, grinning at its own wretched plight, as is the ugly and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... more properly supper, with lights kindled: "Only I cannot dress, you know," her Highness had said; "I never do, except for the Queen-Mother's parties;"—and rang for her maids. So that you are led out to the Anteroom, and go grinning about, till a new and still more charming deshabille be completed, and her Most Serene Highness can receive you again: "Now Messieurs! Pshaw, one is always stupid, no ESPRIT at all except by candlelight!"—After ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... representative of all that divided her forever from the life of luxury and show which had so permeated her young blood with its sweet, lingering poison. She descended from the carriage, passed the crowd of gaping, grinning loungers, and entered the train, with cheeks burning and eyes downcast, an ideal bride in appearance of shy and refined modesty. And none who saw her delicate, aristocratic beauty of face and figure and dress could have attributed to her the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... two dirty, wet little boys suddenly appeared before him,—one grinning cheerfully, the other looking very dismal and scared as the dog growled and glared at them as if ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... the King of Terrors with his grinning skull and his rattling bones was man's steady companion. He woke his victims up with terrible tunes on his scratchy fiddle he sat down with them at dinner—he smiled at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took a girl out for a walk. If you had heard nothing but ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... came bounding down the little path to meet her, wagging his tail and barking his morning greeting. They reached the door together, but Jock, mindful of his injuries, had shut and barred it, and was grinning at them through the window. Jean sat placidly down upon the step with True Tammas beside her and continued her song. ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... full sweep of those emotional explanations which they had ingeniously avoided for the last three hundred at least; in a word, Charles Langholm's new novel is being finished while you wait. It is not one of his best; yet a moment ago there was a tear in his eye, and now he is grinning like a child at play. And at play he is, though he be paid for playing, and though the game is only being won after weeks and months of uphill labor ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... was eloquent; he produced a fat bag and flung it on the ground, where it fell with a mellow chink. "There is my sponsor," he made answer, grinning in the very best of humours, savouring to the full his enemy's rage and discomfiture, and savouring it at no cost to himself. "Shall I count out one thousand and one hundred ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... drank the best,—touched not the sick-man's lips that night. His wonted humor was gone. Of all his 'jibes, his gambols, his songs, his flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar, not one now, to mock his own grinning!—quite chap-fallen.'—The conversation was of death and the grave. And when one of his friends said, that life was not the highest good, Hoffmann interrupted him, exclaiming with a startling earnestness; 'No, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... upon his father's chaplain, grinning like a heathen idol, in the midst of a tempestuous ocean of petticoats, and the bland way in which he sniffed up the incense of praise showed how grateful such homage was to his vain nature. At that ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... scenes of riotous drunkenness, but there was something debonair about even those bent upon extermination, either of an antagonist or the chandeliers and glass-ware, and she had never seen men sodden save on the water front. Even then they were often grinning. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... either cheek defined the outline of the jaws; while a set of projecting teeth, still white, seemed to stretch the skin of the lips with the effect of an equine yawn. The contrast between the ill-assorted eyes and grinning mouth gave Samanon a passably ferocious air; and the very bristles on the man's chin looked stiff and ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... have rewrite men," Scotty said, grinning. "It's all I can do to write a readable letter. A news story ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... to the west, And the cold fog invades the sleeping land. Lo! how the grinning skulls in the level light Litter the place! Methinks that every skull Is a most lifelike portrait of my Sen, Drawn by the hand of Death; each fleshless pate, Cursed with a ghastly grin to eyes unrubbed With love's magnetic ointment, seems to mine To smile an amiable smile like ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... Dennis. Choke their grinning! The law of the land's a good doctor; but, bad luck to those that gorge upon such a fine physician's poor patients! Sure, we know, now and then, it's mighty wholesome to bleed; but nobody falls in love with ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman

... with every ounce of my strength. The Han officer, grinning wickedly as he tried to raise the muzzle of his pistol, threw himself backward as my bayonet ripped the air under his nose. But his grin turned instantly to sickened surprise as the up-cleaving ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... beheld the offerings—mouldy fruit spread out upon a rude altar, or hanging in half-decayed baskets around some uncouth jolly-looking image; I was present during the continuance of the festival; I daily beheld the grinning idols marshalled rank and file in the Hoolah Hoolah ground, and was often in the habit of meeting those whom I supposed to be the priests. But the temples seemed to be abandoned to solitude; the festival had been nothing ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... was gazing upon, and for the moment he had forgotten where he was. The grinning faces of Joe and Jerry, whom he had awakened half an hour before with his sawmill sleeping serenade, brought him to ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll

... forth some article whose real value he knew perfectly well. Adelle lost her assurance, shed tears of shame; Archie lost his temper and swore at the officer for insulting his wife, and in consequence every article in the fourteen pieces of baggage was dumped upon the dock while a grinning audience of inspectors, reporters, and stevedores ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... sir," said the black-bearded sailor, grinning. "The cook's put a bit of salt pork, beef, and old grease inside. They'll smell ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... their family joys as she would share. Giacomo introduced her to the stables and the horses; Assunta initiated her into some of the mysteries of Italian cooking. Tommaso, the scullion, and Pia, the maid, stood by in grinning delight one day when the Contessa's ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood

... smart as they make 'em," went on the colonel. "Quick as a flash to think and to see and to act, never loses his head. And he's a wonder with the men, jollies 'em along when they are grousing or homesick, sets 'em grinning from ear to ear when they are down-hearted, has a pat on the shoulder for this one and a jeer for that one. Old and young they are all crazy about him. They'd go anywhere he led. I tell you he's the stuff that will take 'em over the top and make the boches feel cold in the pit of their fat tumtums ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... fellow, grinning pleasantly. "There's the usual stuff. The 4.19 is two hours late, and I've had one whole private message. Gettin' to be ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... Park, which is the dormitory of the East Side in summer. We saw a van clattering off with prisoners to the night court. We saw illustrious burglars, "gunmen," and "dukes" of famous streets—for we had but to raise a beckoning finger, and they approached us, grinning, out of gloomy shadows. (And very ordinary they seemed in ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... went the rounds as they stood in line, looking curious, grinning suspiciously at Coleman and Acres, who had in fact stationed themselves on either side of the door, at little writing stands upon which the petition lay spread, with an ever-increasing list of names beneath as one man after another "put his fist to it," chaffing one another with grievous comments ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... retreated to the further corner of my room or box; but the monkey, looking in at every side, put me into such a fright that I wanted presence of mind to conceal myself under the bed, as I might easily have done. After some time spent in peeping, grinning, and chattering, he at last espied me; and, reaching one of his paws in at the door, as a cat does when she plays with a mouse, although I often shifted place to avoid him, he at length caught hold of the lappet of my coat (which, being made of that country cloth, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... love of Moses, sir, I—" Hobbs began to wail. Then he groaned in dismal horror. King had lightly vaulted the wall and was grinning back at him from the sacred precincts—from the playground ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... entirely surrounded him [Sharon Turner]; and Gloucester himself wondrously approved the trust that had consigned to his stripling arm the flower of the Yorkist army. Through the mists the blood-red manteline he wore over his mail, the grinning teeth of the boar's head which crested his helmet, flashed and gleamed wherever his presence was most needed to encourage the flagging or spur on the fierce. And there seemed to both armies something ghastly and preternatural ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... you stand there, grinning at me in that impertinent way, you low woman?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed with great exasperation. "I believe you are a Jesuit, sent here to corrupt my children. But go ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to overpower the ridiculous without deigning to hide it; and these grotesque monuments of the last century answer a similar purpose with the grinning faces which the old architects scattered among their most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... regarded by some critics as a grave moral censor, veiling his high purpose behind the grinning mask of comedy; by others as a buffoon of genius, whose only object was to raise a laugh. Both sides of the question are ingeniously and copiously argued in Browning's 'Aristophanes' Apology'; and there is a judicious summing up of the case of Aristophanes vs. Euripides in Professor Jebb's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... grounds was looking canalward. Torches were beginning to flare up here and there in the darkening field. There were all kinds of sideshows and "penny pops"—lifting machines, hammer-throws, a shooting gallery, a baseball alley with a grinning black man dodging the ball at the end—"certainly should like to try to hit that nigger," Pap declared—taffy booths, popcorn machines, soft drink booths, and a dozen ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... that we crave. Go down into the dark markets of the town. See the long, narrow, sordid streets lined with the cheap commodities of the poor. Mark how there is a sort of spangled gaiety, a reckless swing, a grinning exultation in the grimy, sordid caravanserai. The cheap colours of the shoddy open-air clothing-house, the blank faded green of the coster's cart; the dark bluish-red of the butcher's stall—they all take ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... changed much in six years. His face was worse than mine; he hadn't had the plastic surgeons of Terran Intelligence doing their best for him. His mouth, I thought fleetingly, must hurt like hell when he drew it up into the kind of grin he was grinning now. His eyebrows, thick and fierce with gray in them, went up as he saw Miellyn; but he backed away to let us enter, and shut the door ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... Basom. "I ran all the way here to tell you!" He was grinning widely and panting for breath ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett

... turning every thing into disgust—when a certain incubus rides upon the brain, as the Old Man of the Mountain did upon the shoulders of Sinbad, burdening, irritating, and rendering existence a misery—when, looking around, you see but one object perched everywhere and grinning at you—when even what you put into your mouth tastes of but that one something, and the fancied taste is so unpleasant as almost to prevent deglutition—when every sound which vibrates in your ear appears to strike the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... mean, don't I think, Mr. Hale," jeered Professor Brierly. "You mean don't I guess. No, I never guess. I leave that for highly imaginative newspaper men, or," he waved his hand sarcastically at his grinning assistant, "to John, there. Bring me some facts and I shall try to give you an opinion, an opinion that I may base on those facts, but, what do you know of the other ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... full of these little plagues, now, that a body can't set down their foot without treading on 'em. I get up in the morning, and find one asleep behind the door, and see one black head poking out from under the table, one lying on the door-mat,—and they are mopping and mowing and grinning between all the railings, and tumbling over the kitchen floor! What on earth did you want ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... grinning at the sarcasm. "This Transcanadian Railway Company, having got a great deal of spare land from the Canadian government for nothing, thought it would be a good idea to settle British workmen on it and screw rent out of them. Plenty of British workmen, supplanted in their employment ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... tragedy occurred is down a narrow, winding, country lane. While we made our way along it we heard the rattle of a carriage coming towards us and stood aside to let it pass. As it drove by us I caught a glimpse through the closed window of a horribly contorted, grinning face glaring out at us. Those staring eyes and gnashing teeth flashed past us like a ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle

... you grinning at, boys?" angrily demanded an old gentleman seated beside a meandering stream, of two schoolboys, who were watching him from behind a high paling at his rear.—"Don't you know a ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... papa often says so and he knows all about it," replied Alfred with an involuntary wriggle suggestive of painful memories. Then, as if anxious to change the conversation from its somewhat personal channel, he asked, pointing to a row of grinning heads above the wall, "Do ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... the line. Many of the men were grinning. Most of them were white and their faces were drawn. The young American felt queer; somehow he did not feel real. Everything about him seemed to be taking place as in a dream. He could not realize ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay

... the great green valley with its hills, green, too, the line of the Seine cutting the city apart like the flash of a sword blade, the golden dome of the Hotel des Invalides, the grinning gargoyles of Notre Dame, the arches and statues and fountains and the long green ribbons that ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... dead in this gay Paris morning seem to go gayly to the cemetery, with their jovial coachmen grinning and nodding ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... into the back room, and Buster poked himself in the ribs with his thumb, grinning and winking at his own ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... like a great ogre, who was going to snip off people's heads, and eat them for his breakfast—only to satisfy his hunger, not from any malevolent feeling toward them. Mr. O'Brallaghan, as his name intimated, was from the Emerald Isle—was six feet high—had a carotty head, an enormous grinning mouth, and talked with the national accent. Indeed, so marked was this accent, that, after mature consideration, we have determined not to report any of this gentleman's remarks—naturally distrustful as we are of our ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... Timmy came back, grinning. He took the box off the truck, carried it into the office, and set it on the floor. It was not a large box, nor heavy, just a small box with strips nailed across the top, and there was an Angora cat in it. It was a fine, large Angora ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler

... hands with the petrified Mr. Gribble and went off, grinning wickedly. He had few favourites, and Mr. Gribble ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs

... saves itself backache and elbow grease. Personally, I think they would not have worked at all, if Macartney had not put the fear of death in them. I caught him at it, and though I did not hear what he said in that competent low voice of his, there was no more lounging around and grinning from our new men. But the trouble among the old men kept on till we had none of them left except the four in the mill. It did not concern me particularly, except that I had to work on odd jobs that should not have concerned me either, and I ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... except that gorgio, in his greens and his Lincolns, says that I have played the—with him.' 'Oho, he does, Ursula,' says my coko, 'try your action of law against him, my lamb,' and he puts something privily into my hands; whereupon I goes close up to the grinning gorgio, and staring him in the face, with my head pushed forward, I cries out: 'You say I did what was wrong with you last night when I was out with you abroad?' 'Yes,' says the local officer, 'I says you did,' looking down all the time. 'You are a liar,' says ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... for the first time of the presence of Uncle Pentstemon in the background, but approaching, wearing a tie of a light mineral blue colour, and grinning and sucking enigmatically and judiciously round ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... Frog is afraid of Farmer Brown's boy, so when he appeared, Grandfather Frog stopped arguing with old Mr. Toad and with a great splash dived into the Smiling Pool and hid under a lily-pad. There he stayed and watched his cousin, old Mr. Toad, grinning in the most provoking way, for he wasn't afraid of Farmer Brown's boy. In fact, he had boasted that they were friends. Grandfather Frog had thought that this was just an idle boast, but when he saw ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess

... that, some centuries ago, an army of white men invaded one of the Barbary states. They were defeated by the natives, and were every one slain. The Moors took their bodies and piled them up in a great monument, and there the white bones and grinning skulls remain to this day, a pyramid of skeletons; a ghastly warning to others who might think to make a like attempt at invasion of the country. Caesar must have read of that terrible ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... further. His hostess began issuing orders. A few minutes later, Primmie, adequately if not beautifully attired in a man's oilskin "slicker," sou'wester, and rubber boots, clumped forth in search of the suitcase. She returned dripping but grinning with the missing property. Its owner regarded it with profound thankfulness. He could at least retire for the night robed as ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... atrociously. All about the green carpet, there was a slowly moving crowd of people: talking to each other: staring at the Pope through eye-glasses; defrauding one another, in moments of partial curiosity, out of precarious seats on the bases of pillars: and grinning hideously at the ladies. Dotted here and there, were little knots of friars (Frances-cani, or Cappuccini, in their coarse brown dresses and peaked hoods) making a strange contrast to the gaudy ecclesiastics of higher degree, and having ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... tempest, the demon, or a malevolent spirit might bear her away on unbridled wings. In one poem she apostrophizes Marie Bashkirtseff as warring with vast genius against unknown powers, but who now is in her coffin among worms, her skull grinning and showing its teeth. She would be possessed by her and thrilled as by an electric current. A dwarf beggar wrings her heart with pity, but she will not be overwhelmed. Though a daring peasant, she ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... wonder, fiercely, why his eggs and coffee were so slow in coming. Then, to his consternation, the young women, plainly of the serving-class, bore down upon him with abashed smiles. He noticed for the first time that one of them was carrying a very small child in her arms; as she came alongside, grinning sheepishly, she extended the small one toward the astounded Brock, and ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... my grinning subordinates by a frown. It was easy to see what was passing in their superficial minds. If I had not been able to look below the surface, I might, on observing two nicely dressed men and one nicely dressed woman enter a church before eleven in the morning on a week day, have come to the same ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... the anterooms of hell, which Dante has described in such masterly style. We all wear our glittering masks, under which our corpses are hidden; one word from our master and this drapery would fall off, and these grinning death-heads be brought to ruin. It depends solely upon the will of Frederick of Prussia to speak this word. He is our master, and when he commands it, we must lay aside our swords and exchange our uniforms for ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... up, and half pushed his chair from the table. He quickly sat down again, and I could hear him sacre-ing and muttering to himself, and grinning and scowling. I could not tell whether he was ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... from my nephew's, who is a cotton planter, residing eighteen miles from the Springs. As sure as Friday or Saturday came, so sure came the pack horse, laden with fresh butter, mutton, &c. The presiding genius of these luxuries, who safely guided the richly laden vessel into port, was a grinning, half grown cuffy, whom they called "Bowlegs." But my only object in telling you of this delightful, but very novel winter sojourn, made so pleasant because of the unwearied attentions, and choice society of a small ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless

... unpunished, signaling behind him with one of his lower hands for the box to be brought forward. The slaves carried it to the front, set it down, and opened it, taking from it a rug which they spread on the floor. On this, from the box, they placed twenty-four newly severed opal-grinning heads, in four neat rows. They had all been freshly scrubbed and polished, but they still smelled like ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... the boarders or outsiders ask you how you work it, you cut out the bones and toe business and talk science and temperature to beat the cars. Understand, do you? It's science or no eight-fifty in the pay envelope. Left toe-joint!" And he goes off grinning. ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... years at sea and learnt the knack of the press-gang for nothing, daddy," replied one of them grinning; "but we must be off; we ain't constables, you know, and ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... pomp for freedom, gaolers for a council, Inquisitors for friends, and Hell for life! 360 I had only one fount of quiet left, And that they poisoned! My pure household gods[429] Were shivered on my hearth, and o'er their shrine Sate grinning ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... the envelope a good deal, so that that boy shouldn't read it going upstairs; and he wrote 'Very private' outside, and gave the letter to the boy. I thought it wasn't any good; but in a minute the grinning boy came back, and he was quite respectful, and said—'The Editor says, please will you ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... suddenly he had brought the gun along from the bed with him and was holding it without having been in the least aware of the fact. Grinning twistedly at the old and pointless precaution, he shoved the gun into his trousers pocket, brought out matches, a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and began to smoke. Very considerate of them to see to it he wouldn't run out of minor ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz

... at all surprising when one recalls how persistently he always avoided people. He planned that as a way of escaping from anyone—even the servants. Can't you picture him grinning down from those windows upon departing callers? Doubtless many a time I've walked away myself, after that man of his told ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... a little grinning negro Lord Peterborow gave her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... fire-light. As Charley recognized one less robust than himself, he gave a shout of delight and with a rush dragged him from his saddle in an affectionate embrace, while the captain, his eyes dancing with pleasure, was wringing the hand of a widely-grinning little darky who had dismounted from the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... shall leap, And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, And noble thought be freer under the sun. And the heart of a people beat with one desire; For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and done, And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... grinning now, for he saw the humor of the situation, and he could not help admiring the nerve of the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... model, and took it to Mr. Kruesi, at that time engaged on piece-work for me. I told him it was a talking-machine. He grinned, thinking it a joke; but he set to work and soon had the model ready. I arranged some tin-foil on it and spoke into the machine. Kruesi looked on, still grinning. But when I arranged the machine for transmission and we both heard a distinct sound from it, he nearly fell down in his fright. I must admit that I was a little scared myself." The words which he had spoken into the machine and which were the first ever to be reproduced ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... he, grinning, "one sees that the Jew's stair was easier going for thee than Ortone." And he prodded her with ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... dignity beneath the admiring gaze of their humbler brethren. Taxies brought up those whose fortunes, perhaps, were not of such amplitude. Hansoms and hacks conveyed still others, and one party came in a plumber's wagon, its women members all bundled up in shawls and blankets against the cold, but grinning delightedly as ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... there no the heeven above them there, and the hell beneath them? and God frowning, and the deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idea of the classic tragedy defined to be, man conquered by circumstance? Canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man conquering circumstance?—and I'll show you that, too—in mony a garret where no eye but the gude God's ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... describe crazy circles upon the smooth turf in the deepening dusk. Seen thus in the half-light they appeared more than ever gnome-like, humorously ugly and awkward. They trod on their own ears, tumbled over one another, sprawled on the grass, panting and grinning, until their ecstatic owner incited them to further gyrations. To Dick this was a night of unbridled licence. Had he not dined late? Had he not leave to sit up till half-past ten o'clock? Was he not going out, bright and early, to-morrow morning to see the horses galloped? Could life ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... held out her little hand to him. The gesture was so delightfully natural that Hale, grinning boyishly, took her hand and held it as they ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... descended thus Down to the second, which, a lesser space Embracing, so much more of grief contains Provoking bitter moans. There, Minos stands Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all Who enter, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... of grinning faces about him, and saw that there was no mercy for him. He must make ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... happy young father yelped, "hey, how about that? I've got a son." He pounded the two grinning troopers on the back. Suddenly he froze. "What about Ellen? How's Ellen?" ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael

... a D'ISRAELI, and tax his mighty intellect to make even SIBTHORP comfortable,—surely the same minister will have, aye, a morbid sense of the wants, the daily wretchedness of hundreds of thousands, who, with the fiend Corn Law grinning at their fireless hearths—pine and perish in weavers' hovels, for the which there has as yet been no 'adoption of measures for the warming and ventilating.'" "Surely"—they will think—"the man whose sympathy is active for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... in the land. There was only a fitful sleep for the small boys and girls, who were up at peep of day, stealing: from room to room crying "Christmas Gift!" Out on the back porches waited the negroes in grinning rows to follow the example. All week the cabin fires burned brightly and constant was the rejoicing over their treasures, not forgetting the grand eatables and the big ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... delighted to find a large audience gathering round him to listen while he gave one of the new boys a good setting down, "or you may find that, after I have done with you, you won't be fit to show your ugly mug in the row of grinning boobies staring over the wall at ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... herself in her excitement, and was grinning at Lottie, who was wriggling with rapturous expectation. She almost dropped her box, the disapproving voice so startled her, and her frightened, bobbing curtsy of apology was so funny that ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... like grinning triumphantly, but I didn't. "Why, just fine, Rob," I told him, "though you really should have given me notice that you were leaving. ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf

... ran round the grinning circle. An old Boer came up. He did not understand what induced the soldiers to go in the armoured train. Frankland replied, 'Ordered to. Don't you ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... buy that grub stake," Slim interrupted the family gift for profuse speech. He had caught the boys grinning, and fancied that they were tracing a likeness between the garrulity of Sybilly and the fluency of her aunt, the Countess. "You don't want that train to go off and leave yuh, ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower



Words linked to "Grinning" :   simper, facial gesture, smiling, facial expression, smirk



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